Epithalon — Khavinson's original 10mg x 10 days protocol, three cycles in, writing it up
36 posts
Been running Khavinson's classical Epithalon protocol — 10 mg/day SubQ for 10 days, then 80 days off — for three cycles now (so ~10 months elapsed). Writing this up because the space is split between 'Epithalon is the fountain of youth' and 'Epithalon is saline with good marketing' and I'd like to add some actual data to the pile.
Background: 47M, in reasonable shape, bloodwork annual with more detail every 90 days since I started. I also track biological age via TruDiagnostic (DunedinPACE + epigenetic age). N=1 caveats obvious, I'll name them at the end.
Why the 10/80 protocol and not daily microdosing: Khavinson's published work centered on short pulsatile courses with long washouts. His argument was that pineal regulation responds to pulsatile signaling, not sustained exposure, and that the 10 day course is enough to 'reset' without driving tolerance. I'm not qualified to endorse that mechanism, but the original work is what it is, and I wanted to replicate the original before deviating.
What I tracked and what moved:
- DunedinPACE: 1.04 (baseline) -> 0.98 (6 months) -> 0.96 (10 months). That's a genuine shift, but within the population-level noise of the assay.
- Epigenetic age (TruAge PACE): tracked roughly in line with chronological plus a small negative offset. Not dramatic.
- Subjective sleep: measurably better during the 10-day dose window (+6% deep on Oura) and then regresses to baseline during washout. Most consistent effect I've seen.
- HRV: no clear pattern. Too noisy.
- Bloodwork: nothing meaningful moved. No changes in fasting glucose, insulin, lipids, HbA1c, IGF-1, prolactin, or thyroid.
Dose details: 10 mg reconstituted in 2 mL bac water, 0.2 mL per day SubQ belly, rotating sites. PM before bed. I did not split dosing.
Caveats I'll front-load:
- TruDiagnostic's scores at the individual level have reported test-retest variability that's a big fraction of the annual change we expect to see. Interpret small movements cautiously.
- Over the same 10 months I also cleaned up my sleep hygiene and added Zone 2 cardio. Can I isolate Epithalon's contribution? No, I cannot.
- The only effect that cleanly time-locks to dosing is sleep quality during the dose window. Everything else could be lifestyle drift.
Would I keep running it? Yes, at this cost and injection burden. Would I tell someone 'you should do this to live longer'? Absolutely not. It's a reasonable experiment, it's not a treatment.
15 Replies
34 posts
Epithalon's human data is almost entirely from Khavinson's own institute. External replication is thin and the trials that exist are small, mostly open-label, and not rigorously blinded. That doesn't make it wrong, it means our prior on the effect size should be modest. Your writeup is consistent with a modest effect or placebo — I genuinely can't tell.
205 posts
This is the kind of post longevity threads should look like. Dose/route/duration, what you tracked, what moved, what didn't, and the methodological caveats stated up front. Bookmarking.
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115 posts
The telomerase activation claim — which is the headline mechanism — rests on a small set of in vitro and animal studies plus a handful of human papers showing telomere length changes. Telomere length measurement at the individual level is extremely noisy. I'd trust DunedinPACE over a telomere measurement any day of the week.
26 posts
I ran telomere testing (Life Length) before and after two cycles. Saw a small increase in average telomere length. Also saw an increase in the shortest-percentile telomeres, which is allegedly the more meaningful metric. N=1, and Life Length's own reported CV is big enough to eat that signal, but it's there.
16 posts
Sleep tracking during dose window is the only piece I'd accept as probably-real. Everything at the epigenetic-clock level at this effect size is inside the assay's noise floor. That doesn't mean Epi doesn't work — it means this data can't tell you whether it works.
58 posts
Khavinson's original framing was bioregulatory — a short pulse to 'restore' pineal signaling. The underlying theory is more interesting than most modern vendors present it. Worth reading his actual papers rather than the protocol summaries.
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31 posts
I run Epi 10/80 alongside NMN daily and have the same problem — can't separate the signals. Decided to keep Epi and drop NMN for 6 months to see which was doing the work. Will post back.
71 posts
The OP's 10-month writeup is better-structured than most of the published human Epithalon trials. That's mildly damning of the published literature.
22 posts
Second the sleep observation. For me Epi during the dose window is the only time I consistently get >1.5h deep. Off-cycle it drifts back to ~1.2h. Pattern is reliable across three cycles now.
36 posts
Updating 3 weeks later: just finished my 4th cycle. Same sleep improvement during the window. DunedinPACE next draw is in 6 weeks, will edit back in.
45 posts
Appreciating how you decoupled the bloodwork from the biological-age assay. Too many Epi writeups lean on 'my fasting glucose went down' as evidence of longevity effect. That's not how this works.
46 posts
This is a reference-quality writeup. Tagging it as an exemplar for this subforum.
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