2:29:07The Diary Of A CEO · Interview
Can Aging Be Reversed?
Harvard longevity scientist David Sinclair on the information theory of aging, gene therapy trials, sirtuins, NAD, fasting, and the supplement stack he actually takes.
March 23rdThe argument in one line.
Creatine is not a bodybuilder supplement — it is a naturally produced metabolite with decades of safety data and emerging evidence for brain health, bone preservation, and mood that most adults are chronically short on, especially under stress.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You are 40 or older and noticing that muscle is harder to hold and joints are sorer than they were in your thirties.
- You are post-menopausal or approaching that transition and are concerned about bone density loss.
- You regularly deal with sleep deprivation, shift work, time zone travel, or sustained high cognitive load.
- You are a woman who has avoided creatine because of bloating or bulk fears — the episode addresses those myths directly with clinical data.
- You already supplement but want to understand what the actual evidence says versus what marketing claims.
SKIP IF…
- You are looking for a fat loss supplement — creatine's effect on body fat is indirect and modest at best.
- You have pre-existing kidney or liver conditions and have not yet spoken to a physician about supplementation.
The full version, fast.
Dr. Darren Candow has published over 120 papers on creatine and spent 25 years studying it. His core argument: creatine is underused because of five myths (kidney damage, water retention, men-only, hair loss, muscle cramps) that the evidence consistently refutes. The dosing picture is more nuanced than the industry suggests — 3–5g/day saturates muscle, 8–12g/day supports bone (only with exercise), and 10–20g acutely is where brain benefits under stress emerge. Fat loss effects are real but indirect. The strongest evidence is for muscle and safety; brain applications are promising but early, with Alzheimer's and depression adjunct work particularly exciting.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:57hostSteven Bartlett
00:57guestDr. Darren Candow
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:57
01 · Cold Open — Stressed Brain Hook
Guest mid-sentence: healthy brain vs. metabolically stressed brain. Sets up the core thesis before the intro card.
00:57 – 05:00
02 · Guest Introduction & How Candow Found Creatine
Background: cell biology PhD, fell into creatine research while studying glutamine. Noticed consistent strength gains across studies and pivoted to healthy aging.
05:00 – 10:00
03 · What Creatine Is and Where It Comes From
ATP/Robin analogy. Body makes 1–3g/day in liver and brain only; 95% stored in muscle. Dietary sources: red meat, seafood. Vegans get none and respond strongest to supplementation.
10:00 – 22:00
04 · Five Myths Debunked
Card-reveal format: (1) kidneys — false positive, not damage; (2) water retention — temporary loading-phase effect only; (3) men only — women respond robustly; (4) hair loss — based on a flawed 1 study; (5) muscle cramps — opposite is true.
22:00 – 30:00
05 · Muscle: How Creatine Works and What to Expect
Training volume elevation, protein synthesis via osmotic swelling, protein breakdown reduction. Realistic expectations: ~0.86–1.2kg lean mass gain at 6 weeks, half of which is muscle.
30:00 – 40:00
06 · The Dosing Dilemma — Muscle, Bone, Brain
Core segment. 3–5g for muscle; 8–12g for bone (exercise required); 10–20g+ acutely for the stressed brain. Guest's daily protocol: 10g baseline, 20–25g on travel/stress days.
40:00 – 46:00
07 · Creatine and the Brain — Sleep Deprivation Deep Dive
Healthy brain makes its own; stressed brain benefits from supplementation. German study: 30g during 21-hour sleep deprivation improved cognition. 14g did not. Higher dose needed because creatine struggles to cross the blood-brain barrier.
46:00 – 51:00
08 · Live Stroop Test Demo
Host attempts and fails the Stroop color-word task live. Context: study showed 20g creatine before 90-minute Stroop improved speed and accuracy under cognitive fatigue.
51:00 – 1:00:00
09 · Alzheimer's, Depression, Concussion — Emerging Evidence
Alzheimer's: 20g x 8 weeks raised brain creatine 11%, improved cognition (no placebo yet). Depression: adding 5g to antidepressants doubled remission rate in women. Concussion: prophylactic potential in contact sports. Guest flags all as promising but early.
1:00:00 – 1:05:00
10 · Inflammation and Recovery
Anti-inflammatory effects clearest in endurance contexts (Ironman athletes). Not a direct anti-inflammatory like ibuprofen — works by reducing muscle damage markers and improving recovery speed.
1:05:00 – 1:10:00
11 · Form, Timing, and Practical Protocol
Monohydrate wins. CreaPure + NSF certified. Timing irrelevant — consistency matters. Microdosing reduces GI/adrenaline sensitivity. Gummies valid if third-party tested. Coffee fine under 350mg caffeine.
1:10:00 – 1:15:32
12 · Weight Training, Protein, and Longevity
Weight training ranked above cardio for overall longevity — gets same CV benefits plus preserves muscle. 1–3% muscle loss per year post-40 without resistance training. Protein 1.2–1.6g/kg adequate. Creatine + protein = force multiplier for lean mass.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Your body makes 1–3g of creatine per day in only two places — the liver and the brain — but stores 95% of it in skeletal muscle.
- Vegans and vegetarians get zero dietary creatine and respond more strongly to supplementation than anyone else on the planet.
- Three grams per day for 30 days will fully saturate your muscles — no loading phase required.
- Creatine's kidney damage reputation comes from a false positive: it metabolizes to creatinine, which doctors misread as kidney strain on routine blood work.
- The water retention myth is half-true only during the loading phase; maintenance doses of 3–5g eliminate it within a week, and the water goes inside the muscle, stimulating protein synthesis.
- A healthy brain makes its own creatine and may not need supplementation — but a sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, or cognitively stressed brain likely does.
- 20g acutely before 21 hours of sleep deprivation improved cognition in a controlled German trial; 14g did not produce the same effect.
- Adding 5g of creatine to antidepressant therapy doubled the remission rate in women with major depression over 8 weeks in a Utah clinical trial.
- In a study of over 200,000 adults, those with the lowest dietary creatine intake had the highest rates of depressive symptoms.
- Creatine slows bone density loss in post-menopausal women at the hip — it doesn't build bone, but it reduces the rate of loss, which may prevent fractures.
- Creatine has anti-inflammatory effects specifically during endurance exercise — 20g for 5 days before an Ironman reduced post-race inflammation markers.
- After stopping creatine, muscle levels take about 4 weeks to return to baseline; brain levels may take 5 weeks to 3 months.
- Weight training beats cardio for longevity because it delivers comparable cardiovascular benefits plus preserves muscle mass — you lose roughly 1% of muscle per year after 40 without resistance training.
- Creatine monohydrate is the only form with long-term safety and efficacy data — no newer form has ever been shown superior.
- A 2-year trial in post-menopausal women given 0.14g/kg creatine with exercise showed meaningful improvements in bone preservation and muscle performance.
- At recommended doses, creatine may have potential anticancer properties and speeds rehabilitation from injury — no one in the research community has found a population that shouldn't take it.
- Timing creatine intake doesn't matter — morning, pre-workout, before bed, all equivalent. Consistency matters more than timing.
- A 25,000-case analysis found that even doses over 10g/day for many years produced no adverse effects.
- A landmark 1992 study showed that multiple 5g doses throughout the day maintained elevated blood creatine all day — the origin of the 5g standard dose.
- Children and adolescents also benefit from creatine at recommended doses — at least 1g/day supports bone health and muscle development.
What creatine actually does — and for whom.
WHAT TO LEARN
Most of what you've heard about creatine is wrong, outdated, or narrowly scoped — and the emerging brain and mood applications may be more important than the muscle ones for most adults.
01Cold Open — Stressed Brain Hook
- The brain/muscle distinction is the whole story: muscle evidence is straightforward, brain evidence depends entirely on whether you are under metabolic stress.
03What Creatine Is and Where It Comes From
- Creatine is made only in the liver and brain — your muscle stores it but cannot make it, which means dietary supply matters more than most people realize.
- Vegans and vegetarians have zero dietary creatine intake and show the strongest responses to supplementation of any population.
04Five Myths Debunked
- The kidney damage myth is a lab artifact — creatinine elevation from creatine supplementation is not the same as kidney damage and reverses when supplementation stops.
- Water retention during creatine use is temporary (loading phase only) and mechanistically positive: the water entering muscle cells triggers protein synthesis pathways.
- The hair loss claim traces to a single study that showed DHT elevation within normal range, with no actual hair loss ever measured.
05Muscle: How Creatine Works and What to Expect
- Realistic expectations matter: a 6-week creatine protocol increases lean mass by roughly 0.86–1.2kg, about half of which is skeletal muscle — not the large gains marketed by some brands.
- Creatine's main muscle mechanism is not direct protein synthesis but increased training volume and reduced protein breakdown, which together produce cumulative gains.
06The Dosing Dilemma — Muscle, Bone, Brain
- Three separate dose thresholds govern three separate outcomes — you cannot optimize muscle, bone, and brain from a single low dose.
- Bone benefits require exercise — no study has ever shown creatine improves bone density without resistance training.
- 10g per day is a practical baseline that covers muscle and bone and provides some insurance for the brain; higher doses are reserved for acute stress periods.
07Creatine and the Brain — Sleep Deprivation Deep Dive
- Creatine struggles to cross the blood-brain barrier, which is why brain applications require substantially higher doses than muscle applications.
- An acute mega-dose (20–30g) before a high-stress event may provide cognitive protection — one study showed 30g mitigated the cognitive effects of 21 hours without sleep.
09Alzheimer's, Depression, Concussion — Emerging Evidence
- All brain disease applications are in early stages — promising signal, no placebo-controlled trials completed for Alzheimer's or depression as standalone treatment yet.
- The depression adjunct evidence is the strongest: a Utah clinical trial found 5g added to antidepressant therapy doubled 8-week remission rates in women with major depression.
11Form, Timing, and Practical Protocol
- Creatine monohydrate with a CreaPure label and third-party certification is the only form backed by the full body of safety and efficacy evidence.
