Creatine

“So for me, I think protein's hot. Good luck breaking through the market. It's very crowded right now. I think everyone is also trying to figure out the creatine craze. The gum, do you put in the powder or do it going? How do we get women on it? Right. Everyone's talking about these things, but it's almost like you need to have been the first creatine gummy.”

“I'm going to do a lightning round. So, in a sentence or two, give me your review on these interventions for longevity. Okay. Okay. Creatine. How are we scoring? Just however you want. Give me a review. Yes, no, like it, don't like it. Useless, buy it, do whatever you think, whatever you don't.”

“And creatine because, not because creatine is a bodybuilding supplement, which is kind of the category it's been in for decades. What's really fascinating that we knew 15 or 18 years ago in the mortality space, what's really fascinating is the way the human body works is we take certain nutrients, like vitamin B12.”

“But from the same amino acid as an egg protein. So what's fascinating is, you know, when we talk about creatine specifically, it is a part of this methylation cycle, and it is absolutely critical to something called SAM-E.”

“SAMe is the main, the number one methyl donor in the human body. When you become deficient in creatine, which your body does produce, but when you're deficient in this nutrient, it converts SAMe. It actually eats it from SAMe.”

“So when the body is deficient in certain nutrients, why you're seeing creatine now topping the charts for cognitive function, why you've probably heard me say that every woman over 40 years old has to be on a creatine supplement, why you're seeing it now creep into neurodevelopmental disorders, mood and mental illnesses, because this compound is a substrate that is made in the human body,”

“methyl donor in order to produce creatine. And so what's fascinating is when we go into the human body and we look at all of these compounds, if I keep zooming in on this chart, most of you are going to recognize these.”

“is of a higher quality and a more focused intent. I mean, this might be a good time to just quickly take a, I mean, everyone's talking about creatine at the bloody moment. Do you have your athletes taking it? Yeah, of course. You do. Yeah, everybody. Do you take it? Yeah. What do you take?”

“Now you have performance accelerators on the other side of that question. This is when creatine can come in. If I'm traveling, I'm going to take things like fiber, right? Because it's harder to get vegetables when you travel. You probably know this, but airplanes, airports, restaurants, like vegetables are nowhere to be found.”

“I'm going to take fiber there, or I'm generally not taking it as much when I'm home because I can control my diet. Performance enhancers are things like creatine, are things like beta-alanine, sodium bicarbonate. So depending on what fitness training goal I have at the moment, I'm going to alter those based on if I'm looking for muscle growth or endurance or what are you taking right now?”

“And then second of all, we don't know whether it works. O' For some we do, like creatine, omega-3s, magnesium. Yeah. And creatine is actually the best. So like omega-3s, we know that they're a critical nutrient. Creatine I think is the best example because we know it's very safe, right? Right. We know this idea of creatine responders and non-responders.”

“We know it's very safe. So then you can try it and see if it benefits you. So creatine is a great example, but there aren't that many others that kind of fit into that category. O' Interesting times. Mm-hmm. Again, I go back to, I love the idea of blood testing, tailoring supplementation”

“Then things that we have some, you know, reasonable evidence for immediately after concussion, creatine. At what dosage? The best trial was actually done in a pediatric group, although very broad. It was like one year old to 18 years old, but they gave 0.4 grams per kilo per day.”

“But like if you're seven, if you're 70 kilos, you know, 155 pounds or something like that, then that's 28 grams of creatine. So like it's a lot, but a few extra trips to the bathroom could be expected, but you may just spread it out across the day, right? Yes. So, well, one thing I'll say about that is”

“So for most people, it might be 20 to 30 grams of, of creatine spread, spread across the day. You know, for, if anybody's just like taking creatine for other reasons, I've, you know, this is a standard dosing protocol. I think it's fine. I thought you were gonna tell me I could get it to work that way.”

“and in older adults, um, some of those benefits happen at just like a traditional creatine doses. So you don't need to take massive doses, you know, think load loading doses, you can actually see some benefits of like five to 10 grams. So that's the creatine. So magnesium, so 400 milligrams once or twice a day, there've been some trials that shouldn't, um, what form?”

“Creatine, again, we've talked about it a bunch, but it's just worth remembering what it is. Creatine is a phosphate donor, so it's kind of the fastest way to generate ATP. Multiple clinical trials, meta-analyses nonstop demonstrate that creatine is favorable in terms of strength, power, and muscle mass.”

“to people who are exercising, or anybody for that matter, and creatine's probably the closest we have to that list for me. Beyond nutrition, any other quote-unquote lifestyle factors that people should be aware of that can affect their ability to gain muscle, focus on muscle mass, resistance training?”

