The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Creatine for Time-Crunched Cyclist Performance (Plus Cognition & Concussion Recovery)

• CTS • Season 3 • Episode 161

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Topics covered in this episode:

  • What creatine is and what it does in the body
  • How much creatine athletes need and when to supplement
  • What types of activity are enhanced by high levels of creatine in the muscles
  • Creatine's influence on the brain: cognition and concussion recovery 
  • Drawbacks to creatine supplementation
  • Creatine for vegan and vegetarian athletes
  • Importance of creatine + strength training for older athletes 

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Guest: Nicole Rubenstein
Nicole's bio from racersedgenutrition.com: "My interest in nutrition started long before I became a Registered Dietitian-Nutritionist. Growing up I was a snowboard racer on the U.S. Junior National Team and traveled the world to compete. When I left racing in 2001 I shifted my focus to nutrition and helping others. My career began in 2006 after completing my B.S. in Nutrition from Cornell University and my dietetic internship at New York Presbyterian. My foundation was diverse, working in a variety of clinical nutrition settings, a top sports nutrition practice in Manhattan, and running a private practice on Long Island. I relocated to Colorado in 2010 to continue my career and advance my skills as a sports dietitian. I enjoy working with complex sport nutrition cases (athletes with medical conditions) as well as recreational and elite athletes looking to improve performance or change body composition. I love planning my own sport nutrition too, which has been essential for strength and conditioning to stay strong and healthy during mountain bike season."

Education and Credentials

Host
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more than 13 years and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Speaker 1:

From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now onto our show. Welcome back Time Crunch fans. As a reminder, you're now listening to part two in a two part series on sport nutrition supplements with Nicole Rubenstein, owner and lead dietitian of racer's edge nutrition, based in Colorado. If you missed part one, start there. It helps to frame up our whole conversation on these topics, but if you're a weekly listener or consistent binger of the podcast, who's all caught up? Keep listening now and enjoy the show. Let's get into creatine First. What is it and why shouldn't endurance athlete care about it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so creatine. It's a nutrient in our body. It's made up of three amino acids and our body naturally makes creatine, so some of the organs in our body will produce creatine around a gram a day, and we can also get creatine from the diet. Similar to beta alanine is coming from our animal proteins meat, poultry, fish and the typical American diet might supply around one to two grams of creatine per day.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha. And how much creatine should be coming into the system if the typical American diet has? What one to three? What's the recommended that athletes are getting?

Speaker 2:

So there isn't necessarily a recommendation for how much to be getting from the diet. But when we look at dosing protocols for creatine, if we were not loading, it's around three to five grams a day. So it seems that if we were to add three to five grams per day from whether it's supplement or diet there's going to be improvements in the creatine level in our body. But if you were to consume an extra three to five grams a day from meat, you would probably be doing more harm than good, because I'm pretty sure eating five pounds of meat a day just isn't good for you. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean there's probably some people that would enjoy the first day or two of that, but I would imagine it would get old after a while and it certainly seems like it's detrimental to overall health.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely yes.

Speaker 1:

Okay, well, since we're into dose a little bit already, three to five grams maintenance, is there a loading phase for creatine?

Speaker 2:

It's optional. So if you were in a rush to increase the creatine stores in your body, you could do five grams four times a day. So that's 20 grams for five to seven days. That's about a week and that will increase your creatine level in your body. Most of my athletes, especially an endurance athlete, is not going to use a loading phase. They're just going to start it and stay on a maintenance dose and that will do the same thing as that loading dose. It'll just take a little bit longer. So it might take four weeks as opposed to one week to get to the same level of creatine in the muscle.

Speaker 1:

So we talked about dose before. Are there any benefits for the endurance athlete you mentioned? You have some endurance athletes taking it, so let's talk about the benefits. Why should an endurance athlete be taking creatine? What do they gain from it? And then we'll get into potential side effects later.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I think it's first important to think about what creatine is actually doing, how it works in the body and it provides a fuel source for very high intensity but short duration exercise. So we're talking less than 30 seconds. So think about what you might do from an activity standpoint. That would be a maximal effort, but less than 30 seconds. So this could be strength training. It might be intermittent sports, like a soccer player, where they're doing these short sprints and they're doing them over and over and over. But when you think about Adam, you would know this. You're building training plans for athletes. What type of training plan might involve repeated efforts, maximal effort less than 30 seconds? Do you have athletes that do that type of work within their training?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I do, and it's very specific, very short time period and we may be using that sort of training for criterion racers, for cross country, mountain bike racers, short track, that kind of thing, but I think the context of it and track racing as well I don't coach any track racers, but there's a lot of I would say that there's a lot of benefit there for people doing kilos and team pursuant some of these other ones. But I'd say this too the 30 second sprint doesn't matter if you don't have the aerobic capacity to get to the line to actually use the sprint Right. So like there's a lot more training, other fitness and other things to consider, rather than you know jack yourself on creatine for a 20 to 30 second sprint.