- A consumer test of off-the-shelf creatine products found roughly 90% contained negligible actual creatine — label verification is not optional.
12Weight Training, Protein, and Longevity
- Two days per week of full-body weight training is the minimum effective dose for preserving muscle mass across aging — more is better, but two is sufficient.
- Protein and creatine together produce more lean mass than either alone; 1.2–1.6g protein per kilogram per day is the evidence-based target for most adults.
Terms worth knowing.
- Creatine monohydrate
- The original and most studied form of creatine — creatine bonded to one water molecule. The body separates them on ingestion, making it identical to naturally produced creatine. All long-term safety and efficacy research is based on this form.
- ATP (adenosine triphosphate)
- The energy currency every cell in the body runs on. Creatine's primary role is to rapidly regenerate ATP during high-intensity effort, allowing sustained performance.
- CreaPure
- A German-manufactured creatine monohydrate held to the highest purity standards in the industry. A CreaPure label on a product indicates the creatine passed rigorous third-party quality testing.
- Creatinine
- The breakdown byproduct of creatine in the body. Elevated creatinine in blood tests is often misread by doctors as a sign of kidney damage — it is typically a false positive in people supplementing with creatine.
- eGFR (estimated glomerular filtration rate)
- A blood-test marker that estimates how well the kidneys filter waste. Can appear falsely low in creatine users due to elevated creatinine, leading to unnecessary concern.
- Blood-brain barrier
- A selective filter between the blood and the brain that controls what substances enter brain tissue. Creatine struggles to cross it efficiently, which is why brain applications require higher doses than muscle applications.
- DHT (dihydrotestosterone)
- A hormone derived from testosterone that has been associated with hair follicle thinning. The hair loss myth around creatine traces to a single study that showed elevated DHT — still within normal range — with no actual hair loss measured.
- Osteoblasts / Osteoclasts
- Osteoblasts are bone-building cells; osteoclasts are bone-breakdown cells. Creatine appears to stimulate osteoblasts and suppress osteoclasts, producing a net bone-preservation effect.
- BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor)
- A protein involved in brain cell growth and plasticity. Animal models suggest creatine increases BDNF, which may partly explain its emerging role in depression and cognitive health research.
- Bisphosphonate
- A class of drugs prescribed to slow bone density loss, often in post-menopausal women. Creatine has been described as working through similar biological pathways, though it is not a drug.
- Stroop test
- A cognitive endurance task where participants must name the ink color of a color-word when the word and color conflict (e.g., the word RED printed in blue ink). Used in research to measure cognitive fatigue and processing speed.
- NSF certified
- A third-party certification from the National Sanitation Foundation verifying that a supplement contains what it claims and is free of contaminants such as heavy metals. A key quality marker to look for on creatine products.
- Sarcopenia
- Age-related muscle loss. Adults lose roughly 1% of muscle mass per year after age 40 when sedentary; resistance training significantly slows this decline.
- VO2 max
- The maximum rate at which the body can consume oxygen during exercise — a key marker of cardiovascular fitness and longevity. Properly programmed weight training can improve VO2 max, though cardio is more directly effective.
Things they pointed at.
1:07:30productCreate creatine gummies
55:00linkPerry Kent Renshaw research group, University of Utah
58:00linkJournal of Psychiatry and Brain Science (Alzheimer's creatine study)
Lines you could clip.
01:12
“A healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine. But when you're stressed, night shift workers, military pilots, ER doctors — that's where creatine comes to the rescue.”
20:00
“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.”
45:00
“The best overall studies right now that use an MRI for the brain have showed about 20 grams seems to have some effect acutely. But remember — a healthy brain likely doesn't benefit because it's already making enough.”
55:00
“Adding five grams of creatine to antidepressants doubled the remission rate in women with major depression over eight weeks.”
1:13:00
“Creatine is like saving everything for retirement. My question is why? You might not make it to retirement.”
34:00
“Three grams is the lowest most effective dose, and you just need to take it for one month. You'll saturate your muscles.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 10:00steadyCreatine physiology and background
10:00 – 22:00denseFive myths debunked
22:00 – 30:00denseMuscle evidence and mechanisms
30:00 – 46:00denseDosing dilemma — muscle, bone, brain
40:00 – 51:00denseSleep deprivation and cognitive performance
51:00 – 1:00:00steadyAlzheimer's, depression, concussion (emerging)
1:00:00 – 1:05:00steadyInflammation and recovery
1:05:00 – 1:10:00densePractical protocol — form, timing, supplements
1:10:00 – 1:15:32steadyWeight training, protein, longevity
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00:00A healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine. But what if you're stressed? What about sleep deprivation?
00:06Night shift workers, university students cramming for a midterm, then all of a sudden the healthy brain becomes a metabolically stressed brain. And most people fall into the stressed environment, and that's where creatine comes to the rescue. And we'll talk about how much, but the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come into play.
00:23And is there anyone that shouldn't take creatine? Well, I've published over a 120 papers just on creatine alone. Wow.
00:28And we've done at least 30 to 40 studies in our lab, and I can't find anybody that can't or shouldn't take creatine. So for example, at recommended dosages, creatine can not only have potential anticancer properties, but really speed up rehabilitation, and there's a lot of hope, especially around Alzheimer's.
00:43And what about kids? The current body of evidence suggests they wanna get at least one gram per day because in children, they wanna have optimization for bone health as well as muscle development. And so I'm fascinated that this nutrient discovered in 1832 was, like, boring for the longest time, and it's having these profound benefits we never even thought would And so your viewers today will be surprised about some of the things I'm gonna talk about, including micro dosing.
01:05And we've got this thing here in front of us. Right. This is the dosing dilemma.
01:08Right. And I wanna talk about how much I need to take for all these things. And I wanna talk about nutrition, protein, weight training, etcetera.
01:13But before that, you've got five myths in front of you. Can you reveal one by one what they are? So this is oh, I can't believe you did this one to me.
01:20Creatine causes hair loss. I was going bald before I started taking creatine. Myth number two.
01:26Oh, so this is by far the biggest myth, and that is
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01:48We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it.
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02:26Doctor Darren Kandau, what is the mission
02:31that you're on in your life? I think right now it would be to promote health and make people live longer free of disease.
02:38It's fascinating how we've transcended our understanding of weight training and now weight training is seeming to have these profound effects that cardiovascular exercise has and it gives you a bit more. Really focusing now on the benefits of lifting things around the house and how exercise and then, of course, nutrition.
02:54We're gonna 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?
03:04And we hope that we are. Yeah. And so what are the reference points you're drawing on?
03:08How do you know the things you know? Are you doing your own research? Yeah.
03:11So I did my graduate school in Canada, uh, cell biology degree, then and 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.
03:25And at the time, about twenty, thirty years ago, glutamine was biggest rage. Everybody was taking this nonessential amino acid and hoping that it would have body composition improvements.
03:35Uh, and I sort of determined it was worthless in young healthy individuals from a body composition, uh, standpoint. And at the same time, a good colleague of mine was doing creatine. And I started to notice these young biological males were getting bigger, stronger, faster.
03:50And then another study, bigger, stronger, faster. And then when you go to the research on creatine, it was very stimulating in a sense that we're now improving things that we know with aging go down. So then I turned my focus completely to healthy aging and trying to get, you know, grandparents and great grandparents and your parents to live longer free of disease.
04:10But wait. Let's start young.
04:12Start as early as you can and move forward. Yeah. And so you got really compelled by creatine.
04:15I wanna talk about all these things Yeah. Nutrition, protein, weight training, etcetera.
04:19But on this subject of creatine, what was it that compelled you so much to start you you did start doing your own research on creatine? I did. And I started to take creatine.
04:27So, you know, it was this natural metabolite that we're synthesizing in the liver and brain.
04:32If you take a little bit more, not a lot, just a little bit more than what we're probably taking in from the food sources such as red meat and seafood. Can it have benefits?
04:41And sure enough, it's now the most researched supplement out there. It's overtaken protein and caffeine from an ergogenic perspective, and it's gone global, not just for males, but, of course, females and centurions and elderly.
04:53So it's very fascinating, the explosion in this research part.
04:57What is this sort of not evolutionary backdrop, but I guess physiological backdrop of why humans need creatine, but also why they might not be getting optimal
05:06amounts? Yeah. That's a great question.
05:07So adenosine triphosphate or ATP is the energy currency of all our cells. And think of your muscle doing work or shoveling the driveway or or walking. You're using your muscles, and you need to maintain that level of energy to to maintain exercise.
05:22Well, creatine comes to the rescue to help maintain your energy currency. So if Batman, which gets all the press, is ATP, Robin is creatine.
05:32Creatine comes to the rescue. It's his best friend to help maintain these levels. Now when you exercise at a high intensity, you know, sprinting, weight lifting, those ATP stores do become jeopardized, and that's why creatine sort of sacrifices itself, uh, to come to the rescue.
05:47So that's why anaerobic sports the World Cup just started. These individuals will be using a lot of creatine stores in their muscle. The question is do they have enough?
05:56And if they had more, could they play better? And so our body makes creatine naturally? That's correct.
06:01It's making about one to three grams a day, but only in two areas. So this will be quite shocking for people. We're only actually making it in the liver and the brain.
06:09We don't make it in skeletal muscle, but you store 95% inner muscle. So when it's being made in the liver or brain, the brain will keep it there, but in the liver, it will get transported in the blood up to your skeletal muscle.
06:22The question is, well, what if we need more? And that's where dietary creatine from red meat or seafood or supplementation comes into play.
06:30So are we deficient in creatine?
06:33There are small populations with unfortunately, they were born with the inability to synthesize creatine. They would have a deficiency, they are required to take supplementation.
06:44The other unique population is vegans and vegetarians. So vegan and vegetarian diet is extremely healthy. The downfall though is they're not getting any dietary creatine because creatine is only found in animal based flesh, so red meat, seafood, and poultry.
