Creatine Expert: Creatine Is The Secret To Weight Loss

28:41But what if you're stressed? Sleep deprivation. Your dog got you up in the middle of the night to pee and you couldn't fall back to sleep. University students cramming for a midterm. Now, all the countries look at the World Cup. They're going to be up stress, you know, different time zones. Then all of a sudden, the healthy brain becomes a metabolically stressed brain. So your guess about 10 grams on average is fine because the brain on a non-stress day is naturally making enough and it's healthy. But now we get into a more difficult. What about those metabolic stressors? So, again, all the neurons in the brain are being used.

29:16So what about sleep deprivation? 10 grams? For sleep deprived? When was the last time you slept 10 straight hours?

29:27It's been a while. It's been a while. For even you to pause there, you know, that's alarming because you're thinking, when was the last time I got a really good night's sleep? What if you were up for 24 hours? Gosh. An ER doctor, traveling different time zones, all these come into play. Yeah. Remember, on a healthy brain, you know, adequate sleep, the brain is actually making enough. But 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.

30:04But if it does, now you might need longer or higher dosages. So, what about sleep-deprived? I have no idea. Okay, so let's say there's five, there's 10. What do you think? It's going to be more, isn't it? It's going to be a lot more. Here's 15. A couple studies showed some benefits. Now let's do 20. Remember that loading phase? The best overall studies currently right now that use an MRI for the brain have showed about 20 grams seems to have some effect acutely. but the two studies last year to germany even showed this there's 25 and here's 30 so a classic study was done last year when they gave 30 grams to a group of young individuals who volunteered to be sleep deprived for 21 hours and that level of creatine increased creatine levels in the brain and it offsets some of the negative effects remember that was an acute episode of 21 hours of sleep deprivation.

31:11They've done a subsequent study going down to about 0.2 grams or about 14 grams. It didn't have the same effect. So remember, a healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine, but a stressed brain likely does. And the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come into play. There's a lot of nuances with the brain. Obviously, we just show different regions, which we don't have a lot of information. But overall, it seems that 20 grams seems to be the most viable dose when the brain is stressed we basically need to start dumping out quite a bit more so 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 this stressed environment and 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 so i take 10 grams a day at minimum to check off muscle right that checks off bone for the most part and i'm pretty sure over time 10 grams would do the most part for stress now since i just flown different time zones today i'm taking 20 to 25 grams based on this acutely and then when i go back to a non-stressed environment back to canada i'll go back to my regular 10 so i look at the 10 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 will 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 if we were talking about protein the entire thing would be hundreds of grams.

32:59We'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, look at university students. Five final exams, hardly any sleep for a week. This is where this would come into play. I look at flight attendants or pilots. They'll fly from Canada to Europe and then they go back home. Their circadian rhythms are all over the place. So I think of all these scenarios. The area that I was surprised I watched one of the episodes of the Aeros tour and you know money can't stop circadian rhythm so as much as Taylor Swift would have I was marveled by three hours of performance in 90 to 100 ,000 people of all her running around and then when you see her they're totally gassed they finished the concert they're totally mentally exhausted that's a situation where this could come into enhanced performance then you think of uh celebrities you think of uh athletes these a 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 we still don't know a lot so i think the big take-home for people is that if you're going through periods of stress a little bit more is okay we don't know any adverse effects we don't think there are any but again if you're just taking creatine for muscle bone in the brain you're likely going to be checking off all those boxes and when we start getting the brain benefits up at this end what are those brain benefits that were recorded in the studies?

34:22Is it, I'm going to feel like I slept or is it something more internal? You likely won't feel anything. However, when you get to tasks the next day, so for example, you're up all night, you take a high dose of 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 doing puzzles or basic tasks, or what about a stroke test. What's the Stroop test? So I'm going to get you to do this. I apologize in advance. It's one of the most fatiguing things that you can do. And it was one of the most robust studies to show the efficacy behind creatine.

