Exciting research: The inexpensive amino acid Taurine grows new brain cells

[AikidoSoul]

Comment from Aikido Soul: The amino acid Taurine has been included for decades in treatment programs by specialist MDs who care for patients with toxic brain and central nervous system injury. I appreciate articles coming from the Life Extension Foundation, but purchase almost zero of its products because they too often use non-organic soy and corn as source material, which can come from GMO crops. Clean Taurine is easily found. (Sorry about the smilies which were inadvertently formed within the references).
http://www.lef.org/Magazine/2015/9/Grow-New-Brain-Cells/Page-01?p=1
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Excerpt taken from Life Extension Magazine:

Grow New Brain Cells

By Forrest Ritiker

For years, scientists believed brain shrinkage was inevitable and irreversible.

Cutting-edge research has shown that brain cells can regenerate.

An amino acid called taurine plays an important role in creating new brain cells.

Researchers found that taurine increased the growth of brain cells by activating “sleeping” stem cells. Taurine also increased the survival of new neurons, resulting in an increase in adult brain cell creation.1-3

Recent studies reveal that taurine has unique biochemical properties that promote new brain cell formation.4,5 Animal studies show that taurine triggers new brain cells to grow in the hippocampus, the area of the brain most concerned with memory.1,6 This can lead to dramatic improvements in cognition and recall.7,8 Low levels of taurine have been observed in patients with Parkinson’s disease.9,10

In addition to these impressive brain benefits, taurine also boosts cardiac function and reduces arterial stiffness as well as reducing the negative impacts of metabolic syndrome.11-16 In fact, taurine supplementation added to the drug metformin has been shown to offer tremendous reductions in tissue damage.17

Taurine levels fall significantly with age, leaving the brain, heart, kidneys, and other tissues deprived of this vital healing compound­—one capable of rescuing dying cells and restoring cellular communication.1,6,18

Experts are beginning to recognize that with age, many can experience a taurine deficiency that is a real and fundamental threat to health.

The great news is that taurine is a super low-cost supplement, meaning everyone can benefit from its potential to slow and reverse degenerative processes.


Taurine Grows New Brain Cells

For years, scientists believed that brain shrinkage (atrophy) was an unstoppable degenerative process. New research reveals this loss of brain matter is partially caused by reversible processes.19,20 This knowledge opens the door to a new paradigm—one that aims to restore brain structure and function—as opposed to simply treating the symptoms.

BIG SNIP -- SEE REFERENCES HERE:


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Zhang L, Yuan Y, Tong Q, et al. Reduced plasma taurine level in Parkinson’s disease: association with motor severity and levodopa treatment. Int J Neurosci. 2015 May 23:1-24.
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Caletti G, Almeida F, Agnes G, Nin M, Barros H, Gomez R. Antidepressant dose of taurine increases mRNA expression of GABAA receptor alpha2 subunit and BDNF in the hippocampus of diabetic rats. Behav Brain Res. 2015 Apr 15;283:11-5.

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Lambert J, Nicholson C, Amin H, Amin S, Calvert J. Hydrogen sulfide provides cardioprotection against myocardial/ischemia reperfusion injury in the diabetic state through the activation of the RISK pathway. Med Gas Res. 2014;4(1):20.

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Kulthinee S, Wyss JM, Roysommuti S. Taurine supplementation prevents the adverse effect of high sugar intake on arterial pressure control after cardiac ischemia/reperfusion in female rats. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2015;803:597-611.

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Marui A, Kimura T, Nishiwaki N, et al. Percutaneous coronary intervention versus coronary artery bypass grafting in patients with end-stage renal disease requiring dialysis (5-year outcomes of the CREDO-Kyoto PCI/CABG Registry Cohort-2). Am J Cardiol. 2014 Aug 15;114(4):555-61.

Yeung-Lai-Wah JA, Qi A, McNeill E, et al. New-onset sustained ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation early after cardiac operations. Ann Thorac Surg. 2004 Jun;77(6):2083-8.

Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMHT0024703/. Accessed June 29, 2015.

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Beyranvand M, Khalafi M, Roshan V, Choobineh S, Parsa S, Piranfar M. Effect of taurine supplementation on exercise capacity of patients with heart failure. J Cardiol. 2011 May;57(3):333-7.