06:57They're naturally synthesizing about one to two, maybe even three grams a day through amino acids in their food, but vegans and vegetarians respond literally the best on the planet because now they're taking in a supplement to allow that in.
07:11Is 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 products.
07:20Just 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 what if you don't eat meat or you just can't afford it. Yeah.
07:32Creatine has exploded over the recent over the last couple of years. I I saw a stat that said, I think in women, it had gone up to about three percent of women take the creatine, and in men, it's slightly higher.
07:42Mhmm. It's still a little bit lower in terms of consumption in women Mhmm. From the stats that I saw.
07:47And I think that in part is because there's still some prevailing myths about creatine. Yeah. When I when I speak to some of my friend, people know that I interview a lot of health experts and scientists and PhDs on I've done research and supplements.
07:58Right. They ask me the first question I get asked a lot is what other supplements shall I definitely take? Yes.
08:02And when I mentioned creatine, it's always met with a certain set of rebuttals because there's some prevailing myths. You've got some myths Yes.
08:10About creatine on the cards in front of you. Can you reveal one by one what they are? So this is definitely the number one myth.
08:17Creatine damages your kidneys. So when you take in creatine to the body, it gets stored as creatine. But when you metabolize it, sort of sort of thinking leaking from the muscle, it gets leaked out as creatinine.
08:28And most people watching is like, oh, that was on my blood requisition form. And right below creatinine was something called eGFR. So glomerular filtration rate is an estimation of your kidney health.
08:39So 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 that's only from the breakdown of the compound. And then, unfortunately, their filtration rate is lower.
08:54So then their doctor gets really surprised, they're like, stop taking creatine because it's hurting your kidneys. What typically happens is they go back or stop in creatine, and then they check their kidneys again, and it's fine. So I would say ninety nine out of a hundred times that it's a false positive.
09:08So 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. If you're also creatine, it can be elevated if you're on a high meat diet, a little bit dehydrated.
09:23So those that are exercising is very, elevated. So always tell your doctor you're on creatine supplementation because your creatine could be a little bit higher. Okay.
09:31Yep. Myth number two. Creatine makes you retain water.
09:35So this is really important, and I think this is one of the main reasons females were really hesitant to take creatine.
09:42If 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.
09:49This is where supplement companies want you to take about twenty or three grams a day for about five or seven days. That has been shown to increase water retention acutely. So maybe it'll reside there for about three to five days, But after that, when you go on a maintenance phase of about three to five grams a day, uh, that water retention goes away.
10:06So in the initial stages, if done improperly or too much, it can cause a little bit of water retention. The good news for everybody watching is after about the first week, that water's inside our muscle. So now we're volumizing the size of our muscle sort of like a balloon here.
10:23It's full of water. Now after a while, the water is now going into our muscle. It's a lot bigger compared to a deflated balloon or muscle that didn't have any water.
10:32So creatine is osmotic. Water likes to follow creatine. So by taking it into the muscle, it gets a lot bigger.
10:38And that's good because a swollen muscle stimulates protein synthesis to get bigger and stronger.
10:44Oh, really? The swollen muscle stimulates protein synthesis? Yeah.
10:48So 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?
10:55Does that mean that if I have creatine in my muscle, I'm more likely to gain muscle?
10:58That is potentially the 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.
11:13Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
11:14Because a lot of people are concerned that they're gonna put on lots of weight and be bloated with creatine. The interesting there is if you take smaller, more microdosing, there's hardly any effect.
11:22And this might come surprising, but if you did a six week study, pre and post after creatine, you only increase mass by point eight six kilograms. Oh, wow.
11:31And the majority of that is lean mass. So at the end of the day, you know, a pound and a half is not a lot. Lean mass?
11:37Lean mass. Yeah. Which is We think of lean mass.
11:40Most people think of it as muscle, but lean mass in our body that includes water, connective tissue, organs, as well as skeletal muscle. And about 50% of our lean mass is muscle. Okay.
11:50Yeah. That's great. Okay.
11:51Myth number three. Creatine is only for men. This is a 100% false.
11:57When you go through the totality of all the evidence, females respond extremely robustly to creatine supplementation.
12:04They get profound benefits in strength, endurance, and performance. They lose a little bit of body fat. So there's another idea that people thought water retention was causing an increase in fat mass.
12:15We've done some meta analysis now showing that creatine reduces fat mass. Females get an increase in lean mass as well. 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.
12:32Myth number four. Oh, I can't believe you did this one to me. Creatine causes hair loss.
12:38So obviously looking at me and I 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, obviously looking at him, creatine caused this, and I was going bald before I started taking creatine.
12:54This myth came from a study in rugby players decades ago, where creatine about twenty to twenty five grams a day for seven days increase a hormone called DHT. It's a precursor for testosterone, which unfortunately has been linked to hair follicle loss and thinning.
13:09But 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. The cool thing is just a few years ago, they decided to put this theory to the test, and five grams in young males for about six to eight weeks of training caused no detrimental effect from hair thinning, follicle loss.
13:32So my appearance was probably based on something else. So there's no evidence to that as well. Myth number five.
13:38Creatine causes muscle cramps. No. I think this is so overplayed.
13:42When creatine is taken into the body and water will follow it, now you're super hydrating the muscle. So one of the main issues with muscle cramps is it could be, you know, dehydration in the muscle.
13:53Some people have heard of sodium potassium. That's why Gatorade was invented. But if anything, sodium decreases muscle cramps and it super hydrates.
14:01So in the hotter environments, June, July, August, creatine is gonna be one of your best friends. So there's the five myths. We talked there about weight training.
14:09Mhmm. What is this very curious graph? It seems to show that creatine helped gain muscle mass through a training regime?
14:20Oh, yes. So this is actually showing now that, uh, when you take creatine supplementation, you're actually getting an improvement in training volume.
14:27So when you go in the weight room, you look at the load you're lifting by the reps, by the set, so it actually goes up. Um, and then when you don't, obviously, it would go down over time as well. 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.
14:44So a lot of people say, I've taken creatine. Now I 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?
14:55That 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.
15:03And this leads to another important point. So and it's often not talked about. When you take creatine for at least a month, people say, well, how long does it stay in my muscles if I go on vacation?
15:14What if I can't take creatine? And in skeletal muscle, it takes about a month for those elevated levels to come back down. In the brain, we don't have a lot of evidence, but it's speculated it takes about anywhere between five weeks to about three months for those elevations to come back down.
15:30And this essentially means that if I take creatine,
15:33I will be able to train harder.
15:35Harder or longer or more frequent. So one of the things with creatine, it allows the muscle to recover quicker. So you might be able to get back to to the you know, if an athlete's trained twice a day.
15:45So either one of those seems to be one of the most plausible mechanisms. 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.
15:56Oh, okay. So then then stop. It's a detraining and then taking it again.
15:59Correct. Okay. So they start taking it?
16:02Taking it at the at week four, and then that's where the elevations go up. Oh. Yeah.
16:07So it goes to show that when you have creatine, everything is elevated. If you stop taking it, it takes about four weeks to come back down, but you'll notice that it was at the same level as the placebo. And then when they take it again they get a rebound effect.
16:19So 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.
16:28And
16:29it does it I guess because it makes your training volume increase Correct. It makes your muscle mass gain increase? It can gay gain increase in muscle mass.
16:37It's not great. That's probably gonna be a bit surprising to a lot of people. A lot of people take creatine for huge increases in muscle.
16:43You get an increase in lean mass by about 1.2 kilograms. But as I I said previously, remember, only half of that is skeletal muscle.
16:51So creatine, yes, can with weight training improve muscle mass, but it has more robust 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.
17:05So that might allow the muscle to maintain its integrity or recover quicker. But overall, when you combine creatine with a standard weight training program, you should expect a greater increase than weight training alone. Absolutely.
17:17And that is that's across all ages, which is really important. Okay. And the studies you've done in your own lab, what are those?
17:25How wide varying are those? And how many have you done? We've oh god.
17:28We've done at least 30 to 40 studies, um, in our lab. I've published over a 120 papers just on creatine alone. Wow.
17:34And the interesting thing is that from young individuals to middle age to older adults, we see a very common, uh, theme that combined with weight training, uh, creatine about five grams or more, uh, we use typically a little bit more, Seems to have beneficial effects on muscle mass, uh, muscle strength, and as well as performance.
17:52Absolutely. Can you show me what five grams looks like? Absolutely.
17:57So this would be a standard five gram dose. Which is one scoop for you? One scoop.
18:01Now keep in mind that can be found in in meat or seafood, but you're gonna require a lot. Yeah.
18:07Okay. So five grams is one scoop. One scoop.
18:10And you're saying we don't necessarily need to do this loading phase that bodybuilders would Correct. So the loading phase is the most rapid way to saturate your muscles. Now that's very beneficial, but that would be four scoops.
18:22So four scoops is a loading phase per day and is very effective, but the issue is can it cause some adverse GI tract irritation, things like that? That's where anodolian people report that.
18:32But a lot of people from a muscle perspective will start with just five grams a day, that's very beneficial. And at five grams a day, what benefits am I getting? Five oh, across from a skull to muscle perspective, you get a whole plethora.
18:42So you definitely get an increase in lean tissue mass or muscle size. And then again, muscle performance, muscle strength, power, and endurance. And the other one that never gets a lot of press, which should, is functional ability.
18:53An older adult to sit to stand. This has applications getting off the toilet, out of the bed, out of a car. So as we get older, we're losing muscle strength and performance as well as functionality, and creatine and weight training seems to come to the rescue there.
19:06And is there anyone that shouldn't take creatine? You know, I can't find anybody that can't or shouldn't.
19:13The safety profile is exceptional. 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.
19:23And pregnant women? So that's an interesting colleague of mine, doctor Stacy Ellerio of Australia, is now finally looking at human trials with pregnancy going into breast milk into the fetus.
19:35It's still in its infancy. The jury's still open. As it currently stands, it seems to be relatively safe and well tolerated.
19:41Okay. So not all creatine is made the same. Right.
