Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn9257

by gumby • 3 years ago

350 292 3 years ago

_hyn3• 3 years ago

Interesting, so Red Bull is actually healthy?

Grazester2• 3 years ago

Was actually needing some caffeine to up me toda. I debated having a sugar free Red Bull but even the sugar free ones are not great for you due to the sucralose

Blackthorn13• 3 years ago

I know I won't change anyone's already set opinions here, but for anyone reading this and not sure what is being discussed: there's absolutely nothing wrong with consuming sucralose.

topicseed• 3 years ago

What's wrong with sucralose?

lostmsu2• 3 years ago

Anecdata: a heavy (2 x 8oz cans/day) consumer of Red Bull I got sleep problems starting around 34.

Can't be sure they are related, but Red Bull is definitely the main suspect.

WastingMyTime893• 3 years ago

That’s a high amount of sugar. That by itself can’t be too good.

pmoriarty• 3 years ago

I've developed sleep problems as I've gotten older, but I've never touched Red Bull.

We can't draw any generalizable conclusions from isolated anecdotes like this.

Jolter• 3 years ago

And do you suspect the taurine, or the caffeine?

opisthenar84• 3 years ago

So... drink more Red Bull?

Scoundreller2• 3 years ago

Or think of mass-market cat food as a dietary supplement

SketchySeaBeast3• 3 years ago

That's good to know my retirement plan will keep me looking young.

gnulinux• 3 years ago

Cat food has tons of taurine in it because cooking food destroys taurine but unlike humans cats cannot produce taurine themselves.

canucker20164• 3 years ago

each Red Bull has 1000mg of taurine (source: https://www.redbullsingapore.com/products)

ThrowawayR2• 3 years ago

More like eat more sashimi (which is uncooked by definition) or sushi that contains sashimi since uncooked fish meat contains a fair bit of taurine. Carpaccio would be a good option as well. If my budget supported it, that's a dietary change I'd be more than happy to make.

redkinght99• 3 years ago

Taurine? I've been jacking myself full of that since Middle School! Thanks RedBull!

Jokes aside, This feels like one of "Wine is Good for you" In moderation and other fine point details. Not buying it.

throwaway888abc• 3 years ago

Can't stop laughing. The day after is terrible, but with the aging factor relevated - here is the recipe of favorite anti-aging cocktail

Jäger Bomb

Ingredients 1 1/2 ounces Jägermeister Liqueur 1/2 (8.4-ounce) can Red Bull energy drink

https://www.thespruceeats.com/jager-bomb-recipe-759713

winddude• 3 years ago

or a nice steak. 1 - 14oz steak, season with tiptop steak seasoning, grill 3-4mins per side on med heat. let rest 5 mins. enjoy.

LuckySalamander• 3 years ago

I've always enjoyed Jäger bombs half and half. Then again, no one survives living in Champaign, IL without getting well acquainted to Jägermeister.

dluan• 3 years ago

jaeger has a history as a traditional alpine bitter of serving some sort of medicinal purpose. like chartreuse or absinthe, lots of the herbal ingredients inside sometimes helped soothe upset tummies, or in the case of wormwood, expel parasites and worms.

throwway120385• 3 years ago

The really interesting clincher wasn't the association of taurine with anti-aging, but the association of exercise with increased serum concentrations of taurine.

browningstreet• 3 years ago

MSM media is always trying to convince people they can live longer if they stick with coffee, berries, dark chocolate and wine — as if those foods needed boosters. And if true I’m quite sure we’d have people out there living to 150…

isk517• 3 years ago

You probably can live longer if you stick with coffee (black), berries (minus the food you put the berries on top of), dark chocolate (unsweetened), and wine (in strict moderation).

makeitdouble• 3 years ago

People are very receptive and willing to share your articles around when you tell them they're better off keeping enjoying they current lifestyle.

jprete• 3 years ago

They have an incentive to boost "forbidden pleasure" foods that are popular with their subscribers. The subscribers get an excuse to do what they are already doing, the article feels dramatic because of the fake controversy, and the article is a little more viral by pretending to tell people something secret or surprising.

DANmode• 3 years ago

The people I know who talk about these items the most vocally also frequently have fast food.

voytec3• 3 years ago

Jokes aside, This feels like one of "Wine is Good for you" In moderation and other fine point details. Not buying it.

I mean, pinot noir has a lot of resveratrol. You'd just need 750-1000 glasses daily.

