Taurine & Beta-Alanine

[picante]

So I asked my dr for pregnenolone, but he wants me to do a saliva test for it -- my insurance doesn't cover it and I can't afford it. So next Wed I am going to see another dr and will ask for it.

You can just order pregnenolone cream (or caps) yourself and try it out. iherb has it (and a lot of other websites do), but it takes a lot of searching to find a brand that doesn't have a zillion additives.

That would at least give you an answer and save you money.

 

[mgk]

I'm curious how much zinc are you taking & what form?

30mg/day as zinc glycinate. I'd been taking another form for a while until I found out through the taste test that I was still deficient. I tried a few forms and settled on glycinate because it's the only one that affected my taste perception. I also noticed that my sense of smell got stronger on it. I didn't realize that my sense of smell was impaired, but I guess that's how these things go: it fades so slowly that you don't realize.

If I stop taking it for a few days I go into deficiency again. I seem to have some underlying problem that causes me to use up zinc very quickly. Still trying to figure that one out... My best theory right now is that it has something to do with the high oxidative stress caused by the red blood cell issues. I found out about the G6PD deficiency in particular a few days ago, which would explain a glutathione deficiency that's caused by something other than methylation cycle dysfunction. I'm looking into NAC as a possible fix for that.

 

[aaron_c]

I want to recover that ability Yesterday at the farmers' market there was a cool jazz quartet performing, but I didn't stay to enjoy it I haven't been to the movies or listened to music in years

How do you know all that????

Ya, I had thought I just don't connect with music much, that's just who I am. And then I took the cunermuspir and went for a walk and heard someone on a guitar and was inspired to learn to play--not that I have the time. But quite a turn around!

The bit about copper and benfotiamine: I believe the proof is in what happened when I took cunermuspir with and without excessive benfotiamine (I had been taking as much as 1800 mg of benfotiamine per day prior to the cunermuspir). The cunermuspir with high benfotiamine caused insomnia; the cunermuspir with a normal dose of benfotiamine (300 mg) did not. I also tried adjusting my doses of biotin and carnitine; neither seemed to play a role in my insomnia.

Beyond that... Thanks Izzy, I bit off a little more than I could chew in my (first) edit of the post above.

I see now that, according to the Linus Pauling foundation website on thiamine, "Thiamin pyrophosphate (TPP), the active form of thiamin, is involved in several enzyme functions associated with the metabolism of carbohydrates, branched-chain amino acids, and fatty acids." So the issue was not so much that they both helped stuff through the same door, as they both generally increased the thruput of the electron transport chain; thiamine by increasing input to the krebs cycle and ultimately increasing the formation of NADH, and copper through its important role in Complex IV of the electron transport chain (the electron transport chain, in essence, uses NADH to kick protons out of the mitochondria and then uses the proton gradient to create ATP). Why biotin and carnitine did not seem to have impacts similar to thiamine when I take cunermuspir I do not yet understand.

PS. I edited my last post to reflect the above paragraph.

 

[aaron_c]

Zinc Deficiency and Urinary Excretion of Taurine-35S and Inorganic Sulfate-35S Following Cystine-35S Injection in Rats
J. M. HSU ANDW. L. ANTHONY
Biochemistry Research Laboratory, Veterans Administration Hospital, and the Department of Biochemistry, The Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, Maryland 21218
Received for publication April 30 1970

ABSTRACT The effect of zinc deficiency on cystine oxidation was studied by comparing the amounts of labeled 35S found in urinary inorganic sulfate and taurine following injection of cystine-35S into zinc-deficient and zinc-supplemented rats. The results show that rats receiving a diet low in zinc for 1 week excreted significantly more 35S than control animals. At the end of 3 weeks the recovery of injected 35S in the urine of zinc-deficient rats was three to four times greater than that of zinc supplemented controls. This increase was due to zinc deficiency per se rather than to a reduction of food consumption, and disappeared upon zinc repletion. It was further demonstrated that the bulk of the excess sulfur found in the urine of rats following zinc deficiency was due to increased amount of both inorganic sulfate and taurine. Zinc-deficient rats also significantly increased the urinary excretion of sulfide and sulfate after injection of 35S-labeled methionine, thiamin, thiourea and inorganic sulfate. Liver ATP sulfurylase was not affected by zinc deficiency indicating that zinc-deficient rats were capable of converting inorganic sulfate to its active form.​

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I think this supports what @mgk said; they found that zinc deficiency caused an increased excretion of taurine, sulfide and sulfate.

