Looks Like Taurine Make You STRONG LIKE BULL!:
Humanity has done some pretty stupid stuff in the past.
Whether it’s trying to use “Pyramid Power” to keep houseplants alive without water,
Giving LSD to animals, or teaching rats to understand backwards-Japanese.
We’ve certainly tried a lot of stupid stuff, some in the spirit of evolution, some that seemed destined to win a Darwin Award.
But the quest for The Fountain Of Youth is one of our smarter pursuits.
And Science has helped a lot, finding out great stuff about Ultra-Processed Foods, Sugar, and Intermittent-Fasting.
But a Columbia team might be onto another simple patch that almost anyone could do as time marches on…
The Short Answer:
- Humanity has tried some stupid experiments.
- However, searching for The Fountain Of Youth is actually a great one.
- Bad habits don’t seem to account for all the malfunctions of aging.
- For example, the body loses some of its internal signaling ability over time.
- But researchers like Dr. David Sinclair think Aging is a disease that can be fought.
- Columbia’s Vijay Yadav’s team found that our bodies also stop making a lot of Taurine as we age, too.
- This can decline as much as 80%+ over a lifetime.
- Healthy animals have the same problem, too.
- In tests on (human-equivalent) 45 year-old mice, their lifespans were increased up to 12% with supplemental taurine.
- Their physical health was also better by almost every single metric imaginable.
- They were also healthier right down at the cellular & genetic-levels, too.
- Studies on 12,000 EU participants with higher taurine levels showed many improved markers of health.
- Exercised muscle tissue does some amazing things.
- This includes immediate production of more taurine in every body-type except obese people after a workout on a stationary bike.
- The researchers have yet to measure the effects of adults taking supplements.
- The doses they used in animal studies are extremely-high and inadvisable until that study comes out with specifics that have no side-effects.
Read on to find out the details…
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The Slings And Arrows Of Outrageous Function:
For some unfair set of reasons, the human body starts to malfunction as we age.
Some of this might be down to lifestyle factors like drinking, smoking, diet-choice and becoming overweight or obese.
But other parts of it seem to be an unfair degradation in the performance of our systems.
We previously talked about how the blood-transfusion crazies might be onto something.
Because the body stops making signal-carriers for the bloodstream as part of that “Disease Of Aging” as Dr. David Sinclair calls it.
The loss of these “EVs” is not the only thing the body stops making.
Columbia Finds Mysterious Slowdown Of One Amino:
Columbia researcher Vijay Yadav’s team also found the body really slows down production of the amino acid Taurine with age, too.
In fact, he found out years ago that out of all the aminos in the samples he examined, that Taurine was conspicuously lowest in concentration for older people.
And these are serious numbers. The amount from young to old can decrease as much as 80%!
These age-associated deficiencies also occur in animals, too.
Furthermore, taurine deficiency is associated with vision, kidney, and in some cases, neurological dysfunction.
Simple Supplements To Your Existential Rescue?:
So then the $64,000.00 anti-aging question becomes, “Can you just supplement your way out of this?”
Is it just an indicator of some larger problem, or is it a part of the process?
So in a test of about 250 mice that were about 45 years old in human terms, the team gave one group daily taurine and the control group none.
By the end of the test, this had increased the lifespan of the supplemented mice by 12% in females and 10% in males.
This would equate to about 7 human years.
But wait, it gets better!
Somehow The Results Are Better Than Just Lifespan!:
Because when they ran tests to examine the health effects divorced from lifespan increase, the results were still more encouraging.
The mice and monkeys appeared to be healthier in a variety of different ways.
The mice had:
1) Less weight-gain
1a) Lower insulin-resistance
2) More energy
3) Higher bone density
4) Higher endurance
5) Greater strength
6) Less depressive symptoms
7) Lower anxiety
8) More youthful immune system
9) Better coordination
10) Better memory
The monkeys had similar results, including better blood-sugar levels.
