@Vulcan, I love both as well. I started a gaba/theanine combination product one month ago and find it quite helpful for relaxing after a stressful 12 hour shift at work.
Theanine is also a mast.cell stabilizer.
Denis Odinokov
Favorites · ·
The decline in blood taurine concentration with age has been observed in mice, monkeys, and humans.
The taurine-fed mice (the dosage of taurine used in the study was 1,000 mg/kg once a day. To determine a corresponding dose for humans, you can use my Allometric Dose Scaling Calculator) showed increased survival rates, with a median lifespan increase of 10 to 12%, and improved life expectancy at 28 months by about 18 to 25%.
Additionally, taurine supplementation improved the functioning of various organs and systems, including bone, muscle, pancreas, brain, fat, gut, and immune system, leading to an overall increase in health span. Similar effects were observed in monkeys. Further investigations revealed that taurine positively influenced key aging markers such as cellular senescence, telomerase deficiency, mitochondrial dysfunction, DNA damage, and inflammation.
Human studies showed that lower taurine concentrations were associated with adverse health conditions, including abdominal obesity, hypertension, inflammation, and type 2 diabetes.
Notably, exercise increased taurine and its metabolite concentrations in the blood, suggesting a potential link between the antiaging effects of exercise and taurine.
Link in the comments.
I tried it over the past week and didn’t go so well. I have had a dry mouth, which I discovered is most common with Taurine with women my age. I have also had lower quality sleep including higher heart rate and worse HRV scores. I might try it pre workout for awhile and see how that goes but am not taking it any longer at night.
I am with you and was thinking exactly the same thing. Blood tests on these things are so slow and don’t give enough real time information. I have not had good results with Taurine - I tried it over the past week and didn’t go so well. I have had a dry mouth, which I discovered is most common as a side effect with Taurine with women my age. I have also had lower quality sleep, including higher heart rate and worse HRV scores. I might try it pre workout for awhile and see how that goes. Maybe I already have enough in my body and don’t need it. Who knows?
What dose did you take?
Isn’t that one think blood testing might help answer?
I’m glad to learn, @Curious, that there is an antagonism between taurine and beta-alanine, as I’ve been dosing on the latter every day for years. The benefits are remarkable for interval training. Fortunately, daily dosing is unnecessary. It can be cycled on and off every three months, allowing me to alternate between the tarurine and the beta-alanine. Thank you for the useful information.
Perhaps, but the results only give a snap shot of a day in the past. In real time I have no idea how the levels of amino acids vary.
I was really just agreeing with Eric that I think it is very difficult to know all of the interactions of amino acids.
I have stopped taking Taurine at night but took a larger dose (3g) before my workout today. I felt strong and had a great workout but my heart has been racing all day. I am not sure I am going to keep experimenting with this.
I will see what blood tests I can get done to check my overall amino acid levels when I get time to look into that further. It is all very complicated but everyone sharing their experiments on this forum is very useful indeed Maybe testing for baseline after not taking anything for a few weeks would be the best start.
1 gram at night and 1 in the morning before my workout.
3 gr before a workout is quite a lot. I sometimes take as little as 0.5 - 0 8 gr before workout.
Beta alanine have also been promoted as a longevity supplement. But I have not focused on it. I try to reduce the supplements I use.
@karismac, I usually take it before a workout with good results, but last night I took three grams right before bed and couldn’t sleep til dawn.
Like you, @Curious, I don’t need another longevity supplement, but as a fitness supplement beta-alanine has been great. No one, however, should use both. It would be like taking Adderall and Ritalin at the same time.
Thank you for sharing. It is enlightening to learn that people have very different reactions when they take Taurine.
Since you use Beta alanine as performance enhancing agent, I would like to share my experiences with Taurine as an performance enahancing agent.
In my self-experimentation aiming at enhanced performance, I have taken different doses (between 2 – 5 gr) of Taurine at night. I have observed increased cardiovascular performance when running the next morning. And I have observed a dose dependent effect.
My maximal performance is improved when running at maximal speed the morning after having taken Taurine before bed. And that goes for all distances from 400 m to 10 k.
I have also noticed that after I having taken 2-5 gr Taurine before bed my heart rate goes down while doing slow ZON 2 running the next morning.
I find this interesting since Taurine is expressed particularly in the excitable tissues such as the heart, retina, brain and muscles. The intracellular concentration of taurine is commonly 5–50 mM and the plasma concentration of taurine is approximately 100 μM. When taurine is supplemented, the plasma taurine content usually reaches its peak within 1 h to 2.5 h of taurine intake. In an analysis on the pharmacokinetics of oral taurine supplementation (4 g) in healthy adults. These individuals, who had fasted overnight, showed a baseline taurine content in a range of 30 μmol to 60 μmol. Then, 1.5 h after taurine intake, the plasma taurine content increased to approximately 500 μmol. Plasma taurine content subsequently decreased to baseline level 6.5 h after taurine intake.
Since plasma taurine content subsequently decreases to baseline level 6.5 h after taurine intake, one explanation of my increased performance is that taurine might have been absorbed in the excitable tissues in the body (like in the heart and other muscles). This could explain the increased capacity for maximal performance when plasma levels are back to the normal levels. (something similar to creatine loading, yes a highly speculative thought)
I have also observed an improved cardiovascular performance if I take a smaller amount, 0,5 – 1,5gr of Taurine 45 minutes to 3 hours before running. One can speculate that this is an indication that there is both an effect on performance when loading cells (heart and other muscles) with taurine as well as an immidiate performance enhanced effect of having increased levels of Taurine in plasma. I would really like to see a study done on taurine loading.
One must take into consideration that people in different age groups respond differently to taurine. I am male 60 y old.
It is hard to generalize from my n(1) expriments. For instance, the observed effects could depend on my individual biology. And I could, for instance, have an undetected weakness in my heart or in mitochondria or other individual weaknesses that Taurine addresses.
Outstanding presentation, sir, and crunching of the data. However, one of the papers here said that taurine alone, without the addition of caffeine, had little or no effect on enhanced performance. I don’t doubt your n=1 results, but as with almost everything in the science of exercise, it can be hard to tease out the variables. I, for example, am 75, compared to your 60. Should we expect to see a difference? Yes, of course. But I’d say we’re both doing pretty well, supplements or not.
I can only guess, but I think it is realistic to assume that people in different age groups has different needs. With Taurine as with NAC/Glycine, my first thoughts are that with increased age comes a need for a larger dose. This since with increased age the body loose more and more of itsTaurine and Glutathione