Speaker 2:

Right, Exactly, it can have these benefits in certain situations. But a lot of endurance cyclists they're not really doing that type of work and if they are, it's not very frequently.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, a handful of days where we're going full send on those durations in order to get that pop. But then even within the context of that right Like in some athletes maybe saying, well, shoot, I do sprints every weekend on my group ride, right, that is nested in with a 99% of the time you're more aerobic Right, so in all that time matters. So I think it's really important to bring out that point where, if we're considering this as a supplement for an endurance athlete, there's more nuance around it, because you mentioned in the way of strength training, right, like, there is some pretty good application of creating to some strength training benefits. We can talk about that because I think, again, going back to, if you can do more training long term and you're getting some benefit there, that could have some application to the performance of the endurance athlete as well as just their overall health, mobility and strength right.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, absolutely. And for athletes that might be doing different types of races, particularly stage races, there's often a sprint at the end and there's these marginal time differences between being on the podium and not. And if you think about that being a max effort sprint, it might be less than 30 seconds, it might not be. If you have more fuel in the tank to be able to produce that effort, then that might give you an advantage and creatine it is part of the fueling of these really short, high intensity efforts.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, so it's an important factor. I think that there's. It seems like there's benefit there. We're getting nuance on a sprint at the end of a four hour day, but yeah, so there's going to be some benefit there. There's some drawbacks. I want to talk about some side effects there. But before we move on from the benefits, one thing that I learned recently in working with another one of my athletes, with professional nutritionists, was some of the neuro protective properties that creatine has for endurance athletes, ie when you go bike racing and bonk your head because he hit the ground. Can you tell us some benefit of creatine when it comes to concussion and concussion protocol?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. So. There is some benefit in terms of taking it prophylactically. So you take this small maintenance dose each day, you have higher levels of creatine and there might be a reduction in symptoms from the concussion because you're starting with higher levels of creatine.

Speaker 2:

We do know that when there's a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury, the level of creatine in the brain goes down.

Speaker 2:

We didn't talk about where creatine is stored, but the majority is stored in our muscles and 95% there's only about 5% of creatine that's stored in the brain and we do know it's harder to get creatine into the brain. So the research around this is so new that we don't even know the optimal dose to really improve the level of creatine in the brain. So I think there'll be a lot more research coming out, hopefully in the next decade, around optimal dosing for someone that does a high risk sport, where they're prone to potentially have a concussion, as well as better dosing regimens for after the concussion, because right now there isn't a tremendous amount of data to say how much creatine should you be taking after you have a concussion. More of the research has actually been around youth, so kids that have had a traumatic brain injury, and there's been a couple good papers that show when you provide them with creatine after the head injury, their hospital stay is shorter, their time in the ICU is shorter, their symptoms are lessened as a result of providing creatine.

Speaker 1:

So and I know the research is limited here, but kind of the context or the role of creatine in the brain, I would imagine that it's the brain using ATP for a fuel source and creatine providing that phosphate to regenerate ATP. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:

It could be. So we don't know 100% what all the roles are and it's likely many different roles that it's playing. It could be roles around it being an antioxidant. It could very much be. It's providing a fuel source and we know that right after a head injury, the brain is very metabolically active and it's taking up a massive amount of energy. So, yes, in theory, if we're providing more fuel for that, perhaps it's going to give us some benefit.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Okay, well, I'll keep my eye on the research for that, but I think that does have pretty sizable implications for endurance athletes in the way of prevention and recovery from concussion. So I wanted to mention it and yeah, thanks for writing more detail on that. Let's talk about drawbacks or side effects. If endurance athletes are considering taking creatine, what do we need to know from a full scope of things?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So some athletes will have an increase in water weight when they take creatine and some athletes do not have that side effect. So I think it's important to test out your own body. Do you have an increase in weight pretty rapidly when you're taking creatine? So if you are doing that loading phase of 20 grams a day, it would probably be within that week or so where you'd be seeing a change in weight. If you are not doing the loading phase and you're just going to be taking the three to five grams a day for a month a little bit harder because there's so many other things that can affect weight during that month but assuming you were doing everything else, the same you could see is my weight going up.