34:57So 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. So 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 i can only get the line two without making a mistake okay okay so i want you to do this out loud but as fast as possible and am i reading the words or the color you're reading the color okay so the first one's green yeah uh yes okay fine you want to do it as fast as possible as fast as possible okay so let's see how you do gosh this is confusing already i hit the second one and i got it wrong in my head depends how much creatine you talk I don't think I've had Korean students today.

35:41Okay. Okay. Green, red, yellow, green, blue. Black, orange, red, blue, green. Blue, pink, black, gray, yellow, red, blue, green. Fuck. There you go. See? I failed. The study that they did, get this. They had to do this for 90 straight minutes. Oh, 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 got slower. Now you have to do this for 90 minutes. And in this classic study, they gave 20 grams of creatine before they did the test and then after, and it really improved their ability with speed and cognition there.

36:26So it's just a simple example to show, wow, our brain is seeing one thing. We got to maintain memory and cognition and creatine can help maintain some of those factors. So you won't feel anything, but performance of activities like that come into play. Do you know how much it improved the performance on the street? I would have to get the graph, but it did prove statistically significant. Yeah. What else is there for me to know about the impact that creatine can have on the brain? Yeah. You know, I think as a, as a podcaster, you sometimes sit here for many, many hours interviewing people on a range of subjects.

36:57I'm always trying to find if there's any way that I can perform better mentally. Yeah. So it doesn't boost the brain it likely just brings those levels back up to normal levels before stress and it might give you a little bit more so there's been populations alzheimer's disease clinical depression concussion when those populations are evident one of the biggest factors is that they have reduced creatine in their brain so maybe supplementation can get through the blood brain barrier the 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 um 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 like i'm going to find you tomorrow and give you this and say you're going to be practicing all night will you perform better but that's just an example of something that we go through on a daily basis if someone's working on wall street or whichever it is really high stress demand uh 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.

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40:09What about inflammation? Yes. In the body. So what is inflammation? Is there a link between creatine supplementation and inflammation? There is. So unfortunately, I'm 49 so at the age of 40 I have this systemic inflammation that went up and we all know this because around the age of 30 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 40s and 50s and things hurt and 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 joint pain and things like that creatine 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 so this is an important distinction weight training is too acute but when you do iron man triathlon things like that those individuals who took creatine 20 grams a day for five days beforehand they had reductions in inflammation markers so that might allow that individual to recover quicker not get ill and then perform more optimally from a weight training perspective we see that it decreases markers of muscle damage so it has these anti-inflammatory and anti-catabolic effects as well interesting yeah and what about people that have neurodegenerative disorders yes so alzheimer's is is the area we're really starting to focus on and a couple single arm studies came out last year by matt taylor and aaron smith showing that 20 grams a day for eight weeks did increase brain creatine levels in Alzheimer's patients.

41:42And it seemed to improve measures of memory and cognition there as well. So again, using the same mechanisms, it decreases inflammation and maintains brain bioenergetics, and it might actually have a neural protection effect as well. There's evidence in cell cultures and in rodents that there's some lines there, but in humans, we're still in the infancy. But 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, which is a key predicator of survival in dementia patients, which was a landmark study of 20 Alzheimer's patients found that taking 20 grams of creatine daily for eight weeks increased brain creatine levels by 11 % and significantly improved the cognitive test scores they showed.

42:28That's the Journal of Psychiatry and Brain Science. And that one's really exciting. And I think more future studies will come out. So the limitation with those is that there was no placebo to compare to. But again, it's just showing that, yes, creatine can be used as an effective adjunct. And because there is impact on our brain, is there impact on our mental health with creatine? Excellent point. So the best lines of evidence here come from clinical depression and anxiety. The group out of Utah in the United States have clearly shown that creatine, in addition to other therapies. So this is important.

