How a Creatine Supplement May Boost Your Muscle And Mind

You are listening to Spot On, a health and wellness podcast that breaks through the latest media headlines to provide you with accurate and usable information that is, well, spot on, spot on to meet your needs. I am your host, Dr. Joan Salju Blake, a nutrition professor at Boston University, and the author of the college textbook called Nutrition and You, which is used in colleges across the United States and abroad. I want to thank you so much for listening to Spot On, and I hope that you subscribe to it so that you don't miss any of our episodes. And again, can you kindly follow me on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook at Joan Salju Blake. Hello Spot On listeners and viewers. Today we're going to talk about this supplement called Creatine. And you may have heard about creatine for people that are athletes or fitness enthusiasts. But what you know now that there's much, much more behind this based on science. In fact, the creatine supplement market in 2024 was estimated to reach about a billion dollars. But by 2030, it's expected to reach over four billion dollars. So there's got to be something more to just them for athletes. So today we're going to get to the bottom of that and see if this supplement is something you may want to consider throughout your entire lifespan. Okay, so today, as I said in the introduction, we are going to learn about creatine and let me put tell you, I brought the guru of creatine here on the show today, is Dr. Jeffrey Stout. He's a PhD in professor and founding director for the School of Kinesiology and Reliabilitation Sciences at the University of Central Florida College of Health Professionals and Sciences. He is recognized as an international and international scholar in the field of kinesiology. And he's the world-leading researcher on creatine and other dietary supplements. Are you ready for this? Throughout his career, he has co-authored more than 300 peer review publications, 300 national and international presentations, nine books, 13 chapters, focused on nutrition, exercise, performance, and body composition in youth and older populations. So the first question I'm going to ask, I'm assuming you're taking creatine and I think you must be doing it for stamina because there's no wicked way you could do all that. That's a lot of books, a lot of presentations. That's a lot of help from colleagues. I know. There's no I in team. I get that. All right, Dr. Stout, I am so excited to talk to you about this because all I'm hearing about is creatine, creatine. And I knew from way back that athletes used it, people in the gym used it. But now it's kind of expanding to the lifespan. So first of all, can you tell our listeners and viewers what is creatine? Yeah, creatine is what we call an organic compound that's naturally occurs in the body. It's primarily found in the muscle tissue and in the brain and some other organs. And when you think of creatine, think of energy, it's the most important aspect of creatine is ensuring the supply of energy when the body needs it. Oh, great. So it's kind of like helps with fueling throughout your day, correct? That's correct. Can you get in the diet or do you have to take a supplement, can you get it in the diet? Yeah, actually our body naturally makes about 1 to 2 grams a day from considered non-essential amino acids. So we can get those in our diet and you can also get creatine in your diet from basically animal-based foods. Okay. I love both of those. That's great. All right. So we can get it in the diet and you said that you can get about a gram, did you say gram a day from the diet? Or did I read that from one of your five of the papers? No, that's correct. So an omnivore's diet typically eats about 1 to 2 grams a day. Now in, you know, giving body energy, I know athletes have been on this forever like in the 1980s. So for an athlete would use creatine, tell me how it might help in athletic performance. Yeah. So it's very important as part of muscle contraction process, right? So when our muscle contracts, we use something called ATP. It's the energy currency, right? So creatin, which is stored in the muscle as phospho creatin, it helps to regenerate ATP. ATP is used, it's broken down, but it's regenerated by phospho creatin. And so when it does that, it can maintain ATP sort of generation with the speed of contraction. So if you're like sprinting or you're lifting a heavy weight, you need a lot of ATP really, really fast. And the only thing that can help maintain ATP at that level is creatin. No kidding. So phospho creatin is again, that energy that's needed for explosive sort of movements is what it's primarily doing. Now if you don't need ATP that fast of a rate, then you can use carbohydrates or you can use fat. You know, as we sit here, our muscles are not doing much, so we don't need phospho creatin for that. So if you have somebody likes to go and you sprint real fast versus do, you know, a three, a five mile run at leisure, it's more important for the sprinting right