Are Your Supplements Really Causing Cancer?—Taurine on Trial

(Forgive the pun, readers)

“Common Ingredient in Energy Drinks May Increase Risk of Cancer”

”Ingredient in Energy Drinks Linked to Blood Cancer Risk”

You’ll have seen popular new outlets blaring these titles over the last several days. I’d like my readers to know that these titles are entirely misleading and potentially even harmful.

Yet another article is titled:

“This popular drink may increase the risk of blood cancer, warn doctors”

I, for one, am not of those “doctors.”

To give you some background:

A study was published in Nature—arguably the highest profile science journal in the world right now—ultra recently (just four days ago, as of this writing), titled: Taurine from tumour niche drives glycolysis to promote leukaemogenesis.

The research in brief:

A group of cancer researchers at the University of Rochester in New York were trying to understand factors that contribute to the growth of leukemia (blood cancer). They found that these growing blood cancer cells have transporters on them that allow them to take in taurine produced by the bone marrow (the place where blood cells grow). When they take in that taurine, it allows them to grow more effectively.

Taurine is that “common ingredient in energy drinks” cited by the popular consumer articles.

That, in brief, is all the studies showed: Taurine intake allows growing tumor cells to grow better.

So is there any basis for their claim that taurine increases the “risk” of blood cancer?

Well, it depends on how you define risk.

For the vast majority of people reading these articles, they understand risk to be “the likelihood of being afflicted by something”—in this case, blood cancer. These consumer articles are claiming that taurine supplementation—e.g. through energy drinks or supplements—makes you more likely to get blood cancer.

But this is emphatically not what this Nature article is showing.

The article explains that:

(1) During the progression of blood cancer in mice, the bone marrow cells where these growing cancer cells are housed start making more taurine.

(2) Blood cancer cells have a lot of the taurine transporter (TAUT), and more taurine transporters means worse cancer.

Furthermore:

(1) If you block bone marrow cells from making taurine, blood cancer becomes less bad in mice.

and (2) if you block the taurine transporter on these blood cancer cells, blood cancer again becomes less bad and becomes more effectively blocked by a cancer drug called venetoclax.

Therefore:

Taurine in this context is all about the progression of existing cancer, not the development of new cancer.

Yes, the authors do say:

“Consistent with a key role of TAUT expression in myeloid leukaemia initiation, TAUT loss in disease driven by AML-ETO9a resulted in a marked increase in survival (70%) relative to the controls (0%)…”

They are citing cancer initiation, but, ironically, initiation in the context of cancer biology does not always mean actual “initiation”—rather, it can mean, instead, the beginning stages of progression of an already-existing cancer.

That is what is being referred to here, based on the actual methods they used to run the study.

The mice that they studied were primed with cancer causing mutations (namely, AML-ETO9a), and then their response to taurine modulation was studied after cancer had already begun to take hold.

The obvious conclusion here is that:

This study says very little (if anything at all) about whether taurine supplementation is bad for people without cancer.

However, does that mean that we can’t say anything at all about whether people without cancer should take taurine?

Absolutely not.

There is an absolute wealth of data about the potential benefit of taurine in non-cancerous individuals.

It’s found in very high concentrations in the brain, the heart, the eyes, the muscles, white blood cells (immune cells), and the developing fetus.

• It’s essential for the development of the brain the growing fetus.

• It prevents brain cells from dying in response to oxidative stress.

• It prevents cardiac arrhythmias.

• It helps cells handle dehydration.

• It prevents the retina of your eye from dying.

• It prevents your tissues from getting damaged in states of chronic inflammation.

• It both prevents excess immunity (as occurs in autoimmune diseases) and fuels immune cells—essential in dealing with both infections and cancer itself.

If you’re deficient, you’ll get retinal degeneration and thus loss of vision, cardiomyopathy and thus heart failure, growth delay in infants and children, muscle weakness, immune dysfunction, and neurodevelopmental issues, especially in preterm infants.

Many people do not get enough, and supplementing has been shown to:

• Lower blood pressure in people with hypertension, comparable in effect to some first-line medications, without side effects.

• Prevent heart failure and protect against arrhythmias.

