Understanding Creatine

Creatine is having a moment — it's in gummies, powders, capsules, and about half the ads in your feed. So Rick and Greg sat down to sort out what's real. In this episode they explain what creatine actually does at the cellular level (it recharges the ATP "battery pack" your muscles burn through in the first seconds of any effort), and why that matters more than the marketing suggests. The honest version: creatine doesn't build muscle. It gives you the energy to do two more reps or run one more mile — and that's what builds muscle. They cover realistic dosing at three to five grams a day, why timing matters far less than consistency, the water weight you might see early on, and the newer research pointing toward brain and cognitive benefits at higher doses. They also tackle the kidney myth head-on, explaining the lab-value mix-up between creatine and creatinine that sends so many patients into an unnecessary panic — and why you should simply tell your provider you're taking it. Plus: who benefits most (vegetarians, older adults, and anyone actively losing weight on a GLP-1), who should check with a clinician first, and the buying advice that'll save you money — plain creatine monohydrate from a reputable brand is what every study used, and there's no such thing as men's or women's creatine.

Educational and informational only. Talk with your healthcare provider before starting any supplement, especially if you have kidney or liver disease, uncontrolled high blood pressure, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are under 18.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hey, welcome back. Hey guys. This is Healthier Ever After. I'm Rick Sorensen. Greg Camp. We are here to talk about all things health-related, weight loss, and healthy lifestyles. We've been having some good times and we have we're, I'm super excited, man. Some of these things we've talked about. I I find myself like we will we'll make an episode, talk about you know something, and and then over the next couple days, my brain is thinking, oh man, we should have said this and I should have talked about that. We dived into this. We didn't even mention that other thing. Yeah. And there's I'm thinking maybe we need to do like a reprise of some of these things because there's so many things. I just like, oh no, there's so much more we could just we just talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

And I think it's just there's just levels to all of this. And it's like sometimes it's uh for some people, uh, it's keeping it very, you know, I don't want to say simple, but yeah, simple. I mean simple.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Like it's like everyone's not a physiologist, you know, or a physician or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

So so for those that like a deeper dive, we're gonna hit some of those things, like and some of this stuff will be full circle with uh some of the stuff we've already talked about. Yeah, yeah, but it'll just be diving deeper into so saying, hey, what's uh what's the deal with that? Or you know, how does this work? And so we'll dive into a little bit of that. Um, we just want to give you tons of information if you want it. Uh that's what this is there for. And it always is gonna circle us back right to the basics, right? Of like the little things that you need to be doing on a on a daily or weekly basis to kind of get us where we need to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah. So today we're gonna talk about something that I'm excited about as well. Uh, as a reminder, this is for educational and informational purposes only. Uh, we certainly recommend that uh you do not replace anything we say with uh do not replace a relationship and conversation with your healthcare provider uh with anything that we say here uh before starting any exercise program, weight loss regimen, uh nutritional supplement. Uh talk to your provider. Yeah. So today, creatine.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Creatine. There it is. Probably the most talked about supplement right now, as far as the, you know, most of these supplements go. Vitamin D is definitely had been has been hitting hitting for a while. We'll talk about, I'm sure, that again. Um creatine lately has just been very popular. Uh, you know, you probably see advertisements for it on uh Facebook or wherever else you you consume your um your uh your whole life. Yeah, your whole whatever however you consume content outside of your own world, uh there's so many uh advertisements and and whatnot. So um we're gonna talk about is that um just hype. You know, what yeah, well, I mean, okay, talked about, I mean, everybody's about creatine.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

You're like, oh, creatine, you know, I mean my pre-workout, I'm gonna get ripped, it's uh it's gonna be huge. Well, we're gonna talk about is that real or or not? But but it's also the the um most studied, most proven sports supplement on the planet Earth, yep, in human history. How about that? And that's saying something.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

That's like reading. Yeah, no, no, and it's uh there's more studies on it, there's been more things looked at. And I think it used to be looked at, and that probably when me and Rick were, you know, coming up in the military. I mean, creatine kind of used to be looked at as like a more of a sports supplement, not just for your average everyday.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