Speaker 2:

Do I think it's related to the creatine? It could be anywhere from two pounds up to maybe seven pounds of water weight and of course, for any cyclist that's going to be doing climbing, that's a huge concern for them and I think that particular side effect has prevented a lot of endurance athletes from taking creatine. Who wants to carry an extra five pounds of water weight up a hill? Any benefit that I'd be getting remember the benefits. Only in that really short maximal effort is that little tiny benefit going to outweigh the fact that I just had to do two hours of climbing with an extra five pounds of water weight? Most likely the benefit is not going to outweigh the cons. So everyone's a little bit different in terms of whether or not they have any increase in water weight from the supplement, and you won't know until you try it.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha. So to that water weight. So you gain some weight rapidly. I'm guessing that is primarily water weight, your body's holding on to it. If you go on maintenance dose or if you just stop taking creatine, does that water weight flush from the body or does? If you're doing maintenance dose, does your body hold on to that?

Speaker 2:

So there's less likelihood, I think, for people to have the weight gain when they're doing the lower dose for a longer period of time. I think how that weight gain changes over time will be different for everyone because there is a bit more evidence around the water weight gain happening early with this big loading dose. Less of an issue if you're doing smaller doses over a longer period of time, and then for some athletes it can take a little while for that water weight to go away after they stop the supplement. So if you were going to be using it and you're concerned about climbing events that you have, it would be nice to know how long is it going to take from when I stop the creatine to be able to lose that water weight, and that's really individualized. So if you could try that in the off-season and have the answer to that question, it's going to help guide your dosing protocol for the season.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, in the way, because we mentioned consuming a lot of animal products in order to get some of this natural creatine. So therefore, supplementation is pretty good In the way of a vegan or a vegetarian. What are some of the concerns or benefits around creatine? Should a vegan, should a vegetarian, in your opinion, be on creatine from that standpoint, if they're an endurance athlete, and is it safe for vegans and vegetarians to consume?

Speaker 2:

Safety? Absolutely Creatine. It's a supplement that has been studied for many, many, many, many decades and it has an amazing safety profile. I do like to consider creatine for my vegan and vegetarian athletes because their starting levels are so much lower, so I think they're going to see the biggest benefit out of any athlete for that reason alone, and there is also some research around cognitive processing, memory and how creatine can potentially be helpful in those aspects.

Speaker 2:

So occasionally I have athletes that bring that up to me that they feel like they're a little fuzzy in terms of, like you know, the brain, brain fog, like I'm having a hard time remembering things, and especially in mountain biking in particular, which is my sport, you are thinking all the time. There's so many thoughts going through, especially when you're going fast. If you're going downhill, you're thinking about your line and you're looking ahead and there's a massive amount of processing in the brain going on. So if we have a supplement that could potentially help with that, especially for a vegetarian or vegan athlete who has much lower levels of creatine, then there could be a big benefit, and particular with DH athletes not sure how many DH athletes listen to this podcast, but that's a cycling discipline where I think the benefits of creatine are absolutely outstanding. We don't have to worry about the water weight, the cognitive benefits. Are there Issues with concussion? These athletes have really high rates of concussion. Their power strength athletes. So much benefit for a DH athlete.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and for those endurance nerds wondering what the heck we're talking about DH downhill, just for anybody who doesn't know. But yeah, I fully agree with that. I do have DH athletes, enduro athletes.

Speaker 2:

We take creatine for all the reasons including that, yeah, and there's potentially some other applications for it as well. You could spend years just trying to read all the articles that are out there on creatine. There's so many and so many potential benefits. One in particular that I think is interesting is the improvement in cognitive processing when you have someone that's sleep deprived.

Speaker 2:

And we have a lot of athletes that are sleep deprived. They're trying to balance their training and their work, and maybe they have kids and they're not getting as much sleep as they should be. Or maybe you have an athlete who is doing altitude training and we know that altitude can have negative impacts on sleep, so potentially there is a role for creatine in that case.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Yeah, so just as we're talking here, it sounds like the benefits of creatine are vast and there for all people, including endurance athletes, even though in the way of aerobic capacity and long duration sort of performance it doesn't really seem to correlate. But this creatine gets a stamp of approval and a thumbs up from you. It sounds like.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I think the only other potential drawback and I don't think we would necessarily see this in our daily application of it, but maybe if we were doing a lot of testing we might see it there is some research that shows supplementing with creatine can reduce VO2 max.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. What's the mechanism there?

