from Hacker News

Taurine and aging: Is there anything to it?

by etiam on 6/7/25, 12:01 PM with 69 comments

• by baxtr on 6/7/25, 1:33 PM

  After looking a bit into the longevity stuff I’ve come to the conclusion that 80% of the benefits for health come from simple habits: sleep well, move daily, work-out regularly, eat fresh and moderately, and maintain social connections. That’s it.

• by robwwilliams on 6/7/25, 1:35 PM

  The original taurine paper in Science was obviously a mess to some of us in the field. They did not even have plausible taurine concentrations. Poor review process.

  There is no reason to supplement with taurine or with resveratrol. Resveratrol debunked firmly by both the Interventions Testing Program in mice (Miller et al 2011, a paper with Sinclair as a coauthor) and earlirr by Timothy Bass and Linda Partridge and colleagues in two widely used model organisms (C elegans anf Drisophila, 2007).

  Yes David Sinclair is vocal and has a book: but look at the evidence and compare to rapamycin.

  Rapamycin is a drug with strong prolongevity effects at almost any age in both sexes at an appropriate dose to inhibit only mTOR-C1 signaling (4 to 8 mg once per week).

  There ARE side effects to almost any drug. And rapamycin will not be a good drug for a subset of humans in some environments. For example rapamycin is one if the last drugs I would take if I was caring for a room full of 5-6 year olds all day. But surprisingly it was a good drug to be taking during COVID-19 if you were older. perhaps by reducing the inflammatory hyper-vigilance that killed so many older humans. See Kaeberlein’s study of 333 biohackers in 2023.

• by mark_l_watson on 6/7/25, 12:51 PM

  I understand that trying to take supplements to slow aging is a crap shoot. That said I take Taurine in the form of eating dark chicken meat, legs and thighs. I also take NAD+ with resveratrol as publicized by David Sinclair at Harvard.

  I believe that the very best thing to do to maintain health and perhaps have higher quality of life, later in life, is to meditate, forgive other people and yourself, and generally balance spirituality, good sleep, good food, and walk outside a few times a day.

  EDIT: left off two big things. As we age we need vitamin D supplements and I personally also believe in loading up on Omega 3 by eating walnuts, chia seeds, and salmon.

• by meindnoch on 6/7/25, 12:30 PM

  A Downside of Taurine: It Drives Leukemia Growth

  https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/a-downside-of-taur...

• by OutOfHere on 6/7/25, 3:30 PM

  I can't speak for aging, but my strong personal experience with taurine tells me that it does help, a lot. It is excellent for anyone with dry eyes, which is a lot of people. It is also good for anyone who relies on caffeine a fair bit, which is why it's in energy drinks.

• by _xerces_ on 6/7/25, 2:31 PM

  I was taking taurine 1000 mg per day but stopped when I heard a plausible link to colon cancer. Having a strong family history, it wasn't worth the risk.

  Eagerly awaiting the results of this trial: https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2024.42.16_suppl.TPS363...

  Uncertain though how they will separate the effects of the taurine from all the other stuff including sugar that is contained in energy drinks.

  I think this is a hard theory to pin down as it might depend on how much taurine producing bacteria an individual has in their gut B. wadsworthia, so two people could have very different outcomes while taking the same amount of taurine.

• by amelius on 6/7/25, 12:47 PM

  Answer from TFA: no

  > But taken together, all of this new information makes me glad that I have not been loading up on the taurine for purposes of graceful aging, I can tell you that for sure.

• by lentoutcry on 6/7/25, 12:48 PM

  this is the first time I’m hearing taurine had been linked in any way to aging (while also finding out that’s no longer supported by evidence). all I knew was that it’s something energy drinks have. but I’m curious, did this take off as a popular supplement?

• by jbentley1 on 6/7/25, 2:08 PM

  Read the first couple lines, closed the page, and concluded that I should drink more Red Bull.

• by simonebrunozzi on 6/10/25, 8:53 AM

  Derek is always the best.

• by paulcole on 6/7/25, 1:14 PM

  > Taurine and Aging: Is There Anything to It?

  Remember that you should only smugly refer to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines when you disagree with the article.