42:58Creatine by itself has never been shown to be a standalone. own but with ssris or cognitive behavior therapy or methamphetamine use in populations under medical supervision the addition of creatine seem to improve symptoms and it's likely going back to all the ones we've already talked about where it improves bioenergetics it improves neural transmission or neuromodulation but it also in animals has been shown to improve a protein called bdnf so 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 in the toolbox for a lot of these clinical issues.

43:37PTSD also comes to my mind. There was a study in Gatorade Sports Science Institute, which PubMed published, that said a study of over 200 ,000 adults found that those who consumed the least amount of creatine in their daily diet had the highest rates of depressive symptoms. Yes, that's correct. And the common denominators, those with clinical depression or anxiety when you measure their baseline creatine 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 and there's another in pubmed that said in a clinical trial of women with major depression adding five grams of creatine to their daily antidepressant yes doubled their remission rate over eight weeks that's correct yes and that group is from perry kent renshaw's group out of utah they do great work our 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 if i don't want to be supplementing with creatine is there what are the foods that i can eat that are high in creatine naturally they're primarily animal based so seafood and red meat um you know herring is going to have one of the highest concentrations salmon as well as beef.

44:51Very small amounts in milk and dairy. So you'd have to drink all the milk in the Jersey cow to get a sufficient amount. So it definitely comes down to animal-based flesh. There's some other studies that I love that 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 on training days. Yeah, we did that study a few years ago in young biological females who were healthy. And on the days that they train and took creatine, this is interesting because they actually slept an hour longer uh compared to a placebo so this is a very interesting fact so 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 right now in this study it showed that improved so maybe these individuals trained at a higher capacity and allowed the brain to have more homeostasis to come back so this is an air a study that needs to be replicated in males as well to see can creatine improves sleep quantity.

45:49And if it is, I think that's a game changer. I think everybody on the planet would raise their hand and say, hey, I 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. I think there's evidence there that creatine can have an effect. I think it's getting overhyped, especially around the brain for what it can do. It's one tool in the toolbox. And I think it's one of those things that I'd like to show or, you know, talk about for sure. Yeah. out. Well, what do you mean by that? So 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?

46:24You can't do anything without a plan. And the way I like to preface this is the most popular tool in anybody's toolbox is the hammer. Now, from a lifestyle perspective, what do you think the hammer represents? What would you decide that the hammer represents? As in like a... Is it weight training? Is it cardio? Is it creatine? Is it protein? Or is it sleep? Sleep. Okay. So I say weight training is going to be the hammer. Okay. Okay. Now, what about the screwdriver? Always need a screwdriver. Creatine? No, I think aerobic training or sleep comes way before creatine. Okay. But most people say, hey, I can fix a lot of things with that.

47:06Now, 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. So you can hit something with this. You can open it up and fix something with this. It's heavy. You can also pull out the measuring tape. Your argument, sleep. This could be protein, whichever it is. So when you put all these things in your toolbox, you're now having a greater comprehensive plan to improve health. So you said weight training was the hammer. Hammer.

47:42I like to consider if you were to choose one modality of exercise, weight training is a little bit superior to cardio. You get pretty much all the same benefits of cardiovascular exercise. And then you get more with obviously an increase in lean tissue mass and performance. Weight training, if done effectively, can actually improve mitochondrial health. You can improve VO2 max if done correctly. And you don't need a lot of it. So I think we've switched from just doing cardio to now incorporating weight training to be effective. So weight training. Yes. What are the sort of misconceptions about weight training and why are you so positive about it?

48:16Yeah, I think one of the biggest myths is that you always need to lift heavy to put on muscle mass. And world-renowned researchers in this area have clearly shown now that lighter weights perform to a lot of effort, almost to fatigue. fatigue if done correctly you can get 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 so 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 so 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 yeah i think the benefits there is that cardiovascular exercise will make you live longer and and healthier but the downfall with cardiovascular exercise it doesn't stimulate strength or the muscle skeletal 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 but the cool thing with weight training is you get cardiovascular benefits but you also get those profound muscle skeletal 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 so do both and if i just do weight training what am i missing from not doing cardio training yeah if you do weight training improperly where you're lifting heavy heavy weight with low repetitions all the time you're likely going to jeopardize capillary density or mitochondrial health these are things that sort of move blood flow to and from your muscles you could decrease vo2 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 anything.