K0balt2• 3 years ago

Is that a challenge? Because my mother in law just calls that Thursday.

insanitybit3• 3 years ago

AFAIK, at this point resveratrol does not look promising.

quietbritishjim• 3 years ago

The median life span of taurine-treated mice increased by 10 to 12%, and life expectancy at 28 months increased by about 18 to 25%. A meaningful antiaging therapy should not only improve life span but also health span, the period of healthy living. We, therefore, investigated the health of taurine-fed middle-aged mice and found an improved functioning of bone, muscle, pancreas, brain, fat, gut, and immune system, indicating an overall increase in health span. We observed similar effects in monkeys.

I don't think any studies have shown red wine to have a clear casual impact like that, even just in mice.

qbrass• 3 years ago

10-12% of a mouse's life is 5 or 6 months. Assuming it's going to extend human lives by 7 years and not 6 months is being optimistic at best.

arduinomancer• 3 years ago

Not buying it

What is there not to buy?

They tested it in mice and it increased lifespan, they never claimed it worked for humans in the study.

To test whether taurine deficiency is a driver of aging in humans as well, long-term, well-controlled taurine supplementation trials that measure health span and life span as outcomes are required.

Did you read the abstract?

hindsightbias• 3 years ago

Do they actually have mice drink wine?

az226• 3 years ago

Unfortunately all the sugar is working in the opposite direction.

labrador4• 3 years ago

The Monster zero Ultra drinks I like (no sugar) list energy ingredients as taurine, L-Carntine, caffeine, inositol. I'm bipolar and they make me somewhat manic, which I like because I get creative, but I keep thinking I shouldn't drink them because everyone tells me they are unhealthy. Maybe not?

strawhatguy• 3 years ago

Can't make decisions on what everyone else says. Drink what you want!

2023throwawayy2• 3 years ago

Yea! Nutritional science be damned! Smoke crack too! Can't make decisions on what everyone else says after all.

labrador4• 3 years ago

You don't believe in the "wisdom of crowds" I take it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

SketchySeaBeast3• 3 years ago

Well, "healthy" and "unhealthy" aren't binary. Smokers are skinnier than non-smokers.

k__4• 3 years ago

Also, taking nicotine doesn't seem to be bad. Putting smoke in your lungs on the other hand...

labrador4• 3 years ago

I asked ChatGPT "Is moderate consumption of energy drinks unhealthy?" and the answer was no. Moderate consumption is defined as "For adults, moderate consumption is typically defined as no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine per day, which is roughly equivalent to four cups of coffee or two 16-ounce cans of common energy drinks."

I drink them moderately so maybe the taurine is healthy for me at my age, although excessive consumption could be damaging. "There is evidence to suggest that excessive consumption of energy drinks can have negative effects on the cardiovascular system, including the potential for heart damage. Energy drinks typically contain high levels of caffeine and other stimulants, which can increase heart rate and blood pressure.

I'm under the impression that when people tell me they are unhealthy they are talking about stories of young people who damage their heart by drinking them constantly through out the day.

221qqwe2• 3 years ago

It's probably just caffeine.

alexfromapex• 3 years ago

Turns out Monsters are pretty healthy for you except for all the sugar.

euroderf• 3 years ago

Based on a survey of felines, mice are pretty healthy for you too.

Consider: a rich source of taurine and with a delectable crunch.

abeyer• 3 years ago

Can't wait for this diet plan to go on sale

friend_and_foe• 3 years ago

Yup. I used to be a heavy monster drinker, and I quit because that much sugar a day will kill you eventually.Ia drink a cup of coffee every day now, but I do sip an energy drink when I go on a multi hour drive, and I've found the alertness is unmatched by coffee. So I started adding taurine to my coffee, it works almost as well, good mood lift.

giardini2• 3 years ago

In the study mice were given 1000 mg taurine per kg body weight per day. In comparison a typical taurine supplement for humans is 1000 mg total.

IOW they gave the mice a dose of taurine that, proportionally, i'd be unwilling to take.

rale00• 3 years ago

You don't directly convert dosage across species like that. The dosage they tested on monkeys was 250mg/kg, and the human equivalent would be less than that.

A_D_E_P_T3• 3 years ago

The basic formula from mouse to human is (X mg * (3/37)) = human equivalent dose in mg/kg.

In this case (1000mg * 3/37)) comes out to 81mg/kg. So, if you weigh 80kg, it comes out to 6.48 grams per day.

That's a lot of taurine, but not really a crazy amount. Easy enough to consume.

0cf8612b2e1e2• 3 years ago

For what it’s worth, Wikipedia is currently referencing a 2009 study which had previously tested 1000mg/kg in humans.

PaulHoule• 3 years ago

Really? For a 100kg human (me) that is 100g a day of taurine which is more than 3 ounces or this whole bottle

https://www.amazon.com/NOW-Supplements-Taurine-Strength-Caps...

and costs about $9. Seems like a lot. Contrast that to the claim that people should eat about 800mg/kg a day of protein overall

https://www.sclhealth.org/blog/2019/07/how-much-protein-is-s...