19:45Correct. There's lots of different types of creatine. People some people take creatine gummies.
19:48Yep. I mean, I have some different types of creatine here. Creatine monohydrate, creatine hydrochloric.
19:54Okay. I I remember looking when I was in a shelf a couple of months ago Yeah. And seeing, like, five or six different types of creatine.
20:00Yeah. What is the the optimal type of creatine to take and why? So by far, creatine monohydrate,
20:07that goes against all the new marketing forms. Creatine monohydrate is simply creatine linked to one water molecule. When you take it into the body, the water molecule dissolves, it's identical to what's being produced in the liver and the brain.
20:20All the evidence you ever hear about the safety and efficacy of creatine is based on the old, boring, from 1832, creatine monohydrate. There's new market forms of creatine such as hydrochloride, which does have evidence behind it.
20:32There's many other forms. But the only downfall with all these market forms is it's never been shown to be safer or more effective than creatine monohydrate.
20:42The 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 is also third party tested. CreaPure.
20:53CreaPure is from Germany. It has the highest standard of qualification and and scrutiny, and then NSF certified or another third party certified.
21:01So those are the three things that I personally would look for. Monohydrate, CreaPure is the type, and then NSF certified or third party certification.
21:09Which is that little logo at the bottom? Logo here at the bottom. That's right.
21:11And what does that mean? So NSF is the National Sanitation Foundation. It's a third party organization that will independently take the the supplement and then third party test it.
21:19And then you get a certificate of analysis to make so there there's no, uh, contaminants like lead or arsenic or things like that. So that's something for the consumers watching to definitely be aware of when you go to, uh, the store. And we've got this thing here in front of us.
21:32Right. This is the dosing dilemma. Right.
21:34We talked about muscle there. Have we checked muscle off, is there anything else to cover? No.
21:38So how many scoops do you think is optimal for skeletal muscle?
21:43Oh,
21:44skeletal muscle. Yeah. Your bicep, your tricep, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
21:50Five five grams? Five grams. So that's only gonna be one little scoop.
21:53Okay. K. That's probably very viable, and you're correct.
21:58Across the lifespan, five grams has been shown to be effective. But here's a little bit of caveat. If you're over the age of 50, maybe you wanna have a little bit more.
22:07Because as we get older, the creatine in our lower legs is more jeopardized, and therefore, you might need a bit more. Okay.
22:14K? So this is without the loading phase. So this is if you just wanna take a little bit per day.
22:19And do you have to take it consistently? Good question. So, ideally, yes.
22:23There is evidence that you can just take it on the training days, but we haven't talked about the brain yet. And the reason why I think you should take it every day is it likes to go to other tissues on a daily basis. So that's about seven grams?
22:34That's about seven or eight grams, and that seems to be very safe and viable dose to be shown to be effective for improving muscle mass. Okay. And performance.
22:43I I do have an issue sometimes when I take a little bit more creatine, which is I feel I wouldn't say lightheaded,
22:50but I get a little bit dizzy almost. 100%. What is that?
22:53So there is a mechanism. So creatine is the biggest methyl scavenger in the body. And without boring your viewers, but methyl groups are used for everything.
23:00They're also used to synthesize something called adrenaline and our neurotransmitters, 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.
23:14Mhmm. 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, They like to synthesize adrenaline, and that's why you feel more energetic, to speak.
23:27When you say synthesize adrenaline, what does that mean? Yeah. That means you're creating more of the hormone called epinephrine.
23:33And that, you you hear about fight or flight or you're nervous or whichever it is, it gives you a little bit more of that. So that's why sometimes you feel a little bit jittery or things like that. Yeah.
23:42Sometimes I I can feel a little bit sick as well if I do too much. Yeah. And so that's where it's sort of the new area of interest for me is this microdosing based on that.
23:49So we're starting to see some evidence now that if you take smaller amounts all throughout the day, it does not have any adverse effects. If anything, it seems to be a little bit more tolerable. So you could take a few grams in the morning, a few grams in the evening, or whichever.
24:03I think one of the best ways to take it that never gets any press is I put five grams in my water bottle during my workout. Mhmm. 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.
24:18So I take about ten grams a day at minimum on on a daily basis. Other people will take more or less, but that's just how I get it in. Yeah.
24:25I find that if I do take a little bit in the morning and then a little bit later Yeah. It's much better. A 100%.
24:30And I don't get any weird feelings. That's correct. And it seems to be more consistent and appreciated for individuals because if you do or are susceptible to any fluctuations in weight gain, water retention, or GI tract irritation, they'll seem to definitely go away.
24:44And we've, god, we've assessed over a thousand individuals in my lab, and that seems to be a very viable approach.
24:51Not a lot of taste to it, is there? It's not the best tasting. No.
24:54It's very bland, very boring, but there's other companies trying to make it more flavorful, things like that. The cool thing is with creatine, you can put it in anything.
25:03You can put it in yogurt, a juice, whichever it is. You can now put it in coffee.
25:07There's a little bit of controversy over the dose of caffeine. I think anywhere lower than three hundred and fifty milligrams is fine, and that's gonna be most standard coffees or teas as well. So whichever allows you to become consistent is is a great way to do it.
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25:38Okay. So bone. Tell me what I need to know about bone.
25:41So now we talked about muscle. How many do you think for the skeleton here?
25:45That's the same. Okay. Seven.
25:48Unfortunately,
25:48the lowest dose ever has been shown to have bone benefits is eight grams all the way up to twelve. So now we're in a dosing dilemma already.
25:56We just started. We have a little bit disconnect between muscle and bone. Three to five grams seems to be really good for muscle.
26:02A little bit more is fine. But bone needs to be a little bit more, and that's primarily based on some of our work from our lab where we've shown that about eight to twelve grams a day with exercise, and that's crucial. If you do not exercise, there's never been a study ever shown to have bone benefits.
26:18But if you do perform weight lifting, one of the very cool things in post menopausal females is that creatine seemed 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 it also seemed to maintain or improve the structure of the bone a little bit more.
26:38So that has profound beneficial effects, especially as we get older. If those individuals on creatine were to fall, maybe they might not fracture their hip. And as we both know, if you fracture your hip, you're gonna be placed in long term care, or you're gonna be inactive for at least six months.
26:52So creatine has some bone benefits. They're not great. They don't improve bone density, so they're not gonna be an osteoporotic cure.
26:59But there is something there, especially if you're prone to osteoporosis or osteopenia. And what's the mechanism there that's just stop stopping bone loss? Yeah.
27:07It's very interesting. So if you understand a twenty four 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 became energized.
27:19Creatine does that as well. And then on the flip side, creatine seems to decrease the osteoclasts or bone breakdown cells.
27:26So by a synergistic mechanism seems to cause this turnover to go a little bit better, causing the bone to maintain its structure. It's very similar to a bisphosphonate that someone would be taking to maintain their bone health.
27:38A bisphosphonate. Yeah. It's a drug that a lot of individuals will take if they're prone to bone loss.
27:43Obviously, 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.
27:50Yeah. With bone, it's a little bit more. A little bit more.
27:52You don't mean additionally? No. In in total.
27:55So now this is where we get into the daily dosing dilemma. We've gone from three to five grams or a little bit more for muscle. Bone is maybe eight to 10 or a little bit more.
28:03So what do you think on the brain? The hottest topic. 10.
28:0610. Okay. So that would be, you know, two scoops.
28:10I'm just assuming this increases. Yeah. So the interesting thing here is that the brain will naturally make its own creatine, very similar to the liver.
28:19So since the brain is actually making its own creatine, it may not require as much or any on a daily basis. So here's the brain, obviously, and in different regions, creatine is being synthesized and being used all throughout.
28:32So this organ is about two kilograms, but uses 20% of our daily energy at rest.
28:39So just think about that. 20% of the amount of energy we're consuming from food or using is being used by the brain. But what if you're stressed?
28:46Sleep deprivation. Your dog got you up in the middle of night to pee, and you couldn't fall back to sleep. Uh, university students cramming for a midterm.
28:54Um, now all the countries look at the World Cup. They're gonna be up stress, you know, different time zones. Then all of a sudden, the healthy brain becomes a metabolically stressed brain.
29:03So your guess about 10 on average is fine because the brain on a nonstress state is naturally making it is enough, and it's healthy. But now we get into a more difficult.
29:14What about those metabolic stressors? So, again, all the neurons in the brain are being used. So what about sleep deprivation?
29:22Ten grams? For sleep deprived?
29:24You tell me. Was the last time you slept ten straight hours?
29:30It's been a while. It's been a while. For even you to pause there, you know, that's that's alarming because you're thinking, when was the last time I got a really good night's sleep?
29:38Mhmm. What if you were up for twenty four hours? Gosh.
29:42An ER doctor traveling different time zones. All these come into play.
29:47Yeah. You remember on a healthy brain, you know, adequate sleep, the brain is actually making enough.
29:53But when you're stressed, night shift workers, military pilots, ER doctors, whichever it 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.
30:08But if it does, now you might need longer or higher dosages. So what about sleep deprived?
30:15I have no idea. Okay. So let's say there's five, there's 10.
30:22What do you think? It's gonna be more, isn't it? It's gonna be a lot more.
30:26Here's 15. Couple studies showed some benefits. Now let's do 20.
30:32Remember that loading phase? Mhmm. The best overall studies currently right now that use an MRI for the brain have showed about 20 seems to have some effect acutely.
30:45But there's two studies last year out of Germany even showed this. There's 25, and here's 30.
30:54So a classic study was done last year when they gave 30 to a group of young individuals who volunteered to be sleep deprived for twenty one hours.
31:04And that level of creatine increased, uh, creatine levels in the brain, and it offset some of the negative effects. Remember, that was an acute episode of twenty one, uh, hours of sleep deprivation. They've done a subsequent study going down to about, uh, 0.2 or about 14.
31:19It didn't have the same effect. So remember, a healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine, but a stressed brain likely does.
31:27And 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.
