Taurine could delay aging

In this Article (Index)

• What is Taurine?
• Taurine and Aging
• Taurine and your Body
• Taurine deficiency
• How much taurine does your body need?
• Dietary sources of taurine
• Safety and Risks

What is Taurine?

Taurine is usually referred to as an amino acid, but it isn't, as it lacks a carboxyl group (-COOH), the "acid" part of an amino acid. Its chemical name is β-amino sulfone.

It is synthesized by the body utilizing two amino acids, methionine, and serine, to make another cysteine, which undergoes further modifications to produce taurine.

It was first synthesized in 1827 by two Austrian scientists, F. Tiedermann and L. Gmelin using bile salts obtained from oxen, hence its name "Taurine" which comes from the Latin word taurus, which means "bull" or "ox." (8)

Some foods contain taurine and it is found in beef, chicken, fish, and seafood. Plant-based foods contain minute quantities of taurine.

It is an ingredient found in high concentrations in energy drinks and is also sold as a dietary supplement. (1)

What does Taurine do?

Taurine is quite abundant in the human body and is found in the brain, heart, skeletal muscles, retina, liver, blood plasma, and white blood cells.
It acts as an anti-inflammatory in injured tissue, and it also acts upon bile acids turning them into salts, that can be easily removed by the body. Studies show that taurine supplements lower the "bad" LDL cholesterol enhancing its degradation, and suggest that it may also lower blood pressure acting upon the kidneys and on hormones that increase blood pressure. (5)

Taurine and aging

A study published in 2023 by Singh et al. (4) found that taurine levels decreased with age, and that supplementation with taurine slowed down aging markers such as DNA damage, and alterations in the cells and in mitochondria that are associated with aging-related disease.
Another key finding was that taurine levels increased with physical activity.

The study analyzed the effects of taurine on different animals, such as mice, worms, and monkeys. They looked into changes that are associated with aging and that cause decline, disease, and death.

They found that taurine concentration in blood drops as mice, monkeys, and humans age.

Mice fed with taurine supplements lived 10 to 28% longer than control mice who were not supplemented. They also looked at "health span", the period during which the mice lived free of disease, finding that it also increased. A similar effect was observed in monkeys and worms.

Taurine acts upon the cells protecting against mitochondrial dysfunction, DNA damage, and telomerase deficiency.

In humans, lower levels of circulating taurine were linked to more abdominal fat, high blood pressure, inflammation, and type-2 diabetes.

The fact that taurine levels increased with exercise may help explain why increased physical activity has an antiaging effect.

Taurine abundance decreases during aging. A reversal of this decline through taurine supplementation increases the health span and life span in mice and worms and the health span in monkeys. This identifies taurine deficiency as a driver of aging in these species. Singh et al. (2023) (4)

Aging and health benefits

Mice live longer and healthier

Singh's team fed middle-aged (14-month-old) mice 1 g of taurine per kg of body weight once a day and noticed that they lived 10 to 12% longer than those who didn't receive taurine. It also extended their period of healthy living or "health span", providing disease-free life. Their brain, bone, pancreas, gut, fat, and immune system showed they were in better health, and their weight gain as they aged was lower and bone mass in female mice improved. Their endurance, coordination, strength, memory, and curiosity also increased while anxiety and depressive-like behavior decreased.
Glucose levels improved. (4)

Monkeys too!

Supplementation in middle-aged monkeys who received 250 mg per kg of body weight showed that, in comparison to a group receiving a placebo, they gained less body weight and had lower body fat levels, and their fasting glucose values improved, as did bone density. The taurine group had better values for their liver damage markers (AST and ALT), and markers of oxidative damage that signal DNA damage, inflammation, Alzheimer's, IBD, heart disease, and diabetes (lipid peroxide, 80H-dg, and protein carbonyl) were up to 36% lower. (4)

Exercise and Taurine

Exercise increased taurine levels. Tests in humans showed that taurine levels increased by 16% in male athletes who engaged in different types of physical activity and were higher than those found in sedentary people. These findings suggest that "an increase in taurine and taurine-related metabolites might mediate some of the health benefits of exercise." (4)

