Creatine Explained: Benefits & Best Dosage | Extra Mile

0:00Hello everyone and welcome to Untap the Extra Mile with me Spencer Matthews and me Oli Patrick. Today we have another banger for you. I think we're allowed to call them bangers at this stage. Self-declared bangers. Self-declared bangers. We are, we're just a couple of guys that love physiology. That's all we are at the end of the day, right? Oli is professional. I am here to learn. Today we're talking about creatine. Miracle stuff, isn't it? You would think so looking at the marketing. I mean, has ever a supplement had a bigger wind beneath its wings than creatine? I mean, if you had a creatine conversation two years ago, you were talking to yourself.

0:39And now, dinner party chat, bus stop chat, not that I'm regularly at the bus stop, you know, but everywhere. Creatine's everywhere. And for good reason. It is, you know, it is a banger of a supplement for a banger of an episode. So fantastic. Well, I'm keen to dig into it because to your point, it's all you hear about. It's almost nowadays like if you're not on creatine, you're some kind of loser. Yeah. You know, what you're agreeing with that? I'd say you're a loser at physiology because the benefits of creatine appear to be so much broader than we originally thought. And so I would never call anyone a loser, but I think there is a huge strategic advantage to people of all ages, all biological sex to consider creatine.

1:20All ages? all ages. In fact, I could make a probably more compelling argument for elderly people, to be honest. Oh, I was thinking more about children. Well, children, we're seeing creatine potentially extending the length of sleep. It's only been trialled in juvenile females. God, my kids sleep for ages. So they did a trial. How can I wake them up is more the question. Don't give them creatine. So we saw in a group of young girls, they got an extra hour's sleep from the application of creatine. So there's question marks over, again, whether that's good or bad and why that is. But the general sense for adults, because again, we don't know on kids, is that for all adults of all ages and stages, it's probably got some kind of benefit in store.

2:00Okay, well, let's kick off the episode with what exactly is creatine and what does it do? Well, it's a naturally occurring compound. So it is a supplement, but we make it. So we make lots of creatine. And actually, we make it in parts of the body, kidneys, and I think we make make some in the liver actually but it's mostly stored in muscle and where it's stored in muscle it is a bank of potential energy right so we've spoken before about energy systems and the fact that i can do incredibly high intensity exercise for a couple of seconds but then i can't sustain that because i run out of a molecule called atp do you fondly remember that conversation of course no how could i forget such a thing so we've atp that's not the tennis tournament correct the the I don't know what ATP stands for in tennis.

2:45Something tennis professional. You would have thought, yeah. Advanced tennis professional. I don't know, but it is a thing, surely. ATP is the tour. ATP is the tour. So in human physiology, it's not about tennis. It's adenosine triphosphate, which is the molecule of energy. And increasingly, as we see the world go mad about cellular energy, mitochondria, red light, ATP is more discussed now than ever before. And adenosine triphosphate is, I think when we described it before, It's like a little Christmas cracker in the cells of your body. Oh, yes. And when you pull it, that crack is the energy that powers everything in the human body.

3:19That is how we manufacture energy. But we've only got enough Christmas crackers for two seconds of energy production. And then everything else is about how we glue the end of the cracker back together again and pull it again. And the beautiful thing about creatine is creatine is actually phosphocreatine. It just doesn't go by that name. That's not its street name.

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4:19Individual results may vary. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. New school year, new podcast obsession. Hit play on this. Did you know there are 3 ,000 different names for colors in the dictionary? Or that leprechauns were once called shoemakers? Those are the kinds of things I love talking about on the Grammar Girl podcast. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and I've been hosting Grammar Girl for 20 years now. Can you believe it? On Tuesdays, I share quick tips to clean up your writing, and stories about language you'll want to text to a friend, like the word recipe first referred to a list of medications you'd get from a doctor.

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5:50biology to glue that phosphate back on. And the first one we use is creatine phosphate or phosphocreatine. And phosphocreatine literally grabs that phosphate molecule and shoves it straight back on, which means I can keep pretty much the same intensity of exercise going for 10, 12, 13, 14 seconds, which is unbelievable, but I will start to lose power thereafter. So the person who's got more creatine will be able to generate more high intensity exertion than the person who's got less creatine. And in simple terms, that's its big thing. And because we don't make that much of it, we can take it in through diet and we can take the creatine from animal flesh.

