In short
Creatine 101—what creatine is, how it works (ATP/ADP and phosphocreatine), its benefits for training and health, common myths, and how to take it (dose, loading vs no-loading, consistency). The host argues creatine monohydrate is a daily “energy enabler” for most people, including mental benefits.
Guest backgrounds
No guests are mentioned; the episode is presented as a solo host discussion.
Key claims
Creatine is synthesized from arginine, glycine, and methionine; the body makes ~1–2 g/day but diet often doesn’t cover needs (especially for vegans/vegetarians). Creatine increases phosphocreatine stores in muscle and brain, speeding ATP regeneration via creatine kinase, improving high-intensity performance, training volume, and recovery. It may enhance glycogen storage for endurance, reduce inflammation/oxidative stress, and support cognition (memory, attention, processing speed), with early promising data for Alzheimer’s/dementia. Myths addressed: no kidney/liver damage (serum creatinine rise isn’t damage), no dehydration, no need to cycle, no bloating from proper creatine.
Notable examples
ATP regeneration during bench press/squats; Winford Christie credited creatine monohydrate at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Creatine identified in early 1800s; phosphocreatine discovered in 1927; fitness adoption surged in the 1990s.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOCall to Action for Creatine Supplementation
0:45 to 2:16
Encouragement to start using creatine, emphasizing its benefits.
“there's a lot that I want to dive into in all things creatine.”
Call to Action for Creatine Supplementation
2:23 to 2:36
Encouragement to start using creatine, emphasizing its benefits.
“That's the best way to support me, to support us through this podcast and the content.”
Personal Advocacy for Creatine
6:16 to 8:01
Host shares personal experience and advocacy for creatine supplementation.
“So that's the call to action before we dive into all this material.”
Understanding What Creatine Is
8:01 to 11:39
Explanation of creatine, its natural production, and dietary sources.
“Okay, creatine is synthesized from three amino acids.”
Creatine's Role in Energy Production
11:39 to 14:00
Detailed discussion on how creatine aids in energy production in the body.
“So our body, our bodies use ATP for energy.”
Understanding ATP Regeneration with Creatine
14:00 to 16:42
Learn how creatine impacts ATP regeneration and athletic performance.
“ATP regeneration is catalyzed by the enzyme creatine kinase.”
The Historical Context of Creatine
16:42 to 23:06
Discover the origins and evolution of creatine in the fitness industry.
“It is an energy regeneration, regenerating molecule in substance.”
Myths and Realities of Creatine
23:06 to 28:00
Explore common myths about creatine and its benefits for performance.
“And the thing about creatine is it's not a shortcut, but it is a science-backed, a science-accredited, a science-acknowledged, a science-studied advantage.”
Understanding Creatine's Benefits
28:00 to 32:46
Learn how creatine enhances strength, power, and muscle recovery.
“So the benefits that we're about to talk about are not just, hey, we think this may happen.”
Creatine for Endurance Athletes
32:46 to 36:29
Discover how creatine benefits endurance training and glycogen storage.
“When it comes to athletic performance, a lot of times we talk about progressive overload.”
Show all 18 chapters
Cognitive Enhancement through Creatine
36:29 to 41:25
Explore the cognitive benefits of creatine beyond athletic performance.
“type 2 muscle fiber scenarios where you're performing fast repetitions, higher intensity.”
Debunking Myths about Creatine
41:25 to 42:01
Understand common misconceptions surrounding creatine use and its reputation.
“As I mentioned, when I first started using creatine, when I was a teenager, I had to hide my creatine in my drawer in my bedroom because my mom thought it was performance enhancing drugs.”
The Early Reputation of Creatine
42:01 to 43:23
Learn about the origins of creatine's reputation in bodybuilding and fitness.
“with bodybuilding in the way that it started becoming more popular in the fitness space.”
Debunking Myths About Creatine
43:24 to 45:18
Understand the myths surrounding creatine's effects on kidney and liver function.
“Creatine has shown no adverse effects on kidney or liver function, even at higher doses for extended periods of time.”
The Truth About Creatine and Bloating
45:19 to 46:59
Discover the truth about creatine's relationship with bloating and hydration.
“But it doesn't typically cause visible or uncomfortable bloating unless you are supplementing with a low quality creatine.”
Common Misconceptions About Creatine
47:00 to 48:57
Explore additional myths about creatine, including hydration and cycling.
“There is a myth that creatine causes dehydration.”
How to Effectively Use Creatine
48:58 to 52:41
Learn about the best practices for using creatine, including dosages and consistency.