now. That's right. That's right. Okay. Now I've read when it comes to athletes that it may go beyond just helping them energize or really give more energy to the workout, that it may help with post, you know, workouts and more importantly injury, can you, can you explain this? Yeah. So the amazing thing about creatin and some of the research, especially recently, is its ability to help recover muscle. So if you take creatin after you work out, usually it's with carbohydrate, there's been research to show that it helps replenish that lost energy. So not just creatin, but also carbohydrate, it helps accelerate its storage. And the other thing it helps in preventing sort of injury is preventing fatigue. So when you think of creatin, think of anti fatigue, think of energy. So fatigue is the cause of injury, it's the cause of wins and losses, it's the cause of many things, even cognitively. So the thing about creatin is it's always there as a fast energy resource to make sure that we do not fatigue before we're supposed to. He sounds like it's got to always be there. So yeah, okay, that's what we're going to get to, it has to always be there. And so, you know, I read your fabulous paper to which we're going to put up on the spot on Facebook page, or people that want to really dive more deeply into this. But you know, I've read that, you know, from your papers that it may actually help with concussions, can you explain that? So, you know, there's a couple of ways in which, you know, the thing amazing about the brain is that it's 2% of our body weight, but it represents, it takes up 20% of all the energy that we consume today, or we use it at it. And so ATP, again, is very important for neural transmission in the brain, and it happens again at a very high rate. Now under very stressful conditions, and one of those being like concussion, right? You get the occlusion of blood so you don't have oxygen available to create energy, which is another way to create energy, you have creatin. And creatin is that reservoir of energy to prevent potential damage or additional damage from the concussion. And so, the creatin we're finding out is extremely important for brain energy metabolism. It's that emergency reservoir of energy in case, under, especially under stressful events, like a concussion or a TBI, or it could be sleep deprivation. Mm-hmm. With a lot of us experience, you know, this is fascinating to me, because we're hearing so much about football players, professional football players and concussions, and long-term effects. And now, when I'm reading, it can go even going to, like, little league football, whatever you call that, you know, for children. Scary. Yeah, it is scary. This sounds like it could be a sort of a preventative thing after the game or, you know, to take, make sure you have enough creatin on board, I'm just pulling that out of the air. No, in fact, my kids participate in a contact sport, any contact sport, I would recommend they take creatin. Yeah, okay. It has a prophylactic, because there is really good animal data. Of course, we can't do this experiment on humans, but really good animal data is showing that it does protect and actually attenuate some of the damage that you may get from some sort of concussive sort of event. And this includes a tactical or people, you know, in the military. when an explosive device or whatever. These are things that can put a tremendous monstrous on the brain and having that creatin reservoir there is very important for protection. That's actually amazing. Now we're going to get to the supplements a little farther into this episode. But so after a workout, when you said, okay, you want to make sure you have enough creatine, are you saying like, and you want to have carbohydrates? So right away, you know, as a registered dietitian nutritionist, I'm thinking, okay, carbohydrates protein. So let me think after a workout, chocolate milk, without getting it or not enough animal, I would tell me. No, any kind of post workout drink and then if you throw in some creatin in there, I think it's very helpful. I'm a big fan of chocolate milk. If people know me, they know I'm a big fan of chocolate milk as a post workout drink. So yeah, but you know, there's so many things to talk about with creatin. I brought that up as an example. But hopefully, somebody had already been taking creatin so that you top off what we call your muscle stores and so that your recovery is much faster anyways. The additional benefit of adding creatin to a post workout drink is it helps sort of increase the absorption of those carbohydrates into the muscle for faster recovery. Wow, we're getting two for the price of one here. So you're saying that in the milk is not enough creatine by itself, but you would be adding some more. Is that? Oh yeah. Yeah, milk doesn't have enough. Right. When you say that animal, I went right to the cow. So, you know, okay, now I'm going to go roast beef sandwich. Okay. So then I get the bread and I get the roast beef. Okay, I got it. There you go. Gotcha. Okay. So athletes