Taurine supplements are also available, although Yadav, alongside his colleague Henning Wackerhage from the Technical University of Munich, said that they “do not recommend buying off the shelf taurine at the present time” due to the lack of evidence of any lifespan benefits in human clinical trials. From a dietary perspective, to hit the equivalent dose that Yadav’s team fed their mice, humans would have to gobble down two kilos of roasted dark turkey meat, a few dozen oysters or six cans of Red Bull. Humans do produce enough taurine to stay healthy, but nowhere near the levels attained in Yadav’s study. An influential study in 1975 showed that cats cannot produce enough taurine in their bodies to stay healthy and will develop a form of feline blindness if it is not supplemented in their diet. Taurine, an amino acid, is not one of the 22 amino acids found in our genetic code, but is very commonly produced in the bodies of animals and eukaryotes. This was conducted in a gigantic animal cohort of nearly 250 mice. The median lifespan extension in female mice was 12% and 10% in males. They then asked whether 14-month-old mice – in their middle age – would benefit from taurine supplements versus animals fed a placebo. As in humans, the nutrient’s abundance declined with age. Yadav’s and his team started by measuring taurine levels in the rodents. In 2023, Yadav, alongside a large group of researchers involved in studying the aging process, finally published a surprising answer: taurine supplements, at least in mice, extend lifespan. “What does taurine do?” At the time, said Yadav, his response was, “I don’t have a clue.” Peering through the data, Yadav’s colleague, Vidya Velagapudi, who oversaw the screen, asked him about one striking result – a molecule that dropped 80% in old age. His aim was to identify any molecules that increased or decreased in the body as we age. Over a decade ago, Vijay Yadav, an assistant professor of genetics and development at Columbia University, conducted a metabolomic analysis of older adults. The study is published in the journal Science. But there are important reasons why you shouldn’t start stocking up on Red Bull to live a healthier, longer life. Taurine, a chemical found in shellfish, meat and energy drinks, may extend lifespan and healthspan – the length of life spent not suffering from disease – in mice and monkeys, suggests new research.

Red bull taurine dose