31:36But overall, it seems that twenty grams seems to be the most viable dose when the brain is stressed. We basically need to start dumping out quite a bit more.
31:46So when you get from this area on, the brain healthy likely doesn't benefit from any type of supplementation because it's making its own. But in these areas, when you're stressed, it likely does. The area of nuance or why it's become so popular is I think most people fall into the stressed environment.
32:06And if they're not getting enough creatine through their diet and or supplementation, that's why this big explosion on let's take more to sort of check off all the boxes.
32:16So I take ten grams a day at minimum to check off muscle. Right? That checks off bone for the most part.
32:23And I'm pretty sure over time, ten grams would do the most part for stress. Now since I just flown different time zones, today I'm taking twenty to twenty five grams based on this acutely.
32:36And then when I go back to a non stressed environment, back to Canada, I'll go back to my regular ten. So I look at the ten gram doser a little bit more as kind of being like a safety net. If you're only taking three to five, you definitely will get muscle benefits.
32:50Will you eventually get brain benefits? There's a small chance, but taking a little bit more and remember, the cool thing for your viewers, we're not talking about protein.
32:59If we were talking about protein, the entire thing would be hundreds of grams. We're only talking about maybe 20 grams. And that may only need to be done acutely, you know, when you're really going through metabolic stress.
33:09Look at university students. Five final exams, hardly any sleep for a week. This is where this would come into play.
33:15I look at flight attendants or pilots. They'll fly from Canada to Europe, and then they go back home. Their circadian rhythms are are all over the place.
33:23So I think of of all these scenarios. The area that I was surprised, I watched one of the episodes of the heiress tour. And, you know, money can't stop circadian rhythm.
33:32So as much as Taylor Swift would have, I was marveled by three hours of performance in 90 to a 100,000 people of all her running around. And then when you see her, they're totally gassed. They finished the concert.
33:43They're totally mentally exhausted. That's a situation where this could come into enhanced performance than you think of celebrities. You think of athletes.
33:53These lot of high pressure things 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.
34:03We 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.
34:12We don't think there are any.
34:14But, if you're just taking creatine for muscle, bone, and the brain, you're likely gonna be checking off all those boxes. And when we start getting the the brain benefits up at this end Right. What are those brain benefits that they were recorded in the studies?
34:26Is it I'm gonna feel like I slept Yeah. Or is it something more internal? You likely won't feel anything.
34:32Oh, okay. However, when you get to task the next day so for example, you're up all night, you take a high dose creatine, then you have to go write the final or the midterm or you can't remember. It's those things when your memory and and and doing puzzles or basic tasks.
34:46Or what about a stroke test? What's a stroke test?
34:50So I'm gonna get you to do this. I apologize in advance. Uh-huh.
34:53It'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 words and then corresponding letters, but you'll notice that the color is incorrect.
35:09So up here, you would see, you know, you have red, blue, green, blue, black, but the Stroop test is now looking at the bottom part. Okay. So I've tried it.
35:19I can only get the line two without making a mistake. Okay. Okay.
35:23So I want you to do this out loud, but as fast as possible.
35:28And am I reading the words or the color? You're reading the color. Okay.
35:32So the first one is green. Yeah? Yes.
35:34Okay. Fine. You wanna do it as fast as possible?
35:37Fast as possible. Okay. So let's see how you do.
35:39Gosh. This is confusing already. I hit the second one, and I got it wrong in my head.
35:42Depends how much creatine you're talking about. I don't think I've had creatine today. Okay.
35:45Okay. Green, red, yellow, green, blue, black, orange, red, blue, green, blue, pink, black, gray, yellow, red,
35:59blue, green. Oh, fuck. There you go.
36:01See? I failed. The study that they did, get this, they had to do this for ninety straight minutes.
36:07Oh, wow. So you can imagine how fatiguing that is for someone studying for the MCATs for medical school or, you know, midterms being sleep deprived. And you're not sleep deprived and you struggled and you just got slower, Now you have to do this for ninety minutes.
36:21Wow. And in this classic study, they gave twenty grams of creatine before they did the test and then after, and it really improved their ability with speed and and cognition there. So it's just a simple example to show, wow.
36:32Our brain is seeing one thing. We gotta maintain memory and cognition, and creatine can help maintain some of those, uh, factors.
36:40So you won't feel anything, but performance of activities like that come into play. You know how much it improved the performance on the street? I would have to get the graph, but it did prove statistically significant.
36:50Yeah.
36:51What else is there for me to know about the impact that creatine can have on the brain? Yeah. You know, I think Mhmm.
36:56As a as a podcaster, you sometimes sit here for Yep. Many, many hours interviewing people on a range of subjects. I'm always trying to find if there's any way that I can perform better mentally.
37:04Yeah. 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.
37:12So there's been populations of Alzheimer's disease, clinical depression,
37:16concussion. When those populations are evident, one of the biggest factors is that they have reduced creatine in their brain, so maybe supplementation can get through the blood brain barrier.
37:27The brain says I need help, and that's why you see some improvements there as well. So I like to think of the brain that creatine can act as a safety net, and it certainly won't cause any detrimental effects, but it's always good to have that because you never know when I give you a stroke test.
37:41Like, Like, I'm gonna find you tomorrow and give you this and say, you're gonna be practicing all night. Will you perform better? But that's just an example of something that we go through on a daily basis.
37:49If someone's working on Wall Street or whichever it is, really high stress demand, you know, stuck in traffic for two hours, these all add up, and it's a cascade of stressors that, unfortunately, most people go through. And now we have a nutrient that is being made in the brain, but during times of stress, it likely needs a little bit of help.
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40:13What about inflammation Yes. In the body?
40:15Yeah. So what is inflammation, and is there a link between creatine supplementation and inflammation? There is.
40:20So, unfortunately,
40:21uh, 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 where, you know, you can work out and nothing hurts, and all of a sudden you wake up one day when you're in your forties and fifties and things hurt.
40:35And so systemic inflammation is happening all the time, and unfortunately, it accelerates aging. We're more sore more often, and it can lead to a lot of arthritis or or joint pain and things like that.
40:46Creatine does have anti inflammatory effects, but a big distinction. Creatine is not like acetaminophen or ibuprofen, which directly as a drug effect blocks that, but it has been shown to decrease markers of inflammation specifically during long duration exercise.
41:02So this is an important distinction. Weight training is too acute, but when you do Ironman, triathlon, things like that, those individuals who took creatine twenty grams a day for five days beforehand, they had reductions in inflammation markers.
41:15So 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. So it has these anti inflammatory and anti catabolic effects as well.
41:27Interesting. Yeah. What about people that have neurodegenerative disorders?
41:32Yes. So Alzheimer's is is the area we're really starting to focus on, and a couple of single arm studies came out last year by Matt Taylor and Aaron Smith showing that twenty grams a day for eight weeks did increase brain creatine levels in Alzheimer's patients, and it seemed to improve measures of memory and cognition there as well.
41:49So, again, using the same mechanisms, It decreases inflammation. It maintains brain bioenergetics, and it might actually have a neuroprotection effect as well.
41:58There's evidence in cell cultures and in rodents that there's some lines there, but in humans, we're still in in the infancy.
42:04But if it can have any benefit to any neurological disease, it's huge, and there's a lot of hope, especially around Alzheimer's. There was an eight week trial in Alzheimer's patients that also showed modest muscle gains and a 1.9 kilogram increase in hand grip strength Yeah. Which is a key predicator of survival in dementia patients Correct.
42:21Which was a landmark study of 20 Alzheimer's patients found that taking twenty grams of creatine daily for eight weeks increased brain creatine levels by 11% and significantly improved the cognitive test scores they showed. Mhmm. That's the Journal of Psychiatry Yes.
42:33And Brain Science. And that one's really exciting, and I think more future studies will come out. The limitation with those is that there was no placebo to compare to.
42:41But, again, it's just showing that, yes, creatine can be used as an effective adjunct. Yeah. And because there is impact on our brain, is there impact on our mental health with creatine?
42:51Excellent point. So the best lines of evidence here come from clinical depression and anxiety.
42:55The group out of Utah in The United States have clearly shown that creatine in addition to other therapies. So this is important.
43:02Creatine by itself has never been shown to be a stand alone. But with SSRIs or cognitive behavior therapy or methamphetamine use in populations under medical supervision, the addition of creatine seemed to improve symptoms, and it's likely going back to all the ones we've already talked about, where it improves bioenergetics, it improves neurotransmission or neuromodulation, but it also in animals has been shown to improve a protein called BDNF.
43:27So this protein is involved in brain plasticity. So there's a whole bunch of emerging evidence and hope that creatine one day will be used as a treatment
43:38in the toolbox for a lot of these clinical issues. PTSD also comes to my mind. Was a study in Gatorade Sports Science Institute pub which PubMed published that said a study of over 200,000 adults found that those who consumed
43:51the least amount of creatine in their daily diet Right. Had the highest rates of depressive symptoms? Yes.
43:56That's correct. And the common denominators, those with clinical depression or anxiety, when you measure their baseline creatine stores, very similar to concussion or Alzheimer's, they're reduced. So therefore, obviously, this condition or series of conditions is causing a disruption at the brain, a bioenergetic level, and creatine levels are decreasing.
44:14And there's another in PubMed that said, in a clinical trial of women with major depression,
44:18adding five grams of creatine to their daily antidepressant
44:20Yes. Doubled their remission rate over eight weeks. That's correct.
44:24Yes. And that group is from Perry Kent Renshaw's group out of Utah. They do great work.
44:29Our hope, and I'm collaborating with some colleagues now to look at creatine as a standalone treatment versus placebo, could it have some beneficial effects there? So that's very exciting to come out.
44:39If I don't wanna be supplementing with creatine,
44:42is there what are the foods that I can eat that are high in creatine naturally? They're primarily
44:46animal based, so seafood and red meat. You know, herring is gonna have one of the highest concentrations, salmon, as well as beef.