post-preposed. Wow, that's amazing. Now what I want to talk about when I'm finding out is through the lifespan. And you know, I'm getting to the point where you know, sarcopenia Dr. Stout is, you know, waving at me. Okay. So tell me, what are you learning about this? Well, sarcopenia is something I've been researching for about 20 years now. And you know, there's something called the brain muscle axis. If you've ever heard of that before, so when the brain and the muscle communicate with each other all the time. And one of the things that happens when you exercise is that you release these compounds out of your muscle called mild kinds. There's tons of different kinds of mild kinds, right? And one is called BDNF or brain-derived neurotropic sort of. It's a hormone that sort of is beneficial and helps neurons grow and and multiply, right? So when we exercise, those mild kinds of release, they go to the brain and it helps the brain. So a lot of times when we have a person who is over the age of 65 exercise, they get a cognitive benefit from it. And we've shown that in a few studies. So how does creatin play into this? Well, creatin actually enhances some of these mild kind releases. And if we can and we can reverse psychopenia, which you can, with the help of creatin making those muscles bigger, you get more of these very wonderful mild kinds being released on the muscle that are very cognitive enhancing. And so you get this communication going back and forth. And how creatin can help with that is again, helping with the muscle mass and the intensity of the workouts or being able to continue to do workouts. So that's one thing that I think that is kind of new that people are discovering about creatin and its potential benefits. But we've always known that about exercise being beneficial. You know, that's amazing because I'm like, here I go again. I'm from New Jersey, so I'm so sorry, but it's why I always shop in my head like I'm looking for bargains. So we're at creatine. I may be getting to for the price of one with psychopenia in that it will be potentially helping, you know, maintain lean muscle mass, but also cognitive. Oh, yes. So the other thing is is that as we age, again, I'm getting up there in the 60s, you know, and so you don't even look at for God's sake. Yeah, I'm almost 60. But we have this decline in creatin levels in our brain. And a lot of that has to do with our diet. We tend to eat less meat, you know, as we get older. And because of that, we're finding that people over the age of 65 tend to benefit more cognitively. And again, when the brain starts to decrease in creatin levels, it's stress. So, you know, you have also this, this, this, we call stress brain sort of complex where there's, you have the chronic effect, which is diet or aging, which reduces creatin. And then you have the acute stress. That's concussion we talked about or the lack of sleep, or it could be just social stress. Those stresses are actually primed for creatin supplementation. So that's that's when research asks over seeing the most benefit for people who have lower levels of creatin like vegans or vegetarians or people over the age of 65 or the acute stress of lack of sleep or whatever. That's where creatin does its magic when it comes to cognitive benefits. Well, that's amazing. Now, for the, you know, maintaining lean muscle mass, body mass, do you have to do the resistant exercises or, you know, this is not magically going to work by itself. Tell me. Yeah, I would love to say, yeah, just take this and you don't need to work out. But there's, there's so many good things about working out that, that, you know, creatin disamplifies, you know, again, creatin supply and that energy you need. But it's also doing some other good things as well as like, like I said, you know, trying to enhance the release of those mild kinds that are very beneficial to our cognitive state. How much resistance exercise do you have to do? And this is, this is really just about me. I just want to tell you this right now. Because I, I, you know, I love to walk and I'm, I must walk five, six miles a day. But I, I have tried to lift those weights. I have tried the bands. I have tried. And I just, so just tell me again, how much resistance exercise do I need to do? You know, this is a question that even as researchers were asking, because there's a lot of people like you, like, you know, and so far, the best method is having a personal trainer. And I know, I know, but if, you know, we always have this thing, if you can do once a week, it's good. And if you could twice a week, it's great. So you don't have to be a bodybuilder in train with weights every day. You know, I, there's times where I'll go for weeks where I only workout once a week with weights. Most of the time, I'll just do some sort of aerobic activity or walk like you, like you do. But it is so important to lift weights because when I say lift weights, to do resistance exercise, which doesn't always mean lifting weights, you know, you can do pushups and setups and those kind of things. But muscle mass is so