The Truth About Creatine, Cortisol & Red Light Therapy

This is the episode you NEED to hear around some of the most popular topics in the health world right now. Cassie is decoding the truth about Creatine, Red light Therapy, Fasted Caffeine, Cortisol and more. 

This season is all about the evolution of you, exploring growth, change and what it means to step into the next version of yourself. 

Cassie Davenport is a experienced and degree qualified naturopath and nutritionist, Cassie is passionate about co-creating achievable and sustainable solutions with her clients. Her approach involves combining the latest evidence based research with traditional herbal medicine methods and believes small changes can create a big impact.

If you loved this episode, follow Cassie on Instagram HERE for more, and HERE to learn more about working with Cassie one-to-one.

The information shared in this episode is general in nature and is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for personalised medical, nutritional or therapeutic advice. Cassie is not responsible for any actions taken based on the content of this episode. Always consult a qualified health professional before making changes to your health, diet or lifestyle. 

Transcript

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I'm gonna get cancelled for this before I've even begun. Three supplements that I would absolutely never ever recommend. Next question is I've seen a lot of content about inflammation in the body. Is this a part of diet culture? If you're not hungry first thing in the morning, I want to find out why your body's in a stressed state. Welcome to Incasting. I'm Cathy Davenport, your host, Naturopath, and clinical nutritionist. This season is about the evolution of you. No extremes, no wellness noise, no pressure to be perfect, but evidently leading yourself where you're at. Simple, supportive conversations where we're cutting through the noise and talking real wellness for real life. Energy, hormones, nourishment, nervous system, and the messy middle of life. This is a space for anyone who's done with the extremes and the pressure of doing it all. This is for the women who are ready to come back to themselves. If you're missing a village, you're in the right place. Come and join ours. Let's jump into today's episode. So today we're myth busting. Some of the biggest conversations in health right now supplements, detoxes, inflammation, and hormones. And what's actually true versus what's just trending? No fluff, no fear, just what your body actually needs. So let's jump into today's episode. Is creatine actually worth it? So I give creatine an 8 out of 10. And the reason being, I don't truly buy into the blanket supplement rule. There is not always going to be something that just works for everyone. There's going to be supplements where it works for the majority, and some people it just doesn't sit right with them. It might make them bloated. They don't feel good taking it, and that's okay. So, in terms of creatine, yes, it has the ability to improve strength training, power, and performance and training performance. It can help maintain and build lean muscle. Research is suggesting that it can support memory, mental fatigue mood, especially under stress or in low sleep situations, sleep deprivation and things like that. It is definitely not a magic fix. And if you're looking for positive body adaptations in terms of muscle adaptations, body composition, and physical training, taking creatine alone isn't really going to move the bar. It needs to be combined with strength training. The body of evidence that we have on creatine in women specifically is much smaller compared to the body of evidence that we have for creatine in men. There are some possible side effects that we do know about for women taking creatine, and that includes bloating and water retention. But all in all, all round a supplement, there's a low buy-in cost. It does generally sit well with most people. I started taking creatine and it was it was an interesting experiment. I definitely found in my resistance training specifically. I took longer to fatigue for sure, without a doubt. I did bloat. That was something that I noticed, and it wasn't until it was around four or five days in, and I remember thinking, what is going on with me? Because I'm a well-oiled machine. So the fact that that was happening, it did subside though. So I bloated at the beginning till around about day 10, and then it sort of tapered off. So it might just be something some people have to push through. It is something I've decided to continue to take because it's such low impact in terms of I can have it stack it. I just put a scoop in my water at the beginning of the day and off I go. You can also add it to your coffee if you wanted to. So yeah, that one gets an eight out of ten for me. The next one is is red light theory. Okay, we're not just looking for red light. We're looking for the right wavelength, the right power and consistency in use. Otherwise, it just is a pretty light. So wavelength is everything here. We want, if you're working on something like acne, or you want more of a glow, or you're trying to boost and increase collagen, you want around 630 to 660 nanometers. For somebody who is working on inflammation or muscle pain, you want near infrared levels. So you're looking at 800 and 880 nanometers for that. You also need to check that companies are listed for iridescent. So how strong the light is at a skin level, not just a machine that has red light. We want it to make sure it's penetrating to a deeper cellular level. If you're buying in Australia looking for TGA certified products, and this product does come down to consistency. One-off users aren't really going to be doing much. You want to be using it at least three to five times a week for 10 to 20 minutes. The catch that I see with people is they're getting caught out by buying low-powered devices or just red LED lights, which isn't going to operate on a skin cell level at all. It can be a game changer for a lot of people. But it is just that. It's a tool, and tools don't replace our foundation. So if you're