“So there's a lot of myths about creatine and many of them, if not majority of them, have been debunked truthfully.”
The Benefits of Regular Creatine Supplementation
52:42 to 54:46
Understand the benefits of consistent creatine use for performance and health.
“And I think part of that is because there's not necessarily acute benefits to creatine supplementation.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:05Nick Bare:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is all about creatine. What creatine is, the benefits, some of the history about how creatine came to be and has become so popular these last couple of years. I'd say even so, as I'm recording this, December 2025, in the last 12 months, creatine has become very, very popular. Not just in terms of athletic performance, improving, enhancing, optimizing athletic performance, but for the mental benefits, mental processing, memory, longevity. there's a lot that I want to dive into in all things creatine. But before we do, I do have a call to action within this episode.
1:08Nick Bare:There's actually two calls to action. The first is I hope that by the time you're done listening to this episode, if you're not supplementing with creatine on a daily basis, you go buy creatine right away. Creatine is one of those supplements that I believe everybody, just about everybody, depending on some of your medical conditions, almost everybody should be supplementing their diet with creatine monohydrate every single day. Every single day. Now we don't monetize this podcast, as you might know. We don't run ads on this podcast and we don't plan to. We want to provide, I want to provide a lot of value to the listeners.
1:58Nick Bare:And really the goal of this podcast for me and the BPN brand is if you enjoy the content, if you find it valuable and you listen to it on a regular basis, my hope is that you go support us by purchasing Bear Performance Nutrition Supplements. Go to bpnsubs.com and try and purchase our products. That's the best way to support me, to support us through this podcast and the content. And like I said, we don't run ads, we don't monetize, we don't plan to ever monetize this podcast. Now we sell creatine monohydrate. On our website, you can get 60 servings, that's 65 gram servings or 30 servings. 35 gram servings.
2:49And we exclusively source our creatine monohydrate from a brand called CreaPure. And we've been selling CreaPure creatine monohydrate for years now. And the reason that's super important and I share that is because the brand name of CreaPure is the most pure creatine monohydrate you can get. It is produced by a company called Alskam in Germany. CreaPure is the most widely studied form of creatine in the market and it's proven to be safe and effective. And what makes CreaPure so unique and different compared to a lot of the
3:31Nick Bare:other creatines that are widely available online, in retail, is the way that it is produced. CreaPure uses a unique, safe, and effective way to produce creatine without the undesirable byproducts, which are actually commonly found in some of the creatine products in the market. Some of those byproducts, I don't want to butcher this, okay? So it's called DCD, which is di-cyanidiamide and DHT, dihydrotriazine. Those are two commonly undesirable byproducts that can occur in the creatine production process. But because of ALSKEM's unique production process that is proprietary to them, they have found a way to produce creatine without these nasty, undesirable byproducts.
4:31So you know that when you're purchasing and consuming CreaPure, it is safe, it is effective,
4:38Nick Bare:it is pure, and it is without the nasty, undesirable byproducts. That's what makes CreaPure so unique, so special, so beneficial, and in my honest opinion, this is not just because we sell CreaPure, creatine monohydrate. it is the only creatine you should be consuming because you know how good it is, how good it is for you and you don't get any of the nasty sides that come with a less pure product. Now, on top of that, we get all of our supplements. Every supplement we sell here at BPN is NSF certified for sport. So this is a program that we are enrolled in and NSF Certified for Sport verifies that the product does not contain unsafe levels of contaminants, prohibited substances, or masking agents.
5:37And what is on the label actually matches what is in the product. And NSF Certified for Sport is the only independent third-party certification program recognized by the United States Anti-Doping Agency,
5:53Nick Bare:also known as USADA. So not only do we here at BPN sell creatine monohydrate, we only sell Creapure creatine monohydrate and our creatine, just like all of our other supplements that we offer are tested and certified by NSF4 Sport. So that's the call to action before we dive into all this material. If you're not taking creatine, start taking creatine. And if you're going to take creatine, make sure you're taking and consuming CreaPure creatine monohydrate. Now I have been an advocate. I've been a fan of creatine supplementation for years now. I've been using creatine since I was, 18 years old.
6:50Nick Bare:So for the last 15 years, I've been supplementing with creatine. Five grams a day minimum, sometimes even 10 grams a day of creatine. I've always been a fan, an advocate of creatine. But even more so, as I was preparing for this episode. I read a few books. I went through some of the more recent research and studies. I'm even more sold on creatine supplementation now than ever before. And like I said, in the beginning of this episode, it is a product. It is a supplement that I believe everybody should be taking. So those are some of the things I wanted to get out of the way before we dive into some of the meat and potatoes of this episode.