AtlasBarfed2• 3 years ago

1000 mg ... you mean a gram :-) ?

iopq• 3 years ago

he meant 0.001 kg

stefs• 3 years ago

Serious adverse effects have not been reported with taurine supplementation.[24] The highest dose used in a human trial was 10 grams per day for 6 months, and the longest human trial was 12 months and used a dose of 0.5–1.5 grams per day. Based on the available evidence, it’s suggested that 3 grams per day can be consumed indefinitely without risk of side effects.[24]

https://examine.com/supplements/taurine/

mwigdahl• 3 years ago

...in mice.

canucker20164• 3 years ago

... and female rhesus monkeys.

nahsra• 3 years ago

If you RTFA you will note it specifically calls out the multiple models tested. It also points out that these are evolutionarily conserved pathways, so of course the translatability chances are higher than baseline. To top it off, some of those pathways have already been associated with increased healthspan and lifespan in many other studies.

I am interested in informed skepticism, because this is kinda compelling.

Disclaimer: I don't really know shit.

DoreenMichele3• 3 years ago

Taurine is an amino acid, aka a building block of protein. It's found in abundance in meat and seafood.

(I had trouble parsing the title of this piece. Insert joke here about how I don't need to read this article because I no longer own a car nor have a driver's license.)

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

Taurine does not contribute to protein structure.

Taurine helps regulate the levels of water and minerals in the blood, contributing to overall fluid balance and proper functioning of the muscles and nerves.

Also it acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain.

Taurine is found in high amounts in the eye and it's thought to protect against retinal degeneration.

Finally Taurine is used in the formation of bile salts.

But, unlike most amino acids it’s not used in protein synthesis.

DoreenMichele3• 3 years ago

Thank you.

MrGuts• 3 years ago

You say "taurine", I say "meow".

k__4• 3 years ago

They fed mice 1g taurine per 1kg body weight per day.

For me that would be 80g per day.

1kg of pure taurine cost 25€ on Amazon.

That makes a 1.20€ per day.

Sounds okay.

ruffrey• 3 years ago

It would likely be less. See approaches like allometric scaling of dosages.

k__4• 3 years ago

Even better!

I'd expect my blood pressure going through the roof with 80g taurine per day.

canucker20164• 3 years ago

They also fed female rhesus monkeys 250mg/kg taurine - 1/4 of the mice dosage.

Makes the value-calculations even more palatable (does taurine have flavour?)

A_D_E_P_T3• 3 years ago

After scaling, it comes out to 6.5 grams per day. (See my comment above.)

DO NOT take 80g taurine in a day. You probably won't die, but it's a terrible idea.

k__4• 3 years ago

I wouldn't.

I just evaluated how much it could cost to gain a few years.

But thanks!

HPsquared• 3 years ago

Mice have faster metabolism, so eat more of everything per kg of body weight per day. Square-cube law in action!

fwungy• 3 years ago

If you take Essential Amino Acids your body will make whichever aminos it needs most.

You can target supplement something, but it might not be the most critical link at the moment.

fasteo2• 3 years ago

Any nutrient deficiency is usually a proxy for a poor diet, or at least a diet lacking some key foods.

For taurine, it would be some animal food source, specially molusk/fish.

pkoird• 3 years ago

Or digestive disorders like IBD

fasteo2• 3 years ago

Agree, but in that case oral supplementation won't help

pfannkuchen3• 3 years ago

Obviously the real driver of aging is that there was no selective pressure to keep the organism working after sufficient semi-clones were brought online, and keeping an organism functional is a hard problem.

The solution is to gain the ability to simulate the organism that results from a particular DNA sequence, understand the design problems in the organism, fix the problems, then alter human DNA to include the fixes.

We aren’t going to find a simple fix, sorry everyone.

seydor2• 3 years ago

But if the organism lived longer it would keep pumping semiclones. And if organisms are basically huge self-sustaining feedback loops, why won't they keep sustaining ... forever until some pressure forces them to decay

pfannkuchen3• 3 years ago

Because the semi clones are a full process reboot. Rebooting is an easier way to solve the problem of continuing to exist into the future.