“in even their teenage years and their 20s. You mentioned the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, and there is mythology out there that creatine can increase hair loss. I'm guessing because there's at least one study showing that creatine can increase DHT, dihydrotestosterone, and DHT is one of the primary hormones that can promote male pattern baldness.”

“Betaine, do you recall what dosage people typically would take if they're a creatine non-responder? One to three grams. Per day? Yeah. Several versions of creatine have Betaine mixed in because it helps with the processing of methionine and homocysteine.”

“grow supplement, you know, like these bodybuilders with the scary, you know, noises and the, you know, weird t-shirts and stuff. But the creatine is really, really important for women. The way that Dr. Kandow described it to me was he said, you know, lifting weights builds the cake and this is like the icing on top of it, right? So you're not going to, you know, enhance performance.”

“this is the little perimenopausal hack because I am in, fully in the throes of it right now. There are nights where I don't sleep well. So taking a higher dose of creatine that day will help with your cognition, your awareness, and your alertness. So something like a 10 gram dose because it's a little bit harder.”

“But there are a few studies that show a decrease in fat mass as well. I don't think that creatine is a fat. I think that people are able to train harder, build more lean tissue. And so that's probably having an effect on fat mass. Then they've actually shown more recently some cognitive benefits to creatine, which I find really interesting as well.”

“So what about hair loss? Because there was one study in 2009 that showed that creatine increased DHT. But they didn't really show... They didn't really show an effect on any other sex hormone. So it's kind of strange. Like you would think if there was an increase in DHT, there would be like something else that changes as well.”

“Do you emphasize the classic loading? Of creatine, taking it a bunch of times per day and then backing off or just taking it consistently at the, I think, five grams per day is kind of the typical dose that people take. So again, no solutions, only trade-offs.”

“And you're probably going to have a much lower risk of GI issues some people get creatine can be a gut irritant. If it is for some folks, I would recommend splitting it into multiple doses. So maybe like multiple two, one or two gram doses per day, and definitely don't load it.”

“gives you a bit more. So really focusing now on the benefits of lifting things around the house and how exercise and then, of course, nutrition. We're going to talk about creatine, but also how other macronutrients, especially protein, come into play. And then when you combine those two, are we doing enough to optimize longevity? And we hope that we are.”

“Yeah. So I did my graduate school in Canada, a cell biology degree. And then I moved into my master's and PhD looking in kinesiology. So it's interesting that I fell into creatine supplementation research by accident. I was doing my master's on an amino acid called glutamine. And at the time, about 20, 30 years ago, glutamine was the biggest rage.”

“it was worthless in young, healthy individuals from a body composition standpoint. And at the same time, a good colleague of mine was doing creatine. And I started to know that these young biological males were getting bigger, stronger, faster. And then another study, bigger, stronger, faster. And then when you go to the research on creatine, it was very stimulating”

“and your parents to live longer free of disease. But wait, let's start young. Start as early as you can and move forward. Yeah. And so you got really compelled by creatine. I want to talk about all these things, nutrition, protein, weight training, et cetera. But on the subject of creatine, what was it that compelled you so much to start? You did start doing your own research on creatine.”

“And think of your muscle doing work or shoveling the driveway or walking, you're using your muscles and you need to maintain that level of energy to maintain exercise. Well, creatine comes to the rescue to help maintain your energy currency. So if Batman, which gets all the press, is ATP, Robin is creatine. Creatine comes to the rescue. It's his best friend to help maintain these levels.”

“his best friend to help maintain these levels. Now, when you exercise at a high intensity, sprinting, weightlifting, those ATP stores do become jeopardized. And that's why creatine sacrifices itself to come to the rescue. So that's why anaerobic sports, the World Cup just started.”

“but in the liver, it will get transported. The question is, well, what if we need more? And that's where dietary creatine from red meat or seafood or supplementation comes into play. So are we deficient in creatine?”

“to allow that in. And is it thought that historically we would naturally have consumed more creatine? That's a good point. So back, you know, hunter and gatherer age, a lot of meat, they were consuming quite a bit through dietary. Just say if you only wanted to get three grams of creatine through food, you'd have to eat quite a bit of meat to do that. And then it comes into the dilemma of,”

“well, but if you don't eat meat or you just can't afford it, you know. Creatine has exploded over the last couple of years. I saw a stat that said, I think in women it had gone up to about 3% of women take the creatine and in men it's slightly higher. It's still a little bit lower in terms of consumption in women from the stats that I saw.”