44:55Very small amounts in milk and dairy, so you'd have to drink all the the milk in the Jersey cow to get a sufficient amount. So it definitely comes down to animal based flesh. Yeah.
45:03There's some other studies that I that I love that I've I think I've heard you talk about before. One of them was young athletes who took five grams of creatine daily slept an average of one hour longer Yes. On training days.
45:13Yeah. We did that study a few years ago in in young biological females who were healthy. And on the days that they trained, it took creatine.
45:20This is interesting because they actually slept an hour longer compared to a placebo. So this is a very interesting fact.
45:28So creatine, you know, 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?
45:37Right? Now in this study, it showed that it improved. So maybe these individuals trained at a higher capacity and allowed the brain to have more homeostasis to come back.
45:46So this is an air a study that needs to be replicated in males as well to see can creatine improve sleep quantity. And if it is, I think that's a game changer. I I think everybody in the planet would raise their hand and say, hey.
45:58I need more sleep. Is there anything else we haven't covered as it relates to creatine? You know, the expected gains versus the hype gains.
46:05I think there's evidence there that creatine can have an effect. I I think it's getting overhyped, especially around the brain for what it can do.
46:13It's one tool in the toolbox, and I think it's it's one of those things that I'd like to show or, you know, talk about for sure. Yeah. Well, what do you mean by that?
46:21So if you think of a toolbox when it comes to a plan, whenever you need to go fix things, you simply say, where's my toolbox? You can't do anything without a plan. And and the way I like to preface this is the most popular tool in anybody's toolbox is the hammer.
46:35Now from a lifestyle perspective, what do you think the hammer represents?
46:40What would you decide that the hammer represents? As in, like, Is it weight training? Is it cardio?
46:46Is it creatine? Is it protein? Or is it sleep?
46:49Sleep. Okay. So I say weight training is gonna be the hammer.
46:54Okay. K? Now what about the screwdriver?
46:58Always need a screwdriver. Creatine? No.
47:02I think aerobic training or sleep comes way before creatine. Okay. But most people say, hey.
47:08I 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.
47:24So you can hit something with this. You can open it up and fix something with this. It's heavy.
47:30You can also pull out the measuring tape. Your argument, sleep. This could be protein, whichever it is.
47:36So when you put all these things in your toolbox, you're now having a greater comprehensive plan
47:42to improve health. So you said weight training was the
47:45hammer? Hammer. I like to consider if you were to choose one modality of exercise, weight training is a little bit superior to cardio.
47:52You get pretty much all the same benefits of cardiovascular exercise, and then you get it more with obviously an increase in lean tissue mass and performance. Uh, weight training, if done effectively, can actually improve mitochondrial health. You can improve v o two max if done correctly, uh, and you don't need a lot of it.
48:07So I think we've switched from just doing cardio
48:10to now incorporating weight training to be effective. So weight training. Yes.
48:14What are the the sort of misconceptions about weight training, and why are you so
48:18positive about it? Yeah. I think one of the biggest myths is that you always need to lift heavy to put on muscle mass.
48:25And world renowned researchers in this area have clearly shown now that lighter weights perform to a lot of effort, almost to fatigue. If done correctly, you can get as the same increases in muscle mass as then compared to lifting heavy weights. However, if your goal is just to get stronger, lifting heavy is always there.
48:40So I think this is a cool thing for people. Some days if you have a little bit of soreness or you don't have a lot of energy, you can lift lighter weights, but just to fatigue. Whereas other days, you come in Monday, you've had your coffee, whichever it is, you're ready to go, you can lift heavy.
48:52So I think there's not one concrete way. There's a little bit of variety here as well. And why are you putting it above cardiovascular work?
49:00Yeah. I think the benefits there is that cardiovascular exercise will make you live longer and healthier.
49:06But the downfall with cardiovascular exercise, it doesn't stimulate strength or the musculoskeletal system as much as we we hope. So improving muscle mass, and that is very difficult to do with cardio. Maybe sprint interval training will do that.
49:18But the cool thing with weight training is you get cardiovascular benefits, but you also get those profound musculoskeletal benefits. So if I was to tell anybody if there's one form of exercise to do is weight training, but you've got to do cardio as well.
49:29So do both. And if I just do weight training Yep. What am I missing from not doing cardio training?
49:34Yeah. If you do weight training improperly where you're lifting heavy heavy weight with low repetitions all the time, you're likely gonna jeopardize capillary density or mitochondrial health. These are things that sort of move blood flow to and from your muscles.
49:46You could decrease v o two max or a fitness parameter for metabolic health fitness. So at the end of the day, everybody should be doing both. But if you only have time to do weight training or cardio, you still benefit because the majority of the population doesn't do any.
50:00And how how much how often do you It's amazing that it's a small amount. So let's just do cardio.
50:06Most countries will say a hundred and fifty minutes of physical activity at a moderate level over a week. I'm okay with that. I'd like it to be higher.
50:14I'd also like the intensity to be a bit higher. So when you tell an average individual a hundred and fifty minutes a week, most people say, well, I'm gonna do 70 or I'm gonna do 30. I'm gonna hold the couch down and watch Netflix.
50:24So we give it a 150, and we say, you know, if you can do twenty one minutes or twenty two minutes a day for seven days a week, that's gonna be a brisk walk or whichever. We'd like to be at a higher intensity if possible. Now when it comes to weight training, this might be surprising, but two days a week or more is all you basically need, and you can do a whole body routine.
50:43So you don't need to go in there and just do chest and biceps Monday and then legs Tuesday. You can, But if you say I wanna do whole body of training Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that is great as well. So a little bit of volume or frequency goes a long way, especially as we get older.
50:58That's the key. Why especially as we get older? Well, based on this graph here, it's clearly showing a detrimental effect.
51:04So if you can see here, you know, you have muscle mass on the the x axis or the y axis, and then you're having all the catastrophic effects as we get older. So, unfortunately, you know, 20 and 30 looks great.
51:17When you're 20 and 40 years old. When you're 20 and 40 years old or all the way from 20 to 40, you can see great. That's probably the area that you're gonna have the most muscle.
51:25Yeah. But look what happens. 40, age 60, 80, and if you live to be 100, it's catastrophic.
51:34You're losing muscle mass at an accelerated rate. On average, it's about one percent per year after the age of 40. Even if you're training.
51:43So if you're training, you're maintaining that. So this is the average sedentary inactive population. You lose strength at about one point or one to 3% even faster.
51:52Now, if we were to maintain resistance training, that muscle mass would plateau. So I can't stress this enough.
51:59Although we focused on creatine, if you were to choose one thing to do today is exercise, and the only form of exercise that really maintains muscle is weight bearing or, um, resistance training. And if that's the case, you're gonna have way more muscle later on in life.
52:13So you can pick up the grandkids. You can walk those stairs. You can do more functionality things later on in life.
52:19Can you not just, I don't know, 60 years old, start training then? You can absolutely, and you get profound benefits. You can be 80 or a 100, and you still get benefits.
52:26It's never too late to start. But one of things we've already talked about is if you do weight training and add in a little bit of creatine, it gets a bit higher.
52:35If you added in protein, it gets even higher. So, again, nutrition you know, if exercise is king, the queen is gonna be nutrition.
52:43They go hand in hand all throughout lifespan. You gotta have both. And on the subject of protein, you're saying that can when combined with creatine Right.
52:50It's a force multiplier. It's it's a force multiplier when it comes to performance and lean tissue mass.
52:56So there's been a few studies when you combine high quality protein with creatine. They they've been shown to increase lean tissue mass and muscle performance a little bit more than each alone. Yeah.
53:04Does the average person get enough protein through their diet? You know, I think nowadays we do, and and I think this is overhyped as well. I think if you're getting about 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram.
53:15So, you know, if you're seventy kilograms, that's gonna be on average about 84 to about a 115 grams of protein. I think we're so conscious now of the health benefits of protein, uh, that most people are. I think if you're training really intensely five, six days a week and you take a gram per pound, that's probably the max.
53:31But a lot of times when you take an excess protein, it doesn't go to your body area that you're probably hoping. It doesn't all go to your muscle. It's used for other things like hormones and and, uh, blood cells, things like that.
53:41But I think nowadays, people are likely getting enough protein. The question is, are they getting enough high quality protein? So vegans and vegetarians can definitely get enough protein.
53:51They might just need to eat a little bit more to get all those essential amino acids which we need.
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54:57Menopause. Yes. We talked a little bit briefly about menopause, bringing both together the subjects of muscle, but also of creatine.
55:05Yes. How how does those two things impact
55:08a woman's journey through menopause? Yeah. So we know from animal cells that estrogen is highly involved in creatine metabolism.
55:14Estrogen seems to be implicated in the enzymes that are needed to make creatine, and then estrogen also has a huge impact on not only brain bioenergetics, but muscle metabolism as well.
55:24So as the the female goes from a premenopausal stage to perimenopausal stage to the postmenopausal transition, if estrogen is decreasing, uh, and then independent of their diet, we think creatine has bone effects and muscle effects.
55:39And, of course, we've talked about the cognitive effects there. So from a whole skeleton perspective, I think everybody should be, but, of course, the perimenopausal, postmenopausal transition, uh, is good.
55:48And then that brings up a question about what about really young premenopausal females, you know, optimal health. What if we built up their tissues more?
55:56Maybe that would offset the rate of this decline over time as well. So that's what we're hoping to get to. Is creatine safe for kids?
56:02So it's interesting you bring that up, and the current body of evidence suggests, yes, at recommended dosages. Good researchers in in The United States put up multiple reviews at looking at creatine in adolescent children and teenagers, improves balance, agility, body composition.
56:17If anything, they wanna get at least one gram per day because in children, they wanna have an optimization for bone health as well as muscle development. But, again, if any parents are watching, obviously, talk to their medical practitioner, but all the current reviews currently says suggest that it's safe.
56:33We're talking about we're not talking about babies here. We're talking about Yeah. We're talking about adolescents all the way into teenage years.