K0balt2• 3 years ago

Sexual reproduction, which increases fitness? So theoretically the offspring are more fit clone producers so competing with them is bad, M’kay?

twiceaday• 3 years ago

You can search the space of evolutionarily adjacent entities faster by semicloning once and letting the fittest of those semiclone further, compounding the mutations. Such a strategy will likely out-compete a slower searching one into extinction.

enkid2• 3 years ago

There are trade offs for living longer. For example, children of older fathers are more likely to have birth defects.

enkid2• 3 years ago

There are almost certainly easier solutions that at least mitigate the problem even if it doesn't fully solve the problem. A similar problem might be type 1 diabetes, where an issie with the immune system causes the body attacks the cells which produce insulin. There is no cure for type 1 diabetes. However, now that we understand some of the mechanisms, we can monitor blood sugar levels and artificially regulate them so what was previously a fatal disease is now manageable. If we can figure out similar mechanisms with aging, we can treat it even if we can't completely "cure" it.

deegles• 3 years ago

There is selective pressure for aging because populations of organisms that don't age cannot evolve to adapt to new environments.

pfannkuchen3• 3 years ago

Theoretically possible, but aging looks a lot more like gradual system failure than “feature on top of immortality”.

bluedays• 3 years ago

Got it. So I need to eat more cat food.

cjohnson318• 3 years ago

I'm confused. Taurine is found in meat, fish, and apparently, RedBull. But I thought there was a negative correlation between health/aging and eating lots of meat and RedBull. Is there a secret source of taurine that I'm missing? If I double up on fish, can I expect to live longer, assuming I don't accidentally increase my mercury levels?

jstarfish2• 3 years ago

Energy drinks aren't a good source-- there's lots of Taurine, sure, but the net effect of the drink acts as a diuretic. Chronic dehydration will subtract from life expectancy.

justinbstrong• 3 years ago

What if you drink water with it?

canucker20164• 3 years ago

the wikipedia entry for taurine states that the human body can synthesize taurine from cysteine as well.

the wikipedia entry also says dietary taurine intake is rather low, considering the doses the main article talks about, about 40-400mg/day taurine intake.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurine

nradov4• 3 years ago

No one has ever proven a direct causal relationship between (unprocessed) red meat consumption and poor health. The studies which purport to show a link are all low quality observational studies that suffer from the healthy subject effect and failed to control for some confounders. If there is a real effect it is very small, much less significant than total calorie intake.

chaxor• 3 years ago

Perhaps another example of us not really having a clue what's going on with biology, and how it's especially bad when this intersects with anything related with diet. Biology of aging is already extremely difficult, and that's just when we can try for separation of variables in studies of organisms such as yeast. Moving to mammals causes incredible challenges in determining molecular biology drivers, and trying for small molecules interventions beyond that typically causes far too much to be lost in translation. Diet just takes it a bit further by mixing a huge concoction of small molecules together and calls by a simple name, like 'egg'. So all in all, if you want to learn what's really going on, try learning the planarian or yeast cell biology literature first before moving on to these more complex systems in order to get a decent idea for how much weight they hold.

ppeetteerr• 3 years ago

I'm surprised to see no mention of exercise in the comment section. It seems that working out produces "[...] increased the concentrations of taurine metabolites in blood, which might partially underlie the antiaging effects of exercise."

For the able-bodied, it may be enough to incorporate more exercise into our life?

devmor2• 3 years ago

If you are working out a lot, you might want to consume more taurine anyways (which you can naturally get from eggs and meat). It's an important amino acid that supports muscle growth.

I believe it plays a factor in getting salts/electrolytes to the tissue, but I'm not 100% clear on that.

nikolay• 3 years ago

Magnesium taurate is a must for just everybody!

udkl2• 3 years ago

~post deleted for privacy~

I will report back on the experiment, however.

seoulbran• 3 years ago

You're a nice person. Thanks for the post.

bilsbie• 3 years ago

Make sure to report back

crtified2• 3 years ago

Be sure to rule out the 'sugar rush' effect. Not that your ~150 millilitre (or just over 5 fl oz) drink is the world's worst in that respect - it weighs in at around 4 teaspoons of sugar, based upon my googling. Some energy drinks have more.

It's still the sugar equivalent of having a small cup of tea/coffee/water, and stirring in 4 sugars. If chugged down quickly, that's quite a hit! Even if not, it's still more sugar rich than most things you'll intake in your day-to-day.

Your experience may well be due in part or whole to taurine, I can't say. But parents of young children everywhere can attest to the effect of one overly sugary serving resulting in quite a bit of resultant hyperactivity and mood change over the following hours. So your experiments may benefit from some controls in that respect.

udkl2• 3 years ago

It was a sugar-free monster. Drinking or eating other sugar rich products do not have the effect.

pedalpete3• 3 years ago

I'd be curious to know why taurine in blood declines with age? Though supplementation is fine, if the diet stays the same, what is happening in the body that makes it unable use the taurine which is naturally in food.

