One percent of the body mass of all multicellular animals consists of taurine. It is an amino acid that has several important functions in the body, but unlike other vital substances, taurine is not something we need to add in the diet.
A new study shows that the amount of taurine in the blood decreases sharply as we get older. Older people have an 80 percent lower concentration of taurine in their blood than younger people.
The same downward curve is seen in both mice and worms.
– We don’t know exactly when the reduction will start, or why, says Vijay Yadav. He is a biologist and geneticist at Columbia University in New York and has conducted the study published in Science.
More energetic and less anxious
The question is whether the reduction is a natural effect of aging, or whether the animals age because the taurine levels become too low.
– We have been able to show that there is a direct causal relationship. Decreasing levels of taurine cause animals to age.
When Vijay Yadev gave older mice supplements of taurine, they became significantly more energetic than the mice that did not receive anything.
– The mice looked younger, they became slimmer, the bone density increased, they gained increased muscle strength and seemed less anxious, he says.
In addition, the mice lived ten to twelve percent longer than the control group that did not receive taurine. Now the researchers behind the study want to investigate whether the amino acid has the same positive properties in humans.
Risks with taurine
Taurine is a common ingredient in energy drinks that has been on the market for 40 years and it is known that excessive consumption can cause heart rhythm disturbances. Mia Ericson is a professor of addiction medicine at the University of Gothenburg, and she has researched taurine in particular. She sees risks:
– You don’t always know yourself how sensitive you are to disturbances in the heart rhythm, and we know very little about how it affects the elderly.
This is how taurine affects the health of mice, monkeys and humans – see more in the video above.