6:28So if a chicken has got creatine, beef, the tiny bit in dairy, but not really much, but principally it's in animal product, animal flesh, and we can take that creatine and that increases the stores we have in our muscles, which means I can combust that high intensity exercise for longer. Other things it does, but as a sort of back of a cigarette packet it is a stored form which we don't condone we don't condone smoking back of a cards back of an Uno packet coming into holiday season we very much don't condone smoking very much don't condone unless you're in Sosa Grande and you've had a couple of Pintos you know and then like well Pintash I think they call it if you've had a couple of say it's one of the World Cup matches not anymore obviously because the World Cup has come and gone but at the time of the World Cup, say, you know, England are playing and you've had a few Pinter, you know, at the beach and then you go home and you spark up a cigarette, no one's going to blame you, all right?

7:26It doesn't matter per se. It's not healthy, but it doesn't matter really. I'm going to carry it. I cannot endorse the Ziggy. No, of course, no, no. Nobody does. Nor could I. I don't think smokers endorse the Ziggy. I could understand it without endorsing it. Yeah. That's a critical thing. If you want to have a ciggy every so often, we're not condoning it. We don't even control you in any way. Your life is your life. Your life is yours. You do what you want. You fancy a pint, you fancy a cigarette. Who's to stop you? It's not the healthiest thing you could be doing, right? It's no creatine. Well, creatine, back of a UNO packet, taken under very healthy holiday circumstances, is a stored form of energy that you would use in high-intensity exercise situations.

8:15And if you decide to take it as a supplement, you could massively increase your stored form by up to maybe 30%. And that would allow you to combust high-intensity exercise or activities, particularly strength training, at a higher level than you would without that additional store of creatine. So it is very much sitting at the lilt of the performance-enhancing ergogenic aid. But it's a stretch broader than that because we started to see that obviously we produce it in the brain as well. And it's massively important for energy production in the brain. So the brain is a phenomenally hungry energy organ.

8:48So the brain is combusting much of our daily energy. And the more creatine, the more it can deliver against its demands. So we're seeing an increase in cognitive performance in older individuals. So it starts to become the new frontier for reducing the cognitive decline associated with things like Alzheimer's and dementia. Creatine? Yep. Wow. Massive. learn something new on this podcast every day that is quite literally why i'm here but you know but the principle being the principle being it's went from it was like it was a gym monsters fuel right so when you probably came across creatine it would be weight training i was told i remember hearing about creatine for the first time it's the kind of thing that like you'd scoop into your protein shake and your mum would think you're on drugs type thing you know i remember days when my mum would think that like a protein shake was like drugs you know like that you're taking something you shouldn't be taking.

9:38Everything was a steroid. Yeah, everyone was like, hey, why do you eat these things? You know, like, it's protein, mum, it's good for you, right? Like, you know, nowadays, it's, you know, I don't think anyone's going to argue that protein's bad for you. But creatine was one of those things where, you know, it was frowned upon, I think, initially. I was told it was for water retention, so, like, that your body would retain additional water, which was good for inflammation and muscle growth. Really good. I think is what I was told. Yeah, that's good. Is that accurate? You have wise people around you.

10:12So that is very true. So actually, that's one of the main reasons people sometimes lilt away from creatine, that you will gain weight. What you will gain is lean tissue. So there's quite a strong correlation. Lean tissue is that part of me that isn't body fat. Hang on a sec. So are the gains of creatine worth it if you are, say, a runner looking to be a little bit more slender? Potentially not. In terms of, that's a really good argument, right? It's so interesting, not to make everything about me, but it is our show, so we may as well as we're here.