Also, apparently only animal products contain taurine, and vegans have lower levels of taurine.

https://veganhealth.org/protein/taurine-and-carnitine/

robwwilliams5• 3 years ago

I am not sure this is true in all strains of mice. Remember these are data generated from a single fully inbred strain of mouse. I am checking now fir s set of 40 strains we have studied to get a better sense of the decline.

nradov4• 3 years ago

In general the digestive system becomes less effective at extracting all amino acids as we age. This is why elderly people need to increase their protein intake in order to avoid sarcopenia.

pedalpete3• 3 years ago

That's interesting. Looks like I'll be spending part of my day looking at how our gut changes with age.

Thanks!

robwwilliams5• 3 years ago

Solid study, but the core results are based on a single genotype of mouse — C57BL/6J.

Imagine a clinical study of longevity using 120 clones of you or me. Taurine may be effective at extending lifespan and healthspan of C57BL/6J mice but will it work as well using genetically diverse mice such as the UM-HET3 mice?

Like humans, the UM-HET3 mice are genetically diverse (they segregate for about 11.5 million sequence variants). My hope is that taurine supplementation would work just as well using 120 UM-HET3 mice. A robust finding like that would impress me so much more.

I wish high profile journals—Science and Nature and Cell—would demand that submissions include at least several genotypes of mice. N = 1 studies are just barely worth discussing in HN with respect to humans.

In this case the authors did extend to other models to support their claims but these supplementary components do not test longevity directly.

Having pointed out the downside of this work, I am glad to see this study and will treat it as a promising pilot. Given much previous work my guess, and tacitly, those of the authors, is that taurine supplementation will be beneficial for many genotypes of mice and even humans.

However, there will not be one optimal treatment regimen for all mice or for all humans.

By the way: A 16 oz can of Monster contains 2 grams of taurine.

tiffanyg• 3 years ago

By the way: A 16 oz can of Monster contains 2 grams of taurine.

And at least 50%+ of the "added sugar" recommendation(s) for an entire day (depending on whether you look at FDA, AHA, etc. guidelines).

You make good points, for sure, and I appreciate your comment and insights. But, "sugar" is definitely an issue with a lot of current foods.

Carbohydrates are crucial building blocks, biochemically. However, there are numerous increasingly documented adverse effects stemming from "simple sugars" consumption - both epidemiologically, and mechanistically / molecularly (e.g., "glycation").

That said, I'd absolutely recommend sugar over many other available sweeteners. In fact, there are a whole host of "refined" food "modifiers" increasingly available and used that seem to have often unfortunately deleterious effects. For example, even substances like inulin, sugar alcohols, etc., that can be beneficial (have been determined to contribute to healthfulness) in various foods that have been eaten by humans for centuries if not millennia, often end up either not beneficial or actually harmful as applied in current "modern food chemistry".

This isn't to say that we must go "paleo", nor that there are inherent or unsurpassable problems in formulating and "manufacturing" (always a word I love, when it comes to food ... meh) new food products that are safe and have advantages over many entirely unprocessed foods (hell, cooking IS a form of processing, and it's rather crucial given our physiologies, improving safety and nutrition of many types of foods significantly). But, food processing and manufacturing is a rather lightly regulated industry in some ways, and much of it moves far faster than studies of the implications of all of the new formulations, additives, etc.

Time and again, people and industry have been enamored of some apparent "free lunch" that has bitten us in the ass, so to speak, ultimately.

briHass• 3 years ago

That said, I'd absolutely recommend sugar over many other available sweeteners.

I sure wouldn't. Many of the classic, non-nutritive sweeteners like sucralose have been tested more thoroughly than almost any substance we ingest. Even at heroic doses tens of thousands of times higher than what would be used normally, no significant health effects have been noted.

In contrast, we have sucrose: a caloric carbohydrate that rapidly and reliably raises blood sugar, and due to its fructose content, has been linked to NAFLD. If nothing else, it's 'empty' caloric value, high palatability, popularity in beverages, and low cost (especially as the almost functionally identical HFCS) has without a doubt been a major contributor to the obesity epidemic.

So sure, removing all added sweeteners ('natural' or otherwise) would be better, but a NNS is way, way better than sugar.

phkahler2• 3 years ago

> > By the way: A 16 oz can of Monster contains 2 grams of taurine. And at least 50%+ of the "added sugar" recommendation(s) for an entire day

They could try using glycine as a sweetener. Another amino acid that we could use a little more of. It really does taste sweet.

