Why does our thymus shrink with age? And cause immune dysregulation?

Hi all, I’m new to this peptide/small molecule stuff. Little history. I’m 50 years old and have been training since I was about 12. I learned from all sorts of lifters and athletes in the beginning. Read a lot as my lifting moved forward. Never competed in anything. Just wanted to get stronger for sports. In December I started working with a PHENOMENAL coach who helped with nutrition/supplementation to help me get started on this journey. I was at 243 at the beginning of the journey. With better nutrition, an increase in zone 2 cardio a few times a week, HIIT one time a week and better weight training principles, worked my way down to 203 pounds (+/-2). Also included with supplements are peptides/small molecules. At this time I am incorporating 300mcg/week of retatrutide, 500mcg of SLU-PPP-332 pre-training, 50mg BAM-15 on non-training days, and 10mg of methylene blue 3x per week, 1g taurine and 200mg of glutathione once per week. I have had no ill effects with anything new that was incorporated. My main goal is body recomp while maintaining strength. Strength has been progressing during this phase. Alertness has been better, energy level has increased, and sleep quality has improved. I have been reading the posts in the community about maintaining cellular balance with cycling peptides/small molecules. I was looking into possibly adding in SS-31 on non-training days for repair function but am not sure where to start. I am not one to jump into these kind of things head first. With dialing in nutrition more, incorporating breathing drills, changing mindsets and trying to live with nature by sharing energy more and more daily for the last 6 years, I figured this could be the next step/path of the journey. The major question is with cycling SLU and starting point for SS-31, or any other suggestions that you all may have. I am not one who posts anything. I have only 1 social media account (Instagram - which I follow people in the fitness/health community). This is really out of my comfort zone.

How does everyone feel after coming off MotsC (3-5mg 3-5 times a week), NaD+ (25-100mg 3-5 times a week) at these doses? I see these doses being shared regularly so I’m basing my thoughts off of this. This is only for myself and I always react different with medication, etc. The highest I went to on MotsC was 1mg five days a week and I had trouble sleeping because I had so much energy so I backed it down to 500mcg 3-5 days and it was my sweet spot. Nad+ I stay between 10-20 mg 3-5 times a week. I just don’t need anything more and it’s too much for me personally. I may even be missing out on other benefits of these because I can’t reach the “recommended” doses. Last year I went through the process and doses I just shared and then did SS-31. I regretted coming off both MotsC and NaD+ because I did see and feel a noticeable decline in energy through the SS-31 only. After completed though and when I eventually went back to MotsC it was absolutely amplified and it made me a believer in the work that was being done through SS-31. The previous 500mcg that was right for me was now like the original 1mg dose so I decreased to 250mcg for a while and then gradually increased back to 500mcg. I think this was two-fold; one from the SS-31 doing its job and two from allowing my body to reset and going back fresh to the MotsC. My question is when you’re at these higher and recommended doses how do you feel when you come off? Do your energy levels tank and you feel a noticeable difference? Do you gradually decrease the last couple weeks to not feel the drastic change? Do you move to another mitochondrial peptide to maintain and never experienced pulling off something completely Experiences with SS-31? I’m asking for the sake of knowledge and understanding a bit more and I’m looking for personal experiences to pull from. Thanks group!

We are officially closing in on 1000 members inside the Built To Adapt community and I honestly can’t thank you guys enough for what this has become. What started as a place to have better conversations around cellular medicine, strength training, recovery, performance, and health has turned into one of the most thoughtful communities I’ve ever been part of. Some of the best conversations I’ve had this year have happened inside this group. I’ve watched people completely rethink how they approach recovery, training, supplementation, metabolism, and long-term health. More importantly, I’ve watched people learn how to think instead of just what to think. Truthfully, I think I’ve learned more from this community than I’ve taught. That’s the part I value most. This was never supposed to be me talking at people. It was supposed to be curious people learning together, challenging ideas together, and helping move the field forward together. We built this together. Now I have one favor to ask… We’re getting very close to 1000 members and I would genuinely love to cross that milestone before June. If this community has helped you, challenged you, or made you think differently, please invite ONE person who you think would love deeper conversations around health, performance, training, recovery, and human optimization. Invite a coach.Invite a clinician.Invite a biohacker.Invite someone tired of surface-level health advice. There is absolutely no cost to join. Even when the paid tier launches in June, this free community will always exist and I will continue posting free articles, education, and content here. The biggest benefit to me is simple:More minds.More discussion.More questions.More opportunities for all of us to learn together. My goal is to continue building THE place people can come for clear explanations and actionable insights on how to leverage cellular medicine and strength training to take agency over their health and performance. As a thank you, once we cross 1000 members I’m going to host a completely FREE live webinar:

A few months ago a coach messaged me about an athlete whose situation could have described almost anyone training at a high level. Training was going well, sleep looked decent, and the nutrition was cleaner than most people manage in a lifetime. But recovery felt off. Not broken delayed. The athlete could still produce force and grind through hard sessions. He just couldn’t get his nervous system back online afterward. Morning readiness drifted down week over week. Lactate sat elevated longer than it should have. The way he put it was more precise than most: “I can make energy. I just can’t seem to get it back.” That line stuck with me, because it lands on a question cellular medicine keeps running into. What if the limiting factor isn’t the ability to produce energy, but the ability to restore balance once energy has been spent? Most athletes treat fatigue as an energy deficit, and sometimes that’s exactly what it is. But often it’s a distribution problem. And in some cases what you’re really looking at is a redox bottleneck the cell sits in an over-reduced state, metabolic flexibility slows, substrate turnover lags, and recovery drags behind. The vocabulary is heavy; the experience is simple. You train hard, you should recover, and you don’t. That gap is what led me to put together a small pilot framework something for coaches, clinicians, and curious athletes who’d rather think like investigators than collect supplements. The hypothesis is plain. If an over-reduced phenotype is slowing lactate clearance and blunting vagal recovery, then improving NAD+ availability and mitochondrial efficiency should move two things you can actually measure: how fast lactate clears after a standardized sprint, and how well the nervous system recovers overnight, tracked through morning RMSSD. Read together, those two numbers tell a surprisingly complete story. Picture a city emptying out after a big game. Tens of thousands of people leave at once, traffic stacks up, the roads choke. The interesting question was never whether the city can move people obviously it can. It’s how fast normal flow returns. Recovery works the same way. Training generates metabolic traffic: lactate climbs, sympathetic drive climbs, fuel demand climbs. What matters is how quickly order comes back once the session is over.