56:38When it comes to baby or infancy, of Australia, Stacy Allergy is starting to do that work there as well, but we don't have a lot of data in humans yet, but that is an area to to pay attention to for sure. Yeah.
56:48What is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about, doctor? Yeah. I think one of the big things is the safety profile of creatine.
56:55There's been, you know, hundreds of randomized controlled trials now on creatine. The safety profile is is exceptional. Last year, they put out a a study looking at over twenty five thousand cases in creatine.
57:06Even over ten grams a day for many years has been very, very safe and effective. Uh, one area that comes up is, what about the timing?
57:13Does it matter when I take it? And and the cool thing is we just got a paper accepted two days ago. It's putting the nail in the coffin on this.
57:21And at the end of the day, you can take creatine at any time of the day. You can take it in the morning with breakfast. You can take it right before workout.
57:28I take some during. You can take it after go to bed. It doesn't matter when you take it as well.
57:33So you can take it right before sleep. You can't. And it won't impact your sleep?
57:36No. Currently, we haven't exactly assessed the effect on sleep, but, uh, another study looked at it in the evening, and it had no detrimental effect there as well. And what else?
57:44What else is the other questions that you get messaged with or asked most often, doctor? Can I spread out creatine all throughout the day? So for example, we have, like, if we were to take creatine in a gummy form or a candy, you can actually have, you know, one or two of these every hour all throughout the day.
58:00You can have it, uh, periodically. So you don't have to take creatine all at once. You can take it in smaller amounts all throughout the day.
58:06And if anything, there's been a study a few years ago showing that one gram every thirty minutes up to twenty gram dose, uh, seemed to retain more in the body, and that was beneficial as well. What do you think of these gummies? You know, there's only been a few companies that have actually shown some validity and reliability.
58:21Um, as long as they're third party tested, they're very, very effective. Do wanna try one? Are they are they third party tested?
58:26The third the green ones. Yep. And the bottom ones.
58:28Third party tested. Yep. Well, but, you know, the stuff that makes it a gummy, is that stuff is that stuff good for you?
58:34So the issue there is does the manufacturing trying to keep the creatine together influence it? It can.
58:40And There's only been a few companies out there. The one you're eating is by Create from The United States. They have had multiple trials.
58:46They're the first company to actually look at randomized control trial to show improvements in volleyball players with the gummies. Children love them. Older adults, this has become an area of interest where a chewing ability or taste sensation has gone down.
58:59They seem to be very convenient and effective. You can have these at your desk, whichever. You don't need the white powder to mix.
59:05So there companies are coming up with more viable ways to get creatine in there. But to your point, you always wanna make sure the company's third party tested. It uses a high quality creatine,
59:14and it actually has a source of creatine in there as well. Because I I remember watching a YouTube video by a guy called James Smith who's been on the show before. Yep.
59:21And he did some testing on Yes. The off the shelf creatine Yep. And found that a lot of them didn't contain any creatine.
59:2690%, and there was only a few. The one that you did, Consumer did. Yeah.
59:301.5.
59:31It's that crazy that you can go buy creatine and it has no creatine in it. Yeah. So that's why I think for the consumers watching, you gotta do a little bit of homework and and look at those three things.
59:39Make sure third party tested it. It has a logo clearly on the packaging. If it doesn't, I would strongly advise you not to consume it.
59:46Of all the of all the studies that you've encountered Yeah. On all the subjects we talked about, muscle, protein, creatine,
59:52are there studies that were pivotal in how you think about these subjects? Yeah. There was.
59:56So the the landmark study came out in 1992,
59:59and it clearly showed that five grams elevated creatine in the blood. But if you took multiple five gram dosages, it maintained that throughout the day. So this is where the dose of five grams seems to be very, very viable.
1:00:11And the other one showed that, hey. I don't wanna take five. What if I only wanna take three grams?
1:00:16So three grams seems to be the lowest most effective dose, and you just need to take that for one month, and you'll saturate your muscles. So, again, you have options. Take as little amount or a high amount as as you want over time.
1:00:27But I think one of the biggest studies is that we did was a two year trial in postmenopausal women where we gave point one four grams of creatine, and it really seemed to improve or have an effect on bone preservation as well as muscle performance. So these are the the studies that seem to come to my mind.
1:00:41We've done quite a few, but they seem to be the landmark ones. Yeah. And what are the supplements that you take outside of creatine?
1:00:47Yes. For sure. So on a daily basis, it's a probiotic with food in the morning and evening, and that's something I just recently learned.
1:00:53I was taking it on an empty stomach. But probiotic, I take two forms of magnesium, one before bed and then one in the day, three and eight for cognition and function.
1:01:02I take two thousand international units of vitamin d. I always take protein on a sufficient basis as well.
1:01:09Then I take about four grams of omega three fatty acids, and I always take one of the omega three fatty acids post exercise because that seems to be the best time to take it. So omega three, magnesium Yep. Vitamin d.
1:01:19Vitamin d, probiotics, Of course, creatine and protein, I take powder and or through dietary food.
1:01:26Every now and then, I don't eat a lot of red meat, so I'll take iron, but not on a consistent basis. And you know And I'm hoping the new one his this is an area of controversy, NAD.
1:01:36This is the you know, it's a precursor for a main enzyme that's highly involved in metabolism. There's been evidence to suggest it goes down with aging, so my eye is closely on that to see if that's gonna be something to come up into play. And a multivitamin.
1:01:50You know, started with Flintstone vitamins as a kid, and I take a multivitamin day as a safety net.
1:01:55I noticed that when I looked at your video in the interview you did with doctor Rundepatrick, a lot of the comments were from people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. And I wondered why that was. If you just I was just looking at the top three or four comments, and it's a 71 year old.
1:02:09It's an 82 year old. It's a 53 year old who's contending with Alzheimer's.
1:02:13Right. Why is that?
1:02:16Yeah. I think it's the awareness and education now, and social media has really helped with this getting our evidence based research out to the public and the awareness that creatine is just not for young males to get bigger, stronger, faster. If anything, when you go to an aging body and they're predisposed to agent related muscle loss, strength loss, functionality, bone loss, and atrophy in the brain, creatine has been shown to have effects there as well.
1:02:38So I think a lot of older individual populations are becoming more aware of the effects of creatine. And, of course, as we produce more research, it gets out to the public more often.
1:02:46So it's I'm really excited and encouraged that creatine has sort of taken on a life of its own in the last decade. And are there direct weight benefits if I'm trying to cut fat by taking creatine? Yeah.
1:02:57Or is it indirect? It's indirect. So it seems that if you increase lean mass, it might stimulate energy expenditure or a turnover.
1:03:03And then in animal models, it has been shown to have some beneficial effects from a cellular perspective on fat. But at the end of the day, if you are seeing a reduction in fat, it's likely that you're improving your metabolic health with lean tissue mass. Do you think much about how to get these habits to stick?
1:03:17Because I imagine there's lots of people that are aware by now that creatine is a Mhmm. Useful thing to take. But for whatever reason, they still don't Yeah.
1:03:24Take it. Exactly. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons people don't.
1:03:28So we gotta come up with ways to maintain consistency, and I think whatever vehicle you wanna choose to maintain that in the in the run of a day is the best. So if it's putting in your coffee in the morning because you won't forget it, great.
1:03:39If it's putting a little bit in Greek yogurt, if it's using the gummies, whichever it is, as long as it's a viable source of creatine that makes it very practical and consistent for you, that's the best way. Yeah. I found that having it en route to where I'm going Yes.
1:03:51Being really, really important. So when I come to my office in the morning, it's all on my desk. Yes.
1:03:56So I have the supplements just on my desk. And actually, even before I walked into the studio today in the green room that I have, it's on the green room. Right.
1:04:02When I'm at home, it is where the coffee machine is. Correct. Yeah.
1:04:06And that has radically helped me. Yeah. Otherwise, I if it wasn't within my my routine, it would wouldn't happen.
1:04:12We have a jug on the counter with all our other supplements. It's in the pantry. It's close by.
1:04:16Because 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.
1:04:25Yeah. This is not like caffeine. You know, it's an immediate effect.
1:04:28So unlike caffeine, creatine takes a wall to notice the effects, they come indirect. You don't immediately notice a massive increase in energy or alertness. It's like after a week of weight training or even two, you're like, wow.
1:04:39I did more repetitions. I could do more weight. Uh, I recover quickly is one that we hear, uh, quite often.
1:04:45You'll never notice with with your bone, but we have heard anecdotally with cognition, especially sleep deprivation. People do notice the effects.
1:04:52And I'm an n of one, but I noticed jet lag goes down quite a bit when I take a high dose of creatine.
1:04:58And, you know, when you start taking it, if you start taking it today Yes. If I start taking, so three to five grams of creatine today, am I gonna notice the differences today?
1:05:06No. It'll with three to five grams, you'll probably notice it in a few weeks, if not to a month from a muscle perspective. From a brain perspective that low, you're likely not gonna notice any effect because the brain is probably making enough.
1:05:18But if you're really metabolically stressed, then you might notice some memory or cognitive benefits after a few days. But at such a low dose, need to be a little bit patient.
1:05:27But, again, three grams could saturate your skeletal muscle in thirty days, so it's not that long of a wait. And on the cognitive side Yes. The cognitive benefits that were observed when doing these Stroop tests Mhmm.
1:05:37Had they been taking it previously, or was it just administered on that particular day when the test happened? So that one was in a week in advance with the loading phase.
1:05:44So they really saturated the body to try to get the effects. Okay. So they were taking it for some time.
1:05:49Yeah. But on the sleep deprivation study from Germany, they just gave it one bolus mega dose for twenty one hours of sleep deprivation, and those individuals did perform better from a a number of tests like this the next day. So if you're like, wow.
1:06:00I got something coming up Friday. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna get any sleep at best one or two hours, then a high dose might come into play, and then you can go back to your more consistent routine. I think what happened or is happening is a lot of individuals were now thinking I need to take twenty or thirty grams on a daily basis based on those studies.