under-eating protein and fiber and you're really stressed and you're not sleeping adequate hours, red light won't override any of that. You're going to need to fix those foundations. Is it okay to have caffeine on an empty stomach? In my opinion, no. It's something that I invite all of my clients to change very early on when we're working together. Caffeine on an empty stomach creates a few separate issues for me. So, first of all, stomach and gut issues, I see nauseous reflux. It's going to just create a whole lot of gut irritation. So for me, if I'm working on somebody with gut issues, it's about peeling back those onion layers and seeing what is causing the problem. So taking caffeine out on an empty stomach first thing in the morning and then seeing what symptoms we're left with, how is that contributing to their profile picture already? The other thing that I really don't like about having coffee on an empty stomach is it starts to mess with blood sugar levels. So if you're trying to work on your body composition, if you are somebody who is trying to increase their insulin sensitivity, coffee is a sure, fire, fast-tracked way to be sending your body in the complete opposite direction. So it absolutely reduces that insulin sensitivity, having it first thing in the morning. Coffee gives you energy because it has caffeine, but it also does a big glycogen from your liver dump into the bloodstream. So it's putting blood glucose into your bloodstream first thing in the morning as well. If you don't have any protein or fat in your body to counteract that, you're just going on a going up a very steep mountain to drop off that cliff very, very rapidly as well. So we don't want to be doing that. We want to have as stable blood sugar levels as we possibly can and not call on insulinive unless we absolutely need it. The third thing would be it does contribute greatly to stress hormone, cortisol. So cortisol, I also refer to as our get up and go hormone. It should be highest in the morning and lowest at night. If you're waking up and your cortisol is high and you have a coffee on an empty stomach, you are going to amplify this even further. Having high cortisol also suppresses appetite generally. So it's the women who wake up, women and men, any person who wakes up first thing in the morning and say, I just have a coffee and I'm not hungry and I don't eat till lunch. If you're not hungry first thing in the morning, in and of itself, that is generally an issue. I want to find out why your body's in a stressed state, because if you have an appetite, you would generally have ideal cortisol levels. If that is not happening, I want to find out why first and foremost. But again, if you're having coffee, you're going to amplify that and put your body further into a stressed or fight or flat state. So if you are somebody who is experiencing that 3 p.m. crash, somebody who is depleted, feeling anxious or has anxiety or feeling that wired or tired, I would invite you to look at rearranging where your coffee is sitting and notice how that makes you feel. Coffee is not something that I routinely take out of people's diet, but context and timing absolutely matter. What does eating good fat mean? Okay. A healthy fat is one that supports your hormones, brain, and cells, and it's not just calories. So I want you to think mono saturated fats, your omegas, um, and naturally saturated fat, like your grass-fed butter, dairy products, and meats. Your omegas, we're talking about, you know, and this these are not extensive lists. This is just me whipping them off. So omegas, we're thinking salmon or sardines, flaxseed or chia seed, and mono saturated fats, I want you to think avocado, olives, or your olive oil. What I generally have my clients avoid when it comes to fat is highly processed fats. So thinking trans fats or fats that are paired with very high sugar content, usually your trans fats paired with super high sugar. And one of the things why, or one of the reasons rather, why I usually get people to eat healthy fats is it helps stabilize energy, first and foremost. Fats are burnt slower. So I usually use a fire analogy with my clients. So if you're building your fire every day, you've got the kindling, that's all of your carbohydrate, lollies, chocolates, breads, foods that your body can use quickly as energy. That's your kindling. So it burns up really quickly, it gives you energy really fast, but it also burns out really fast unless you have something paired with it. Protein is going to be your medium sticks in your fire. So if you're having, you know, a bunnings, this just came to mind, a bunning sausage sandwich. The white bread is going to give you energy fast. The fat and protein of the sausage is actually going to slow down that energy release slower. Your body's going to be able to use it for longer. Fats are like your big mama log that you're putting on if you want your fire to burn for a really long time or overnight. It's why we only need a really small amount of fat, but it does give you energy for a really long time. Fat is also brain food. 60% of your brain is made up of fat. So that insulation and those neural pathways, fats are essential there. Fats are also building alongside cholesterol all of your hormones. So if you don't have any fat, you're going to have really poor hormone signaling. So low fat intake is also going to really reduce or have poor hormone production as well. So what this actually looks like in real life, what you should be including in terms of good fats into your diet. I want you to think eggs, avocado, olive oil, nuts and seeds, prioritizing oily fish a couple of times a week. Don't fear grass-fed butter or full-fat dairy. 