7:45But I feel this strong conviction around creatine supplementation,
7:50Nick Bare:not just for athletic performance, but for all the health benefits that come with and from creatine. Now, what is creatine? Okay, creatine is synthesized from three amino acids. Those amino acids are arginine, glycine, and methionine. Now, amino acids are the building blocks of protein. The way that I want to think about, or I should say, the way that I would love for you to think about creatine, it's all about energy. Creatine is an enabler. It enables movement, it enables performance, and it enables endurance at the cellular level. Creatine is mostly stored in the muscles and in the brain as a phosphocreatine.
8:55And we'll get into phosphocreatine here in a little bit. but just remember that phosphocreatine is the way that your body stores creatine
9:05Nick Bare:after your body either produces it or it's consumed through food or supplementation. Creatine is a naturally occurring compound and our bodies naturally produce about one to two grams of creatine daily. So it's naturally occurring. And our bodies actually produce it, but not enough. Because our bodies use a lot of energy. And like what I said, creatine is an energy enabler. So there's, you know, whatever your opinions, thoughts, or historical perspectives about creatine are, I'm sure a lot of people, myself included, have always viewed creatine as a bodybuilding, muscle building, strength supplement.
10:03But let's shift the narrative. Let's shift the perspective. It is an energy enabler, an energy fuel source. Okay, that's what creatine is. So our bodies naturally produce about one to two grams per day. And then you can also get creatine from your diet. now you're going to get creatine from your diet through meat sources. And for most people on a common diet, you're consuming about one to two grams of creatine daily. Like I said, this is coming from meats primarily. So if you are vegetarian, if you are vegan, if you don't consume meat sources, you're probably not getting any creatine in your diet, which is even more reason to supplement with creatine monohydrate.
11:04Now, the way that creatine works, okay, like I mentioned phosphocreatine, the creatine phosphocreatine system. This is how your body is going to utilize creatine to create this energy. So we're going to get a little scientific here, but I'm going to try to keep it high level. And my goal here is just to provide education and context that arms you with how creatine works within the body so you know why you should be consuming it and what benefits you might be provided. So our body, our bodies use ATP for energy. This is our body's energy currency. And our bodies use ATP for nearly every function within the body that requires energy.
12:00Nick Bare:Now, the cells can only store a small amount of ATP. And during high-intensity activity or movement, this supply of ATP is depleted very quickly. the higher the intensity, the faster it's depleted. And when I say fast, I mean within seconds. And this is why it's so beneficial for strength training or athletic performance, which we'll get into, because at higher levels of intensity, we're burning through this ATP, the cellular level of energy, very fast, very quickly. Now, when our body utilizes this energy source, being ATP, it breaks down into ADP. So imagine you're in the gym and you're bench pressing.
12:56Let's just use very common basic movements and function. You're in the gym, you're bench pressing, you have a moderate amount of weight on the bar and you start performing some repetitions. your body needs energy. So it is breaking down the energy source ATP by donating a phosphate molecule. When ATP is broken down, it's broken down into ADP. This is where your body now has to regenerate energy to keep performing. This is where phosphocreatine comes into play.
13:41Nick Bare:So you're bench pressing at the cellular level, you're breaking down ATP into ADP. And now your body wants to regenerate energy. So it's donating a phosphocreatine molecule to ADP to turn that ADP back into ATP quickly and efficiently. ATP regeneration is catalyzed by the enzyme creatine kinase. And this is one of the fastest energy regeneration processes in the entire human body, which is quite significant to say. The more phosphocreatine available in your muscles, the faster you can regenerate ATP during high intensity efforts. which means the more total work volume you can perform. So when you supplement with creatine and the recommended dose is about five grams every day, your body will store that creatine in the muscles and in the brain primarily as phosphocreatine.
15:04Okay, so our goal with supplementing with creatine is that we want to saturate our muscles and the brain with phosphocreatine. Just like the way when you consume carbohydrates and your body breaks down those carbohydrates and stores them in the muscle and in the liver as glycogen. This is the same way, or at least similar, that when you consume creatine, your body breaks down and stores creatine in the muscles and in the brain as phosphocreatine. We want to saturate just like your glycogen stores, your phosphocreatine stores so that your body can tap into those stores and regenerate energy, regenerate ATP as it's being broken down.