KptMarchewa• 3 years ago

There are 0 sugar versions of monster

insaider• 3 years ago

Whats your thoughts on the dosage? They use 1g per kg of body weight! If I drank Monster to get the equivalent dosage I think I'd probably die... How did they arrive on that dosage?

grepfru_it• 3 years ago

That's because Monster has caffiene and other chemicals in there that may kill you! The Taurine itself probably won't kill you as LD50 is 5g per kg of body weight

justinator• 3 years ago

Trials like these usually use herculean doses like this. If you remember, the "aspartame can kill you" trials also used an incredible amount of aspartame to kill the mice.

linsomniac• 3 years ago

Didn't read the study, but would it be good if they had 120 clones of you and gave 60 taurine and 60 a placebo, and the taurine ones showed better longevity?

kdamica• 3 years ago

Yes, it would be good and this is precisely what they did in this study.

throwaway20374• 3 years ago

    By the way: A 16 oz can of Monster contains 2 grams of taurine.

My first thought when I reading your post (before I finished): How many grams of taurine per kilogram of body weight were used in the trial?

I found:

    Taurine supplementation increases the life span of mice

To determine whether the observed drop in taurine concentration contributes to aging, we orally administered control solution or taurine at 1000 mg per kg body weight (T1000), once daily at 10:00 am, to 14-month-old (middle-aged) C57Bl/6J WT female and male mice until the end of life.

Woah! That is a lot of taurine. Average adult me are about 60-80 kg. That would be 60-80 GRAMS of taurine per day! (Please correct me if I am wrong.)

spiderice• 3 years ago

There is a comment much further down the page explaining how dosages don't translate across species like this. Apparently the human equivalent would be 6.48 grams per day.

jaggederest2• 3 years ago

Standard intake of taurine in most people is <200mg a day. That would be an astounding amount of taurine. Also, it's a little weird because humans can synthesize taurine, it's a major component of bile, so I'm unclear what mechanism could cause supplementation to have significant effects.

robocat2• 3 years ago

taurine at 1000 mg per kg body weight

Another commenter mentioned that taurine “LD50 is [5000 mg] per kg of body weight”.

So you would want to be very careful - especially if you are old, on medicine, drink alcohol, or have any issues processing taurine (liver/kidney?).

simaltwman• 3 years ago

According to https://examine.com/supplements/taurine/

"Serious adverse effects have not been reported with taurine supplementation. The highest dose used in a human trial was 10 grams per day for 6 months, and the longest human trial was 12 months and used a dose of 0.5–1.5 grams per day. Based on the available evidence, it’s suggested that 3 grams per day can be consumed indefinitely without risk of side effects."

"The observed safety limit, the highest dose for which one can be relatively assured that no side effects will occur over a lifetime, has been suggested to be 3g of taurine in supplemental form (in addition to food intake) a day.[140] Higher doses have been tested and well tolerated, but not enough evidence is available to suggest lifelong safety of said doses.

There is a notion that taurine causes heart damage, which is currently unsupported (and contrary to a fair bit of evidence). This appears to be due to a misunderstanding of why serum taurine levels are elevated during cardiac failure (which is from taurine leakage from cells)."

My advice, however, is to not take it for antiaging until the science is done on humans, specially at high doses.

DebtDeflation• 3 years ago

1000 mg per kg body weight

1g/kg body weight daily of ANYTHING is A LOT. 0.1% of your entire bodyweight.

What's interesting is I checked Wikipedia and found:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurine

accounts for up to 0.1% of total human body weight
The mean daily intake from omnivore diets was determined to be around 58 mg

So this study is adding the entire amount found in a typical human's bodyweight every day.

theobromananda2• 3 years ago

Human-mouse conversion ratio is 1:12.3, so about 6g a day. I easily eat a gram if I drink a ton of coffee.

dreamcompiler2• 3 years ago

Forward-quoting a comment by rale00 below:

"You don't directly convert dosage across species like that. The dosage they tested on monkeys was 250mg/kg, and the human equivalent would be less than that."

robwwilliams5• 3 years ago

There were some other replies in the thread. Does not scale linearly from mouse to humans. The human equivalent (from memory) is about 8 gm/day.

AtlasBarfed2• 3 years ago

WHy does it have Taurine? I honestly don't know why any of the non-caffiene non-b vitamin ingredients are in "energy drinks" like Taurine.

winternewt2• 3 years ago

According to GPT4 there's research indicating that taurine increases metabolism, improves athletic performance, helps regulate neurotransmitters (so could be construed to improve cognitive functioning), and improves cardiovascular health.

I'd wager you can't conclude from any of that research that putting a gram of it in a drink will help with anything at all, but from a marketing perspective it's a name that carries all the right connotations.

mtlmtlmtlmtl2• 3 years ago

I really wish they didn't have so much damn niacin(B3) in them. Niacin has side effects like sweating and flushing in doses not much higher than RDI, and yet one 500ml energy drink typically contains 250% RDI of niacin.

