Thread by @paulsaladinomd

Taurine is the next creatine.

Hear me out...

RCTs in humans show clear benefits from taurine (1-6g per day) in both disease states and for exercise performance.

Taurine is powerful stuff. 🧵

Blood pressure reduction (PMID: 26781281), both SBP (systolic) and DBP (diastolic)

Improved vascular function in Type 2 DM (40546935)

Improved markers of metabolic syndrome including SBP/DBP, decreased triglycerides, decreased fasting glucose (38755142)

Decreased HgbA1c, fasting glucose, HOMA-IR, fasting insulin in type II DM and obesity cohorts (35769396, 39796489)

If taurine were a drug that the Pharma industry could patent we'd have a blockbuster on our hands here.

What else can do this without significant side effects?

No pharmaceuticals that I am aware of. Improving food quality could though...

And look at exercise outcomes:

Improved endurance outcomes (29546641) in a meta analysis of & trials looking at time to exhaustion (TTE).

Increased heat tolerance with increased sweating and decreased heat strain (30776254). Increased TTE by 10%, decreased blood lactate by 16.5% with single pre-exercise dose (50mg/kg).

Animal meat and organs are without a doubt the best food sources of taurine (and creatine fwiw).

Yet another argument against a plant-based diet.

Beef cheek (masseter muscle) is the clear winner here, with around 368mg taurine per 100g.

Most beef ends up in the 50-100mg taurine/100g range with things like flatiron steak also having above average amounts.

Dark meat chicken is a great source of food based taurine ~150mg+/100g. (12864905)

There is a large amount of variability in taurine content based on cuts of beef and dark vs white meat chicken.

Organs like beef heart and liver are also rich in taurine.

Use this paper as a reference if you are curious (PMID 12864905).

Cooking can degrade taurine up to 50%, another reason to cook your meat rare/medium rare.

Or just eat it raw.

Beef cheek tartare for Taurine maxing anyone? See original photo for inspiration.

Eating beef cheek or dark meat chicken (not raw!) could get you close to 1000mg of taurine per day with just food.

Grass fed and finished beef shows higher amounts of taurine and other nutrients relative to grain finished beef. (22063884).

Quality matters!

Unlike creatine, there does not seem to be a loading effect, and a single dose of taurine as been shown to be beneficial for performance (40852891).

In some studies doses >3g perform better than lower doses for glycemic reduction but it seems the jury is still out on optimal supplemental dosing.

Since taurine is an amino acid, free form supplementation is pretty straight forward and safe.

Side effects at higher doses include GI upset. Would be interesting to see long term safety data at doses >3g per day.

At this point I do not supplement taurine, but I focus on getting 1.5 lbs of meat + some organs (1/2 oz liver + 2-3 ox heart) from grass fed beef on a daily basis.

I look for beef cheeks when I can find them, and eat them raw as tartare.

Steaks are cooked rare- flatiron is on the menu often.

Are you guys taurine maxing yet or nah? What are you waiting for?

If you need help designing an animal-based diet there is a free animal-based calculator on my website paulsaladinomd.com

And yes, I apologize in advance if butchers everywhere are soon sold out of beef cheeks.

I stocked up before I wrote this post. 😂

And yes, this is something energy drink makers got right but eating a steak would be better!