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Ohsawa M, Fujioka T, Ogasawara K, et al. High risks of all-cause and cardiovascular deaths in apparently healthy middle-aged people with preserved glomerular filtration rate and albuminuria: A prospective cohort study. Int J Cardiol. 2013 Dec 10;170(2):167-72.

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Chesney RW, Han X, Patters AB. Taurine and the renal system. J Biomed Sci. 2010;17 Suppl 1:S4.
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Rosa F, Freitas E, Deminice R, Jordao A, Marchini J. Oxidative stress and inflammation in obesity after taurine supplementation: a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Eur J Nutr. 2014 Apr;53(3):823-30.

Franconi F, Bennardini F, Mattana A, et al. Plasma and platelet taurine are reduced in subjects with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus: effects of taurine supplementation. Am J Clin Nutr. 1995 May;61(5):1115-9.

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[AikidoSoul]

1. Omaha Steve, please read this.

[AikidoSoul]

5. Shameless kickety kick

[Liberal_in_LA]

23. I just realized that you meant this as help to Omaha Steve. Wonderful

[hifiguy]

2. Ain't science grand? IIRC felines need taurine in their diets to survive.

Perhaps that is why taurine-rich kittehs are taking over the world.

[AikidoSoul]

3. I raise feral cats and make their organic food from scratch, adding Taurine

and many clean, nutritious ingredients, vitamins, minerals, food grade diatomaceous earth (for mineralization and to kill parasites), spirulina, organic chicken thighs, organic eggs, spirulina, chlorella, natural source vitamin e, vit. D3, Asthantaxin, and much more that I can't remember off the top of my head.

[hifiguy]

4. Aww, good hoomin!!

[nomorenomore08]

10. +2

Good on you, seriously.

P.S. Food-grade dirt? Who knew such a thing existed?

[AikidoSoul]

13. Honestly --- I swear -- it's completely true. But it's important to NEVER

use the kind that has pesticides in it for your home, yard, or your animals. Some nurseries carry that version and I avoid it like I avoid all synthetic poisons. Please only get the food grade variety.

Clean, food grade diatomaceous earth is also used as pest control to erode the encasement (I forget the technical word) of soft bodied insects, which kills them.

I buy the stuff in 25lb bags from a local farmers who use it in their dog pens, and for their birds like chickens and ostriches. Ostriches roll around in it because it kills the mites that irritate them. So do the chickens. And since it mineralizes the animals and kills internal and external parasites -- you can put it in their food and bedding.

We even eat it ourselves if we suspect we might have some parasite. Only a teaspoonful every couple of days for about a week seems to be right.

But I caution you that it's not good to breathe the stuff as it can damage the lungs. We use it, but sparingly.

[RichVRichV]

28. diatomaceous earth isn't dirt.

It's fossilized microscopic single-celled algae from river beds. It feels like talcum powder to the touch. But in reality it's very sharp (just too small to cut us unless it gets into our eyes or lungs). It's also highly absorbent of water, drying out what it touches.

Besides being used to kill intestinal parasites it's also extremely effective at killing pest bugs. I've never seen anything better at dealing with bad cockroach infestations. Just lay it down around the perimeter of floors and counters and within a few weeks all the roaches will be gone. It works even where the poisons don't.

[seveneyes]

6. Red Bull and Moonshine

I have living proof it helps keep your mind right.

[AikidoSoul]

9. Actually, strong alcohol (moonshine qualifies)

can actually break the bond of toxic petrochemicals that store in the lipids of your body, including the brain, giving them a chance to be excreted.

But, I don't recommend that strategy on a daily basis! There are other ways to get rid of toxicants that are safer. Doing too much alcohol can destroy brain cells! I think I've lost several that way!.

Alcohol is a Faustian bargain as far as being a technique to break neurotoxic petrochemicals from the body.

[TexasProgresive]

7. The old adage that fish is brain food

Seafood is a high source of taurine.

[AikidoSoul]

12. True. I recommend wild caught salmon and wild caught sardines

as they have fewer toxic chemicals, and less mercury that other fish. They also have the very important OMEGA 3 nutrients. Clean fish is far better than the often rancid fish oil supplements.