“And I think that in part is because there's still some prevailing myths about creatine. When I speak to some of my friends, people know that I interview a lot of health experts and scientists and PhDs that have done research on supplements. They ask me, the first question I get asked a lot is what other supplements should I definitely take?”

“And right below creatinine was something called EGFR. So glomerular filtration rate is an estimation of your kidney health. So the problem is when individuals on creatine supplementation, they go to their doctor for their annual blood work, their creatinine might be a little bit elevated. And only from the breakdown of the compound. And then unfortunately, their filtration rate is lower”

“false positive. So this is by far the biggest myth. And there's been randomized control trials for several years showing that creatine causes no detrimental effects to the kidneys. I had exactly that twice on my blood tests. Creatine can be elevated if you're on a high meat diet, a little bit dehydrated. So those that are exercising is very, very elevated.”

“I think this is one of the main reasons females were really hesitant to take creatine. If you take too much too soon, it can lead to an increase in water retention. So you've probably heard of the creatine loading phase. This is where supplement companies want you to take about 20 or 30 grams a day for about five or seven days, that has been shown to increase water retention acutely.”

“It's a lot bigger compared to a deflated balloon or muscle that didn't have any water. So creatine is osmotic. Water likes to follow creatine. So by taking it into the muscle, it gets a lot bigger. And that's good because a swollen muscle stimulates protein synthesis to get bigger and stronger.”

“Synthesis, yeah. Yeah, so when you have water coming in, that's a really good thing. And creatine does that, and that's one of the main mechanisms why it works. So what does that mean? Does that mean that if I have creatine in my muscle, I'm more likely to gain muscle? That is potentially the factor because when you're having or trapping water,”

“it turns on all these signaling pathways that are involved in protein synthesis. And one of the biggest robust evidence is that creatine increases lean tissue mass and regional muscle thickness with weight training over time. Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, because a lot of people are concerned that they're going to put on lots of weight and be bloated with creatine.”

“Okay. 18% of our lean mass is muscle. Okay. Yeah. Great. Okay, myth number three. Creatine is only for men. This is 100% false. When you go through the totality of all the evidence, females respond extremely robustly to creatine supplementation.”

“So there's another idea that people thought water retention was causing an increase in fat mass. We've done some meta-analysis now showing that creatine reduces fat. It reduces muscle mass. Females get an increase in lean mass as well. And I'm happy this one came up because from our lab with bone health, females do respond very favorably with creatine and bone, and we can talk about that as well.”

“Oh, I can't believe you did this one to me. Creatine causes hair loss. So obviously looking at me, and I'm a prolific creatine researcher and taking creatine religiously for like the last two and a half decades. People would look at me and say, well, creatine is not good for you. Obviously, looking at him, creatine caused this, and I was going bald before I started taking creatine.”

“But the ironic thing is when creatine was given to these young males, the hormone went up, but it was still within the biological range. And no measure of hair follicle thinning or loss was done.”

“So there's no evidence to that as well. Myth number five. Creatine causes muscle cramps. No, I think this is so overplayed. When creatine is taken into the body and water will follow it. But now you're super hydrating the muscle.”

“Helped gain muscle mass through a training regime. Oh yes. So this is actually showing now that, uh, when you take creatine supplementation, you're actually getting an improvement in training volume. So when you go in the weight room, you look at the load you're lifting by the reps by the set.”

“So the cool thing here is that one of the main reasons you get an enhancement in performance is that creatine seems to enhance training capacity. Yeah. So a lot of people say I've taken creatine. Now I've got an increase in the number of reps or sets that I can perform, and that probably leads to a stimulation over time.”

“So this is a eight week study. That is an eight week study, very short term as well. So you can see that the number of weeks came down when they weren't taking creatine. And then when they started to take it, it went up as well. And this leads to another important point. So, and it's often not talked about when you take creatine for at least a month, people”

“It takes about anywhere between five weeks to about three months for those elevations to come back down. And this essentially means that if I take creatine, I will be able to train harder. Harder or longer or more frequent. So one of the things with creatine, it allows the muscle to recover quicker.”

“And why is there a big dip in the middle of this graph? So that is actually showing where the individuals would train and then without creatine and then take it over time as well. Oh, okay. So that's, that's stock. It's a D training and then taking it again. Correct. Okay. So they start taking it.”

“Uh, taking it at the, at week four and then that's where the elevations go up. Oh yeah. So it goes to show that when you have creatine, everything is elevated. If you stop taking it. It takes about four weeks to get back down. But you'll notice that it was at the same level as a placebo. And then when they take it again, they get a rebound effect.”

“So I think this has application for people who have injured themselves and they now need to go back and start training. If you take creatine, it can accelerate the rehabilitation program. And it does it, I guess, because it makes your training volume increase, correct? It makes your muscle mass gain increase.”

