The REAL Reason Doctors DON'T Prescribe Creatine

0:00 And when we start getting the the brain benefits up at this end, >> Right. >> what are those brain benefits that they were recorded in the studies? Is it I'm going to feel like I slept or is it something more internal? >> You likely won't feel anything. >> Oh, okay. >> However, when you get to task the next day, so for example, you're up all night, you take a high dose creatine, then you have to go write the final or the midterm or you can't remember. It's those things when your memory and and and doing puzzles or basic task. Or what about a Stroop test? >> What's a Stroop test? >> So, I'm going to get you to do this. I apologize in advance. >> Uh-huh. >> It's one of the most fatiguing things that you can do and it was one of the most robust studies to show the efficacy behind creatine. So, all I simply want you to do is you can see that there's words and then corresponding letters,

0:45 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 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 took. >> [laughter] >> I don't think I had creatine today. >> Okay. Green red yellow green blue black orange red

1:31 blue, green blue pink black gray yellow red blue green >> [clears throat] >> black. >> There you go, see? >> 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 MCAT 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 g of creatine before they did the test and then after, and it really improved their ability with speed and cognition there. So, it's just a simple example to show, "Wow, our brain is seeing one thing. We got to maintain memory and cognition, and creatine can

2:17 help maintain some of those factors." So, you won't feel anything, but performance of activities like that come into play. >> Do you remember how much it improved their performance on the Stroop test? >> 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? You know, I think as a >> [clears throat] >> as a podcaster who sometimes sits here for many, many hours interviewing people on a range of subjects, I'm always trying to find if there's any way that I can perform better mentally. >> 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, uh concussion. When those populations are evident, one of the biggest factors is that they have reduced

3:02 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 Stroop test. Like, I'm going to find you tomorrow, 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, a really high-stress demand, uh you know, stuck in traffic for 2 hours, these all add up, and it's a cascade of stressors that unfortunately most people go through. And now that we have a nutrient that is being made in the brain, but during times of stress, it likely needs a little bit of help. >> For the last couple of years, I've been

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4:34 has growth tools that other hosting platforms don't have. So, podcasters that are using Flight Cast have this unfair advantage. So, go to flightcast.com/doac now. Of all the things I thought would ever turn up on my desk, a red light toothbrush was not one of them. Here we are. This is made by our sponsor Bon Charge, and you'll probably know of their red light face mask and their infrared sauna blanket, because I use them religiously and I've spoken about them on this podcast before. But, their toothbrush is new to me. I was sent one of these a few weeks ago, and ever since then I've been using it religiously because I love their products. And this is the first toothbrush that combines both red light and near infrared light with sonic cleaning at the same time. The same red light technology that's

5:20 used for skin and inflammation is now built into a device you already know so well. And I'm using it at least two times a day at the moment to clean my teeth. It's great for your gums, for stimulating gum circulation, and for soreness. And the best part is, it's not an extra thing to add to your routine. It just replaces your current toothbrush. If you give it a try, you'll get 20% off at boncharge.com/doac. And also, you'll get free shipping and a 1-year warranty. That's bondcharge.com/doac. >> What about inflammation in the body? So, what is inflammation? And is there a link between creatine supplementation and inflammation? >> There is. So, unfortunately, I'm 49. So, at the age of 40, I have this systemic inflammation that went up. And we all

6:06 know this because around the age of 30, you know, you can work out and nothing hurts and then all of a sudden you wake up one day when you're in your 40s and 50s and things hurt. So, systemic inflammation is happening all the time and unfortunately, it accelerates aging. We're more sore more often and it can lead to a lot of arthritis or or joint pain and things like that. Creatine does have anti-inflammatory effects, but a big distinction. Creatine is [snorts] 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 Ironman, triathlon, things like that, those individuals who took creatine 20 g a day for 5 days beforehand, they had reductions in

6:53 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 g a day for 8 weeks did increase brain creatine levels in Alzheimer's patients and it seemed to improve measures of memory and cognition there as well. So, again, using the same mechanisms. It decreases inflammation, it maintains brain bioenergetics, and it might actually have a neuroprotection effect as well. There's evidence in cell

7:38 cultures and in rodents that there's some lines there, but in humans we're still in a 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 8-week trial on Alzheimer's patients that also showed modest muscle gains and a 1.9 kg increase in hand grip strength. Which is a key predictor of survival in dementia patients. And which was a landmark study of 20 Alzheimer's patients found that taking 20 g of creatine daily for 8 weeks increased brain creatine levels by 11% and significantly improved the cognitive test scores they showed as the Journal of Psychiatry and Brain Science. >> And that one's really exciting and I think more future studies will come out. The limitation with those is that there was no placebo to compare to, but again, it's just showing that yes, creatine can be used as an effective adjunct, yeah.

