There’s a popular ingredient in energy drinks that’s recently been gaining attention for its potential to fight aging and boost key health parameters.
But does the research support the hype? We'll dive into recent studies to see whether this ingredient truly lives up to its promising claims. Plus, I’ll share why I’ve chosen to include it in my regimen, even though I’m waiting on more data to see if the claims about aging pan out.
Table of Contents
1. The Lifespan Result in Mice
2. What is Taurine and Why Does It Matter?
7. Takeaway
The Lifespan Result in Mice
So what’s the ingredient? It’s taurine. And we’ll start with the recent study that has everyone excited about its potential to combat the effects of aging.
The study was published in the prestigious journal Science. Researchers were interested in how taurine supplementation might affect lifespan. They looked at how worms responded to extra taurine. Here’s what they found: The lifespan of worms treated with taurine increased by 10 to 23% [1].
And I know what you’re thinking. Worms are a long way from humans. But they also tested taurine’s effects on mice, which are biologically much closer to us. And in this case, the results were equally impressive. Overall lifespans increased 10 to 12%, and life expectancy at 28 months went up by 18 to 25% [2].
The impact here is huge. You can see why people are excited. But even though we’re closer to mice than worms, we’re still an entirely different species. Should we expect similar results in humans?
Well, we’re quite similar to mice in at least one respect. In this study, researchers found something interesting about taurine levels. They drop rapidly with age. We see this in mice, monkeys, and humans [3].
What is Taurine and Why Does It Matter?
In their experiments with mice, preventing this drop in taurine led directly to a longer life. So will it be the same with us? Let’s dig deeper to see why taurine seems to help. Then we’ll take a look at the evidence we have right now from human trials.
Taurine is an amino acid. It’s found naturally in the body, especially in the brain, heart, and muscles. It plays many roles, from energy metabolism to supporting nervous system function. And having too little can cause problems. It leads, for instance, to a condition called cardiomyopathy, which makes it hard for the heart to function properly [4].
For decades, taurine has been added to energy drinks. It’s an interesting story about how it got there. We’ve actually known about taurine for a long time. It was first isolated in 1827 from ox bile. That’s how it got the name “taurine,” which comes from the Latin word for bull. Scientists noticed it was abundant in muscles, and early research suggested links to things like energy production. So it seemed like a plausible candidate to include in drinks aimed at increasing performance.
It first showed up in a Thai energy drink called Krating Daeng (which means red bull) in 1976. Then an Austrian entrepreneur tried the drink on a business trip in the early 80s. That led to the creation of the Red Bull we’re all familiar with. Its basic formula, combining caffeine and taurine, has been widely copied since.
And the popularity of energy drinks means the effects of taurine on performance have been widely studied. We have lots of data suggesting it actually helps, at least a bit. We’ll look at some of that data in a moment.
But more recently, interest in taurine has surged because of a potential link to aging.
Here’s how the reasoning goes. We’ve noticed that the function of many body systems declines with age. In a sense, this is just what aging means—things are wearing down. And this decline happens along with changes in the concentrations of various chemicals in the blood. As we’ve already seen, one of these changes is a steady decline in the amount of taurine.
This leaves us with an important question, though. Does the decline in taurine levels cause some of the negative changes we see due to aging? Or is it just a side effect? Think of an analogy. Gray hair goes along with getting older. But gray hair doesn’t cause aging; it’s just one of its symptoms. So is taurine decline a cause or a symptom of aging?
Here’s how we could find out. If boosting taurine levels delayed or reversed signs of aging, we’d know it was playing a causal role. And that’s what the results of the study with mice and worms showed. Supplementing with taurine clearly boosted lifespan.
The 2023 Science Study
But will this work in humans? Let’s look a bit more closely at what else the study authors discovered and why it points toward a positive answer.
They didn’t just look at how much longer the mice lived. They also wanted to see if other markers of health improved with taurine. After all, absent specific diseases, living longer is a result of our systems wearing out more slowly. So what evidence did they find of this?
The researchers were thorough. They looked at the effects of taurine supplementation on the health of the mice’s bones, muscles, brains, weight, and more [5]. They found taurine treatment suppressed weight gain, increased bone mass, increased muscle endurance and coordination, and reduced depression-like behavior and anxiety [6][7][8][9].
They conclude that taurine supplementation improved the function of every organ investigated in middle-aged female and male mice [5].
So it appears taurine had a powerful effect across many of the systems in the mice studied.
But the primary drivers of aging happen at the cellular level. Our DNA gets damaged more easily and isn’t repaired as well. The mitochondria of our cells — the power plants — don’t work as efficiently. We have fewer stem cells to replace damaged cells, and damaged cells begin to build up instead of being cleared away.
One of the most intriguing aspects of this study is that researchers looked at the effects of taurine on this level, too. They found taurine helped guard against DNA damage, promoted mitochondria health, and helped to keep cells younger. Taurine supplementation also led to the presence of more stem cells [5].
These results are a crucial addition to the observed effects on lifespan. They show that taurine has a positive impact on a number of cellular-level processes that are powerful drivers of aging.
And here’s why that’s so important. These cellular dynamics of aging mirror those found in humans. So if taurine has these effects in mice, this gives us good reason to expect similar effects in us.
