Taurine slows ageing

[Jim Pickles]

A recent article showing that taurine supplementation prolonged healthy life has caught a lot of media attention. If you want to read it, its free at https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.abn9257.

(Added later - sorry, it doesnt appear to be at that address any longer, and you probably now have to pay for access too - I'll attach the PDF files to this thread so you can see it for free).

Taurine levels in the blood normally drop as we get older. Taurine fed in food reverses this, slows down many age-related changes, and prolongs life. The life-prolonging effect was shown in mice. In monkeys taurine slowed age-related changes (however the experiment didnt see if their lives were prolonged, presumably because they didnt go on for long enough). In clinical studies in human beings, people who have low taurine serum levels have more degenerative changes, but they didnt test the effects of taurine supplementation in human beings. So it seems that having low taurine levels in the body is associated with many aspects of ageing, and this likely applies to human beings as well. Interestingly, exercise increases the taurine levels in the blood, and this may be one reason why exercise is good for us.

The many aspects of ageing affected by low taurine included cellular senescence, telomerase deficiency, mitochondrial dysfunction, DNA damage, inflammation, abdominal obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension as well as depression and anxiety. It affects such a wide range of processes that it looks as though taurine is affecting some sort of “master switch” that affects the ageing process. One possibility is that we know that taurine is needed for energy production in the mitochondria. The mitochondria are the energy-producing organs in cells. In addition, they have another role – they promote cell death and senescence – the logic behind the evolution of this dual role is that if the energy production drops in a mitochondrion, evolution has decided that the mitochondrion is no longer any good, and kills it. Unfortunately, this also eventually leads to killing of the whole organism.

In human beings, taurine has been used as a supplement for many years to improve athletic performance. The doses used have been 1-3 g/day. In the experiments described here, the amounts used in monkeys would be equivalent to 20g/day for a 80 kg person, though based on the mouse data there could be some positive effects with lower doses. The tested safe limit in human beings is 7 g/day, and the manufacturers of the supplement say don’t take more than 3g/day. So the amounts that we know to be safe in human beings are much less than used in the animal experiments; still there may be some effect.

So while I prefer not to take any supplements, thinking “nature knows best” and preferring to rely on fresh air, exercise, good food and clean thoughts (or at least, three of those), this is one I am thinking of taking. Its available as a powder, and fairly cheap. I’ll probably use 3 g/day, and see how I get on. My interest is not so much living longer as such (though I may change my mind on that in years to come) but to stay in a healthy state for as long as possible.

Singh et al 2023 Taurine deficiency ageing 2023.pdf

[Kit_L]

On 6/23/2023 at 11:44 PM, Jim Pickles said:

or at least, three of those

:))) Perfect. Agree completely re. the goal is staying in a functional (healthy, agile, strong, supple) for as long as possible. There seems to be no point to (for example) living to 95 if you can walk for the last ten.

Do please advise which of the taurine supplements you do end up taking, and when (in relation to food).

[Jim Pickles]

Thanks @Kit_L for your comment. I ordered from Bulk Nutrients (7 Crabtree Road, Grove, Tasmania, 7109; bulknutrients.com.au) on Thursday at 3.15, and it was delivered into my letterbox by 5 pm Friday! Amazingly efficient and fast! (maybe they are used to people being worried about running out of supplements). The cost was $15 for a 250g bag of powder, plus $9 for express postage.

At the moment I'm taking about 1.5 g/day. I take it with water at breakfast time, so that it is available to me during the day when I am most active. The study I cited in my posting used a single dose per day (didnt say when) so what I am doing seems comparable.

How much to take? That is the big question. The study I cited used doses in monkeys that pro rata for human body weight would come to 20 g/day in a 80 kg person. Safety studies in humans have not been conducted as such, but taurine has been used clinically in many different settings. These studies did not specifically look at the level at which it became unsafe, so cannot by used for determining the unsafe level. One report (mainly concerned with animal feed supplements) said it was safe in human beings at 6/g day for long periods (though the evidence was not cited in detail) - they say equal to 100mg/kg body weight/day in a 60 kg individual, so presumably 8 g/day in an 80 kg one (Ref 1). However they also call 3 g/day "safe".

A more definitive review of the clinical literature (Ref 2) lists a large number of clinical studies of varying doses and durations. Again, they were using doses that they thought were safe, so again they could not say the unsafe level. Doses up to 10 g/day (though rarely; usually it was a lot lower), in small groups, diseased subjects, and the relatively short durations, meant it was difficult to assign a safe level, but they recommend an upper limit of 3 g/day.

The suppliers recommend 1 g/day, and say do not exceed 3 g/day.

So the amounts used in the paper I cited originally are a lot more than this. Note that they did not use any supplements in human beings (though I bet they are getting on with those experiments). So do these lower levels have any effect? In mice, levels at half the amount cited above produced most of the effects, so if you could extrapolate to human beings, that would come to 10 g/day. It is not possible to accurately extrapolate the effects to still smaller doses, because the uptake of taurine by cells is a bioenergetic process which will be highly nonlinear with concentration. Smaller doses may be much less effective than expected pro-rata - or may be much more. This needs to be tested experimentally. So even if I go up to 3 g/day (which I probably will) it may be too low to have an effect - or it may have a substantial one. I am sure that data on that will emerge soon. So at the moment I will continue with the doses in the range I said, because even a placebo effect would be valuable.