It's important to know that the bigger the fish, i.e. tuna, the more they are contaminated with mercury.

And farmed fish is a nightmare of toxicants and synthetic colorants. The LA Times had a great story on farmed fish several years ago (see excerpt and link below). I won't touch the farmed fish because of the crazy, horrible methods and poisons used in fish farming.



http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-salmon9dec09-story.html

EXCERPT:

Los Angeles Times -- December 9, 2002

Fish Farms Become Feedlots of the Sea

By Kenneth R. Weiss

Like cattle pens, the salmon operations bring product to market cheaply.
But harm to ocean life and possibly human health has experts worried.

If you bought a salmon filet in the supermarket recently or ordered one
in a restaurant, chances are it was born in a plastic tray here, or in a
place just like it.

Instead of streaking through the ocean or leaping up rocky streams, it
spent three years like a marine couch potato, circling lazily in pens,
fattening up on pellets of salmon chow.

It was vaccinated as a small fry to survive the diseases that race
through these oceanic feedlots, acres of net-covered pens tethered
offshore. It was likely dosed with antibiotics to ward off infection or fed
pesticides to shed a beard of bloodsucking sea lice.

For that rich, pink hue, the fish was given a steady diet of synthetic
pigment. Without it, the flesh of these caged salmon would be an
unappetizing, pale gray.

SNIP

[Xolodno]

19. Dang!

Jesus was on to something...

Kudos to those who get it....

[ladyVet]

30. Loaves and fishes? nt

[hunter]

26. Meat in my childhood home was primarly ocean fish my dad caught offshore Los Angeles.

Lot's of mussels and clams and other sea critters too. My favorite meals, my "comfort foods" are seafood stews thrown together from whatever we've got. As a kid it was often potatoes and cabbage. And Lima beans. Lima beans grown within walking distance of our home. And sometimes squid tentacles and anchovies, recognized as the less than lively leftovers from the "bait tank" by more affluent people who were fishing for "sport."

Chile peppers, limes, and lemons are important too, accepted into family culture first entirely by my grandparents, but maybe unfortunately with the tequila also. Weddings, funerals, and other major family events come with highly surrealistic components. If you don't have a few conversations with dead ancestors, then you're not doing it right.

Off and away, in my previous feral solo human life, it was seafood, rice, and any vegetation I grew or collected, including little plastic tubs of "taco sauce" left unused by Taco Bell patrons and thrown away. (The manager of that place started giving me timed out food including meat after my invisibility cloak failed one day. She's crazy wealthy now, but I'm not sure her previous history of looking the other way while the lost people sort fast food industry refuse is something she'd ever want on her resume'. She has tax deductible charities now.

The rice in my pantry has always been my security blanket, just like the potatoes, turnips, and stuff in glass jars in the root cellars of my own ancestors..

My great grandmas were all fearless glass jar canners. I've never canned meat. They did.

These same Los Angeles seafoods almost made the brown pelicans and other fish eating birds extinct, poisoned by industrial Los Angeles sewage and storm drain runoff.

If I ate more taurine it would probably make my craziest mutant brain cells increase.

I'm already a very dangerous fellow when I don't know what I'm doing.

The more I know, the more brain power I can apply to a problem, the less I know what I'm doing.

[TexasProgresive]

27. That's a great memory, thanks for sharing.

My wife and her Dad would fish and clam in Long Island Sound and they ate sea bass and flounder and lots of clams. I grew up in a little enclave in E. New Orleans and we ate all kinds of sea food. most of the men in the neighborhood fished in the gulf and would share with everyone as few had freezers so the bounty had to be eaten very fresh. Red fish, Snapper, Speckled Trout, grouper and oysters and crabs were any and all on the table not to mention shrimp; boiled, fried or in gumbo.

[bvar22]

8. Correction: The "once inexpensive" amino acid Taurine.

If it proves to be effective... Our Pharm Industry will make sure the version approved For Sale will no longer be "inexpensive".

If you can grow it in your yard.. cultivation will become illegal.

[AikidoSoul]

14. I'm afraid that the chem/pharm industry will make

supplements illegal like they did in England. We still don't know what is in the recent trade agreement.

Right now Taurine is very inexpensive. I prefer the pure substance, powder form, with no capsules.

