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Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

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Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#191

Post by chaxor »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #93

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?

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.

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#192

Post by briHass »

tiffanyg wrote: post #173
robwwilliams wrote: post #133

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 va…

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#193

Post by phkahler »

tiffanyg wrote: post #173
robwwilliams wrote: post #133

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 va…

> 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…

>> > 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.

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#194

Post by justinbstrong »

jstarfish wrote: post #96
cjohnson318 wrote: post #93

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?

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.

What if you drink water with it?

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#195

Post by rapsey »

xtracto wrote: post #117
pmoriarty wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe for you or maybe not, but I need to write this out there: My wife (42 YO) started to experience sleep issues around a year ago. She tried with lots of stuff including delayed-release Melatonin, and nothing quite worked well. Until she started taking ZMA pills [1]. This supplement really solved her issues. I take "half dose" sporadically and really helps me get a full good deep night sleep. It may or may not wor…

It is the magnesium that is relevant.

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#196

Post by ck2 »

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.

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#197

Post by xcv123 »

Blackthorn wrote: post #171
Noumenon72 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with xcv here. It's impossible to have a logical discussion with someone who doesn't see a contradiction between "sucralose is toxic" and "there is nothing wrong with sucralose", and it's impossible to have a fairminded discussion with someone who gives objections as speed bumps instead of arguments. If you really cared whether he had linked to a news article vs a study, you would have been satisfied and apologet…

I'm really not understanding why this is being called a contradiction. These studies have, in a good scientific fashion, uncovered some amount of evidence. This evidence has to stand up against 25 years of the FDA recognizing sucralose as generally-recognized-as-safe (GRAS), and the decades prior that made it reach that point. That's a tall hurdle! A contradiction as the term is being used here, to claim my position…

"Contradict" does not mean "disprove".

"there's absolutely nothing wrong with consuming sucralose" contradicts the linked studies and the opposing statements that were made by myself and others here.

This is a simple fact by the definition of the word "contradiction".

Whether the FDA is correct about sucralose or not is actually irrelevant to this point.

Someone can believe the Earth is flat. Another can believe the Earth is a cube. Their beliefs contradict each other but do not prove or disprove anything.

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#198

Post by throwaway2037 »

robwwilliams wrote: post #133

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 va…

    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.)

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#199

Post by chasil »

ggm wrote: post #190

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 pr…

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...

Re: Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging

#200

Post by throwaway2037 »

briHass wrote: post #192
tiffanyg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 t…

You seem knowledgeable about sucralose ("Splenda" in US commercial branding). Thank you to share. On Wiki, it says that sucralose is "genotoxic", but provides no further information. I read the genotoxic Wiki page -- sounds terrible. What am I missing? To be clear: This is not a scare post, rather "explain it to me like I am a 5 year old"!

When I Google >, most of the results are untrustworthy, click-bait news sources.

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