But yes generally, premature death seems to come from bad lifestyle choices over a lifetime, so being proactive is gonna yield the greatest return.
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.
Never thought about it before but handling MB in a chem lab might be a very good way to show beginning students how difficult it is to do good lab work and how easily traces of material (and organisms) may pass from one place to another (contact).
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.
As you age, each acute medical event has a real impact and recovery is slow and limited. You have to be at an high baseline to crawl back up.
My dad had a stroke that really affected him badly, but he recovered a lot and worked hard. It was all set back by a cold and a uti that resulted in a hospitalization. That basically did him in. Everything you can do to make sure that you can stand up and get around as long as possible means that you’ll be able to live a longer fulfilling life.
Re vitamin D: I supplement with that as well, but for a tangential reason: Avoiding sun exposure (esp mid-day) without sunblock avoids photoaging and reduces skin cancer risk. But this leaves you at a Vitamin D deficit, hence the supplement.
I have a tub of taurine, but haven't been taking it; seemed like the evidence was thin, and this article supports that conclusion.
So, if you're a partial sun plant (white person), you should get sun but you should use sunscreen, and you'll be fine and that will work.
My Dad lived to almost 102 and he was learning new things right up to the end of his life. He was a physics professor and Berkeley but in retirement he got into model trains, organized social activities, and taught himself 3D animation and started writing scripts and got into digital story telling.
So, I agree with you, always learning new things makes life interesting and probably has health benefits.
Funny you say that:
"It is a major constituent of bile and can be found in the large intestine. It is named after Latin taurus (cognate to Ancient Greek ταῦρος, taûros) meaning bull or ox, as it was first isolated from ox bile in 1827 by German scientists Friedrich Tiedemann and Leopold Gmelin."
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/a-downside-of-taur...
I shared the study with my stepfather, who is suffering from Leukemia, and is also taking a ridiculous number of various unregulated supplements.
All of us in the family, and his top 1% doctors, have been trying to get him off of most them. It's been a losing battle so far.
I shared the link that you posted, and it may have finally done the job.
> Microbiologists have discovered a new intestinal microbe that feeds exclusively on taurine and produces the foul-smelling gas hydrogen sulfide.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230918105118.h...
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.
> 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.
Remember that you should only smugly refer to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines when you disagree with the article.