I get my supplements from iherb.com because that website has a very important research tool that I've found nowhere else. You can click on the container of the supplement and see all the information, including what has been added to the product. That is important to me because I don't like colors added or anything else that is potentially unhealthy. No soy or corn because the majority of those crops are "Roundup Ready" and genetically modified.

Note: I have no financial interest in iherb.com

[restorefreedom]

16. oh, hell, no

they will certainly, try though

I am convinced that one of the reasons medical marijuana has not become widely used is because the pharmaceutical industry can't profit off of it.

[nomorenomore08]

11. I already take fish-oil capsules daily, being a young guy with the short-term memory of an old guy.

But this does sound quite promising.

[AikidoSoul]

15. I don't recommend fish-oil capsules because they all seem to

get rancid so quickly even if refrigerated.

It would be a better idea IMHO to purchase wild caught sardines. Wild caught salmon is expensive, but I get it frozen at COSTCO and it's not so bad.

Don't buy farmed salmon for very excellent reasons stated above in an earlier post in this thread.

Brain disease because of toxic exposure is an epidemic in this country. A few days ago I posted research on that topic.

See it here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027057611

[nomorenomore08]

29. These are in a non-refrigerated form. Just normal vitamin capsules with omega-3.

I guess using the phrase "fish oil" was a little misleading.

And I never had the greatest immediate-term memory even as a kid - used to forget all kinds of important stuff - but it's definitely gotten worse in adulthood, due to reasons that are almost entirely my own fault.

P.S. That article you posted is as interesting as it is frightening.

[restorefreedom]

17. taurine is also good for the heart

so i am not surprised. In fact, taurine deficient diet was one of the primary reasons cats used to get a disease called dilated cardiomyopathy. Since it started being added to pet food, it has become much less common. I'm not surprised that it's useful to brain tissue as well.

[AikidoSoul]

20. IMHO Taurine should be added to all foods. Folic acid is often added, why not taurine?

Look at the list of references for the Life Extension Foundation article and you can see the wide range of impacts that it has on many body functions.

We take it along with other amino acids as a "Detox Cocktail" created by a collaboration between William Rea, MD of the Environmental Health Center - Dallas, and Sherry Rogers, MD whose specialty (like Rea's) is treating toxic injury patients who often have brain damage.

Detox cocktail per the above doctors:

1/4 tsp of high quality, (no additives) vitamin c powder
1/2 to 1tsp (as tolerated)of high quality magnesium powder with no additives, colors or "natural flavors"
800 iu of high quality natural (NOT ACETATE) complex vitamin E derived NOT from soy but rather from organic Safflower oil, or other organic sources.
1 tsp high quality Taurine powder
1/4 tsp Kelp (contains natural iodine from the sea)
2 level tsp pure L-Arginine powder
1/4 tsp Acetyl-l-Carnitine
1/4 level tsp L-Glutamine powder
1,000 mg Reduced L-Glutathione
800 mcg folic acid
100 mg R-Lipoic Acid

One of the problems we face is that corporate food is not grown in good soil, and we are not getting what we need.

Don't let industry take away our supplements!

[restorefreedom]

21. we still have only begun

to tap the potential of nutritional therapy, partly because doctors were traditionally not taught very much nutrition, and partly because big Pharma is very financially invested in keeping people on their pills and potions.

i am waiting for the anti woo woo crowd to show up......

[Omaha Steve]

18. Probably too late for me & my FTD

But K&R!

[AikidoSoul]

24. Please don't think that it's too late to make some progress

in repairing the damage.

DUers don't want to lose you!

[AikidoSoul]

25. For educational purposes let's kick this baby.

Lots of people have brain damage. It has become a huge problem in this country compared to others.

[randome]

31. Cool. I always wanted one of those things.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[ladyVet]

32. Interesting article. I knew cats had to have it,

but never thought about humans. I need some help with my brain, because my memory sucks.

I read on another site (just a quickie search), that brewer's yeast has taurine. We've been giving it to our dogs, because it supposedly helped with fleas. No sign of that, but their skin and coats look nicer.

Other things like fish, meat (organs?), whole milk, cheese are also sources. If I remember, I'll look for a supplement, see how much it costs.