49:57And how much, how often do you think? Yeah, it's amazing that it's a small amount. So let's just do cardio. Most countries will say 150 minutes of physical activity at a moderate level over a week. I'm okay with that. I'd like it to be higher. I'd also like the intensity to be a bit higher. So when you tell an average individual 150 minutes a week, most people say, well, I'm going to do 70 or I'm going to do 30. I'm going to hold the couch down and watch Netflix. so we give it 150 and we say you know if you can do 21 minutes or 22 minutes a day for seven days a week that's going to 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 so 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 want to do whole body of training, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that is great as well.

50:49So a little bit of volume or frequency goes a long way, especially as we get older. That's the key. Why especially as we get older? Well, based on this graph here, it's clearly showing a detrimental effect. So if you can see here, you know, you have muscle mass on 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. when you're 20 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 going to have the most muscle yeah but look what happens 40 age 60 80 and if you live to be 100 it's catastrophic you're losing muscle mass at an accelerated rate on average is about one percent per year after the age of 40 even if you're training.

51:40So 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 three percent even faster. Now, if we were to maintain resistance training, that muscle mass would plateau. So I can't stress this enough. Although 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 resistance training. And if that's the case, you're going to have way more muscle later on in life. So you can pick up the grandkids, you can walk those stairs, you can do more functionality things later on in life.

52:15Can 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 100 and you still get benefits. It's never too late to start. But one of the things we've already talked about is if you do weight training and add in a little bit of creatine, it gets a bit higher. If you added in protein, it gets even higher. So again, nutrition, you know, if exercise is king, the queen is going to be nutrition. They go hand in hand all throughout lifespan. You've got to have both. And on the subject of protein, you're saying that when combined with creatine, it's a force multiplier.

52:48It's a force multiplier when it comes to performance and lean tissue mass. So there's been a few studies when you combine high quality protein with creatine, they've been shown to increase lean tissue mass and muscle performance a little bit more than each alone. Does the average person get enough protein through their diet? You know, I think nowadays we do. And I think this is overhyped as well. I think if you're getting about 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram. So, you know, if you're 70 kilograms, that's going to be on average about 84 to about 115 grams of protein. I think we're so conscious now of the health benefits of protein that most people are.

53:22I think if you're training really intensely five, six days a week and you take a gram per pound, that's probably the max. But 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 blood cells, things like that. But I think nowadays most 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. They might just need to eat a little bit more to get all those essential amino acids, which we need.

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55:06Yeah. So we know from animal cells that estrogen is highly involved in creatine metabolism. Estrogen 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. So as the female goes from a premenopausal stage to perimenopausal stage to the postmenopausal transition if estrogen is decreasing and then independent of their diet we think creatine has bone effects and muscle effects and of course we've talked about the cognitive effects there so from a whole skeleton perspective i think everybody should be but of course the perimenopausal postmenopausal transition is good and 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, maybe that would offset the rate of this decline over time as well.

55:56So that's what we're hoping to get to. Is creatine safe for kids? So it's interesting you bring that up. And the current body of evidence suggests yes, that recommended dosages. Good researchers in the United States put out multiple reviews looking at creatine in adolescent children and teenagers, improves balance, agility, body composition. If anything, they want to get at least one gram per day because in children, they want to 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 suggest that it's safe.