25 to 35% of your daily caloric intake should be fats. And what that generally looks like, or what I usually say to my clients in session, that usually looks maybe one to one and a half tablespoons of fats with each meal, is what we're aiming for. So it is quite a small amount, but that would be making up around 25 to 35% of your daily caloric intake of fats. Next question. Is your gut health the actual root cause of everything? Or does it get blown out of proportion? Yes, your gut health is vital. It's such a key player. It's definitely not the only player, but it is a key player. You need to support your gut alongside other key players like nervous system, hormone health, blood sugar regulation, nutrition, and sleep. But I will say as well, it's extremely difficult to fix any of the above systems that I just mentioned: hormone health, blood sugar, nutrition, sleep, nervous system. If you have inflammation or dysbiosis in your gut. Gut houses over 70% of your immune system. There's so much information. I think we've only just hit the top of the iceberg in terms of what we really know about gut health and how it actually works. We do know now that there's some microbes in your microbiome that it can actually metabolize stress hormone to create more of themselves. So gut health is such an important part of what we do and knuckling down to the root cause of exactly what's going on. Gut health is responsible for detoxification and moving all of the rubbish out of your body daily. It's responsible for the absorption and assimilation of all nutrients, and it's responsible for housing your microbiome and keeping all of your nutrients and bugs within your gastrointestinal wall and not letting them float out and wreak havoc in the bloodstream. So it is really, really vital part of that system to make sure it is running well. And as I said, it's really hard to fix any of those other systems if you have a compromised gastrointestinal tract. How much water do we actually need per day? Finally, an easy question for me to answer. Okay, I calculate how much water somebody needs based on their body weight. Rule of thumb is 30 mils per kilo of body weight. When I'm calculating it, I'm usually doing 40 mils purely because I'm calculating movement and things, sweat, all of that into it. So I do 40 mils per body weight. If I was to use myself for an example, I'm 76 kilos. If I'm times that by 0.04, I need just over three liters of water a day for me. Our supermarket supplements are waste of money. I'm gonna get cancelled for this before I've even begun. Okay, my initial response to this is yes, I do think that they can be a waste of money. And the reason is is because most people are often self-diagnosing or buying something because it worked for a friend. The products themselves are often underdosed and poorly absorbed. So if we were to use magnesium, for an example, most of the magnesiums on the market or off-the-shelf magnesium are combination magnesium. So there's multiple forms of magnesium, and they're usually blended with magnesium oxide, is quite prominent because it's cheap to make. So the form of magnesium is really important, is not water soluble, and it's very poorly absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract. So if we layer that again with somebody who may have poor or disrupted digestion, if it is in a supplement with multiple other minerals, such as iron, zinc, calcium, they all compete against each other and magnesium. So I often don't see them yielding the same results that I would from, say, an isolated supplement or something that is going to be in a better form to help them. So if they were really struggling with, say, constipation, for example, I wouldn't be giving them magnesium oxide. I would be opting for a magnesium citrate because it's better absorbed, it definitely has an affinity for the gastrointestinal tract and trying to get those bowels working a little bit easier. So the form matters, the dose matters, what it's paired with is so essential. And it's really hard for somebody to know all of that and pick something that is going to suit them and their goals off the shelf. And so quite often people are just using something on a recommendation or because it worked for somebody else and the mark gets missed and it kind of gives natural supplements a bad rap. The other thing is I often see people using supplements as a shortcut to good health, and it just doesn't work that way. You can't skip the foundations. Having somebody figure out what kind of form is going to best work for your body, what dose you potentially need, and how we titrate that up or down. And having somebody who's going to track and measure your progress so that you can pivot and adjust and change direction is so essential. This is why I think naturopaths and nutritionists and even dietitians to a degree, advice around this is so invaluable because nutrients don't just work, they interact and they compete and they influence each other. So if you're seeing a degree qualified naturopath, they have a four-year minimum in terms of undergrad degree. Everybody has done additional study. Many have completed a master's, and everybody does a minimum of 30 hours a year of additional training and learning to comply with their CPE and associations. Finding a naturopath who is associated with the NHAA, who is a degree qualified naturopath, and helping them unpack and figure out what is going to be best for you and how you can get the most out of the supplements. Because again, they're not cheap. Most of the off-shelves ones over the counter, they're not cheap supplements. So if you're buying something and you're investing in that, you want it to really work for you and get the results. So my response to supermarket supplements would be a no-go for sure. There are three supplements that I would recommend nobody ever buys off the shelf. And my top three would be iron, fish oils, and magnesium. They really matter in terms of the dose and the quality and the form for absorption and interaction and making sure you get the right one for you is vital to see a change. Otherwise, they just become very expensive. Next question is I've seen a lot of content on social media about inflammation in the body. Is this a part of diet culture? I'm gonna answer this in two parts because yes, I think any specific diet can be roped into diet culture if somebody is prone to following that style of advice or who has potentially battled with disordered eating in the past. Being on a specific diet, whether that be veganism, keto, anti-inflammatory, is a really great cover as to why they're cuttering out cutting out