Like, why the fuck? At least cut it down to at most 100%.

bluedonuts• 3 years ago

Taurine is said to have an anti-anxiety effect. I have taken it for this reason and believe it is effective (or placebo ..).

My assumption was it helps ease the stimulant effects of all the other stuff in energy drinks.

bartislartfast2• 3 years ago

please let us not all start chugging Monster to live longer. 2 grams of taurine will surely be nullified by all the other crap in there

carrja99• 3 years ago

So drink lots of Red Bull eh??

lo_zamoyski2• 3 years ago

It's the other garbage in the drink that'll do you in!

myth_drannon• 3 years ago

Funny, just yesterday was watching a video of wild foxes animal shelter and they were feeding raw eggs to them. Talking about importance of Taurine - https://youtu.be/z8W0LSarQ8s

lr4444lr• 3 years ago

Doesn't amino acid uptake generally decrease with aging, leading to sarcopenia/osteopenia? Doesn't exercise generally improve amino acid metabolism? Why focus on taurine?

objektif• 3 years ago

Would taking supplements work as well? I saw that Taurine supplements are available for cheap. I have no idea what people are taking it for.

salad-tycoon2• 3 years ago

Heart health/CHF, physical performance, mood ( seems to “even out” effects from caffeine), liver function/hepatitis.

andy_ppp2• 3 years ago

I order stuff off the Internet from time to time including taurine, is there an easy/cheap way to test things that come through the post from Amazon or another company are Taurine and don’t contain things they shouldn’t?

The supplement industry strikes me as dubious! Is there a better way to think about this?

devmor2• 3 years ago

Order from a trusted pharmacy, rather than from 3rd parties like Amazon.

With the way binning works at Amazon, you can't trust that you will get a legitimate product even if you ordered the same thing you made sure was legitimate last time.

miked85• 3 years ago

You may be correct, but I doubt there is a high enough profit for such a cheap supplement to be counterfeited and sold 3rd party.

colechristensen• 3 years ago

Maybe just drink Red Bull.

Supplements are dubious, buying things on Amazon you consume is especially dubious.

There are some signals here and there about the legitimacy of various vendors but I’m generally skeptical of all of them, just some more than others.

nradov4• 3 years ago

Look for supplements with the NSF Certified for Sport mark. Order direct from the manufacturer instead of Amazon which is full of counterfeit products.

https://www.nsfsport.com/

salad-tycoon2• 3 years ago

I’ve been considering the same. I think, first off, Amazon is absolutely the worst place to buy supplements due to potential fakes.

I’ve seen consumer labs.com has done some independent 3rd party testing but it’s not on everything.

There are nootropic outfits that will send you the COA on request. Obviously, who knows what that piece of paper is worth. They could have bought a clean report or could have done a bait and switch.

For my part I research user reviews before I buy something . If a company has been caught lying in the past, I avoid them. No affiliation, I’ve found nootropics depot and lift mode to be well regarded in the Ethernet, generally.Also, Thorne, cellcor, life extension. But again this doesn’t solve the problem of trust. Strangely a lot of internet denizens have a loyalty of their suppliers and typically users report just on what they perceive to be effects and physical properties of supplements received. I also give some weight to anabolic steroid forums. Think what you want about them but the meatheads are real citizen scientists in the realm of chemical ingestion and prone to distrust (and astroturfing on the flip side).

I think some of the smaller companies just buy things off of places like Ali baba. Larger companies still source a ton of their stuff from China. The better smaller companies make an attempt to be transparent with COA, the larger ones just work off their name recognition.

This lack of trust of Chinese consumables extends far beyond just supplements and even the honey industry is implicated in fake products. Recall chinas baby formula fiasco a while back or that they made aquadots out of GHB or the toxic paint they use on toys. Etc. Plenty of reasons for distrust of drop shipped or sourcing from overseas/China.

It’s the Wild West out there in the supplement world and even worse in the “research chemical” peptide world.

I wish we could have a crowd sourced funding for 3rd party testing.

andy_ppp2• 3 years ago

I know it sounds mad but I just want a well tested drink that contains zero stimulants and plenty of good stuff like 6g Taurine, l-cystine, some good magnesium etc. if I knew the testing/provenance of this stuff I’d probably pay $5 per can.

qgin• 3 years ago

Best way the average person without access to very fancy lab equipment can navigate this is to source from a company that has built their brand on testing and quality. A brand like Thorne or Jarrow has a lot of motivation to test everything and make sure nothing untoward makes it out, since that reputation is the only thing that lets them charge a premium vs the commodity brands.

ggm• 3 years ago

If you're old, Eat more protein.