There is another point about quantiation. Though it is advertised as Taurine, the packet says L-Taurine. Most biological molecules exist in one of two mirror image forms of the molecule, known as the D and L forms. Only the L forms are produced and used by biological cells, whereas chemical synthesis from scratch produces a mixture, so only half are L forms. This means that the biologically effective concentration is half what is expected. But reading papers, none of them seem to address this issue, just saying they use "taurine". Maybe taurine is such a simple molecule that mirror forms do not exist - in which case, why label it L-Taurine? I'll take up with the suppliers, since I need to know how much I am using.

By the way, I've been using it for two days now, and have not noticed any reliable difference. But I havent been back to the gym yet, so I havent yet tested if my weight lifting has improved.

 

Ref 1. EFSA (2012). Scientific Opinion on the safety and efficacy of taurine as a feed additive for all animal species. EFSA Panel on Additives and Products or Substances used in Animal Feed (FEEDAP). EFSA Journal 2012;10(6):2736 [17 pp.] Available at https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2012.2736 or doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2012.2736

Ref 2. Shao A and Hathcock JN (2008) Risk assessment for the amino acids taurine, l-glutamine and l-arginine. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Volume 50, Issue 3, April 2008, Pages 376-399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yrtph.2008.01.004 (available in full via https://sci-hub.se/ if you quote the doi).

 

 

[Kit_L]

12 hours ago, Jim Pickles said:

Maybe taurine is such a simple molecule that mirror forms do not exist - in which case, why label it L-Taurine? I'll take up with the suppliers, since I need to know how much I am using.

Agree completely. I see that the second reference notes, "taurine, l-glutamine and l-arginine". The L-forms of the latter two are mentioned, but just "taurine". Definitely worth exploring.

[Jim Pickles]

The suppliers have responded and said the L is a mistake, and still on some of the old packaging. As I thought: taurine doesnt have L or R forms.

Jim.

[Jim Pickles]

Just gone back to that link to the original article - it no longer works - so I've attached a PDF of the article to the first entry.

[Jim Pickles]

@Kit_L I'm now using it 4-5 days a week, and not on the remaining 2-3 days/week. I came across an (unrelated) discussion which mentioned the value of intermittency in diet and training; I wonder if continual supplementation means the body might downregulate its own production of taurine. I hope this regime keeps the body's own synthesis going. Maybe. Who knows?

The other (but maybe related) question, is why do taurine levels drop as we get older? As far as I can tell, this has not been addressed. Our consumption of it probably doesnt drop off that much. This suggests that (1) synthesis might drop, and as a corollary, (2) synthesis, not taurine in the diet, might provide our main source (but why?). And why might synthesis drop? Not addressed yet as far as I can tell. The synthesis involves a few stages, one of which is oxygenation of a precursor. Oxygen is dangerously reactive, and I wonder if this enzyme gets degraded in ageing. Havent seen any information yet, but I'll search for it.

[Kit_L]

19 hours ago, Jim Pickles said:

I wonder if this enzyme gets degraded in ageing

I feel this is likely, like everything else!

[Jim Pickles]

Actually, I came across a study in aged rats, which shows that the biosynthetic enzymes indeed degrade in ageing. So why the concentration in the blood serum drops so much (by 90%) if there is still the usual dietary intake, is not explained.

[Kit_L]

Do you have any understanding of mechanisms that decrease taurine in the blood (independent of ageing)?

[Jim Pickles]

I've not been able to find specific information on what modulates the taurine level in the body, and, more importantly, in the critical tissues of interest. There are a few complexities and questions which I have not seen answered:

1. How much of the taurine in the body comes from biosynthesis, and how much from diet? Biosynthesis happens in the liver, but a review I've been reading says "The rate of taurine biosynthesis by the liver is low in humans, therefore, the major source of taurine in humans is the diet". If this is the case, why does the level of taurine fall so much with ageing, as presumably dietary intake doesnt usually drop several-fold in middle-aged and older people? (at least not in most of them). However, as supplementation can put the serum level up markedly, some can clearly come from the diet. Not adding up.

2. The level of taurine in critical structures is important, not just the amounts available in the serum. Cells have their own specific transporters to accumulate taurine, but most studies dont look at the taurine levels in the actual cells of interest (and it would be very difficult anyway in human beings). Where this has been studied, the taurine concentrations in (some at least) of the cells that use it most, are higher than in the serum. So is what we are usually measuring an accurate reflection of what is important? And do the uptake transporters degrade with time?

I'll keep reading to see if I can find more about what is going on. No doubt a lot of extra interest will have been stimulated by the Science paper referred to above. Another thing to bear in mind is that because it relates to something that is sold as a supplement, commercial interests can be involved, and this means one should look at the research with extra suspicion.

By the way, @Kit_L, thank you for your email about the other issues we've been discussing - I'll have a think and get back to you soon.