10:52I'm not actively trying to lose weight, but with my running volume, I would imagine that I would have lost a lot more weight than I have. Quite heavy at the moment. You even noticed that I look... I did, flattered by your breath. No, but I'm like, I'm lifting weights. I am probably bigger than I was before. The only thing that I am taking is creatine regularly. I don't even take protein shakes. I lift, I run, I take creatine religiously, and then I take, you know, heights and whatever, like normal shit, like, you know, magnesium to sleep, heights, multivitamins. But like, I'd be interested in losing five kilos.

11:37Yes. Is creatine preventing that? It will store more water, for sure. The challenge there is to what value is that water? Plus, it will lean to that increase in lean tissue and you have got to deliver oxygen to those two kilograms of lean tissue. Imagine you put two kgs of lean tissue on, that will decrease your vo2 max the volume of oxygen available by two extra mouths that you have to feed and of course you know you know in the field you're in the elite you know 245 marathon runners do not generally have significant excessive musculature it's not it's not done that often i'm running in a certain way just thinking oh you know over the course of this marathon block I'll lose eight kilos.

12:21So I don't need to worry about diet or whatever. The training will look after that because I'm not gorging on grub either, right? I'm just like, I'm eating healthily and stuff. But I do kind of like look in the mirror and think, I'm not losing any weight at all, but I'm running 90K a week. It will, to the broader, you will still lose weight if you go into a consistent calorie deficit. So it doesn't matter whether you're on creatine or not. I wouldn't say I'm on calorie deficit. Well, you aren't because you're not losing weight. and the science would be outside of very extraordinary circumstances.

12:53If you eat less than calories, than the calories you burn, over time you'll lose weight. Creatine will make you store more water. You would look at your training and go, right, of course to run a marathon, how likely is it I need a fuel that gives me that absolute ability to combust maximal energy for 10 seconds? You don't need it unless you end up, you know, 200 meters from the finish line at 2 minutes 45, you know, clicking away. You shouldn't even get to LT2. Your body should be able to process the lactic acid that it creates all throughout a marathon. 100%. You're not going to anaerobic glycolysis.

13:26And this is an anaerobic pathway, which means this is combusting energy without the presence of oxygen. So I really shouldn't be taking creatine. Apart from, it would probably serve real value in some of your either stride sessions. I mean, you're in an athletic sphere. Who would use it most? Of course, it's a 100-meter sprinter. It's a high jumper. It's a long jumper. but if you're doing 200 meter repeats or you're doing 400 meter repeats or 800 meter repeats you'll be using creatine in that you won't be using much of it over to our 45 aerobic event so the question is do i use the creatine to allow me to get the training adaptation and then i come off it in time to lose the water lose the extra weight in and actually that would be a logical way to play it i want the creatine to help me train strength which is where it's absolutely unequivocally useful to lay down the tissue that allows me to go through this training block without getting injured but when it really comes down to it you won't be pulling on those creatine stores significantly over the course of a of an extended event like 2045 it won't be a main fuel for you is that a revelation yeah sort of well also also you can't like could it be dosage can you have like a little bit of creatine yeah i mean most of the studies you can have too much Well, you have first-hand knowledge of such things.

14:44Yeah, just letting everyone know, and I'll try not to get graphic, but if you are taking creatine, do try to get the dosage correct. And I think it might vary from person to person, or when you buy a product, it will give you a guidance of the dosage on the back of pack, or even potentially the front of pack. Who cares? It'll be on the pack somewhere. It doesn't matter if it's front or back. But there will be guidelines. I accidentally was taking quite a lot of creatine. How much? I was taking 36 grams or there or thereabouts a day every morning. So just for the listeners, the normal dosage is three to five grams daily.

15:31So you're on a 10x. Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, I love a good 10x, generally speaking. but 10x of creatine resulted in gut issues. That would be something that's quite common. Quite aggressive, bad gut issues. And by the way, the only reason, I was experiencing problems with my movement, should we say, my bowel movements. please do say yeah I had diarrhea and lots of it and I mean like you know just sorry listeners I'm just trying to I'm trying to warn I'm trying to make sure this doesn't happen to other people but like you know it was you know call it maybe 10 times before lunch type thing you know it was like all morning like you know and I was struggling with it you know and I didn't really know what the cause of it was and I was chat GPTing you know I'm doing all this running this is this kind of stuff I'm eating, you know, why am I on the bog all the time?