No, it was for your like your bodybuilder. It was, you know, like guys hitting the your gym rats on anabolic steroids and creatine.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah, and and it's just we're just finding that that's not the case. There's lots of benefits for the average everyday person. Now, you know, of course, there's other those are always enhanced by working out and even doing arguably some good resistance training, but you know, they're just finding more and more data that's really leaning towards everyday use for the average person. Yeah, does it mean everyone should be on it? Maybe, maybe not. You can decide for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Well, everybody in my family, like, so it's I noticed there's a big big dub of creatine. My wife's got it on the thing, she's like, on it. And um, and I'm like, Oh, you got creatine. He's like, Yeah, I'm creatine, you know. I don't know what brand it is, got got it, Costco. Yeah, and then and and then my daughter, you know, Carly. Yeah, um, she's doing her creatine just this morning. We're at work together, and uh and she's got a little bag of her creatine gummy. She's like, I don't even care what it does, I don't even care what's in it. She's it's just so so chewy and yummy. Yeah, she just loves the she loves the gummies. I'm like, okay, let it do its thing. But yeah, but it actually does some things. Let's talk about what this like creatine, what it what does it do really? What it what it is because a lot of people think it like like we used to think it's just for your gym, it's gonna make you rip because you're gonna it's gonna build your muscles, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

And really, honestly, creatine without doing any activity or without really doing much. I mean, it there's things it does, but it's um But I think you would be safe to say it does nothing. It does if you almost you don't do like if you sat on the couch every day all day and you took creatine, you're probably not gonna notice much. Now, that's because obviously you're not gonna be using your energy stores, and we'll talk about what it does that way, because you're not gonna be using much energy. So, you know, really like what's the point there, yeah, and you're not really gonna be using your muscles. And so the one very specific area that we know has a lot of um that requires a lot of energy, and we talked about that before of like the the biggest powerhouse your body has and the biggest energy user are your muscles. So that's why creatine is always so closely associated with like muscles, with working out, especially doing resistance training. And so, yeah. Um so so let's talk about creatine.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Like, this is not just just something you can only get at the store, right? I mean, you're eating this in your food, especially with with meat, with fish, like salmon. You're it's part of your uh a normal, uh, regular healthy diet. Yeah, right. So you're so it's not like this out of the world thing that you're not gonna get. I mean, you're you're eating creatine in your diet. Most people on a regular diet eat enough to have their kind of creatine store at about 75, 80 percent, maybe. Sure. Sometimes a little less. If you're a vegetarian, probably a little less, like 50 percent at its at its kind of at store. So what does it do? It's it's a molecule that lives, your body takes creatine and puts it into muscles, and it sits in the muscle cells. Um, and and then it it holds phosphorus. Okay, so your so your muscles you think of your muscles as the energy cell, it uses little batteries. And and so when you're at the gym or you uh go on a walk, whatever, like those first um the first few seconds, it it just burns through the these these ATP batteries. That's your yeah, this like stored energy. The energy that your muscles use, yeah, ATP. And the P is for phosphate. So it takes the phosphate off, and that's how your muscles use energy. The the creatine gives the phosphate back to kind of refill those battery packs, right? So so having a full tank of creatine lets you burn through those batteries, those quick batteries, the first of any kind of exercise activity, a little bit longer. Yep. I don't know if that I mean that's I don't know if that makes sense, but that's kind of what it does.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

It really is, is if you don't refill those batteries, then what happens is that you're on your run, you can't run quite as far because right, you're ha you have to slow down because you're running out of energy, your muscles are getting more tired, more fatigued, and it's because they're running out of the ATP and your body only has so much available, right? And like Rick said, this may depend on your diet, it may depend on how active you are, and so uh so that's where creatine comes in, is that we're just trying to charge those little little micro, every cell is a little battery, as Rick had said, and we're just trying to make it to where you have the right ingredients to be able to add that phosphorus back on there continuously over and over and over.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