15:55So when our phosphocreatine stores are available, again, in the muscle and in the brain, when it comes to athletic performance, we can perform more repetitions. We have improved faster recovery between sets of exercise and we can maintain higher intensity for longer periods of time. So that's what creatine is. That's how it's stored. That's how it's utilized. And now you can hopefully view creatine and we'll get into some of the myths a little bit later in this episode. you can start viewing and thinking about creatine not as a muscle building supplement necessarily, not as a steroid as people used to think and believe.
16:44And I think some people still do. It is an energy regeneration, regenerating molecule in substance. We want to saturate our muscles and our brain because the brain uses fossil creatine as well. so that we can regenerate energy. We can regenerate fuel. We can regenerate ATP. So let's talk about the origins and introduction of creatine primarily into the fitness industry. I found this very interesting. I didn't know a lot of this before some of my research. And it's quite interesting if you kind of track the origin stories and the evolution of creatine. So it was first identified in the early 1800s by a French scientist named Michael Eugene Travelle.
17:52And its name, creatine, comes from a Greek word, krias, which means meat due to its concentration in muscle-rich foods like beef and fish. As I previously mentioned, creatine is naturally occurring and you can get, like I said, one to two grams from your food supply daily, primarily coming from meats like beef and fish. in 1927 a man by the name of loman discovered phosphocreatine the energy storing form of creatine which like i said it acts as a rapid reserve for atp regeneration so in 1927 the discovery and some of the science started coming out about how
18:49Nick Bare:creatine is actually used, how it's stored, and how your body utilizes it to regenerate energy, being ATP. Now, it wasn't until the 1990s that creatine entered the fitness industry as a legal and effective way to improve athletic performance. I found this so interesting. In 1992, at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, there was a British sprinter named Winford Christie. And he credited his success in part, not fully, but in part, to creatine monohydrate supplementation in his build and his training in the process to perform at such an elite level in the 92 Olympics. And this kind of created this flywheel of interest and more research in the attraction to creatine supplementation in terms of athletic performance.
19:55By the mid-1990s, creatine was flying off supplement store shelves. And by 2003, over 200 peer-reviewed studies had been published on creatine. And the International Society of Sports Nutrition, ISSN, actually issued a position stand on its safety and effectiveness. This is what they said. This was published in 2007 by the ISSN, which is a big deal. Creatine monohydrate is the most effective nutrition supplement currently available to athletes in terms of increasing high-intensity exercise capacity and lean body mass during training. And as of today, there are over 1 ,000 clinical studies, clinical studies on creatine covering sports performance, cognitive health, injury recovery, and disease prevention.
21:01so when we say that creatine monohydrate supplementation is the most studied supplement in terms of not just athletic performance but now cognitive health injury recovery disease prevention it has been studied time and time again showing its positive benefit the results and its significance on the impact of regenerating energy, regenerating ATP. It's no longer a question of does creatine work? Is creatine safe? The answer is yes. It is safe. It is effective. It works. We know this.
21:55i remember
21:58Nick Bare:man when when i first got into the the fitness space you know this was mid to late 2000s and coming from a small town central pennsylvania and my introduction into the fitness space, the fitness industry was primarily the bodybuilding space. Creatine was popular, widely spread, acknowledged, but there was also this perception around creatine that it was unsafe, that it was just for bodybuilders. There were so many myths that were going around and we'll get into some of those myths. I remember when my mom found out I was taking creatine when I was late in high school. She thought I was on steroids.
22:54Nick Bare:She thought I was on drugs because of the perception that creatine had. It is more than a sports performance supplement. And the thing about creatine is it's not a shortcut, but it is a science-backed, a science-accredited, a science-acknowledged, a science-studied advantage. It is an advantage that we can utilize to not just improve athletic performance, but also mental performance as well. I love this term, and I'm going to say it again, but energy or creatine is an energy enabler. Energy enabler. Just think of creatine in terms of that as opposed to just a strength and muscle supplement. It enables energy at the cellular level, physical and mental performance.
23:54And creatine studies have exploded over the last couple of years. Exploded. We're now seeing everyone of all ages, all fitness experiences, different jobs, different interests, consuming and using creatine. And it's amazing to see. It's amazing to see how widespread and acknowledged it has become. And what's even more amazing to see, you don't see this very often, when something gets such a bad reputation early on, I believe creatine got a bad reputation because of its perception in the bodybuilding and athletic or muscle building space and industry that it was put into a box. Creatine was put in this box of it's for this sport, this activity, this purpose only.