“It's not great. That's probably going to be a bit surprising to a lot of people. A lot of people take creatine for huge increases in muscle. You get an increase in lean mass by about 1.2 kilograms. But as I said previously, remember only half of that is skeletal muscle. So creatine, yes, can with weight training, improve muscle mass, but it has more robust evidence for muscle performance.”

“evidence for muscle performance. Is there anything else we need to know about creatine's link to muscle mass? I think one of the big things is that it decreases something called protein breakdown. So that might allow the muscle to maintain its integrity or recover quicker.”

“If they have preexisting medical conditions, they definitely need to speak to their doctor. Besides that, I'm not seeing any reason a healthy individual can't take or shouldn't take creatine. And pregnant women? So that's an interesting colleague of mine, Dr. Stacey Ellery out of Australia is now finally looking at human trials with pregnancy, going into breast milk, into the fetus.”

“Correct. There's lots of different types of creatine. Some people take creatine gummies. I mean, I have some different types of creatine here, creatine monohydrate, creatine hydrochloric. I remember looking when I was in a shelf a couple of months ago and seeing like five or six different types of creatine. What is the optimal type of creatine to take and why? So by far, creatine monohydrate.”

“With all these market forms is it's never been shown to be safer or more effective than creatine monohydrate. The other big thing for your viewers is make sure it has CreaPure or some form of creatine monohydrate on the label. And then and that it's also third party tested CreaPure CreaPure is from Germany.”

“But here's a little bit of caveat. If you're over the age of 50. You want to have a little bit more because as we get older, the creatine in our lower legs is more jeopardized and therefore you might need a bit more. Okay. Okay. So this is without the loading phase.”

“muscle mass. Okay. And performance. I do have an issue sometimes when I take a little bit more creatine, which is I feel, I wouldn't say lightheaded, but I get a little bit dizzy almost. Yes. A hundred percent. What is that? So there is a mechanism.”

“You know, the things that we get excited about. So when you take in too much creatine, typically on an empty stomach or in a dehydrated state, that will spare methyl groups in the body to be used because you're taking so much in. And then it says, where can I go? So since creatine is now being taken into a supplement, these methyl groups are available in your body to go elsewhere, to do work.”

“my water ball during my workout. And so now I'm consuming a little bit of creatine as I do my weight lifting or cardio, and then I'll consume a little bit in the morning as well. So I take about 10 grams a day at minimum on a daily basis.”

“But if you do perform weightlifting, one of the very cool things in postmenopausal females is that creatine seem to reduce the rate of bone mineral density loss around the hip region. So it didn't increase bone density, but it decreased bone density loss.”

“And what's the mechanism there that's stopping bone loss? Yeah, it's very interesting. So if you understand a 24-hour cycle, that creatine sort of stimulates these bone building cells to become more energized. Think of Super Mario. The original Nintendo, when he got the mushroom, maybe he became energized.”

“A bisphosphonate? Yeah. It's a drug that a lot of individuals will take if they're prone to bone loss. Obviously, creatine is not a drug. But it has some of those similar properties. So we've got muscle. I need to take about seven or eight grams to get those benefits. With bone, it's a little bit more. A little bit more. You don't mean additionally.”

“I'm just assuming this increases. Yeah. So the interesting thing here is that the brain... Yeah. The brain will naturally make its own creatine. Very similar to the liver. So since the brain is actually making its own creatine, it may not require as much or any on a daily basis.”

“is, that's where the brain starts to rely on supplementation. So unfortunately for the brain, creatine really struggles to get through the blood brain barrier. But if it does, now you might need longer or higher dosages. So what about sleep deprivation?”

“or about 14 grams. It didn't have the same effect. So remember, a healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine, but a stressed brain likely does. And the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come into play. There's a lot of nuances with the brain. Obviously, we just show different regions, which we don't have a lot of information.”

“like imagine being in the world cup final, the pressure, the mental capacity, that's where creatine seems to come into play. There's a lot of nuances. We still, don't know a lot. So I think the big take home for people is that if you're going through periods of stress, a little bit more is okay. We don't know any adverse effects. We don't think there are any.”

“the next day, so for example, you're up all night, you take a high dose of creatine, then you have to go right to final or the midterm, or you can't remember. It's those things when your memory and doing puzzles or basic tasks, or what about a stroke test? What's the street test? So I'm going to get you to do this.”