And it's like it's like if you have a hybrid car, you know, you can burn gas, but that first little bit is like your big battery pack, yep, and you burn through that really quick. But the the creatine helps you it it like increases the capacity of that initial battery pack. And and what that what that does, I mean, that doesn't really do anything specifically to the muscles, but what it does is it lets you, when you train, it's a couple extra reps, yeah, you know, it's uh it's a little bit more effort that you're able to do in those quick initial steps. And so that doesn't sound like a lot, but over a week, over a month, uh it it lets you do a little more exercise. So it's not like it's not like creatine builds muscle, um, but it lets you put forth a little bit more effort as you're building muscle. Yep. It's the effort that builds it. It is the creatine fills your battery pack, it makes your it makes that it like makes your tank a little bigger.

unknown 8:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

I mean, it if really, I mean, if you were as a runner, if you could run normally three miles and you're now able to run four miles or five miles because you're on creatine, I mean, of course, your endurance, it's not really the creatine, it's actually that you're just building uh additional muscle and um endurance, but the creatine is kind of that thing that can help you push it to that next level. And so it's really, and and that uh, you know, Rick had mentioned that last rep, you know, if you can only do uh normally eight reps of whatever weight, and now I can do 10. And it wasn't you weren't fatiguing because you necessarily didn't have the muscle, you actually potentially fatiguing because the energy stores right to that last rep and you just can't push through. Now you have that extra energy, you can push through a couple more reps. What's going to happen? More breakdown of muscle, and then you end up growing these muscles, and uh now you're going up and up and up in weight. So it's attributed to the creatine, but actually it's just a physiologic process of building.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

What it allows you to do with that. Yeah. So excuse me. Um so so let's say I start a creatine. So like I'm like, wow, um, my daughter's got these delicious, chewy, yummy, yummy gummies. Yeah, and my wife's got this thing on the counter. Maybe I'll start creatinine. Or not creatine, creatine. Creatine. Um, we'll talk about creatine. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute. Uh so I start taking creatine. What can I expect?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Well, I I think A, uh, the typical recommended starting dose is a little bit lower than what's being advertised on most of these advertisements you're seeing nowadays. It used to be that it was always advertised down at these lower doses. So we know the studies show that three to five grams, supplementing with three to five grams a day, is what you need to be able to get the desired benefits. So that uh increased endurance. Uh, we know that you're probably not gonna expect much in the first couple of weeks. You might have a little more energy, you might have uh maybe a little more endurance in your workouts, but this is not a I take it like now and then I feel energy tomorrow this afternoon. No, this is a process that happens over time. And like I said, that three to five grams. Now, you're gonna get people watching this are like, no, I just barely watched this podcast or this, I got this advertisement. They said you're supposed to be on 10 grams or 15 grams or even 20. Yeah, I mean, really high, much higher doses than we've like traditionally kind of been accustomed to seeing. Yeah, and the reason for that is that they're starting to find um evidence of you know, like even more benefits. Sometimes we say like more doesn't necessarily mean better. Uh, in this case, what they're finding out is a little bit more than what they originally found is a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah, especially for like the brain. Yes. Like that's new. I mean, that's kind of newer research, but there's there's um good evidence that that the creatine actually helps the brain. It uses it using some of the same batteries, I guess. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Well, I mean, yes, the brain, so the brain uses ATP the same way the body does, right? And it's actually one of the biggest, your brain and your heart are really some of the biggest um users of that.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

