#61

Adding 3g/daily taurine to my stack. Wow, stuff is cheap compared to other stuff I take!

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#62

I am in China. Since China is the main producer of Taurine in the world, Taurine powder here is very cheap. The Taurine powder I just bought is only 3 dollars for 2000 grams. I also know that there are many counterfeits in China, and this powder tastes a bit sweet and bitter at first, but it doesn’t feel sour. How do you like Taurine?

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#63

I am getting confused: we all seem to be taking one or several amino acids for their signaling and longevity effects; certainly I am starting down this path with my cupboard filling up with kg bags of white powder. Many of us are taking several grams of glycine per day, some of us are taking several grams of creatine per day, same with either carnosine or beta-alanine. Cystine/NAC as well. And now we’re going to add taurine to our stacks? Every time I read this forum, there’s a new post with research on the positive impacts of another amino acid. (Ignoring the synthetic amino acids)

What if I could sell you a combined package of 3.5g of glycine, 3.2g of alanine, 1.2g creatine, 500mg of cystine, and 66mg of taurine, and a bunch of others? — it’s half a pound of basic hamburger meat, and it’s cheap. But seriously: if we’re starting to take several amino acids in gram- size daily supplements, aren’t we essentially recreating meat from powder?

If it was just one amino acid, I get it. Two maybe. But three or more it would seem that, unless there are many amino acids with detrimental effects, getting them in a package is easier. (Yes, I’m ignoring other compounds and possible containments/etc. in the protein, just for discussion.)

And more importantly, won’t taking multiple amino acids at one time/day have interacting pathways which may not have the same impact as the single amino acid supplement used in the research we cite? We’re all biohackers here, given the lack of conclusive clinical trials in longevity, but with more complexity/compounds, I am guessing we may possibly be negating much of the benefits of the overall — didn’t the ITP show that in many cases multiple compounds that each individually have a positive longevity impact together show negotiable impact? Or maybe I’m just looking at this in too-simplistic a manner.

(Not advocating animal meat: eat a veggie protein if you’d rather. But the thought stands).

http://www.schwarzenegger.com/fitness/post/creatine-isnt-just-for-building-muscle#:~:text=Meat%20has%20a%20high%20creatine,(3.4g%2Fkg).

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#64

Sorry, hamburger meat is not known to extend life. :smile:

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#65

With hamburgers, you get a lot of other amino acids/additives/preservatives/etc… that you probably don’t want. Also, if you’re vegetarian, you won’t get some of these amino acids (taurine). Also, I am allergic to beta-alanine, so I can’t take the supplement, but I’m OK when I eat a hamburger. What happens to the amino acids in hamburgers when you char and grill them? Some of them convert into toxins.

There is definitely a difference between a supplement and a food source.

On prolonged heating, the basic amino acids are also lost. Charring and the presence of off odours during cooking is due to destruction of amino acids and proteins. These changes affect the palatability of the final product.

I guess you could eat your meat raw… :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, do you really want to eat all these?

https://www.foodauthority.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/_Documents/industry/preservative_use_in_processed_meats.pdf

Mutagens/carcinogens produced during cooking of meat and fish.

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#66

It was a vehicle for discussion around the fact that we are taking an increasing number of amino acid supplements (me included) without studies regarding interaction. But if you were to pressure me, I’d say I prefer steak tartare which eliminates the charred toxins (but introduces the risk of parasites).

And @desertshores : I am sure McDonalds has funded a study on the impact of longevity of hamburgers.

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#67

Great comment :slight_smile:
For me it does not matter, I consume 40+ different supplements at this point, one more does not matter.

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#68

I think, people make a mistake when assuming that amino acids in supplement form are the same as what we consume via diet.

I can eat 2g taurine from fish and not feel anything. I can take 2g supplemental taurine and feel an acute effect. This is true for basically all amino acids.

Empirically, they are not the same.

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#69

I agree: I feel the “flush”?/effect when I started 3g glycine daily (I don’t any more) but don’t feel it with 200g of meat/tempeh.

1 Like
#70

He mentioned the “well-known health benefits of plant-based diets.” This is foundational to his line of criticism here.

I am not convinced there are any health benefits to plant-based diets. Obviously if someone was eating terribly (the standard American diet) and they switch to plant-based whole foods they are likely to experience health benefits. But that is a poor comparison. I think the better question is which diet, or range of diets, is reasonably close to the optimal diet for human health?

It is clear from the study of populations over history that humans can thrive on a wide variety of diets. It is not clear which is optimal, although I do believe all groups studied had some animal sourced food (whether dairy or fish or etc.). Without modern supplementation, I think some animal sources are needed for Vitamin B and some other things.

Anyway, I will just reiterate that the logical underpinning of his criticism here is that plant-based diets are particularly healthy. I am not convinced.

His point about calorie restriction seems off as well. Yes, the mice are fed ad libitum. So are people. A dietary pattern that improves health outcomes but cannot be accomplished by > 90% of actual humans would be of scientific interest but would be less helpful for humanity than a list of supplements to be taken that work for the > 90% humans who eat ‘ad libitum’.

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#71

I agree with you here. And thats why I still think rapamycin is valuable.