1:06:17And I'm like, wait a minute. Are you getting enough sleep the next day? Because at that dose, we don't know if the neuron will swell with water.
1:06:26And if that's the case, is that potentially causing any detrimental effects in the long term? So, again, I would not recommend taking a mega dose for consistently over time.
1:06:37Could that down regulate your natural synthesis? These are all questions that we need to look at. Yeah.
1:06:42So outside of the realm of creatine Mhmm. Outside of the realm of muscle Yeah. Outside of the realm of, I guess, nutrition generally, what are you doing to keep yourself healthy?
1:06:49What is what is your routine? Yeah. So I'm religious with exercise, so I try to exercise at least three to four days a week with weight training and add in at least twenty or thirty minutes of either moderate intensity cardio or, like, a spin class.
1:07:02I personally like to do alternating days. Okay. So I'll do weight training like maybe Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then cardio Tuesday, Thursday, and then on the weekends, hiking, things like that.
1:07:12Pretty religious with nutrients as well. Try to eat a really balanced diet. And my, god, my failure is getting enough sleep.
1:07:18So I've had to cut caffeine out quite a bit by past noon to allow me. I'm probably a slower metabolizer with caffeine.
1:07:25So I try to really optimize evidence based research, take it into my daily life, and and try to promote it that way. Yeah.
1:07:32And is there anything you're particularly excited about in the work and research that you're super fascinated with the movement from the neck up. I think we know a lot about the neck down with creatine and exercise or other nutrients.
1:07:43I'm fascinated with the ability what about concussion? You know, can the UFC fighter take creatine before they get hit? Could that decrease CTE or concussion or brain trauma later on in life?
1:07:54I think of boxing, Muhammad Ali, things like that. So there's evidence in and Rhodes said if you take creatine before head trauma, it really speeds up concussion recovery. So I'm fascinated with that as well, like almost a prophylactic.
1:08:07Anybody involved in head trauma, I think you should definitely look at creatine as something to be taking just in case you get hit. And then, of course, everything with Alzheimer's or other areas of depression.
1:08:17So I'm fascinated that this nutrient, was, you know, eighteen thirty two was discovered, boring for the longest time because we thought we knew everything, and now it's taken a life of its own and it's having these profound benefits we never even thought would happen yet.
1:08:31A lot of people consider you to be the sort of leading expert on this subject for many reasons. Do you think there'll be a time where you stop researching creatine and you move on to something else? You know, that's interesting.
1:08:40I would have said yes about five years ago, but now, no. There's too much to do even with skeletal muscle. If you were to say, what's the best dose, Darren, to take?
1:08:48I say, I have no clue. Every creatine researcher said, I don't know. We still don't know the best dose that every person can take that will check off all the boxes, especially in the brain.
1:08:59We're just giving an estimate that I take ten, maybe you take twelve, someone might take fifteen. But at the end of the day, we still don't know the best supplementation protocol, the best dose.
1:09:10Uh, so there's so many areas. So for the next twenty years, I bet y'all still be focusing on creatine with other things as well. Yeah.
1:09:15And on that doses, is that
1:09:17different for different people?
1:09:19Excellent question. So the thought was that the larger you are Yeah. You have more storing capacity in your muscle for creatine.
1:09:26So it makes sense. If you're fifty kilograms and a hundred and fifty kilograms, you're gonna have a greater storing capacity. So the dose on a relative basis is likely higher there as well.
1:09:35The more stressed the person is, it's likely they're gonna require more because their natural machinery in the brain can't keep up. So it is very individualistic.
1:09:43I think we give out general recommendations to make it easy. But, again, some people can take it very scientifically and base it on body weight, and you can't go wrong with both of them. I bet there's a lot of people that are this far into the conversation, and their their central question is, well, I've got loved ones Mhmm.
1:09:58That I really, really want to start considering protein supplementation for whatever reason. It could be cognitive benefits, muscular benefits, whatever, all the things we've talked about.
1:10:07They might end up sending this conversation to their loved ones. Right. Something that I do sometimes when I when I have episodes that are particularly moving for me.
1:10:14If their loved ones are now listening Yep. Yep. And you had to make a case to their loved ones about why they should take
1:10:20creatine Yep. What would you say? I would say creatine is one tool in that health promotion toolbox that might help you live longer and better and allow you to maintain activities later on in life, which you wouldn't have been able to do.
1:10:35And unfortunately, that leads us to accelerated aging and a poor way to go. It's like it's like saying I'm gonna save everything for retirement.
1:10:41My question is why? You might not make it to retirement. So that's one of the things.
1:10:45Yeah. Aging? Yes.
1:10:47What is aging in your definition of the word? It's catastrophic.
1:10:51Unfortunately, I'm going through it. You know, I've noticed ever ever since I hit the fourth decade, things hurt a lot more and muscle mass to retain it is a little bit harder. So, unfortunately, think of the body's ability to withstand stress is not as high, and things start to break down quite fast.
1:11:06So we all know, you know, things hurt more. We've lost muscle mass. I can't run as fast.
1:11:11So biological aging is kind of the deterioration of the human body. We need to, with this conversation and others, come up with ways to stop the deterioration, and if anything, come up with ways to maintain that ability to live longer free of disease.
1:11:26Yeah.
1:11:27We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. This one's quite a tricky question. K.
1:11:34What is reality? What do you think all of this is?
1:11:38All this stuff that we can see and all we experience. What what do think it is? Do think it's a simulation?
1:11:42Do you think it's This is all real for sure because I think we can feel it. It's not a a big brother or anything that's a a game show. We all go through different emotions and things like that, so I think you can feel it.
1:11:53Yeah. Are you religious? Yes.
1:11:54Catholic. Roman Catholic. Yeah.
1:11:55Okay. Yeah. And you're a family man?
1:11:57You've got Mhmm. Got some
1:11:59French bulldog and a cat as we talked about and wife at home. Yeah. And really close to my family and stuff like that.
1:12:04Yeah. And what is your goal? If we get to end of your career and this was your last day and you had been successful?
1:12:07Oh, yeah. I think it would be a lasting impression on my students that, wow, he changed my life in some way.
1:12:15And if I can make one person live longer free of disease and happier, I'm all for it. You know, when you start to see the human body as people get older, you're like, oh, that person used to be young and vibrant. And then when you hear other people that can't do activities they live in or they can't travel or they're afraid to, I'm like, you need to embrace today.
1:12:32I love that quote from Morgan Freeman Shawshank. Get busy living or get busy dying because, honestly, we have the ability with lifestyle choices to improve optimization.
1:12:42And I wanna see people live to be 120, 130, still active, still going. And I think we're on the cusp with technology, and I think awareness around nutrition, exercise, sleep, laughter.
1:12:54Oh, jeez. If I could ask anybody to do one more thing, it'd be just laugh more often. For me to be just a small piece of the the puzzle promoting it, I think it's if anything, it's it's just beyond my belief.
1:13:05Yeah. Why did this pull you in?
1:13:08I I I asked that in part because it tends to be the case that the things that draw us in will pull on our make us curious. There tends to always be a bit of a personal reason. Right.
1:13:16Yeah. It was it was more that, you know, am I scared to death? A 100%.
1:13:21Yeah. I can't I can't think of it. Yeah.
1:13:22Why? Yeah. I just think it's weird for me.
1:13:25I get to a point, uh, maybe being religious, and then you think about it, and then I my brain stops. I can't think about it. Really?
1:13:31Yeah. And it's it's becomes it's almost like I wanna live forever. And if I can think of ways to make me live and partially get there, obviously, it's not reality.
1:13:39But, yeah, I'm scared to death of dying. Yeah. Have you always been?
1:13:42Yep. 100%. Scared to death of heights, and I can't even talk about the the death experience.
1:13:46Yeah. Because I think it it sorta brings into perspective things that you just don't know.
1:13:53Did you ever lose anybody? Just friends and things like that, but nothing specific like parents or anything like that yet. But it's always been there.
1:14:00I don't know if it's the Roman Catholic in me or not, but it's like, woah. I don't want that at all. Yeah.
1:14:05You can't even talk about it. Can't even talk about it. Nope.
1:14:07Nope. Yeah. Really?
1:14:09Yeah. It's kinda like I can talk about it in a sense I understand and then it's realistic, but it's it's more that for some reason, don't even wanna think about it because I have so much passion for life that I don't even wanna think about, oh, shit.
1:14:22This could happen. Yeah. And you believe you go somewhere after that?
1:14:25Oh, for sure. Heaven. Yep.
1:14:26Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
1:14:26Yeah. Yeah. But if you do believe you're going to heaven, that sounds like a good place now.
1:14:29Great place. Yeah. I just wanna spend more time here.
1:14:32There's still a lot of things to do. Yeah. For sure.
1:14:34Makes sense. Yeah.
1:14:36Well, thank you. Thank you for doing the work. So much.
1:14:37This was great. Thank you. Yes.
1:14:38I I have to say, you know, you've done so so much research on this subject. So many of my previous guests cite and talk about it. So it's it's great to have the source here himself, and I I applaud you for the work you've done.
1:14:48Because at end of day, I think I think a lot of people do want to extend their health span Right. Which is to live healthier for longer. Because there's a real sort of epidemic of people having short health spans being medicated from the age of 40, 50 years old, and then having that sort of last couple of decades of our life in Yeah.
1:15:04You know, incapable of doing the things we care about. Hundred percent. Yeah.
1:15:06And I think a lot of this research gives us an option Yeah. If we choose to take care Yep. To live a to live a better life.
1:15:12Thank so much. Yeah. It was great.
1:15:13So Thank you so much. Well done. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior.
1:15:22And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now.
1:15:29Check this video out, and I bet you you might love it.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The episode opens mid-sentence, in medias res — the guest already explaining that most people live in a state of metabolic stress, and that the brain creatine picture is entirely different from the muscle creatine picture most of us learned about. By the time the intro card rolls, you're already wondering whether you've been underdosing for the wrong reason.
How they asked for the click.
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