Human Evidence
But do we have any human evidence yet to back up this hypothesis? It turns out we do.
The same group of researchers that ran the experiments on mice looked at a large human population in England. They drew on data from the EPIC-Norfolk cohort study. The study had an initial population of 30,000 adults. It followed them for 30 years [10].
They found that higher levels of taurine in the blood were associated with a lower BMI and a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes. They were also associated with lower levels of inflammation [11]. They’re quick to add that association doesn’t establish causation. But these kinds of results are consistent with the claim that taurine deficiency may contribute to aging.
And they collected one other piece of evidence. It is well established that exercise improves several age-related health variables. Since they had a strong suspicion that taurine has anti-aging effects, they wondered if raising taurine levels might be part of the reason exercise is so powerful. So they set out to see if exercise actually does raise taurine levels.
The results? Taurine levels did indeed rise significantly in response to exercise [12].
This is further evidence of taurine’s impact.
So where does this leave us? When it comes to taurine and aging, we’ve seen there is some intriguing early evidence that it can extend lifespan and improve health. But we need better human studies before we can say for sure what its impacts are. Ideally, we’ll want randomized controlled trials that last long enough to track meaningful results across time. Until those studies are done, we need to be cautious about the claims we make.
Emerging Areas
And aging isn’t the only area where taurine is attracting attention. There’s also some early indicators that it could have a significant impact on brain health as well.
For instance, researchers looked at the association between levels of taurine in the blood and the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Based on participants in the Framingham study, they found higher levels of taurine were associated with a 26% lower risk of dementia [13].
There have also been a few small clinical trials. So far, though, results have been mixed. I’m going to be keeping an eye on this research, too.
Other Benefits
But the primary reason I take taurine isn’t because it extends lifespan or protects the brain. Despite the lack of convincing evidence in those areas, I personally still think it’s worth it. Here’s why.
For one thing, as I mentioned earlier, it has been shown to help with parameters related to exercise. As an example, a meta-analysis in 2021 combined 10 randomized controlled trials. It concluded that taurine supplements could increase fat metabolism and decrease DNA damage during aerobic exercise [14].
During strength exercise, taurine has been found to reduce exercise-induced oxidative stress.
But I’m far more excited about a new study published last year that looked at measures related to metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a significant health concern because it increases the risks of heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, and chronic inflammation [15].
Despite numerous clinical studies that show the diverse health benefits of taurine, there are inconsistencies. That makes it a challenge to say for sure whether taurine reduces the risk of metabolic syndrome. And that’s why this new study was done. The authors wanted to clarify taurine’s effectiveness.
So they conducted a meta-analysis of the randomized clinical trials that looked at parameters linked to metabolic syndrome—things like cholesterol, blood pressure, and insulin sensitivity [16]. The analysis included 25 trials involving over 1,000 participants. It found that taurine decreased fasting blood sugar levels, blood pressure, triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, HbA1c, and insulin levels [17].
But it had no effect on body weight. The doses used in the studies varied between 1 and 6 g per day. And the analysis showed that taurine is safe [18].
However, we need to consider potential bias. Of the 25 studies, 18 lacked crucial information about how they were conducted, putting them at risk of bias. The remaining 7 had a low risk of bias. None had a high risk [19].
Another crucial issue is the short duration of the included studies. Most lasted no more than 2 months, with only a few extending up to a year. So due to these limitations, the authors of the analysis stress the need for longer-term studies to validate taurine’s effects.
But then there’s also some data showing additional ways taurine might help with heart health. For example, one study of 120 individuals with high blood pressure demonstrated that taurine lowered blood pressure by over 7 units [20]. This study also gave insight into the mechanism. The researchers found it was due to improvements in the way blood vessels can respond to and regulate pressure [21].
Again, with most of the findings we’ve looked at in this article, we could use more evidence to strengthen our conclusions.
Takeaway
But if that’s true, why do I still take taurine?
For me it’s simple. Even if it is preliminary, we have a wide variety of experimental results that all point in the same direction. Taurine seems to have a number of significant impacts on parameters connected to living a longer, healthier life.
But we always need to think about safety. We have to weigh the benefits against the costs. In this case, though, the evidence we have is that taurine is safe.
So there are strong potential benefits and no known risks with supplementation. This picture could change in the future with better data. But for now, I personally add taurine to my supplement stack.
I do this in a unique way. Subscribers will know I also supplement with magnesium. But the magnesium needs to be bonded with something else. For example, magnesium can come in the form of magnesium oxide or magnesium glycinate. But magnesium can also be paired with taurine. So when I designed MicroVitamin, I knew I wanted to include taurine. So the magnesium form I chose was magnesium taurate.
The new MicroVitamin+ powder adds taurine by itself as well, for a total of 2g.
But just because I take a supplement in no way means you need to also.
Reference List
1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10630957/
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10630957/
3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10630957/
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861323000749
5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861323000749
6. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861323000749
7. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861323000749
8. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861323000749
9. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861323000749
10. https://www.epic-norfolk.org.uk/
11. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861323000749
12. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1347861323000749
13. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5722716/
14. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8419774/
15. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11099170/
16. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11099170/
17. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11099170/
18. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11099170/
19. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11099170/