16:41Yeah.

16:45Losing weight can feel like a roller coaster, full of ups, downs, and being thrown for loops, like when someone brings donuts into the office, or your kids' dino nuggets start giving you that look again. That's why there's Noom. They combine GLP-1s to quiet the food noise with healthy habits that help you keep it quiet, even if you get off the meds. Their program is designed to make weight loss a smooth ride, helping you understand what drives you, so you can build better habits to not just lose weight, but keep it off. Noom. Lose for keeps. Get started at noom.com. Not all customers will clinically qualify for medications.

17:23Individual results may vary. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. New school year, new podcast obsession. Hit play on this. Did you know there are 3 ,000 different names for colors in the dictionary? Or that leprechauns were once called shoemakers? Those are the kinds of things I love talking about on the Grammar Girl podcast. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and I've been hosting Grammar Girl for 20 years now. Can you believe it? On Tuesdays, I share quick tips to clean up your writing, and stories about language you'll want to text to a friend, like the word recipe first referred to a list of medications you'd get from a doctor.

18:02And on Thursdays, I sit down with authors, freelancers, and the people who actually make the dictionaries and style books we all argue about. Find Grammar Girl on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And give it a follow so you don't miss an episode. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Class is always in session at acast.com.

18:32and and uh and this thing uh eventually churned out you know what supplements are you taking i said you know i'm taking creatine blah blah and they were like how much creatine are you taking i thought i was taking the the recommended dose because it kind of looked it didn't look like much it was a spoonful right like a a tablespoonful if you will um and you know i i thought that might be about five grams, you know, five, six, seven grams, maybe. And then one morning I was baking, well, not baking, I was making pancakes for the kids. And I had a bowl all zeroed out on the scales to begin the process of making the pancakes.

19:14And then I thought to myself, I'll just weigh that creatine whilst I'm here, because it's here at my knees. So I took it out and I took the scoop, the spoonful, and I put it in 36 grams. And I thought, oh, that's a lot more than I should be taking. And I'd been taking that every day for, call it, two weeks, and it had taken a little while for it to catch up. But then, whoa, mass problema. Yeah, like, you know, like kind of dangerous to leave the house type of thing. You know, you never know where you might have to go. No. No, no problem. And then I chat-C-P-T'd, you know, I've been taking 36 around, you know, 36 to 40, call it, grams of creatine every morning for weeks.

20:00You know, what would be the most common side effect of that? And it literally said, diarrhea. Yeah, yeah. That will, like, screw you up. And I thought, great. It's a vital lesson. I should probably stop doing that. And then I also was quite bloated at the time. I didn't feel very comfortable. And look, it turns out, too much of a good thing. too much of anything too much of any good thing I think we learnt something crucial there that you you eat with a serving spoon because that is a big old that's a big old dosage yeah yeah not like the type of thing you'd use to like put a lasagna out for the family I'm talking about like a like a tablespoon not a what are the different kinds of spoons not a teaspoon a tablespoon yeah teaspoon's a little spoon I still don't think a tablespoon would be 36 you are it's a heaped yeah no it was a heaped tablespoon yeah yeah so like it would say It's a ladle.

20:47A ladle of creatine. A ladle, yeah. It would say, fists full of creatine. It would say that the bag should last, you know, like several weeks and it was not, you know. I kept having to order it. The dosage does matter. And actually in the old days of creatine, we wanted to get your muscle stores up quickly. And so people did do a loading dose where they do 20 grams a day. They do four lots of five grams, five days in a row. Then they go to the maintenance dose. And actually a series of studies said you don't really need to do that. But if I urgently needed to lay down some tissue, increase strength, if I urgently wanted to retain more water, and that water, interestingly with creatine, goes intramuscular fairly quickly.

21:30So it's not always the same as bloating, where it's sort of sitting around your abdomen or sitting under your skin. It will go into the muscles, so it does give people a slight bigger pump, potentially. So the water storage from creatine is going to be less visibly detrimental than maybe water storage from other sources, too much sodium or other things like that. So I think the dosage isn't that crazy, but one of the citations is it could give gastrointestinal distress, which for some people's diarrhea, for some people it's going to be constipation. Distress is a light way of putting it, I think.