8:25 >> 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. Creatine by itself has never been shown to be a standalone, but with SSRIs or cognitive behavioral therapy or methamphetamine use in populations under medical supervision, the addition of creatine seemed to improve symptoms and it's likely going back to all the ones we've already talked about where it improves bioenergetics, it improves neuro 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

9:12 evidence and hope that creatine one day will be used as a treatment in the toolbox for a lot of these clinical issues. PTSD also comes to my mind. >> There was a study in Gatorade Sports Science Institute which PubMed published that said it 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 and 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 bioenergetic level and creatine levels are decreasing. >> There's another impairment that said in a clinical trial of women with major depression adding 5 g of creatine to

9:59 their daily antidepressant >> Yes. >> doubled their remission rate over 8 weeks. >> That's correct, yes. And that uh group is from uh Perica Renshaw's group out of Utah. Uh they do great work. Our hope, and I'm collaborating uh 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 uh animal-based, so seafood and red meat. Um you know, herring is going to have one of the highest concentrations, uh salmon, uh as well as beef. Uh very small amounts in milk and dairy, so you'd have to drink all the the milk in the Jersey cow to get a sufficient amount. So, uh it definitely comes down to animal-based flesh yeah. >> There's some other studies that I that I

10:44 love that I I think I've had you talk about before. One of them was um young athletes who took 5 g of creatine daily slept an average of 1 hour longer >> Yes. >> on training days. >> Yeah, we did that study a few years ago in uh uh young biological females who were healthy, and on the days that they trained and took creatine, this is interesting because they actually slept an hour longer uh compared to the 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 a study that needs to be replicated in males as well to see can creatine

11:31 improve sleep quantity, and 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 a an effect. I 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. >> Well, what do you mean by that? >> So, if you think of the toolbox when it comes to a plan, whenever you need to go fix things, you simply say, "Where's my toolbox?" You can't do anything without a plan. And the way I like to preface this is the most popular tool in anybody's toolbox is the hammer. Now,

12:16 from a lifestyle perspective, what do you think the hammer represents? What would you decide that the hammer represents? >> Um as in like a >> Is it weight training? Is it cardio? Is it creatine? Is it protein? Is it sleep? >> Sleep. >> Okay. So, I say weight training is going to be the hammer. >> 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." Now, remember, we have a nice big toolbox. I like to think of creatine as the multifactorial wrench or screwdriver. Because creatine has profound benefits for muscle, a little bit for bone, of

13:01 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. I 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 actually improve VO2 max if done correctly, and you don't need a lot of it. So, I

13:46 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? >> Yeah, I think one of the biggest myths is that you always need to lift heavy to put on muscle mass. And world-renowned [clears throat] researchers in this area have clearly shown now that lighter weights if performed to a lot of effort almost to 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

14:33 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 and healthier. But the downfall with cardiovascular exercise, it doesn't stimulate strength or the musculoskeletal system as much as we we'd 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 musculoskeletal benefits. So, if I was to tell anybody if there's one form of exercise to do, it's 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

15:18 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 cuz the majority of the population doesn't do any. >> And how how much how often do you think? >> 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're given 150 and we

16:05 say, you know, if you can do 21 minutes or 22 minutes a day for 7 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 2 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. So, 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 the x-axis or the y-axis, and then you're having all

16:51 the catastrophic effects as we get older. So, unfortunately, you know, 20 and 30 looks great. >> When you're 20 and 40 years old. >> When you're 20 and 40 years old or all the way from 22 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 1% per year after the age of 40. >> Even if you're training? >> So, if you're training, you're maintaining that. So, this is the average sedentary inactive population. You lose strength at about 1. or 1 to 3% even faster. Now, if we were to maintain resistance training, that muscle mass would plateau.

17:37 So, I can't stress this enough. Although we focus 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. >> Can you not just do 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

18:22 nutrition. They go hand in hand all throughout lifespan. You got to have both. >> And on the subject of protein, you're saying that can when combined with creatine, it's a force multiplier. >> It's it's a force multiplier when it comes to performance and lean tissue mass. So, there's been a few studies when you combine a high-quality protein with creatine, they have been shown to increase lean tissue mass and muscle performance a little bit more than each alone yeah. >> Does the average person get protein through their diet? >> You know, I think nowadays we do and and I think this is overhyped as well. I think if you're getting about 1.2 to 1.6 g per kilogram. So, you know, if you're 70 kg, that's going to be on average about 84 to about 115 g of protein. I think we're so conscious now of the health benefits of protein that most people are. I think if you're training really intensely five, six days a week

19:08 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. >> If you love the Darvis CEO brand and you watch this channel, please do me a huge favor. Become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the subscribe button. It helps us tremendously and the bigger the channel gets, the bigger the guests.