important. And it's directly related to our mortality. So we want to keep as much of that as we can. And the only way to really do that is through resistance exercise. Once again, you're right. And, and, you know, when I love that, what you just said is really spot on because everybody comes in with their own personal history and, you know, back pain, whatever. So you want to get right, you know, somebody who understands this personal trainer something to tell you how to do it correctly because I imagine you do it incorrectly and then we got another problem. But that doesn't mean that you have to have a personal trainer rest your life. Maybe you can get a personal trainer with a buddy and then you and the buddy just kind of make sure each of you do it twice. So wait, you know what I mean? I'm trying to cut some corners here, but I agree. Get advice because you could really do something silly that's not going to work when you're lifting weights. That's right. And you don't have to, you don't have to do these crazy lifts. I mean, they can be a little circuit that just one exercise on a machine weight that just gets every muscle group in your body. You know, it doesn't take much to stimulate the muscle. You know, it's very least maintained itself. I have to do it. There's no getting around it. I keep on waiting for someone to say, nah, you don't need it, but no one's telling me that, right? Oh gosh, you know what I want to talk to you a little bit about because, you know, these anti obesity medications, particularly the GLP ones where people are, you know, many, many people are taking. We're seeing that when you're losing weight, well, actually, when you're losing weight any time, you're going to lose body mass. But on these GLP ones, especially if you're losing quickly, so I'm saying to myself when I was reading your paper last night, gee, with those on GLP ones, benefit, we're taking creatine. What do you think? Oh, absolutely. Anytime you're losing weight, you're going to lose some muscle mass. Right. And to help keep some of that muscle mass, nothing like a nitrogenous compound like creatine, to help maintain some of your muscle, but you still have to exercise. Right, right. The thing that's scary, people. go on those drugs is they don't exercise and exercise will help prevent some of the negative aspects of losing weight. And sometimes there's no doubt that those drugs are helping people lose weight and weight itself is associated with all kinds of cardiovascular issues and stuff like that. So it's great that they're losing weight but I always want people to try and maintain as much of their muscles as they can and adding creatinine to your diet among other things is very important when going on something like that. You know last season we did a whole episode with Dr. Jim Hill about these GLP1 so anybody that wants to learn more about it or review that can go to last season and listen to that on the spot on podcast here. I want to know here I go it's all about me. So what's the story with creatine and skin health? Well I know there's been some research on topical and I was trying to think of well how can it help you know with by consuming it and the only thing I can think of is that it would help hydrate. So one of the things that creatinine will do is it pulls in water that's actually one of the side effects right so you gain a little bit of weight when you load with creatinine not necessarily when you just take a single dose a day and that hyper hydrates you. So that could have a positive impact on your skin as well but I think there's more research and needs to be done with with the skin. You think the cosmetic industry you know would just love another thing so yes well stay tuned to that. You know I open the saying and the essential saying you know how you know this creatine supplement market is predicted to go over 4 billion by 2030. If it goes into anti-aging like forget it I won't be able to find it you know all right this is what this is what I want to know here so if you know one was to take it this you know just you got to understand this how much and whatever so give us some idea I've had to do this. So there are several ways you can do this and it depends on what you're taking it for one is I've taken creatinine since 1993 and but I just take one serving a day and that serving can be three to five grams a day it could be in your post walking shake it can be just one serving in the morning whatever you want and even if you have a diet that's low so you naturally have low creatinine levels it will still it will take some time but if you're taking in five grams a day you'll your muscles will be fully loaded within 30 days that's what research shows us so you don't have to take 20 grams a day the other way if you want to saturate your muscles right away and usually athletes will do this is it'll take 20 grams a day so it's five grams four times a day and usually you dissolve it in some sort of water juice or protein shake or whatever you want to put it when it was first study actually was in hot tea but those are