Anyone doing any degree of attempt to recover (lost) muscle tone as an older person is told 'eat more protein' to help "feed" muscle mass rebuilding after the exercise induced stresses which are heading to "bigger muscles"

So if you eat more protein, you're going to get Taurine.

Drinking a can of "monster" is not the answer.

Does this mean "exercise extends life" is actually .. the protein you eat building muscle is supplying the taurine you need to extend life?

(no: more muscle is a net good all of its own. it helps with diabetes/insulin issues, it helps with core stability == less accidents. it helps with preventing bone loss. it helps with cardio. but ... )

chasil• 3 years ago

Would it be more practical to take a supplement containing all the amino acids used by [human] ribosomes?

Those, as I understand them to be, are:

alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamine, glutamic acid, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, proline, serine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine, valine.

And why am I not seeing taurine in this list?

https://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/education/AminoAcid/the_twenty.h...

raylad• 3 years ago

This actually may not be good advice, because methionine restriction has been found to mimic caloric restriction in extending lifespan, and also inhibits cancer cell growth.

See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5008916/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32138282/ for example.

insanitybit3• 3 years ago

Go for pea protein then?

ck2• 3 years ago

Note most protein chains have taurine, like whey.

If you are following the 1g per kg per day of protein guideline, you likely have been taking in plenty of taurine and your body makes some too.

But general population nutrition basically gets worse every year, people other than athletes are likely not getting enough protein.

Food prices now are also going to be a huge problem, protein isn't cheap in any form.

janmo• 3 years ago

Did Red Bull sponsor this research paper?

gigatexal• 3 years ago

You mean that stuff in redbull ;-)

rjtc• 3 years ago

Not good news for vegans looks like, as top sources of taurine are meat?

dsign• 3 years ago

As a PhD and a hobby writer myself, I tend to put a lot of attention on first sentences. And it is something that all academics do, specially when submitting to the highest divinities, i.e. Science and Nature.

The first sentence in the structured abstract of this paper is curious:

Aging is an inevitable multifactorial process.

If the paper were discussing aging in general, the use of the word "inevitable" would be an expected adjective. Not entirely useful, it wouldn't be new information because everybody knows that aging is inevitable, but excusable.

Yet, the paper is discussing counteracting--if only a little--aging. I would have written "Aging is a poorly understood multifactorial process" (to be modest), or "Aging is the combination of natural drift and degradation in complex systems and evolved coping mechanisms" (to set the world on fire).

So, to me, this first sentence sounds like cultural subservience: "Before you get the pitchforks and the bonfires, we don't want to be young forever, please spare us. Now, with that out of the way, aging is a multifactorial..."

heresie-dabord• 3 years ago

cultural subservience

Or perhaps recognition that we live in the time of a Fallacy-Industrial Complex?

"Aging is inevitable, there is no magic, don't delude yourself into thinking that you are going to avoid aging by gorging on some single element or compound. Get enough rest, take care of your teeth and gums, exercise daily, and maintain a healthy weight. Everything else is a marketing scam.

That said, here's what we found playing with mice and taurine..."

wly_cdgr• 3 years ago

Alcohol abuse riding shotgun for a lot of y'all tho

shipmaker• 3 years ago

so this explains why vegans look older

amai4• 3 years ago

So people on a vegan diet ( low in taurine ) will live shorter?

amai4• 3 years ago

„However, prolonged intake of a vegan diet with negligible taurine content leads to a decline of only ∼20% in circulating taurine in young healthy individuals (6, 7), suggesting that the ∼80% decrease observed in older people by Singh et al. at least partly reflects a loss of capacity for endogenous synthesis“

See https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi3025

amai4• 3 years ago

Isn‘t any deficiency a driver of aging?

amai4• 3 years ago

Don‘t miss out the related perspective article on this: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi3025

It discusses important issues like

„ A key issue for any longevity intervention is whether it causes calorie restriction (which can extend life span) or acts through independent mechanisms. Singh et al. found that taurine supplementation did not affect food intake in mice but nonetheless caused a small decrease in body weight, indicating a calorie deficit. Energy expenditure was higher in taurine-treated mice and intestinal transit time was accelerated, although it is not clear if nutrient absorption was decreased. The change in intestinal behavior is intriguing, because taurine is conjugated to bile acids to form bile salts, which facilitate uptake of dietary lipids (1). It will be crucial to control for the effects of taurine on body composition and nutrient uptake in future studies.“

Sloppy• 3 years ago

Wow, Red Bull does give you wings!

Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

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