For Karl personally, I think that he’s able to do the caloric restriction and practice a very regimented diet so I think for him rapamycin doesn’t make sense… the risk vs. the return for him doesn’t seem worth it. But for the rest of us (99% of the population) - I really don’t think CR is much of an option.

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#72

Summary: ALL diets have a similar all-cause mortality rate.

There was a study done on all-cause mortality on individuals who ate a certain diet. Dr. Sinclair highlighted it in one of his podcasts. The study reported that a pesco-vegetarian diet had the lowest all-cause mortality followed by a vegetarian diet. The Mediterranean diet also scored well.

But then there’s this study in Australia that says diet doesn’t matter regarding all-cause mortality.

We found no evidence that following a vegetarian diet, semi-vegetarian diet or a pesco-vegetarian diet has an independent protective effect on all-cause mortality.

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#73
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#74

“Summary: ALL diets have a similar all-cause mortality rate”
I might add that IMO most diets work as long as you are able to stick to the diet.
That is why fad diets come and go. Any diet that conquers obesity is going to have a similar outcome.

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#75

Don’t all diets have a 100% mortality rate? Everybody eventually dies regardless of what they eat.

I know I’m showing my ignorance here, but I dont understand the terminology/definition of mortality rate I guess

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#76

The way I understand it is that the all cause mortality rate is the percentage of people that die over a given timeframe. So if a carnivore diet has an all cause mortality rate of 20% over ten years you would expect 20 out of 100 people in the cohort to have died over those 20 years.

The Australian study showed no statistical difference between the diets for all cause mortality.

For me, I think the Australian study is probably accurate as people tend not to follow diets strictly or may change diets or cheat over the study timeframe. Also Australians tend to be a more active lot than Americans. In the end there are too many confounding factors to truly tie the results to diet alone.

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#77

One should not forget that taurine is already used as a medicine in humans. Against mitochondrial diseases and heart failure, and taurine also has many other beneficial physiological effects on humans. The taurine related effects on the cardiovascular system are especially interesting. For instance, on the heart and also the Antithrombotic potential. I think that the vast human data on the effects that Taurine show on human physiological systems (and diseases) in part is a counterargument against karls position against the recent study about taurines potential as an agent that might increase human healthspan/lifespan. I really like the extensive research on Taurine that is done on the human physiology.

”Nowadays, there is overwhelming evidence about the involvement of taurine in fundamental physiological processes, such as neuromodulation, bile acid conjugation, intestinal microbiota homeostasis, regulation of energy metabolism, muscle contraction, ion transport, calcium handling, immunomodulation, anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative response, osmoregulation, and cell membrane stabilization and apoptosis [3,4,9,10,11]. Taurine has been further proved to exert many pharmacologic actions, acting as a protective agent against pathologies including nervous diseases (retinal degeneration, stroke, neurodegenerative diseases—Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or Huntington’s disease—epilepsy, fragile X syndrome, succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency), metabolic diseases (diabetes mellitus, stroke-like episodes - MELAS, mitochondrial disease), inflammatory diseases, sarcopenia, myotonic dystrophy, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy [9,10,11]. Moreover, taurine elicits protection against cardiovascular disease [5,9,12,13,14], delaying the progression of atherosclerosis [15,16], reducing blood pressure [17,18,19,20], preventing the development and correcting cardiomyopathy [21,22,23,24,25,26], showing efficacy in ischemia-reperfusion injury [9,27], manifesting antiarrhythmic properties, preventing sudden death [28,29,30,31,32], and acting as a cardioprotective agent in congestive heart failure (CHF) [11,33]. As a matter of fact, taurine has been approved to be included in the treatment of CHF in Japan [9]. Generally, no side effects of taurine administration have been reported at regular doses, nor major ones at high doses (over 6 g/day) [8,11,33,34,35,36]. Through all these above mentioned actions, taurine can represent an important future component of the newer promising therapies against cardiovascular disease.

Last but not least, taurine has been proven to manifest inhibitory effects on key processes of hemostasis, such as platelet activation and aggregation. Our descriptive article aims to review available data regarding the influence of taurine and its derivatives on platelet function, focusing on its claimed antithrombotic potential.”

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#78

Life Extension says: “most successful clinical studies with taurine have used daily doses of 1,500 mg to 3,000 mg .”

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#79

I disagree with Pfleger on the health benefits of plant based diets being a contradiction for taurine being beneficial. For one, plant based diets aren’t devoid of taurine unless we’re talking about vegan diets, which aren’t particularly healthy. Plant based diets are healthy primarily because of the high plant content, not much because of the low meat/fish content. Secondly, even when talking about omnivore diets, the taurine content from food is still relatively low compared to supplemental intakes.

I also disagree with him on thinking the fact that hyperbaric oxygen therapy being potentially beneficial is some kind of a contradiction versus the health benefits of living at lower oxygen altitudes. That’s a comparison between apples and oranges. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is intermittent high oxygen while living at low oxygen altitudes represents a chronic very mild decrease in oxygen. These are two very different things.

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#80

I substitute glycine for sugar in my morning coffee and had the same thought until I looked at the costs. Where I am 1kg of glycine costs 20-60 times the equivalent weight of sugar.

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