22:04Distress was the least of my worries. GI trauma. But it is an amazingly safe supplement. Actually, it's generally cited as the most researched supplement in the world, which has meant there aren't the big scary stuff that used to happen with it. So people are worried about water retention. That is true. You will retain some water, which you'll lose as those stores go down. So if you stop taking it, is it, you know, eight, ten days when it starts to diminish out? Eight, ten days. It's got to race tomorrow morning. Well, the more you burn through it, if you do some sprints, you know, and actually, you're doing a 5K tomorrow morning.

22:34So that will, you know, certainly in periods, you will burn through some of it. You will burn through some of your stores. without a shout out. I'm interested to, I love Crittin, but I'm interested in just giving it a break for a while and seeing what it does to my physique. Because to be honest, I don't need a bigger pump. Pump.

22:52You don't? No, I don't need a bigger pump. No, no, to be honest, my pump is fine. But also if your strength, you know, we talked about strength training for runners. If your strength is where it needs to be, if your lean tissue is where it needs to be, if you do not need to combust high intensity exercise over blocks of time between, you know, 20 seconds and two minutes, so you're not doing 200, 400, 800 repeats, then it's probably of limited value. Apart from the fact we're starting to say it's a benefit to things like inflammation, which we've recently done an episode on. And it might suppress unnecessary system-wide inflammation.

23:24Plus, it's going to support brain energy, so your cognition. And what's interesting about a marathon is, again, when you run out of gas on a marathon, it's not because you have run out of glycogen or fat. it's partly because your body's signals of fatigue are increasingly messaging you. Yeah, but you could just cane some creatine like before the marathon, right? We won't increase your cellular stores by much. So it takes a while to build up that increased level. To get sort of 30 % up on baseline, you're going to need to do it for several weeks beforehand. But it might, so this is relevant to you, it might diminish that symptom of fatigue.

23:59So it might play a role in cognitively decreasing your sensation of fatigue. Might, might, might. so you're not just taking it for strength and power you're also potentially taking it for inflammation which could be part of your better recovery you might be taking it partly for your brain to help you manage the symptom of fatigue during the race and you might be taking it because in 50 years time you want to still be as witty and as sharp as you are now and it may contribute to that as well so it's not i think it's moving out of being a strength and power supplement to being a potentially a longevity i know you love longevity a longevity and cognitive longevity and equally particularly prevalent for perimenopausal menopausal females.

24:40Is Brian Johnson's gut still eating itself? Last time I checked. Yeah. I'm not laughing at Brian Johnson's autoimmune disorder, just for the record. I'm laughing at you bringing it up in such a magnificent way. Is it still easy? We needn't talk longevity. When it's my time, it's my time. Wheel me off a cliff type thing. Yeah, I just think it's... We're going to get to longevity at some point and we'll hack this out. but for perimenopausal menopausal females that's a group who wouldn't have historically been associated with creatine because it was you know it was gym bros and and traps and lats and you know upper body and they're coming out of nowhere though well you'll be like i have like like listen leave this in or take it out or whatever but like in the gym this morning right i took my shirt off at like in the changing room and i'm like i have like bulked up out of nowhere right I'm heavier.

25:34I have bigger shoulders. I have bigger lats. It was post-session, right? So I've just lifted a load of weights, right? So obviously I'm like blown up. But I like looked like I'm trying to be a bodybuilder or something. And I looked at it and I was like, the fuck is going on? There'll be a lot of very sad people listening to this who are working so hard together. A lot of people are buying creatine. Well, I think if creatine is doing this and you're trying to look big in the gym, then there is no better thing. Get your hands on it. Plus your protein, plus your training quality, plus your sleep, plus your testosterone.

26:10So all of these things are the fuel for... I'm not taking testosterone. Oh, you mean just natural testosterone? Natural testosterone. Thank you. Which is largely driven by quality diet, quality sleep, quality stress management. So all the things that you do do very well. Last night I ate a lasagna for six people. So for the first time... I'm joking.