two different ways now if you know that you're about ready to compete or do something where you're going to not get very much sleep you can use it as a prophylactic and you could take like 10 to 15 grams before you go out to do something so there's some people that will take it if they're traveling to Europe to compete and you know sort of because your brain's going to be stressed because your your whole system sort of out of whack right so that stresses the brain out you know so typically though I always recommend just one serving a day and you said five grams of it is it a powder or a capsule because I was looking you can get it in either form yeah I think powder is probably easier because that's a lot of capsules if you oh yeah I imagine yeah so okay in my morning coffee I'm going to put this in I mean this is something you could do like that yeah yep yep you can put it in your coffee and and you know just make sure that it's a good brand yeah that's my next question yeah out here you go and there's there's a trademark there's a lot of different manufacturing plants over the world and probably the best one is the trademark create pure and and always go with creatin monohydrate okay okay the monohydrate 95% of all the research done and we're talking tens of thousands of humans studies have been done with creatin monohydrate there's a lot of other uh warms out there is a creatin hydrochloride creatin whatever those are kind of gimmicky and they're trying to say that they absorb more well creatin monohydrate absorbs 100 oh when they say it absorbs greater than creatin monohydrate than so and also creatin monohydrates the cheapest yes you know it's funny you said that because I went on did my did due diligence and I love consumer labs and my consumer labs does that people never use it it kind of makes sure tells you which is the you know the supplement that is the purist doesn't have anything in it you don't want but the cheapest it'll wreck it by by how much of course per serving whatever and I they were saying that too about the powder being cheaper and to do that so that's another wonderful resource of people want to look into a little bit farther for what would be a good one is there anybody is there any downsize to this is somebody that shouldn't be taking this well anybody who has pre-existing sort of conditions whether it's you know uh severe kidney issues or any kind of issue that kind of will have their physician kind of question whether they should be taken any supplements um always you always want to consult especially if you're going through something that um is under care of a physician you always want to make them aware of any supplement you're taking um and creatin is no exception to that other than that the safety profile and creatin is is incredible now I always say that you know if you're going to take a supplement you know make sure you pass it by your healthcare provider and especially Dr. Stout because you were just saying that it could be beneficial for people over this age of 65 now people are over the age of 65 maybe on other medications or have issues going on here so that's why you really want to clear that in there so I'm over the moon about this because I thought this was absolutely fascinating I had heard about creatin in the 80s and what has happened because you've been studying this from the 90s or whatever 80s wherever and so much has evolved around this and this is so so exciting can you look in a crystal ball and see is there anything else coming out about yeah I mean there's some exciting actually research coming out that I learned about I mean and I'm not an expert on but um we had we every three years we have um an international conference on creatin and so I got to see some the latest and greatest and a lot of it has to do with pregnancy and um cancer um immune deficiency issues and so expect to see some research coming out on that pretty soon um I was I was shocked I had no idea I mean on some of that stuff so um you're going to see it more and more in the clinical realm and uh and you know it probably is going to be in combination with other sort of medications um to help offset you know there's been a big effort on um the neuromuscular diseases MS and duchain muscular dystrophy and those kind of things um have been researched um there's been a lot of research on accelerating rehabilitation um but the new stuff is the cancer and the the female um pre menopause post menopause the a lot of that kind of research going on and um so it's pretty exciting actually it is very very exciting I I can't thank you enough Dr. Stav for coming on spot on and talking about this and like first of all I can't thank you thank you for starting to study this like decades ago and being a forefront you know researcher on this to help us all out but boy fascinating and thank you again for being on spot on well thank you for inviting me spot on is supported by the Boston University Sergeant College's Master of Science degree in nutrition program logon to be 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