56:29And we're talking about, we're not talking about babies here, we're talking about... Yeah, we're talking about adolescence all the way into teenage years. When it comes to baby or infancy out of Australia, Staceyology 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 pay attention to for sure. Yeah. What 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 uh there's been uh you know hundreds of randomized control trials now on creatine the safety profile is exceptional last year they put out a study looking at over 25 000 cases in creatine even over 10 grams a day for many years has been very very safe and effective uh one area that comes up is what about the timing does it matter when i take it and the cool thing is we just got a paper accepted two days ago, putting the nail in the coffin on this.

57:17And 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. I take some during. You can take it after, go to bed. It doesn't matter when you take it as well. So you can take it right before sleep. You can. And it won't impact your sleep. No. Currently, we haven't exactly assessed the effect on sleep, but another study looked at it in the evening and it had no detrimental effect there as well. And what else? What else is the questions that you get messaged with or asked most often yeah 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 you can have it periodically so you don't have to take creatine all at once you can take it in smaller amounts all throughout the day and if anything there's been a study a few years ago showing that one gram every 30 minutes up to 20 gram dose 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 um as long as they're third-party tested they're very very effective you want to try one are they are they third-party tested they're third the green ones yep and the bottom was third-party tested yep but you know the stuff that makes it a gummy is that stuff is that stuff good for you so the issue there is does the manufacturing trying to keep the uh creatine together uh influence it can and there's only been a few uh companies out there the one you're eating is by create from the united states they have had multiple trials they're the first uh company to actually look at a 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 they seem to be very convenient and effective uh you can have these at your desk whichever you don't need the white powder to mix so the companies are coming up with more viable ways to get creatine in there but to your point you always want to make sure the company's third-party tested it uses a high quality creatine and it actually has a source of creatine in there as well because i remember watching a youtube video by a guy called james smith who's been on the show before and he did some testing on yes the off-the-shelf creatine and found that a lot of them didn't contain any creative 90 and there was only a few and the one that you did uh consume it did yeah 1.5 isn't that crazy that you can go buy creatine and it has no creating yeah so that's why i think for the consumers watching you got to do a little bit of homework and look at those three things.

59:36Make sure third-party tests that it has a logo clearly on the packaging. If it doesn't, I would strongly advise you not to consume it. Of all the studies that you've encountered on all the subjects we've talked about, muscle, protein, creatine, are there studies that were pivotal in how you think about these subjects? Yeah, there was. So the landmark study came out in 1992, and it clearly showed that five grams elevate a 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 and the other one showed that hey i don't want to take five what if i only want to take three grams so 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 to take as little amount or a high amount as you want over time but i think one of the biggest studies is that we did was a two-year trial in postmenopausal women where we gave 0.14 grams of creatine and it really seemed to improve or have an effect on bone preservation as well as muscle performance.

1:00:35So these are the studies that seem to come to my mind. We've done quite a few, but they seem to be the landmark ones. And what are the supplements that you take outside of creatine? Yes, 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. I 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. I take 2000 international units of vitamin D. I always take protein on a sufficient basis as well. And then I take about four grams of omega-3 fatty acids.

1:01:08And I always take one of the omega-3 fatty acids post-exercise because that seems to be the best time to take it. So omega-3, magnesium, vitamin D. Vitamin D, probiotics, of course, creatine and protein. I take powder and or through dietary food. Every now and then, I don't eat a lot of red meat. So I'll take iron, but not on a consistent basis. And I'm hoping the new one is this is an area of controversy, NAD. This 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 going to be something to come up in the play.

1:01:45And a multivitamin, you know, started with Flintstone vitamins as a kid and I take a multivitamin a day as a safety net. I noticed that when I looked at your video in the interview you did with Dr. Rhonda Patrick, a lot of the comments were from people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. And I wondered why that was. I was just looking at the top three or four comments, and it's a 71-year-old, it's an 82-year-old, it's a 53-year-old who's contending with Alzheimer's. Why is that? Yeah, 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.

1:02:24If anything, when you go to an aging body and they're predisposed to aging-related muscle loss, strength loss, functionality, bone loss, and atrophy in the brain, creatine has been shown to have effects there as well. So 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. So 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? Or is it indirect?