They're just big because they're constantly, constantly running.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yes. And so what's really cool about that is they're finding these really cool benefits, neurological benefits, um, at about 10 grams. That's about when that those start. So um it's really interesting to watch this in creatine, which was like really big and then kind of seemed to like almost fade away. It was still there. I think a lot of people were still using it, but more so as a it was more of a uh uh bodybuilding kind of supplement, right? And now has come back in full force. And the reason why is because there's just a lot of people that are really focused on wellness. I think COVID kind of kicked this off for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Yeah, well, and and it also it it also it's it's actually, I mean, if you talk, we're talking about what it does. So, so before we get into that, let me go back to tell what you expect. Like, like if I start taking this as a supplement, I actually might notice some weight gain. Yeah. Uh, because because as your body, what your body's gonna do is it's gonna take this creatine, it's gonna store it into muscles and and keep there so that it's like increasing that tank size. That's gonna pull some water into the muscles as well. So you're gonna gain a little bit of water weight. This isn't this isn't gaining fat, it isn't like that. It's just your muscles getting a little bulkier because it the creatine pulls some water in with it. Okay, so that's so that's an important thing to know. Now, as far as like the brain and the dosing and all that thing we're talking about, I can't I forgot what I was gonna talk about. Yeah, um, the the just the the benefits of taking that uh that supplement, um, there's there's some um, we'll just talk about some of these studies. Like it there's not a so you talked about like a daily dose. Normally it's about three to five, you can go to 10. Some people say 20, you can like load with 20. And that's fine. Um, number one, you don't expect to feel the most benefit of creatine in a few days. This is a this is like a couple weeks, maybe up to a month, of taking regularly the supplement, allowing your body to kind of build it and and distribute it into the muscles and and kind of fill that etch out that bigger tank essentially. Yes. And so it so it takes a while. So this is not something that it's like I'm gonna take this now and I'm gonna feel this tomorrow. It's like, no, I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna be consistent. Um, almost like like your exercise has to be, you're you're watching your diet has to be. It's one of these, one of these small things, but you be it takes some consistency and you're gonna notice that. And and it also, it's I think the thing about it that is getting talked about a lot more is because as we talk about weight loss, we're talking about GLP1s, and that's kind of getting more and more traction and more and more popularity. It's getting just you know taking the world by storm essentially. Creatine is the one supplement that that helps do what we're trying to do. We've been talking about keep your protein, lose your fat, keep your protein, and it and it helps you do that, it helps you um do that a little bit more exercise and and and keep the muscle tissue.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

There's some good benefits shown for helping with some uh with some weight loss. Like, so once again, it's not directly. If you just do nothing else and you start creatine today, you're not gonna add on muscle and you're not gonna lose weight just with that. But what it's gonna do is it's gonna set your body up for success for that. Like if you put an equivocal amount of effort in on those fronts, with or without creatine, with creatine, it's going to be a bit better. It's gonna use energy better. You once again, you might get that little bump with some some weight gain due to water. That's expected. And what's nice about that is of course, once that levels off, then it drops back down. Now you're supporting keeping good muscle mass, especially while you're losing weight. Um, you're able to keep those energy stores up. What do we do? One's the one of the first things we do when we start trying to lose weight, right? We start cutting calories. So oftentimes we start cutting nutrients. So arguably, maybe through your diet, you might be getting a little bit less creatine than you normally would. And so supplementation is is really what me and Rick feel like supplementation is where we supplement things that we are not otherwise naturally getting through our diet.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

And creatine is going to be one of those things that where when we're cutting back, even though we're trying to keep that protein content high, which is a lot of those foods are what has creatine in them, unfortunately, it is going to drop a little bit, most likely. So I just think it really comes down to doing that, to knowing that it's not a fix-all supplement, but it's a very, very, very good and evidence-based supportive supplement that can really support weight loss, that can support maintaining good muscle mass. And then all these other benefits that we're talking about as far as um, you know, uh neurological, helping your brain function better, helping uh your body function better overall, because every single cell has to has to fuel itself, yeah, and it does it through some creatine.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Yeah, and it's interesting. Uh we'll talk about this. I time and again, you know, I keep I was telling Greg, we when I've talked to you know medical professionals that I helped train or whatever, uh one of my catchphrases has been that um life happens at the cellular level. All these things that we talk about, really uh why we do certain things, what we're working on doing, it's because there's the reasoning behind it is what's happening in the little cells in the different organs in your body. And and that's where it becomes important. Anyway, so so back to the back to just overall creatine. Um they've done some interesting studies. Uh, there was one on a study in older women. Like there's there's there's not like an age either that this is it stops being helpful. Yeah, right. Um, studying older women, a 20 24-week study in older women, for example. They had um the two groups that had people just taking creatine, and they had people doing resistance training, and they had a third group that's doing both. Yeah, right. And the take a creatine supplement and do resistance training beat both of the other groups for gains in strength and lean body mass. Yeah, um, so so that's and that's just the evidence that one thing versus the other doesn't help. Creatine alone didn't help as much. And and certainly resistance training, the people who did the resistance training, the ones that did that and had creatine, were able to do a little more. I mean, that's kind of what that number, those numbers say.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

