Topical Supplements for Preventing Skin Aging

Personal experiments using taurine or resveratrol topically.

Your skin is your biggest organ, and it is also like a big billboard declaring your age. When you go to the store, there seem to be a hundred options out there for antiaging skin care. Which one is going to actually work for you? And which ones contain substances that you don’t want on my skin?

Instead of selling you on the latest and greatest (because I honestly don’t know which is the greatest), I’m going to explore some studies on how topical taurine or topical resveratrol may be theoretically helpful.

Taurine and skin aging

Taurine is a sulfur-containing amino acid. Your body naturally synthesizes it from other amino acids - cysteine and methionine, and you can get it from your diet (seafood, dairy, and meat contain taurine) or energy drinks.

Studies show that taurine is important in heart health, muscle function, digestion (bile acids), and nervous system functionality. You can read more on general reasons why taurine is important for longevity here.

But let’s look specifically at the studies on skin health (because I’m tired of looking old).

Taurine levels are fairly high in the skin and help to modulate skin moisture content. It plays a role in regulating the tight junctions between cells, which prevents moisture loss and regulates the inflammatory response.[ref]

However, studies also show that taurine levels in the skin decline with aging¹. (I write that phrase ‘declines with aging’ a lot… sigh.)

Let’s take a look at some of the studies on increasing taurine to reverse the effects of skin aging.

Oral taurine for skin health:
In animal studies, higher taurine levels (added to their water) helped to prevent UV-induced wrinkles. It also helped to reduce wrinkles that were already established. Importantly, the oral taurine was able to reverse the decreased skin taurine levels.² Another recent animal study used a mouse model of accelerated skin aging. The results showed that oral taurine supplementation prevents a lot of the negative effects of skin aging. ³

Topical taurine mitigates estradiol decrease:
A 2025 study in animals showed that topical taurine can help to mitigate the skin effects of decreased estradiol in menopause. When estrogen levels drop, skin becomes drier with more wrinkles, and taurine was shown to upregulate zonulin, claudin-11, and other tight junction proteins along with type III collagen in a way that mimics the effect of estradiol.⁴

Genetic connection to skin aging:
A Mendelian randomization study found that genetic variants that are associated with increased taurine levels are also associated with decreased skin aging effects.⁵

Increases hyaluronic acid and ceramides:
Low taurine causes problems in the skin. A study using skin cultures found that increasing taurine levels directly results in an increase in ceramide synthesis, filaggrin (tight junctions), and hyaluronic acid synthesis. Together, these point to higher taurine levels enhancing skin barrier function and increasing moisture.⁶

Plaque psoriasis case study:
A study involving two cases of unresponsive psoriasis showed that N-bromotaurine plus regular taurine in olive oil healed the pustular plaques. The study noted that the addition of taurine cut the healing time in half compared to N-bromotaurine alone.⁷

Resveratrol for age spots:

The other problem with aging skin is dark spots - unkindly known as liver/age spots or medically known as solar lentigo or hyperpigmentation.

Melanin is the pigment in the skin that gives it its color, and excess melanin causes age spots. Tyrosinase is the enzyme involved in converting tyrosine eventually into melanin. Overactive or overproduction of tyrosinase causes excess melanin, usually due to UV damage.

Resveratrol is theoretically beneficial for dark spots because it directly inhibits tyrosinase. It also regulates the inflammatory processes to prevent oxidative damage, which then decreases melanocyte stimulation.⁸

Resveratrol is a fairly small molecule (228 Daltons), which means that it should be able to penetrate the skin barrier. It is also lipophilic (lipid soluble) and not very water soluble.⁹¹⁰

• Animal studies show that resveratrol can effectively decrease hyperpigmentation through inhibiting melanin synthesis.¹¹

• A human clinical trial using resveratrol in nanoliposomes showed that it had ‘anti-aging and skin-brightening effects’. ¹²

Of note, though, several dermatology websites claim that there are better options for age spots - mainly retinoic acid.

DIY topical taurine and resveratrol: My experiment