food or food groups. So that's one. Like, yes, I think it can get twisted. Secondly, is yes, inflammation is absolutely real and necessary. It's part of the immune response. It helps you heal, it helps you fight infection, it helps you respond to injury. Inflammation in and of itself is a natural response and it's not the enemy. However, there is nuance in that as well. Chronic or dysregulated inflammation can contribute and compound certain conditions. I do think the message gets distorted on social media in terms of everything seems to be inflammatory, or I see a lot in my algorithm of cut this out to reduce inflammation. There's a lot of fear-based messaging, especially around foods. So inflammation is rarely about one singular food. It's contributed to by lack of quality sleep, nervous system, stress, blood sugar dysregulation, gut health issues, and overall dietary patterning. In my opinion, you don't need to fear inflammation, but you do need to support the systems that regulate it. Can stress affect weight? Oof. This is a big one. Yes. Short answer is yes. Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, stress can impact weight. But let me unpack this a little bit for you. Cortisol is our stress hormone. And I also refer to this in clinic as your get up and go hormone because, again, I don't want you to think that it should be feared. It is a powerhouse little hormone that does its best to keep us safe with the feedback it gets from our environment and from us. So Cliff Notes on cortisol is cortisol is highest in the morning and lowest at night. It should be a rinse and repeat sort of cycle. If cortisol is elevated, it can increase appetite, it can promote fat storage, and it can make weight loss feel like an uphill battle. It makes it a lot harder. Because cortisol is a hormone, it will naturally interact with our other hormones because they all talk and interact. The higher your cortisol, the more spikes we're going to see in insulin, potentially the more crashes and it creates more cravings and more energy dips. The third thing I would say is from a nervous system state, if your body is so stressed that you're in a fight or flight state, digestion is going to be impaired, metabolism is going to be less effective, and you're Your body prioritizes survival over fat loss any day of the week, which is exactly how it should be. Chronic stress will generally lead to poor sleep, which leads to further hormonal disturbances. What that looks like in real life is increased cravings, particularly around the body's preferred method of fuel, which is carbohydrate, and it reduces satiation as well. So you're going to be less satisfied with the food that you are consuming. Just on a functional level, if somebody is highly stressed, they're not going to feel like making and preparing food. They're going to be more likely to want to reach fast or convenient types of foods. Movement is likely to be the first thing that falls off the bandwagon because they no longer have time or they don't feel like it. And suddenly you've got somebody who has increased cravings are less satisfied with the food that they're consuming. They're not moving, and they're likely to reach for more convenient foods rather than nutrient-dense foods. So, yes, stress does not just affect your mind. It has the ability to alter your metabolism too. Does detoxing your body actually work? I.e. lemon detox and liquid fasts. If I had a dollar for every time I got asked this question, no, liquid fasts and lemon detox do not detox the body. Okay. I can't wait to get into this. Okay, you're you guys, your body is magic. Like, truly, it already has such a highly effective detoxification system. It consists of your liver, your kidneys, your gastrointestinal tract, your gut health, your skin, and your lymphatic system. These run 24-7, seven days a week with absolutely no juice or lemon required at all. And the counter-argument I usually have to that is but I did one and I felt amazing, or I had a friend do one and she felt incredible. And I'm all about people's personal experiences because they truly do matter. But my challenge here would be by doing a detox like this, you're likely removing ultra-processed foods. Yeah. You're likely eliminating alcohol and you're likely to be increasing hydration. The full story is supporting real detox has everything to do with the foundations and nothing at all to do with the extremes. To detox effectively, there is a bin in your body that gets filled up with rubbish every single day and it needs to be moved out. And in order for it to be removed, your body requires fiber in your gastrointestinal tract to do just that, to move it out. And a lemon drink and juice detoxers certainly do not tick that fiber box at all. In order to detox effectively, you need adequate protein for those liver pathways. To detox effectively, you need micronutrients such as your B vitamins, all the B vitamins, zinc and magnesiums. In order to detox properly, you need to be hydrated and you need to absolutely have a regular bowel movement, at least one banana poo every single day. If that isn't happening, your detoxification pathways could be compromised. You need to support the systems that are already doing it. If there is one thing to take away from all of this, your health isn't built in trends and quick fixes. It's built in the foundations you do consistently. Think sleep, nutrition, nervous system support, hydration, and movement. Start there always. This is what actually moves the needle forward. If you have a topic that you would like me to talk about or a question that you would like me to answer, please head over to my Instagram and slide on into my DMs. It's Cassie Davenpoor underscore naturopath. And if this lands for you and you feel like you're in a tricky season and would like some extra support, you don't have to figure this all out on your own. I offer one-on-one consults and you're welcome to email me for a free discovery call. Thank you so much for being here and being a part of this little community. And in case nobody has told you today, you can't outhack your health, but you can rebuild it one foundation at a time.