1:02:54It's indirect. So it seems that if you increase lean mass, it might stimulate energy expenditure or turnover. And then in animal models, it has been shown to have some beneficial effects from a cellular perspective on fat. 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? Because I imagine there's lots of people that are aware by now that creatine is a useful thing to take. But for whatever reason, they still don't take it. Exactly. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons people don't.

1:03:24So we got to come up with ways to maintain consistency. And I think whatever vehicle you want to choose to maintain that in the run of the day is the best. So if it's putting in your coffee in the morning because you won't forget it, great. If 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 being really, really important so when i come to my office in the morning it's all on my desk yes um so 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 when i'm at home it is where the coffee machine is correct yeah and that has radically helped me yeah um otherwise i if it wasn't within my my routine it would wouldn't happen we have a jug on the counter with all our other supplements it's in the pantry it's close by because if it's in the garage you're like i forgot about it i think the other thing is with some things like creatine it's hard to really notice the difference sometimes ah excellent point yeah this is not like caffeine you know it's an immediate effect so unlike uh caffeine creatine takes a wall to notice the effects and they come in direct 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 i did more repetitions i could do more weight i recover quickly is one that we hear uh quite often you'll never notice with with your bone but we have heard anecdotally with cognition especially sleep deprivation people do notice the effects and i'm an end of one but i notice jet lag goes down quite a bit uh when i take a high dose of creatine and 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 going to notice the differences today no it'll probably 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 going to notice any effect because the brain is probably making enough.

1:05:14But 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, you need to be a little bit patient. But again, three grams could saturate your skeletal muscle in 30 days. So it's not that long of a wait. And on the cognitive side, the cognitive benefits that were observed when doing these stroke tests, had they been taking it previously or was it just administered on that particular day when the test happened? Yeah, so that one was in a week in advance with the loading phase so they really saturated the body to try to get the effects okay so they were taking it for some time yeah but on the sleep deprivation study from germany they just gave it one bolus mega dose for 21 hours of sleep deprivation and those individuals did perform better from a number of tests like this the next day so if you're like wow i got something coming up friday unfortunately i'm not going to 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 20 or 30 grams on a daily basis based on those studies and 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 and 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 could that down regulate your natural synthesis, these are all questions that we need to look at.

1:06:38So outside of the realm of creatine, outside of the realm of muscle, outside of the realm of, I guess, nutrition generally, what are you doing to keep yourself healthy? 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 20 to 30 minutes of either moderate intensity cardio or like a spin class. I personally like to do alternating days. 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 um pretty religious with nutrients as well try to eat a really balanced diet and my god my failure is getting enough sleep so i've had to cut caffeine out quite a bit by past noon to allow me i'm probably a slower metabolizer um with caffeine so uh i try to really optimize evidence-based research take it into my daily life and try to promote it that way yeah and is there anything you're particularly excited about in the work and research i'm I'm super fascinated with the movement from the neck up.

1:07:35I think we know a lot about the neck down with creatine and exercise or other nutrients. I'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? I think of boxing, Muhammad Ali, things like that. So there's evidence in rodents that 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. Anybody involved in head trauma, I think you should definitely look at creatine as something to be taking just in case you get hit.

1:08:09And then, of course, everything with Alzheimer's or other areas of depression. So I'm fascinated that this nutrient, which was, you know, 1832, it 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. A lot of people continue 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. I would have said yes about five years ago, but now, no, there's too much to do, even with skeletal muscle.

1:08:43If you were to say, what's the best dose, Darren, to take? I 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. We're just giving an estimate that I take 10, maybe you take 12, someone might take 15. At the end of the day, we still don't know the best supplementation protocol, the best dose. So there's so many areas. So for the next 20 years, I bet y 'all still be focusing on creatine with other things as well. Yeah. And on that doses, is that different for different people?