And I would say that if it's gonna, I mean, if honestly, if it's gonna work for a little old lady, I can assure you it's gonna work for all the other ages, right? This is like probably, you know, post-menopausal women um in their time when like the it's the hardest time for them to add on good lean muscle and things like that. So if if that's gonna be the case for them, I mean, I can assure you that someone that's like earlier on, with male or female, that does that. I mean, I can assure you the results are gonna be similar. The with the creatine and the resistance training, you're gonna be able to add on more lean muscle than if you do either one alone. Creatine by itself, I can I'm I can almost assuredly tell you you will not add any lean muscle by itself. If you're still just sitting around and not doing anything, you've got to you gotta move.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Use it for what it's intended to do. Yeah, and you can think of the intent of is increasing that little battery pack in all your muscles. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

One thing that uh comes up with even, I mean, this study was talking about older women, and it kind of comes up about every time I check lab work um and someone's on creatine, we always see their creatinine. Um, this is a byproduct of your kidneys to show how the kidneys are functioning. Yeah, so so you're talking about like people say, oh, well, creatine wrecks your kidney. Yep, absolutely not. And in fact, the studies show it does not. So, but what happens is that how your your kidney function is calculated is using uh creatinine, not creat uh creatine. So this is a this is a byproduct of your kidneys that uh that ends up going up a little bit as you take creatine because there's just more of that. And so what happens is it kind of calculates your your your foot filtration.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Your kidney function, yeah, your kidney function.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

And that's what they use for that. And so it tries to you know indicate or or it shows on the lab work, oh shoot, what's going on with your kidneys? Like you normally have had good kidneys and you started creatine, and all of a sudden your doctor's like, make sure you tell them that you're taking creatine.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Yeah, tell the lab, tell your doctor I'm taking a creatine supplement because that that's gonna save a lot of surprise and and potentially headache and lab redraws, and let's recheck this because something's up, yeah, because it it is gonna look like that. Now, that being said, that's in healthy people. It's been very safe. This is actually the um, I would say it's the safest supplement ever studied.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah, it's I mean, we just haven't seen any problems with it. There used to be theories of uh wrecking your kidneys, like we just talked about, and and other things, and it's it's frankly, it's just never bore out to that. Now, look, if you are on creatine and you work out and you're taking other supplements and and you're getting dehydrated, I don't care. It's not the creatine. Yeah, if you get like that, yeah, you can have an acute kidney injury and things like that. That means that you're just too too dehydrated. That really has nothing to do with the supplement. I mean, you're just asking your body to do too much on too little fluid. Yeah. So I mean, we see that well hydrated.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

