They randomly assigned the volunteers to either a placebo group or a taurine group, the latter of whom took 1.6 grams of taurine daily. So, these people weren’t in quite as rough shape as those Tibetan subjects, from a vascular standpoint, but could still stand to benefit a ton from improving their numbers. In 2016, researchers in China recruited 120 men and women with prehypertension, meaning a systolic (top number) blood pressure of 120 to 139 mm Hg, and a diastolic blood pressure (bottom number) of 80 to 89 mm Hg. More recent studies, using larger sample sizes and more rigorous designs, have mirrored these impressive results. The volunteers were administered 3 grams of supplemental taurine every day.Īfter two months, their blood pressure had dropped dramatically, from an average of 152.5/93.8 all the way down to 138.7/84.6. These folks had some of the lowest levels of taurine among the populations studied, and their blood pressure was also really high on average. The research team found a small group of Tibetans living at the foot of Mt Everest who had participated in the CARDIAC study. The CARDIAC researchers apparently wondered the same thing, so they decided to do a clinical trial. Like, is taurine actually doing anything, or is it just a marker of a high fish diet? So how can we be sure that it was actually the taurine, and not other benefits associated with fish? After all, fish is an all-around healthy food, full of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, potassium, selenium, and other good stuff. Here’s the thing: Taurine is found abundantly in fish, and all of the populations with the highest taurine levels were also the most avid seafood consumers. We kind of already knew all that, even back then.īut here’s where it gets really interesting: they noticed that higher levels of taurine in the urine (indicating higher intake in the diet) were strongly and consistently linked to lower risk of cardiovascular mortality, even after adjusting for other factors like age and BMI.Īnd it seemed to be making a big difference statistical analysis showed that 42-55% of the variation in ischemic heart disease mortality could be explained by differences in taurine levels.īut of course, correlation does not equal causation. For instance, higher urinary sodium was associated with higher blood pressure, and higher serum cholesterol was linked to greater risk of coronary heart disease. Now, most of the key findings from this study aren’t really anything new. They followed the subjects for more than a decade, to see how differences in these measures ultimately related to long-term outcomes. During these exams, they looked at standard measurements like weight, blood pressure, and blood lipids, but they also looked at a bunch of biomarkers that corresponded to dietary factors, like urinary sodium and potassium. Basically, researchers approached groups of people from 61 different populations distributed across 16 countries and invited them to participate in a health examination. It started with a global observational study coordinated by the WHO, aptly dubbed the CARDIAC Study. The relationship between taurine and blood pressure was noted back in the early 1980s. But does this translate to humans? And should we try to exploit this for ourselves? Unveiling taurine’s impact on blood pressure Some preliminary research in rodents has shown that taurine might improve heart health by preventing hardening of the arteries, and generally keeping the blood vessels healthy. Taurine is an amino acid-like molecule that occurs naturally throughout the body, and most of us would recognize it as a prominent ingredient in energy drinks. One factor that has attracted some hype is taurine. So it’s very likely that aspects of our lifestyle - in other words, things that we can control - play a role in circulatory function. For instance, we know that people living in certain hunter-gatherer communities have low blood pressure, and it stays low even as they age. According to the CDC, nearly half of American adults have hypertension, and risk tends to go up as we get older.īut high blood pressure is probably not inevitable, even if it kind of seems that way. High blood pressure is often characterized as “the silent killer,” because it can cause permanent damage throughout the body without any obvious symptoms.
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