1:09:16Excellent question. So the thought was that the larger you are, you have more storing capacity in your muscle for creatine. So it makes sense if you're 50 kilograms and 150 kilograms, you're going to have a greater storing capacity. So the dose on a relative basis is likely higher there as well the more stressed the person is it's likely they're going to require more because their natural machinery in the brain can't keep up so it is very individualistic i 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 i bet there's a lot of people that are this far into the conversation and their their central question is where i've got loved ones that i really really want to start um considering creatine supplementation for whatever reason it could be cognitive benefits muscular benefits whatever all the things we've talked about they 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 if their loved ones are now listening yeah yeah and you had to make a case to their loved ones about why they should take creatine yeah 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.

1:10:31And unfortunately, that leads us to accelerated aging and a poor way to go. It's like saying, I'm going to save everything for retirement. My question is why? You might not make it to retirement. So that's one of the things, yeah. Aging? Yes. What is aging in your definition of would it's catastrophic unfortunately i'm going through it you know i've noticed ever since i hit the fourth decade things hurt a lot more and muscle mass to retain it is a little bit harder um so unfortunately think of the body's ability to withstand stress is not as high and things start to break down quite fast so we all know you know things hurt more we've lost muscle mass i can't run as fast so 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 yeah we 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 okay what is reality what do you think all of this is all this stuff that we can see and all we experience what do you think it is do you think it's a simulation do you think it's this is all real for sure because i think we can feel it it's not a big brother or anything that's a game show we all go through different emotions and things like that so i think you can feel it are you religious yes catholic roman catholic yeah okay and you're a family man you've got some uh a french bulldog and a cat as we talked about and wife at home yeah and uh really close to my family and stuff like that and what is your goal if we get to the end of your career and this was your last day and you had been successful oh yeah i think it would be a lasting impression on my students that wow he changed my life in some way and if I can make one person live longer, free of disease and happier, I'm all for it.

1:12:16You 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. I 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 And I want to 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.

1:12:51Oh, geez. 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 puzzle, promoting it, I think it's, if anything, it's just beyond my belief, yeah. Why did this pull you in? I ask that in part because it tends to be the case that the things that draw us in or pull on our make us curious there tends to always be a bit of a personal reason right yeah it was it was more that you know am I scared to death 100 yeah I can't I can't think of it yeah why yeah I just think it's weird for me I 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 yeah and it's it becomes it's almost like I want to live forever and if I can think of ways to make me live and partially get there obviously it's not reality but yeah i'm uh scared to death of dying you know have you always been yep 100 scared to death of heights and i can't even talk about the the death experience yeah because i think it it sort of brings into perspective things that you just don't know did you ever lose anybody uh just uh friends and things like that but nothing um specific like parents or anything like that yet but it's always been there i don't know if it's the roman catholic in me or not but it's like whoa i don't want that at all yeah you can't even talk about it can't talk about it no no yeah really yeah it's kind of like i can talk about it in a sense i understand and it's realistic but it's it's more um that for some reason i don't even want to think about it because i have so much passion for life that i don't even want to think about oh shit this could happen yeah and you believe you go somewhere after that oh for sure heaven yeah yeah yeah okay yeah yeah but if you do believe you're going to heaven that sounds like a good place great place yeah i just want to spend more time here there's still a lot of things to do yeah for sure makes sense Yeah.

1:14:32Well, thank you. Thank you for doing the work that you're doing. Thank you so much. This was great. Thank you. I have to say, you know, you've done so much research on this subject that so many of my previous guests cite and talk about. Okay. So it's great to have the source here himself. And I applaud you for the work you've done. Thank you so much. I think a lot of people do want to extend their health span. Yes, right. Which is to live healthier for longer. Yeah. 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 being you know incapable of doing the things we care about 100 yeah and i think a lot of this research gives us an option yeah if we choose to take it to live uh to live a better life thank you so much yeah it was great so thank you so much

1:15:38Thank you.

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