26:30A really interesting group is this perimenopausal group. So perimenopause, two to 10 years where a biological female's cycle is changing and they're losing estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. And a huge part of that is the loss of muscle mass. And a huge part of that is the loss of strength, which follows those two things. And that again, even more so potentially into the full menopause where the menstrual cycle has ceased. And that audience you will see now being very targeted with creatine because that loss of strength, loss of muscle is a huge feature in why they, might struggle with controlling blood glucose levels, why they might struggle with, again, the level of activity they need to offset some of the loss of those hormones with the slowing or what they would often describe as brain fog, this sort of reduction in cognitive clarity directly associated with diminishing levels of those vital hormones.

27:20So you take a biological female who's had all these hormones that no longer either exist or at the same level, and creatine might offset some of that damage that's been done. So I think the audience it's probably got the biggest growth opportunity for is that particular audience. That's good to know if we're launching a creatine business. Well, I think everyone's launched one. And actually creatine has got to the point where it's a relatively simple supplement, right? So it's synthetically made. So despite the fact I can only find it in animal products, it can be manufactured. So vegans can take creatine.

27:52It's very hard for a vegan diet to bring creatine at those additional levels in. But it's quite a crowded marketplace. Do you see the whole shenanigans with the creatine gummies that was called out by the PT influencer, James Smith? Yeah, the Newtonic ones. Yeah, so Newtonic, he's, I think, doing a range, but he was originally going to invest in a gummies brand, and then he sent them off for third-party testing, and they claimed, I think, three grams, maybe even five grams per gummy, and there was something like 0.2 grams or 0.3. So it raised this idea, again, of efficacy. And what you've got is it's not particularly tasty.

28:27the, I can taste creatine when I take it in a drink. It's bitter. It's a bit, it's not a, it's not a great flavor and no one's really cracked a really flavored version. So the gummies suits really well, but to get five grams of powder into a sweet, it's going to taste like creatine. It almost has to. So the creatine gummies world is sort of driven as a way of people getting this without having to drop it into a shake or put it into a, into a drink and any friction to any behavior gets in the way of millions of people doing it. So we haven't quite got the perfect delivery mechanism, but there's a busy marketplace of creatine and some very good providers using third-party tested, you know, really clean versions.

29:03So it wouldn't be my first business venture. What would you say, that's good to know. What would you say, what would you say is the, if you, if you had to rank what it does for you, kind of, you know, one to three, like what is, what is the first thing you will notice if you start to take creatine and then just go down the list? One, preservation of strength. Strength is separate to lean tissue. You know, my ability to be strong is my ability to still be able to lift a child, to be able to put a suitcase above my head on the airplane, to be able to get out of the house, to be able to go from sit to stand.

29:43Very relevant in aging. The minute I can't get myself to upright, the minute I'm capable on requiring other people. So retaining strength, not just the athletic strength, but life strength, retaining skeletal muscle mass and lean tissue, absolutely would be my sort of number two. So sorry to interrupt you. So is creating really more importance kind of later in life? It's a great question. It's probably got a greater value exchange, unless you are doing activities that take you to exertion in that five to 12 second window, which would be the last few reps of a quality strength training program.

30:19Interestingly, to replenish your sort of creatine capability, it's going to take maybe three to five minutes. So if you do something explosive, that's why when you do real strength workouts, you have a longer gap between sets than if you do sort of, you know, more muscle endurance type workouts. And as a runner, so this is more to do with sprinting than anything else. It's sprinting, lifting. So even you were talking about kind of 400 meter, 800 meter repeats. repeats even those the word repeat means you're doing several of them yep so you're not going full tilt even then so you know if i go to the track and my fastest speed work yeah will be 400 meter repeats yeah but i'm not gunning 400 meters as fast as i can that would be 400 meters so it's kind of you're so it's not even really applicable then no it is you would still use most of it then and and you would use what are you using if you don't take creatine so if i'm not mistaken, Stephen Scullion doesn't take creatine, but he runs a 209 marathon and his 400 meter repeats would blow your mind.