24:56And a lot of people who had a negative attitude or perception or connotation around creatine were not open-minded. to what else it could do because the science wasn't widespread. The studies weren't acknowledged or widespread. So it was kept in this box, which is so unfortunate because of how
25:20Nick Bare:powerful of a supplement it can and is for so many people outside of just the bodybuilding, muscle building strength arena. So let's talk about some of the creatine benefits. And these benefits I'm going to bring up are backed by, as I mentioned, over 1000 clinical studies. You know, a lot of times you'll find supplements or products or ingredients, single ingredients that have research, that have studies, but it might be a few studies. And some of those studies can be kind of weak, meaning there's bias. They have small sample sizes. There's not a whole lot of validity behind them. But when it comes to creatine, over a thousand clinical studies of really good studies, meaningful studies.
26:25Nick Bare:When it comes to clinical research and studies, is not every study is the same, but I guess I want to say not every study is credible. Sometimes you'll find a study that shows positive benefit or maybe in some cases negative consequences around a certain achievable outcome. And you can pick apart the study of finding out why. Maybe the sample size, for example, was too small. Sample size being, if you're in a study and you have 10 participants, for example, that's a small sample size. It's really challenging to pull some really effective and meaningful data and reports and outcomes from a small sample size.
27:22Nick Bare:But when you have large sample sizes, dozens, hundreds, thousands of individuals who are going through a study and you have multiple studies that are showing consistent results and outcomes, you can build a lot of credibility and proof behind that research. when it comes to creatine, I mean, we have, as I mentioned already, over 1 ,000 clinical studies with ranges of small sample sizes in some cases and then huge, large sample sizes in some studies. So the benefits that we're about to talk about are not just, hey, we think this may happen. No, we know this happens based off of the research that has been done.
28:12Nick Bare:And I think the main benefit that many of us know about is strength and power, muscle building. Creatine started as an athletic performance supplement. And to this day, it's probably still mostly recognized and used for athletic performance, enhancing training ability. by supplementing with creatine, you can experience a higher force output. You can maintain peak power for longer. You can increase your total working load or volume and you can recover faster in between efforts. So how does this happen? We'll go back to kind of what creatine is just briefly and how it works. When you're in the gym, And let's talk about resistance training, classic resistance strength training right now, where you're utilizing weights, whether that's machines, bars, dumbbells.
29:23Nick Bare:There's a certain load on those machines or those bars or dumbbells being a weight. And you are resisting that weight as you perform the exercise. We'll go back to the bench press or maybe in this case, let's use the barbell squat. You load the barbell with weight. You get under the bar and you start doing some reps. Now when you do that first set, what is making you fatigue partly towards the end of that first set where you can't do any more reps is your muscles don't have any more energy. So you're doing the set, you're performing the reps. The ATP, the energy source in your muscles is breaking down to a point where you don't have any energy left and you can't perform any more reps.
30:15Nick Bare:Once you re-rack that weight and you're not performing the exercise anymore and you start resting, this is the importance of rest in between sets and an appropriate amount of rest. what's happening in the body right now is that ATP was broken down into ADP. So it lost a phosphate molecule. It was broken down. This regeneration process happened so quickly that the phosphocreatine that is stored in the muscle now donates a phosphate molecule to ADP, turning it back into ATP so that when you go back into that second set, your muscles now have energy again. And if your muscles are saturated with phosphocreatine, which will only happen if you are supplementing with creatine on a regular basis, you can then regenerate that ATP more efficiently and faster.
31:20So when you go into that second
31:22Nick Bare:set, you can perform more reps at higher efforts, greater intensity. You rack the weight again, same process occurs. Your muscles donate a phosphate molecule from the phosphocreatine. It turns that ADP back into ATP and you can hit your third, fourth, fifth set with more intensity at higher volumes. So not only does creatine supplementation help you with generating higher force output, you can do it for longer and you recover more quickly and more efficiently in between sets. The more working volume you're doing in a workout, The more weight, the more reps, the more sets, the stronger you will become, the bigger your muscles will become.
32:27Nick Bare:You'll get stronger, get faster, you get bigger. It is amazing. It is an amazing supplement for athletic performance in terms of strength, power, and muscle building. We're able to build more muscle if we can do more working volume. When it comes to athletic performance, a lot of times we talk about progressive overload. So progressive overload is over a long period of time doing more working volume, whether that's being able to lift more weight or add in more reps or add in more sets. And one of the science-backed advantages that we can offer our bodies is by saturating our muscles with phosphocreatine.