Note: The document does not say "sulfide and sulfate" but 35S and 35SO42- with the 4 small and below center and the 2- small and above center, a form that should be familiar to anyone who has taken chemistry. The fact that they do not say 35S2- but only 35S makes me wonder if I was wrong to call it "sulfide," which I think should have two negative charges? Anyone with a better understanding of chemistry, please chime in!

 

[AaroninOregon]

Include me in on that minority, along with you and your doctor. Taurine gives me insomnia.

Apparently, I'm in this same minority.

I started taurine yesterday and I felt really good...unfortunately my insomnia was full on last night. I wasn't wired feeling, but I just wasn't tired at all.

 

[AaroninOregon]

Round 2 with taurine.

Yesterday, I cut my dose down to 25% of the original dose(675mg) I tried and I had no noticeable effects, good or bad. I slept great last night.

Today, I am increasing that dose to 50% of my original dose...so ~337.5 mg.

 

[aaron_c]

@mgk : What kind of zinc did you switch to that you found to be an improvement?

 

[mgk]

@mgk : What kind of zinc did you switch to that you found to be an improvement?

Zinc glycinate, the NOW brand in particular. Minerals bound to glycine seem to work very well for me.

By the way, I still take 1g taurine a day. It's one supplement that has proved beneficial for a long time, which is rare for me. It really helps reduce the severity of some of my neurological symptoms (paresthesias).

 

[rippe]

is it possible to take taurine together with zinc or do they interfere or bind each other because of the sulfur?
has anybody any experience with combining them? since both of them work well before bedtime…

 

[aaron_c]

I want to confirm two things that @mgk @dannybex and I speculated about:

1. Riboflavin deficiency causes "taurine deficiency"-type insomnia* in myself: I inadvertently tested this recently by taking 9 mg of boron for a few days--boron chelates riboflavin, and within two nights I began suffering from the insomnia.

2. Taking extra of a more absorbable form of zinc (zinc orotate), I was able to prevent the taurine deficiency insomnia. (thank you mgk for reporting this). Interestingly, this still works while I took 9 mg of boron, so it may be that it helps in some way separate from its effect on riboflavin.

*Taurine deficiency -type insomnia is a specific kind of insomnia for me. It starts with an "empty" feeling in my heart and difficulty getting to sleep.

 

[rippe]

*Taurine deficiency -type insomnia is a specific kind of insomnia for me. It starts with an "empty" feeling in my heart and difficulty getting to sleep.

do you know what causes this empty feeling exactly. I have this too very often despite taking taurine and riboflavin.
It feels like having real empty space in the head. I fall asleep than without being tired in my head or senses. It doesn't feel well.

 

[rippe]

Oh sorry I've read something wrong. You wrote heart not head.
anyway… : )

 

[vision blue]

I'm not sure if any other participants of the thread are still around. Wanted to add my recent test results on these items. Going back a few years, my Taurine has always been elevated on urine amino acids. Finally got it together to test serum AA on the same day as urine AA to compare them. Would taurine be low on serum suggesting the so called "taurine wasting" or would it be high suggesting high taurine levels? or would it be normal leaving me more confused/another blind alley. Answer is it was low! Not even low normal, but bonafide under the cutoff range, and none of the other amino acids were.

Ok, so unraveling causes, my urine beta alanine is also high, as is anserine. This may suggest anserine built up because of the high beta alanine (supposedly when b alanine gets too high, it send a signal to keep anserine and carnosine from being broken down since that would produce even more b alanine- but i'll come back to that. As others have noted above, beta alanine causes taurine to be lost in urine since they compete for same receptor.

and further, studies have shown that when beta alanine causes taurine to be lost, the organ hardest hit is the liver. next hardest is the heart and brain and eyes (which also use taurine) are mostly not affected. the depletion of taurine in the liver then has been shown to lead to liver damage in the presence of toxins since they cannot be detoxified.

this all seems to describe me, so I will pause for a brief self pat on the back to have put together a little piece of the puzzle.

but of course, its so much more complicated and its still not at all clear what to do about this.

first note another possible cause of depleted taurine is when its needed in a hurrry to as a rescue against too much sulfer (sulfite)? I wonder if this contributed too because on sulfite urine test strips am usually elevated. So was thinking about this when on a hunch I checked the chicken broth on some chicken i boiled for soup for 2 hours (I eat alot of this chicken) with the sulfite strips. and oh man! That strip sure turned pink/peach. was at the 50 ppm (?) mark. Tried not having the chicken, and lo and behold my urine sulfate is now under 10 ppm.

ok, so back then to the taurine and b alanine. Why would my beta alanine be elevated? I know people say gut dysbiosisi, and i certainly have gut issues. But... ok, more specifically, is it candida albicans that produces the beta alanine? i think. but here the answer not so clear. I took an OAT urine test, and my arabose level is 25 and the upper limit is 29. its in about the 90 th percentile and was much much higher than any of my other pathogen markers on the oat. But is that high enough to give a high beta alanine? does not seem like it.