Taurine and your body

The body can manufacture taurine, however, compared to other animals like cows, pigs, sheep, and poultry, human beings are not efficient in their ability to synthesize taurine, this means that we depend on dietary sources of protein containing taurine to reach the necessary daily intake of it. (8)

The body of a person weighing 160 lb (72 kg) has about 72 g of taurine. A healthy adult can produce roughly 50 to 125 mg of taurine per day. But this value depends on factors like disease (diabetes, liver conditions, cancer, and infection), obesity, stress, and a diet with an adequate amount of protein that contains taurine.

A regular diet has been estimated to contain between 9 and 400 mg of taurine per day. Due to the low content of taurine in fruits, legumes, cereals, and vegetables, those following a vegan diet will ingest almost no taurine, while those following a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet will have an intake of approximately 18 mg/day.

Plant-based diets are also very low in methionine and cysteine, used by the body to manufacture taurine.

Taurine deficiency

Taurine deficiency can lead to disorders during early life, causing blindness, and affecting the heart, central nervous system, and muscles. It can also cause problems with growth and reproduction (1)

Taurine regulates calcium handling, it is an antioxidant in the heart and regulates the movement of ions between cells. Taurine concentration in blood decreases with age falling by more than 80% in old adults vs. younger ones.

Absorption of Taurine

The taurine contained in animal protein is not degraded during digestion, it is absorbed and transported in the blood for uptake by the body's tissues such as the brain, muscles, and heart. (8)

How much taurine does your body need?

According to Wu, a healthy adult weighing 160 lb (72 kg) requires around 1.07 mg/kg of body weight per day, or 77 mg/day. Children have a higher daily requirement than adults due to their growth and development needs.

Food Sources of Taurine

The FDA provides the following information about dietary sources of taurine in g/100 g. (3)

By far, the best sources of taurine are animal proteins, beef contains roughly 2.5 mg per gram; and two ounces of beef (57 g) contain 142.5 mg of taurine, which is almost twice the daily requirement for a 160 lb (72 kg) adult. (8)

Energy Drinks and Taurine

These drinks contain taurine in high concentrations; Red Bull has 1,000 mg, Monster (2,000 mg), and Rockstar (3,000 mg). The manufacturers claim that they provide a boost to activity levels and energy, but these claims have not been substantiated. (1)

Taurine synthesis

As mentioned further up, the body manufactures taurine by synthesizing it using other amino acids such as L-methionine, L-serine, and L-cysteine. This process takes place in the liver and requires iron, molybdenum, and pyridoxine. However, it isn't efficient in doing so. (vitamin B6).

Methionine is more abundant in meat and animal-derived foods than in plant-based foods. (2),(6) Serine is found in soybeans, peanuts, almonds, walnuts, eggs, chickpeas, lentils, meat, and fish.

Cysteine in turn is transformed by other biochemical reactions and produces taurine in the process.

Cysteine occurs in small quantities in most proteins and is a "semiessential" amino acid because the body can produce it in the liver. It is found in cheeses, yogurt, chicken, turkey, oats, granola, and wheat germ, among other foods.

Safety and Risks

Taurine is not listed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a Generally Recognized As Safe (or GRAS) substance because it is a dietary supplement, which, unlike food additives, is not required by law to be classified as GRAS to be allowed for use. It is the supplement manufacturer who is responsible for making sure that the ingredient, in this case, taurine, is safe for use. (1)

The European Food Safety Authority concluded in 2009 a "No Observed Adverse Effect Level" (NOAEL) of 1,000mg per kilogram of body weight per day of Taurine and mentioned that there were reports of health problems, including fatalities in young people who consumed very high amounts of energy drinks (containing taurine) but confounded by the effects of combining them with drugs, alcohol and physical exertion and the high caffeine content of these drinks, making it difficult to pinpoint these effects to taurine.
The NOAEL is the greatest amount of a substance that causes no detectable adverse effects. (9)