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Taurine's Benefits For Heart Health And More
Plus: beating sugar addiction the more personalized way
The 10almonds Team
May 22, 2023
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
What matters in life? Your health, your mission, your people. Everything else is a distraction.
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Taurine is an essential amino acid that we can synthesize in our bodies, eat in our diet, or supplement artificially.
Its roles in the body include:
Maintaining hydration/electrolyte balance in cells
Regulating calcium/magnesium balance in cells
Forming bile salts, which are needed for digestion
Supporting the integrity of the central nervous system
Regulating the immune system and antioxidative processes
It also has heart health benefits and neuroprotective effects!
As for safety, is is generally recognized as safe up to 3g/day
Today’s sponsor Fitt Insider is what it sounds like—an insider news source for the world of fitness. It’s free, and we recommend it!
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
5 Things Your Lips Can Tell You about Your Nutritional State
🐮 MAIN FEATURE
Taurine: Research Review
First, what is taurine, beyond being an ingredient in many energy drinks?
It’s an amino acid that many animals, including humans, can synthesize in our bodies. Some other animals—including obligate carnivores such as cats (but not dogs, who are omnivorous by nature) cannot synthesize taurine and must get it from food.
So, as humans are very versatile omnivorous frugivores by nature, we have choices:
Synthesize it—no need for any conscious action; it’ll just happen
Eat it—by eating meat, which contains taurine
Supplement it—by taking supplements, including energy drinks, which generally (but not always) use a bioidentical lab-made taurine. Basically, lab-made taurine is chemically identical to the kind found in meat, it’s just cheaper and doesn’t involve animals as a middleman.
What does it do?
Taurine does a bunch of essential things, including:
Maintaining hydration/electrolyte balance in cells
Regulating calcium/magnesium balance in cells
Forming bile salts, which are needed for digestion
Supporting the integrity of the central nervous system
Regulating the immune system and antioxidative processes
Thus, a shortage of taurine can lead to such issues as kidney problems, eye tissue damage (since the eyes are a particularly delicate part of the CNS), and cardiomyopathy.
If you want to read more, here’s an academic literature review:
On the topic of eye health, a 2014 study found that taurine is the most plentiful amino acid in the eye, and helps protect against retinal degeneration, in which they say:
❝We here review the evidence for a role of taurine in retinal ganglion cell survival and studies suggesting that this compound may be involved in the pathophysiology of glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy. Along with other antioxidant molecules, taurine should therefore be seriously reconsidered as a potential treatment for such retinal diseases❞
Taurine for muscles… In more than sports!
We’d be remiss not to mention that taurine is enjoyed by athletes to enhance athletic performance; indeed, it’s one of its main selling-points:
But! It’s also useful for simply maintaining skeleto-muscular health in general, and especially in the context of age-related decline and chronic disease:
On the topic of safety… How safe is it?
There’s an interesting answer to that question. Within safe dose ranges (we’ll get to that), taurine is not only relatively safe, but also, studies that looked to explore its risks found new benefits in the process. Specifically of interest to us were that it appears to promote better long-term memory, especially as we get older (as taurine levels in the brain decline with age):
^Notwithstanding the title, we assure you, the research got there; they said:
❝Interestingly, the levels of taurine in the brain decreased significantly with age, which led to numerous studies investigating the potential neuroprotective effects of supplemental taurine in several different experimental models❞
What experimental models were those? These ones:
...which were all animal studies, however.
The same systematic review also noted that not only was more research needed on humans, but also, existing studies have had a strong bias to male physiology (in both human and assorted other animal studies), so more diverse study is needed too.
What are the safe dose ranges?
Before we get to toxicity, let’s look at some therapeutic doses. In particular, some studies that found that 500mg 3x daily, i.e. 1.5g total daily, had benefits for heart health:
Bottom line on safety: 3g/day has been found to be safe:
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Fitt Insider: Definitely One To Add To Your Reading List!
Fitt Insider is what it sounds like—an insider news source for the world of fitness.
Do you ever learn of a new health kick, and wish dearly you’d known about it sooner? Fitt Insider’s newsletter really specializes in delivering that—getting cutting edge health and fitness news out to its subscribers.
While we certainly do some of that at 10almonds too, for them, it’s their whole thing, and if you enjoy that aspect of our newsletter, we know you’ll love theirs too!
It’s a free newsletter breaking down industry trends, news, tech, startups, and more. From wearables to health optimization to the latest updates from companies like WHOOP and Strava, Fitt Insider is a top tier resource for getting the fastest news about new fitness and wellness trends.
Click Here To See Fitt Insider’s Latest Issue! ← you can also choose to subscribe there if you like; again; it’s free!
🌏 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Beat Sugar Addiction Now!: The Cutting-Edge Program That Cures Your Type of Sugar Addiction and Puts You on the Road to Feeling Great - by Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum & Chrystle Fiedler
Sugar isn't often thought of as an addiction in the same category as alcohol or nicotine, but it's actually very similar in some ways...
A bold claim, but: in each case, it has to do with dopamine responses to something that has:
an adverse effect on our health,
a quickly developed tolerance to same,
and unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when quitting.
However, not all sugar addictions are created equal, and Dr. Teitelbaum lays four different types of sugar addiction out for us:
Most related to "I need to perform and I need to perform now"
Most related to "I just need something to get me through one more stressful day, again, just like every day before it"
Most related to "ate too much sugar because of the above, and now a gut overgrowth of C. albicans is at the wheel"
Most related to "ate too much sugar because of the above, and now insulin resistance is a problem that perpetuates itself too"
Of course, these may overlap, and indeed, they tend to stack cumulatively as time goes by.
However, Dr. Teitelbaum notes that as readers we may recognize ourselves as being at a particular point in the above, and there are different advices for each of them.
You thought it was just going to be about going cold turkey? Nope!
Instead, a multi-vector approach is recommended, including adjustments to sleep, nutrition, immune health, hormonal health, and more.
In short: if you've been trying to to kick the "White Death" habit as Gloria Swanson called it (sugar, that is, not the WW2 Finnish sniper of the same name—we can't help you with that one), then this book is really much more helpful than others that take the "well, just don't eat it, then" approach!
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Wishing you wonderful week ahead,
The 10almonds Team