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33:16Nick Bare:And we do this through creatine supplementation. Now, another benefit to creatine supplementation is recovery. It's been shown that creatine supplementation, having phosphocreatine stores saturated within the muscle can reduce inflammation. So it does this by inhibiting inflammatory cell adhesion and signaling, and it reduces oxidative stress similar to the way that antioxidants work within the body. And there are anti-catabolic effects on muscle and bone with creatine supplementation. So it's not only helping us to generate more power and athletic performance when we're training, but it's also helping us to recover faster and more efficiently when we're not training.
34:12So it has performance and recovery benefits. It has also been shown to be beneficial for endurance training. This is a question that I have received many times over the year. Is creatine just for resistance training? Is it just for bodybuilding? Is it just for strength training. Does creatine supplementation have any crossover application to endurance training? And it actually does. There has been research showing it is positively beneficial for endurance training. And here's how. This is why consuming creatine with your post-workout meal or post-workout shake or just alongside of a meal is that creatine helps enhance glycogen storage.
35:05So when you consume carbohydrates, as we've talked about, you consume carbs, your body digests and breaks down carbohydrates. And for the glucose or the carbs that your body isn't using immediately, it stores those carbohydrates in the form of glycogen in the muscle and in the liver. So that when we go out and perform longer distance endurance events later, when our body needs to break down a long-term energy storage solution, that being muscle glycogen, creatine supplementation can enhance our body's ability to store glycogen. extremely beneficial for endurance athletes, endurance training. It has been shown to reduce muscle damage.
35:59Great for endurance training, endurance athletes. And as we've already mentioned, it helps with recovery by reducing inflammation. And not only will you store more carbohydrates, reduce muscle damage, faster recovery. So creatine supplementation might not benefit endurance training and endurance athletes in the same way that it's benefiting strength athletes. You know, think of strength training in terms of creatine's primarily use being to regenerate ATP in these quicker, faster type 2 muscle fiber scenarios where you're performing fast repetitions, higher intensity. You need to regenerate this ATP very quickly.
36:54That's how it's being used around strength training, resistance training. But when it comes to endurance training, creatine is beneficial in terms of glycogen storage, reduced muscle damage, and recovery in between training sessions.
37:11Nick Bare:Now, here's where a lot of the more recent research has become very popular. Cognitive enhancement being a huge benefit for creatine. now the brain uses about 20 % of the body's energy which is wild because on average the brain is only about 2 % of an individual's body weight on average a healthy individual the brain being only about 2 % of our body weight uses 20 % of our body's energy, which is a significant amount. A significant amount of that energy that our brains used is utilized for housekeeping to maintain cells. But when the brain is engaged in more complex tasks, The energy consumption in that specific area of the brain can increase.
38:19Nick Bare:It's minor compared to the brain's baseline energy use. But if we put more stress, more demand on our brain, our brains will use more energy. It needs more energy. Creatine is critical for energy metabolism and its job is to transport energy where it needs to be. So supplementing with creatine can increase brain energy. That's amazing because most of our phosphocreatine storage, like we've mentioned, is in the muscles and in the brain. Research has shown that creatine supplementation can and will benefit cognitive function, particularly in the domains of memory, attention time, and information processing speed.
39:16Nick Bare:And there's actually been some promising yet still early studies showing positive cognition boost in patients with Alzheimer's and dementia, which is remarkable, absolutely remarkable. It can support emotional regulation and mood stability and can reduce mental fatigue under stress or sleep loss. I've heard a lot of people talking about this recently where if you are sleep deprived, you can actually minimize and in some cases eliminate the feelings of sleep deprivation and mental fatigue with larger doses of creatine supplementation and consumption. So not only is creatine beneficial for strength, power, muscle building, improving lean body mass, recovery, endurance training, overall athletic performance, but now there's this aspect of cognitive enhancement and improvement, which in my opinion, shifts creatine from being a sports performance supplement to a health supplement, an energy enabler for everybody, not just for being in the gym, not just for building muscle and mass, but being able to perform on a daily basis.
40:56memory, mood, mental processing time.
41:01Nick Bare:You can show up for your job, your responsibilities, life in a more meaningful way because your brain is just firing and cooking in the same way that your body, your muscles are firing and cooking in the gym in between sessions. It's a powerful supplement that has been shown to be beneficial not just for the body, but also the mind. Now there are and have been a lot of creatine myths over the years. I've heard all of these myths. As I mentioned, when I first started using creatine, when I was a teenager, I had to hide my creatine in my drawer in my bedroom because my mom thought it was performance enhancing drugs.