So so there are some people that we you know recommend that you should talk to your clinician first specifically. Like uh the studies we talk about not hurting kidneys, that's in healthy adults with healthy kidneys. Yep. If you have kidney disease already, uh, your kidneys are are low-functioning kidneys already. That, uh, if you have a liver disease, those are two two big things that are worth talking to your doctor about before starting a creatine supplement. Um if you're pregnant, breastfeeding, uh, if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure, those are sort of the big things. If you're under 18, uh that th that's worth a conversation um with your with your provider specifically regarding those things. Um, but yeah, healthy kidneys and a healthy person, it is not wrecking your kidneys. Absolutely. Um, who's gonna feel this the most? Who's gonna um like what you know a month after starting a creatine supplement and you're working out? Um I would say probably vegetarians. Vegetarians big time. Just because just because their normal diet is gonna naturally have less creatine. Yeah. And so that they're gonna they're gonna end up their their overall battery packed tank is actually gonna have the biggest change. Change.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Right. You're going to have vegetarians, you're going to have uh older people uh that that Rick already had mentioned that study done with older women. We I don't know what age that is. I mean, we could look at the study and see where the cutoff was. I'm, you know, yeah. If you're 60, then we'll say older women 61. I don't, you know, it's it's whatever you're not. You're not old. Um, but it's uh it really end up ends up coming down to like, you know, people that have honestly anyone losing weight, older people, people that are higher risk for actually muscle loss. So vegetarians, like we just already talked about, older people, people that are higher risk for muscle loss, people that are losing actively losing weight. Yeah, these are the people that I feel like are going to, it's gonna benefit a ton. And for those of you that are at not really trying to lose weight, but really just add lean strength or muscle. Yeah. Perfect, perfect supplement to you know, that can benefit you that way. Um, people that are dealing, and now they these are the there's a lot of people that are touting creatine as like, oh, it's gonna help with your ADHD and things like that. Um, because of those neurological benefits. Look, those have not been proven yet. There are some anecdotal studies out there that say, hey, look, we've seen some benefits here.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Early, early studies that may be saying some things proven yet.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

But those are interesting things to kind of talk to your primary care about. Hey, this is something I've been thinking about trying. If you want to go at it on your own, I guess that's up to you. But then you can kind of like just do an inventory of how do I feel? Is my concentration better? Am I thinking more clearly? I guess you can kind of do a study of one.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah. Uh so recommended three to five grams a day. We talked about that. And and this is not a supplement that it's like, oh, I have to take it at the same time. And then you can take it because you're looking at the effect of about three to four weeks to fill this tank to kind of build up all these stores. And and so it doesn't really matter if it take it in the morning, take it in the night, take it in the afternoon. It the timing of it uh doesn't matter as much as the consistency of taking it over a kind of an extended period of time, weeks. Um, and so that's good. And some people actually recommend taking, you know, like I would really want to load that, like do a quick load and and load those stores quickly. And and you can do that. Some people recommend, you know, taking that that three to five grams, but split it, do do 20 grams, but split it into like four doses.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yeah, especially if you're if it's sensitive, like if you're if you're if you find that supplements just upset your stomach. Yeah, you're gonna get some GI upset if you do. Yeah, split it up. Uh, that helps. The you know, it's always been, I mean, this has been forever. I mean, this is for when I was like a young male in the military and and tried tried creatine for the first time. Um, it and and you know, I've really found it to be true, uh, at least myself, and I think the studies would support this. I didn't actually see an actual study on this, but um, it actually does uh absorb a little bit better with food or specifically with carbs. Yeah. So because carbs, I mean, think about it. The you everything that's put into your body has to be transported somewhere, and how does it get there? And creatine, the way that it's transported into the muscles, how I understand it is is that it use it, you know, latches onto carbs as a as a transporter. So taking it with food, um, like I said, specifically carbs in a lot of cases can help uh minimize the GI upset as well as help as a great transporter. Um, because like once again, you're fueling those muscles. And so if you take it with some good, healthy carbs, uh, you can imagine that that's gonna also give you the because the creatine has to add that phosphorus on, but you also need the other ingredients, which are carbs. Yeah. So I I I've always taken it, tried to take it with like uh my a meal or right after a workout with some kind of carb. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

So the other thing to think about with the creatine, you know, we're building up our capacity and our muscles. Um, most people are about 60 to 80 percent full. And and and you can't you can't really go to 200. Like, I mean, your your your muscles hold as much as they're gonna hold. Like you have this tank that's a certain size, you just need to fill it up. Uh, and so six to eighty percent. So your body actually makes about a gram of creatine a day from from amino acids, three amino acids. Um, your food gets it red meat and fish, like salmon. Um, you can get about another one to two grams a day if you eat that regularly, and then a supplementation, we're talking another three to five grams a day. So, so and that kind of fills the tank. So just eating normally, you're usually gonna be about 60 to 80 percent full. Now, there are some people who who are very efficient and and make enough creatine, and and their their tank is is full anyway. Yeah, so so they're not gonna notice uh they're gonna be one of these like non-respondent, like creatine doesn't do anything for me because and and and the reason is because your your body is doing a better job than most people, and your tank's already full. So you so more creatine isn't gonna help, but most people are gonna get about 20 to 40 percent more capacity in that in that little battery pack that is the start of exercise.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