I do not know what other causes there are for elevated b alanine, but have found studies showing its a bad sign, perhaps because of the taurine depletion. as just one example, people with sudden sensory neural hearing loss who don't respond to cortisone have high beta alanine levels.

Now to quickly go back to the anserine and carnitine (intermediate peptide products in the digestion of chicken/salmon/turkey (anserine) and carnitine (meat)); while its said that these accumulate because of high b alanine, why can't it be the other way around as well? since both answerine and carnitine are broken down to beta alanine, could that also ex

 

[Gondwanaland]

and further, studies have shown that when beta alanine causes taurine to be lost, the organ hardest hit is the liver. next hardest is the heart and brain and eyes (which also use taurine) are mostly not affected

Yes, Carnosine and B5 cause me eye pain.

I do not know what other causes there are for elevated b alanine,

Low histidine? Carnosine = Beta-Alanine + Histidine

chicken broth on some chicken i boiled for soup for 2 hours

Interestingly I get great relief for joint/eye issues from the glycine of roasted chicken with skin.

Apparently there is an important interaction between Taurine and Glycine. While I can tolerate low dose glycine supplementation, taurine makes me feel awful.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22796293
Brain Res. 2012 Sep 7;1472:1-10. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2012.07.001. Epub 2012 Jul 13.
Interaction between taurine and GABA(A)/glycine receptors in neurons of the rat anteroventral cochlear nucleus.
Song NY1, Shi HB, Li CY, Yin SK.
Author information

Abstract
Taurine, one of the most abundant endogenous amino acids in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), is involved in neural development and many physiological functions. In this study, the interaction between taurine and GABA(A)/glycine receptors was investigated in young rat (P13-P15) anteroventral cochlear nucleus (AVCN) neurons using the whole-cell patch-clamp method. We found that taurine at low (0.1mM) and high (1mM) concentrations activated both GABA(A) and glycine receptors, but not AMPA and NMDA receptors. The reversal potentials of taurine-, GABA- or glycine-evoked currents were close to the expected chloride equilibrium potential, indicating that receptors activated by these agonists were mediating chloride conductance. Moreover, our results showed that the currents activated by co-application of GABA and glycine were cross-inhibitive. Sequential application of GABA and glycine or vice versa also reduced the glycine or GABA evoked currents. There was no cross-inhibition when taurine and GABA or taurine and glycine were applied simultaneously, but the response was larger than that evoked by GABA or glycine alone. These results suggest that taurine can serve as a neuromodulator to strengthen GABAergic and glycinergic neurotransmission in the rat AVCN.

http://www.progesteronetherapy.com/...e-do-they-compete-for-the-same-receptors.html
β-Alanine and taurine are structurally similar to glycine (Fig. 1A), and all agonists compete for the same binding site (Schmieden et al., 1992; Schmieden and Betz, 1995) According to a single-channel kinetic analysis, dissociation rates for β-alanine and taurine are increased 2.5- and 4-fold, respectively (compared with glycine), and efficacy by 2- and 5-fold, respectively", see here.
......
"We conclude that supraoptic neurones express high amounts of glycine receptors, of which taurine may be regarded as a major natural agonist. We postulate that taurine, which can be released in hyposmotic situations, acts on glycine receptors to exert an inhibitory control on magnocellular neurones during alterations of body fluid homeostasis, implicating an active participation of glial cells in this neuroendocrine regulatory loop."

 

[Gondwanaland]

beta alanine causes taurine to be lost in urine since they compete for same receptor.

I knew that B5 antagonizes Taurine, but I just learned something new:

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/11306073#section=Top
Vitamin B5 is a butyryl-beta-alanine that can also be viewed as pantoic acid complexed with BETA ALANINE. It is incorporated into COENZYME A and protects cells against peroxidative damage by increasing the level of GLUTATHIONE.

So this is how B5 antagonizes Taurine and lowers histamine (by supplying Beta-Alanine to bind with L-HIsitdine and form Carnosine? @Lolinda )
Manganese is needed to activate Carnosinase to break down Carnosine and reduce its levels in the body.