41:48It's had this negative connotation over the years,
41:52Nick Bare:which I believe are now being debunked. But I wanted to make a note. I believe that creatine's early association with bodybuilding in the way that it started becoming more popular in the fitness space. You know, you go to the Arnold Fitness Expo or you'd be on the bodybuilding.com forums or you'd be reading bodybuilding magazines and it's this jacked individual with a bottle of creatine in their hand. So there's this early association between creatine and bodybuilding, and then ultimately steroids. And it had a hard reputation from the beginning. And there was a lot of overcautious medical providers early on and probably still are today who aren't familiar with the research and the studies who just uses blanket statement of, no, don't take creatine because it causes X, Y, and Z.
42:47Nick Bare:And we'll get into some of these X, Y, and Zs that people say creatine does that it doesn't actually do. And these myths that I'm about to share have been debunked through research, studies, and science. It's not just he said, she said, or hearsay. No, these have been debunked and proven that they are not correct. There is a myth that creatine causes negative effects on kidney and liver function that has been debunked. Creatine has shown no adverse effects on kidney or liver function, even at higher doses for extended periods of time. There have been large long-term studies in healthy adults, healthy adults, that showed no harmful effect on kidney function at the standard dose.
43:44Now, here is why people assumed early on
43:51Nick Bare:that creatine supplementation had adverse effects on the kidney and liver. Creatine may slightly raise serum creatinine, okay? But this is not showing kidney damage. creatinine is a byproduct of creatine itself so creatine is naturally this naturally happens in the body it is broken down into creatinine and then filtered by the kidneys so doctors were seeing that by supplementing with creatine there was a slight raise in serum creatinine excreted and they just assumed that this was showing kidney and liver damage, but that is not the case. Creatine is naturally broken down into creatinine. It is a natural by-product of creatine itself.
44:57Nick Bare:It's going to be excreted. It just is part of the process, but it does not show kidney or liver dysfunction. So we've debunked that. A lot of people are going to say that creatine can and will cause bloating. This is not the case. Creatine, however, does increase intracellular water, which is actually beneficial. We want water within the muscle.
45:29But it doesn't typically cause visible or uncomfortable bloating unless you are supplementing with a low quality creatine. So as I mentioned earlier on, what makes CreaPure so special is the production process that is proprietary to Owl's Chem and it doesn't create through the production process any of these nasty or unwanted byproducts. But if you are buying a cheap creatine, especially one that is not Creapure, you might get some of these negative side effects.
46:05Nick Bare:One of those being bloating, visible or uncomfortable bloating.
46:13Nick Bare:We'll get into some of this intracellular water in a little bit. We'll talk about dehydration, but creatine does not cause bloating. Some other myths that you have to cycle creatine, You don't have to cycle creatine. You can take creatine every single day of your life at an appropriate dose. There's a myth that creatine is only for bodybuilders. It's not. It's a supplement for just about everybody who wants to enable energy at the cellular level for their body and their mind. There's a myth that there's more effective forms of creatine on the market outside of creatine monohydrate. False. Creatine monohydrate is the most pure studied and effective form of creatine available.
47:07Nick Bare:There is a myth that creatine causes dehydration. I remember early on, this might have been when I was playing like baseball or sports and in college, you'd hear people say, I don't want to take creatine because I got to consume extra water. I don't want to take creatine because I heard it dehydrates you and causes cramping. That is not the case. That is far from the truth. There is this myth that is called the water shift myth that has been associated with creatine. So creatine, like I've said, increases intracellular water. And there's this myth that assumes that because creatine increases intracellular water, So water within the cells, which is good.
47:53Nick Bare:It's a hydrated cell. That's an effective optimized cell. The myth says that because water is moving intracellularly, that it means water is moving
48:09in other places that promote dehydration. So people assume that if water moves into the muscle, this is what the myth says,
48:16Nick Bare:it must leave the rest of the body dehydrated. but this is not the way it works. It's not pulling water out of the bloodstream in a way that dehydrates you. It's simply improving muscle hydration. Studies have actually shown that with creatine supplementation, there's no changes in blood electrolyte balance, no increase in dehydration markers and actually often improves hydration during training. So it does quite the opposite. It doesn't dehydrate you. it improves the hydration levels of your muscles at the cellular level to perform better and more hydrated. So there's a lot of myths about creatine and many of them, if not majority of them, have been debunked truthfully.