“going to get you to do this. I apologize in advance. It's one of the most fatiguing things that you can do. And it was one of the most robust studies to show the efficacy behind creatine. So all I simply want you to do is you can see that there's a word, and then corresponding letters, but you'll notice that the color is incorrect. So up here,”

“Gosh, this is confusing already. I hit the second one and I got it wrong in my head. Depends how much creatine you took. I don't think I've had creatine today. Okay. Okay. Green, red, yellow, green, blue, black, orange, red, blue, green, blue, pink, black, gray, yellow, red, blue, green.”

“sleep deprived and you struggled and you got slower. Now you have to do this for 90 minutes. Wow. And in this classic study, they gave 20 grams of creatine before they did the test and then after, and it really improved their ability with speed and cognition there. So it's just a simple example to show, wow, our brain is seeing one thing.”

“Yeah. So it doesn't boost the brain. It likely just brings those levels back up to normal levels before stress. And it might give you a little bit more. So there's been populations of Alzheimer's disease, clinical depression, concussion. When those populations are evident, one of the biggest factors is that they have reduced creatine in their brain.”

“What about inflammation in the body? So what is inflammation? And is there a link between creatine supplementation and inflammation? There is. So unfortunately, I'm 49. So at the age of 40, I have this systemic inflammation that went up. And we all know this because around the age of 30, you can work out and nothing hurts. And then all of a sudden you”

“is too acute, but when you do iron, and triathlon, things like that, those individuals who took creatine 20 grams a day for five days beforehand, they had reductions in inflammation markers. So that might allow that individual to recover quicker, not get ill and then perform more optimally. From a weight training perspective, we see that it decreases markers of muscle damage.”

“There was a study in the Gay Trade Sports Science Institute, which PubMed published that said a study of over 200,000 adults found that those who consumed the least amount of creatine in their daily diet had the highest rates of depressive symptoms. Yes, that's correct. And the common denominators, those with clinical depression or anxiety, when you measure their baseline creatine”

“interesting fact. So creatine, we now know it has brain bioenergetics. And there's two arguments. If it's making the brain recover, wouldn't you need less sleep? Right. Now, in this study, it showed that improved. So maybe these individuals trained at a higher capacity and allowed the brain to have more homeostasis to come back.”

“Creatine? No, I think aerobic training or sleep comes way before creatine. Okay. But most people say, hey, I can fix a lot of things with that. Now, remember, we have a nice big toolbox. I like to think of creatine as the multifactorial wrench or screwdriver because creatine has profound benefits for muscle, a little bit for bone, of course, brain and other areas of the body.”

“and you still get benefits. It's never too late to start. But one of the things we've already talked about is if you do weight training, add in a little bit of creatine, it gets a bit higher. If you added in protein, it gets even higher. So again, nutrition, you know, if exercise is king, the queen is going to be nutrition.”

“All you have to do is search coach.stan.store now to get started. Menopause. Yes. We talked a little bit briefly about menopause, bringing both together the subjects of muscle, but also of creatine. Yes. How does those two things impact a woman's journey through menopause?”

“So as the female goes from a pre-menopausal stage to perimenopausal stage, to the postmenopausal transition if estrogen is decreasing and then independent of their diet, we think creatine has bone effects and muscle effects. And of course we've talked about the cognitive effects there.”

“every hour, all throughout the day, you can have it periodically. So you don't have to take creatine all at once. You can take it in smaller amounts all throughout the day. And if anything, there's been a study a few years ago showing that one gram every 30 minutes, up to 20 gram dose, seemed to retain more in the body. And that was beneficial as well.”

“Because I remember watching a YouTube video by a guy called James Smith, who's been on the show before, and he did some testing on the off-the-shelf creatine and found that a lot of them didn't contain any creatine. 90%. And there was only a few in the world. The one that you did consume, it did. Yeah. 1.5.”

“if I'm trying to cut fat by taking creatine? Yeah,, or is it indirect? It's indirect. So it seems that if you increase lean mass, it might stimulate energy expenditure or turnover. And then in animal models, it has been shown to have some beneficial effects from a cellular perspective on fat.”

“with lean tissue mass. Do you think much about how to get these habits to stick? Because I imagine there's lots of people that are aware by now that creatine is a useful thing to take, but for whatever reason, they still don't take it. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons people don't. So we got to come up with ways to maintain consistency.”

“supplements. It's in the pantry. It's close by. Because if it's in the garage, you're like, I forgot about it. I think the other thing is with some things like creatine, it's hard to really notice the difference sometimes. Excellent point. Yeah. This is not like caffeine, you know, it's an immediate effect. So unlike caffeine, creatine takes a while to notice the effects and they come in direct.”

“We talk about omega-3, multivitamin, creatine I take a lot. By the way I love your podcast, I learn a lot from you.”