The Benefits Go All The Way Down To The Cellular-Level:
At a deeper level, the mice also reaped these benefits in their cells:
1) Reduced number of Zombie Cells
2) Increased number of stem-cells in some areas
3) Improved mitochondria performance
4) Reduced DNA damage
5) Greater cell lifespan
6) Improved nutrient utilization
And in one of the more encouraging study efforts of late, the team didn’t just stop at mice and monkeys!
That’s Fine For Test Animals, But What About, You Know-Humans?!:
Because after the animal tests, they checked in on humans.
In an analysis of data from the EPIC-Norfolk study, the team looked at info on about 12,000 EU adults.
And those who had higher levels of the cow-themed amino in their blood also had:
1) Lower BMI
2) Lower waist-to-hip ratios
3) Less abdominal obesity
4) Lower incidence of type-2 diabetes
5) Better blood-sugar levels just like the monkeys
6) [very likely] Lower inflammation, via markers like CRP
But even given all that, the researchers make a point of saying that so far all they can say about this is correlation and not causation.
-Which may be revealed in the next set of tests they did.
The Magic Of Muscle And Exercise Comes Back Again:
As an intro to that, we found out a short while ago that exercised muscle tissue is anti-inflammatory.
-So much so, that it blocks the exact same channel as the prescription drugs for it!
We also noted another amazing property of muscle in that post.
There is an amino acid that is concentrated exclusively in muscle that does amazing stuff like blocking a certain type of aging called, “glycation”.
-This is the exact same type of blocking that all the billionaires taking Metformin are doing when they take that pill to try to live 20+ years longer.
Carnosine And The Powerful Drug That Is Exercise:
That amino acid, Carnosine, turns into what’s called a “sacrificial peptide” to stop the damage from high blood-sugar events.
So as you can now guess, if pros like Dr. Mike Evans can say things like “exercise is one of the most powerful drugs we have”.
Then perhaps there’s an exercise angle that could be explored if it’s so great and muscle-tissue itself is starting to look more awesome by the day?
Well, they went out and found that previous work, too.
Exercise Creates Taurine Where There Once Was None!-BOOM!:
And wouldn’t you know it,
Healthy, athletic, and sedentary individuals of normal weight all showed improvements!
More or less immediately, they increased their taurine levels after a bout of exercise on a stationary bike.
Obese individuals took a little longer at 24 weeks.
So we now know another angle by which our old friend exercise is simply amazing.
(not to mention its effects on depression, dementia, longevity, etc. etc. etc.)
It’s hard to say how much of the benefit of it comes from taurine production, because the inputs and outputs of it are so complex.
Next Steps. Will Human Trials With Supplementation Work?:
Next up on the menu of course is for the researchers to grab some Red Bull and do the human trials with supplementation to see if it works.
Finding out what the effective dosage is by age-bracket would also be nice.
There are some complications however, because even if they did find the answers, it doesn’t mean taurine is a panacea.
You probably don’t want to have a crappy diet and exercise plan and just pop a pill to try to fix it.
-Except that this is America, and that is almost certainly what civilian, non-HT people would go and do.
Another wrinkle in the story comes from people on Vegetarian or Vegan diets.
They just won’t get enough of the building-blocks to have enough taurine, because it’s made out of other aminos found in protein-sources.
So in that special case, there is an argument for one more thing the vegetable crowd might want to supplement.
(luckily, there is a little taurine in nuts & seeds)
With No Anti-Aging Dosage Yet, Caution Is A Great Idea:
And on one final note before you all rush out there to grab some and go to a 12-hour rave in Glastonbury, England,
The amino is is actually added to baby-food, because the little ones can’t yet make their own at that age.
So then how dangerous could it really be?
But do note that the amounts used in the study are super high, and I don’t think we really know yet what that will do to humans.
Even if you look at the commonly-used ranges on drugs.com, the study doses of 1g/kg of body-weight could equate to more than 10x the ones on that page.
So, even if it is in pursuit of the extension of both lifespan and healthspan, take it easy out there okay?
Until the next study comes out and tells us exactly how much, grab a Red Bull, put on your wings, monster an exercise bike and fight back against the vicissitudes of the disease we know as Aging!
References & Links:
• Source: Columbia
• More Coverage: Drugs.com
• Source Study: Science – Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging
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