• Extend lifespan and delay age-related decline in animals.

• Protect the brain against neurotoxicity and seizures.

• Stop fatty liver progression and reduce liver enzyme levels.

• Neutralize damaging inflammatory oxidants, Making it one of the body’s most effective natural defenses against chronic inflammation.

• And even prevent the development of some forms of cancer.

Taurine may thus actually reduce the risk of cancer development in people without cancer.

Not only does taurine have the ability to reduce systemic inflammation—one of the main drivers of the development of cancer—but it also stabilizes the immune cells (T cells, NK cells, and macrophages) that are responsible for (1) surveilling and (2) killing rogue precancerous cells.

Even more than that:

Taurine may even help prevent cancerous progression in people WITH cancer.

Yet another study in Nature showed that, yes, some tumor cells do hyper-consume taurine, allowing them to grow faster.

BUT—and here’s where the nuance is—this does not mean that taurine supplementation worsens cancer in these cases. The hyper-consumption of taurine by these immune cells was bad because it outstripped the consumption of taurine by CD8+ T cells (immune cells that detect and kill cancerous cells).

Very importantly, supplementation of taurine in these cases actually allowed these immune cells to “catch up” with the cancer cells.

That is: Taurine supplementation “rescued” cancer-fighting immune cells from the exhaustion caused by the taurine depletion of ravenous cancer cells.

That’s not at all in agreement with “Common Ingredient in Energy Drinks May Increase Risk of Cancer.”

This is the case if there are immune cells there to work. If the cancer patient does not have functional T cells (as occurs with certain types of cancers and secondary to certain treatments), then taurine supplementation would not be expected to help.

In addition to these potential cancer-preventative mechanisms:

Any sign of taurine being implicated in the de novo development of cancer is conspicuously absent from the research.

That is: There is no evidence that taurine supplementation increases the risk of developing new cancers to my knowledge—precisely contrary to the claims of the popular news outlets quoted above.

Granted, some will cite the potential effect of taurine on mTOR (at least in certain contexts)—a protein involved in promoting cell growth—and any promotion of cell growth has the potential to make cancer initiation more likely:

BUT: If we’re being intellectually consistent, then we’ll have to put a question mark on all other promoters of mTOR—and that includes other amino acids like leucine and arginine, BCAAs, protein powders, protein in general, carbohydrate consumption, even weight-lifting—

All things that we need to live and thrive!

My point is that taurine’s effect on mTOR does not alone make it uniquely carcinogenic.

What Cancer (and Disease) is Really About

And that’s precisely the problem with cancer: Cancer is fueled by the exact same things that you need to be healthy. That’s what makes it so hard to treat. It’s a part of you that’s gone awry, so killing it off is not as simple as depriving it of what it needs to grow, because you need those things too.

To make a decision like “I’m going to stop consuming taurine to reduce my risk of developing cancer” is remarkably naive and reflects an ignorance of what’s truly behind cancer. Cancer comes from somewhere.

It’s not as Modern Medicine tends to frame disease: as something insidious, entirely unpredictable, totally disconnected from context and thus requiring “novel” therapeutics and “groundbreaking” developments for diagnosis and treatment.

No. Again, disease comes from somewhere: From perturbations of nature.

While we’re busy incriminating a highly beneficial amino acid, the obviously causal factors behind much of cancer (yes, I say that with confidence) go overlooked!—the changes in the way that humans live, eat, sleep, distancing them from their nature, drowning them in veritable Toxicity, capital T!

I am not saying that we’ll ever entirely eliminate cancer from the earth. I don’t think that’s meant to be how we humans deal with disease: Disease is a foundational part of human worldly suffering. Disease makes us human.

But we can get rid of suffering—on the individual level. It just takes a willingness to understand suffering a little differently.

Suffering is not just a bodily experience—in fact, its not even primarily a bodily experience.

Humans do have the ability to transcend the bodily experience—precisely because they are not simply “bodies” in the first place—and ascend to a different level wherein they can address suffering at its central root: the Spirit.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making decisions about supplements, treatments, or lifestyle changes, especially in the context of cancer or chronic illness.