But you can imagine for your brain, for your muscles, for your body. I mean, you can just only imagine that that, I mean, how much that would help someone that normally runs on the lower end of that. Let's say you are a vegetarian, you run more on 50 to 60 percent. Can you imagine getting up to 80, 90, 100 how much better you'd feel?

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yeah, well, that's the whole point. It doesn't, it doesn't add something that's foreign to your body. It's something that you're already using, it just tops off a tank that you're already using. Yeah. Uh, and and so that's that's super helpful. Um and what else do we want to talk about? Myths and facts. We talked about a little bit of that damage of kidneys. It's not a steroid, it's not there to like bulk you up.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

You know, the one thing I any I always get asked about supplements. So, so supplements in general. Look, a good name brand supplement, you're probably going to be fine. You can always look for, yeah, you know, is it made in a factory that's actually a factory that like they check for standards? Because, you know, there are a ton of supplements out there. It's hard to choose. So there's there's a lot of supplements that you can find that they, you know, depending on the various, uh, depending on where you want to go get your supplement. You know, most of your name brand supplements, most of your big box supplements are going to be good. Um, is it gonna be good as good as your um, you know, super expensive? Like, like, do you need to go spend a hundred dollars on your creatine gummies versus twenty dollars? There's probably not an eighty dollar difference in those.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

No, in fact, there's some super fancy formulas and stuff. And yeah, and honestly, the most studied the the the easiest is is this is one where like simple stuff is simple stuff and it's it's easy and good and work. So creatine monohydrate. Yep. Uh what whatever supplement is that, and that's not that's not the bells and whistles, that's not some of these other fancy things you get on, like, hey, we found the best creatine, yeah, uh supplement, like whatever. Like, no better. All the studies, all the studies creatine monohydrate, it's cheap and it's effective, and it's helpful. So don't agree more. Don't don't bust your wallet looking for some special fancy thing because they make it in the best thing.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Gummies, they make it in powders, they make it in capsules. Yeah, uh, I mean, it's really just whatever you prefer. Look for a good name brand, and and you should be fine. Get that three to five grams a day. You can extend that out, I guess, a little bit higher if you're feeling like you know, you you know, yeah, you want to get those other additional benefits, perceivably, but um hydrate well with it, stay active and keep moving. Um, and you and you and you really should be fine. The um that's really it. Creatine monohydrate, the good. It's good.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, that and we talked about kind of what it is. Yeah, I it's it's an exciting thing. It's it's it's one of the things that's super helpful.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

One of the things I have seen is that it's been marketed specifically to oh, this is like a female version. Uh, I saw that on Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

In fact, I've had a couple patients where they brought it and they were like, This is female creatine, yeah, and this other one is male creatine.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

No, that's perimenopausal. And I'm like, oh my goodness gracious, they just paid like overpaid by $20 for something that said women's on it. There is no specific women's or men's creatine.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

It is specifically I I think we should add a creatine supplement to our website, yeah. And we should have a male version and a female version. And it's gonna look you know what we will discount it and only charge you 10 extra dollars for either of those.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

If you can have if you want the specific one that says male or female, okay, wait, don't do that ever. Yeah, don't. I mean, it is not the creatine monohydrate is for humans. Uh all humans, yeah. And it and it an XY or an XX chromosome.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

XY, XX, XXY, whatever it's yeah, it makes no difference. It's gonna be good. All right, creatine, we're for it. 100%. Um, yeah. And we will we're gonna talk about something else next time. Yep. Yeah, that's good. Take care. We hope you remain healthier ever after. And uh specifically on starting any supplement, we do recommend talking to your uh medical provider, especially if you have any of those medical conditions we mentioned. Um take care and be healthy.