31:19Absolutely right. So he'll be running his own internal stores of creatine. And then when they run out, he'll be using glycogen, which will come at the cost of lactic acid and hydrogen ions. So you're on, remember, we are the Prius. We used that example before. We can run on a clean fuel. Well, actually, it's a bad analogy in this case, because Prius is low intensity. We use oxygen and we use fat and we can go forever. That's the electric Prius version. before the Prius there is the ability to go full 100 % 100 miles an hour using the cleanest fuel so even before we use fat and oxygen we have already ready-made energy in our cells and that's ATP and phosphocreatine and effectively if you have more of that store you will run on the cleanest fuel for longer before you go to the dirty fuels and and here you end up with if you were looking at how hard Stephen runs those sets, there's an argument that he would experience less fatigue or less fallout from those if he had 30 % more creatine stores in his muscle tissue.

32:18There's a detriment to that, that he might then gain two kilograms of mass. And he's worked that out from a scientific basis that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. But the pure science of it would be if you are combusting anything in a high intensity bracket, the more creatine you have available in your stores, the less you'll run into dirty fuels, the better the performance and potentially the better the recovery. Muy interesante. Yeah, so, and no one's, you know, it's in the running community. What's the template? What's the right way to go? It's an unknown. I think in the longevity world that I'm living in quite a lot, there's an awful lot of brain.

32:51There's an awful lot of preserving muscle mass, preserving strength. In the strength and athletic community, it's, you know, the world's most researched ergogenic aid. In the running community, it's a great debate. I'll be fascinated what the listeners are doing with it, whether they've noticed, are they storing more water? Did they lose weight? Did they bloat? Did they grow massive lats? Just what's going on out there? Because, you know, it's not historically been a runner's fuel in the same way as other, you know, electrolytes, gels, carbohydrates are the mainstay of running. Creatine, you know, it would need potentially a better sports scientist than I to work out perfect dosages for the runner.

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34:58I'm going to stop taking creatine for the next I don't know, month and see if it has a dramatic impact on my weight loss Love it Make sure So we need to get you a body composition analysis So we need to do a body fat An in-reach thing So we can do an in-body We'll be able to do that totally And that will do a bioelectrical impedance In there we'll get your water We'll get your skeletal muscle mass We'll get your fat mass and visceral fat. And what we'll be interested then is as you come off the creatine, do we see a retention of the skeletal muscle mass and a loss of water volume? Do we see water volume and skeletal muscle mass?

35:33Do we see fat? But weight loss is never the goal. The right tissue recomposition is what we're interested in. So as long as we do an in-body before and we can do one thereafter, then it's a much more interesting story to tell. So let's do that. If somebody listening to this now is considering taking creatine in the correct dosage, vital. What would you advise them? I think the individual's tolerance, your gastrointestinal piece is really relevant. If you don't feel good on it, then that's often a marker. Most people, that goes away. Just caveat as well, people often worried about kidneys and creatine.

36:10And that's when we break down creatine, we have an increased level of a blood parameter called creatinine. but that's a it's a false positive the creatinine from having too much creatine is not kidney damage so the same marker in your bloods would would suggest your kidneys are in under threat but that's not the case so there's a real challenge with getting away with taking creatine and going to your gp regular running regular labs that there'll be a false positive in there so that's worth mentioning for the benefit side i would say it's pretty simple do you want to be able to execute more high intensity exercise and and be able to do that at a slightly prolonged basis with slightly more strength, slightly more power?

36:46If that's of interest to you, that's worth pursuing. Are you interested in gaining a bit of lean tissue and potentially not worried about gaining weight? That would be relevant. And are you interested in cognitive speed and brain health moving forward? Would that also then be relevant to you? And if you're happy with all those three things and there's no real benefit to those, then maybe it's not the supplement of choice. But I think most people would probably connect with one of those three, if not, in my case, all three. Oli as ever I'm blown away by your wealth of knowledge and understanding of scientific matters if you too enjoy Oli's knowledge and of course our back and forth of matters such as creatine and other incredible topics then we will catch you next week for a brand new episode of Untapped The Extra Mile and we look forward to it