49:10Now how to use creatine?
49:14Nick Bare:Who should be using creatine? almost everyone. My wife's mom, so my mother-in-law is now supplementing with creatine five grams a day, which for me is a huge win. I love to see that. Not just for performance optimization, body composition optimization, but mental processing, brain, memory, mood optimization. There's two traditional approaches to how to consume creatine. So there's this traditional, what's called the loading phase, where an individual will consume 20 grams of creatine per day for the first week. And then it's followed by five gram maintenance every day after that. So if you want to take this approach, the loading phase approach, first week, 20 grams a day, you don't take all 20 grams at once.
50:16You would do say four, five gram doses throughout the day. Then after that first week, you just take five grams of creatine every single day after that. The second approach is a no loading phase. And this is where you just take five grams a day every day.
50:38Nick Bare:This is what I would recommend. Now, they both get to the same outcome. The same outcome is being that you saturate the muscles with phosphocreatine. The loading phase, however, is going to saturate the muscles and the brain with phosphocreatine slightly faster. What that means is if you take the loading approach, your muscles are going to be topped off on phosphocreatine a little bit faster, a little bit earlier than if you do the no loading approach. But I don't think the loading approach is honestly necessary. If you're going to start using creatine, just supplement with five grams a day every single day, skip the loading phase.
51:23eventually you will saturate the muscles and the brain with phosphocreatine.
51:31Should you and can you take more than five grams a day? You can.
51:36Nick Bare:I've seen that some of the mental benefits, the mental processing benefits come from higher doses, say 10 grams of creatine a day. Some days I take five grams a day. Some days I take 10 grams a day. probably three to four days a week. I try to get 10 grams of creatine in daily. And even when I take five grams, it's a heaping scoop. So it's probably more like five to eight grams at my minimum dose a day. But five grams, I would say is the minimum dose of creatine that you wanna be supplementing with daily. Again, you don't have to cycle it. You don't have to take time off. that the biggest thing with creatine is being consistent.
52:23Nick Bare:I know so many people who they'll start supplementing with creatine and they'll do it for a month, two months, three months, and then they just forget and they're not consistent with it. And they never see the long-term benefits of creatine supplementation. And that is because of lack of consistency. And I think part of that is because there's not necessarily acute benefits to creatine supplementation. Like when you take pre-workout or caffeine, you feel it within 20 to 30 minutes. With creatine, you're not feeling it within 20 to 30 minutes. You're not going to feel creatine after you use it.
53:03Nick Bare:So it's a supplement that's really easy to overlook and not be consistent with. But what I would challenge a lot of people is find a way that fits into your routine every single day. Like for me, as soon as I wake up, I consume 25 ounces of water. And within that water, I put a scoop of electrolytes and a heaping scoop of creatine. It's just part of my morning routine. So I know immediately every single day I'm consuming my creatine. Maybe for you, every day you do a protein shake. Maybe part of your routine to maintain consistency is you're just putting your creatine in your post-workout shake or just your shake throughout the day every single day.
53:52Build it into your routine and your habits to make sure you can be consistent with supplementation. And you want to consume creatine on training days and non-training days. So just consume it every single day. five grams is the recommended dose. That's creatine. That is what it is, the origin of creatine, its benefits, how to use. Again, my call to action to you guys, listen to this episode is if you're not supplementing with creatine yet, start right now. for the athletic performance benefits, for the mental benefits, for the recovery benefits, the reduced inflammation benefits. I can only imagine where the research behind creatine is going to go over the next couple of years, but it's become popular for the right reasons.
54:54It is researched. It is backed. It is shown to be effective and safe. So take your creatine, five grams every single day. Guys, thanks for tuning in. I appreciate you. I love you. As always, go one more.
55:27We'll be right back.
From the publisher
In this episode, I break down creatine in a way that actually makes sense—what creatine is, how creatine works in your body, and the real creatine benefits you should care about. We walk through the science in simple terms, its rise as a staple supplement, and how it supports muscle growth, performance, and everyday life.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:04 Call to Action: Why You Should Take Creatine
02:36 About Creapure: The Purest Creatine
08:01 Understanding Creatine: What It Is and How It Works
17:16 The History and Evolution of Creatine
25:31 Creatine Benefits: Athletic Performance and Beyond
41:25 Debunking Common Creatine Myths
49:11 How to Use Creatine Effectively
54:11 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Creatine Monohydrate sourced from Creapure®, shown to increase strength, power and performance.
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https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210
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