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of different theories on what could be causing that.

Speaker 2:

But there's a really, if you're wanting to nerd out on creatine, there's a good paper on creatine supplementation of VO2 max. It's a review and meta analysis so it looks at all the different studies that have looked at creatine and VO2 max and they talk about the different theories and that paper of why it could potentially decrease VO2 max but on the other side it could increase ventilatory threshold. So if you're into all of that testing where you're getting that type of data, this might also help drive your decision on whether or not you want to supplement with creatine. And the last benefit is for older athletes. So many of our athletes are older. We start to lose muscle mass when we turn 40, unfortunately, and there's a condition called sarcopenia. It's this rapid reduction not necessarily rapid, but a reduction in muscle mass strains functioning huge role for creatine there. So if we're working with much older athletes that are really struggling to keep lean mass on, that could be another application for creatine.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great point. That is a great point. And for the aging athlete we're all aging athletes, we're all getting older every day, so we can consider ourselves all to be aging athletes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, along with strength training. Of course we can't just use the supplement and expect a benefit, so with that in particular we have to have concurrent strength training plus creatine.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, Stress makes the world go around and makes our muscles strong. So we didn't talk about what to aim for. Again, kind of brand neutral. But in the world of creatine, should we be aiming for creatine monohydrate? Should we be aiming for powder? Should we be aiming for pill? Talk to us about that.

Speaker 2:

Yep, creatine monohydrate 100%. There's no reason to take any other form of creatine, no matter what their companies are trying to market to you. Creatine is so well absorbed, like 99 to 100%, so there's not really any supplement that is going to be absorbed that much better if you're already getting 99 to 100% from creatine monohydrate. The years of research that we have around creatine, it's almost all on creatine monohydrate. So definitely make sure that your form of creatine is creatine monohydrate and again, it's coming from a third party tested company. So NSF certified for sport, informed sport certified.

Speaker 2:

Powder versus pill, I would say gosh either one, although I usually see it more so in powder form and it's pretty easy to take. You can mix it with anything. It's a little bit gritty, so if you just mix it in water or juice, it'll settle a little bit on the bottom and so you take it and you might end up with a little bit of grittiness in your teeth not a big deal. Just take another swig of water and wash it down. Or you can mix it with a smoothie, a recovery shake, something like that. I think if you're an endurance athlete that is taking it, I might consider taking it after the workout, and many of our athletes are using some sort of recovery protein carbohydrate shake after their workout to help with both muscle recovery as well as glycogen storage, and creatine can help enhance glycogen storage. So there's another little benefit for creatine in our endurance athletes.

Speaker 1:

So would you can. So you just talked about hitting that quote recovery window, taking it along with things. Would you say that creatine is also optimally absorbed if you take it with carbohydrate?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it will get taken up more so into the muscle if we take it with carbohydrate or carbohydrate and protein. Anything that's going to raise our insulin level is going to help bring creatine into the muscle better.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then lastly yeah, I was just thinking too like if you try to take 20 grams in pill form, you just be taking a lot of pills.

Speaker 2:

Right and it should be spread out anyway, but yes Right.

Speaker 1:

Yep. Lastly, I'll say on this too again, like you know, we don't have sponsors or anything like that, but the NSF is super important. Third party review tonight. Small plug for Thorne, because I do believe they seem to do a very good job of that. That's like their thing. Am I correct in that, nicole?

Speaker 2:

Yep. So they have a really nice array of products that are NSF certified for sport. Some of their products they actually have two different versions, so you can get the one that's certified, you can get the one that's not certified. The one that certified is a little bit more expensive and basically what that means is they're taking a sample from each lot that they produce and then they are making sure that it doesn't have any band substances in it. Really elite athletes that have the money to support additional testing might actually test the batch that they're giving the athlete. So we have this product that's already been third party tested and now they're taking another step and they're actually testing the bottle of products that they're giving to their athlete, because the risk is just so high.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and the implications of a positive drug test is devastating.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a thousand percent. So if you know for audience members, if you are out there racing, if you're racing national championship races, if you care what actually goes into your body, I do highly suggest, if you're taking supplements, to take the third party reviewed, nsf certified stuff. So what it's worth.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, nsf certified for sport. Make sure it has first sport on that label.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, All right, that kind of rounds off creatine. And just to kind of fully answer Paul's question, nicole, if we got just a few more minutes gosh, I'm going to really open up Pandora's box. But he did ask is there any other supplement that you would recommend if an endurance athlete is wanting performance Like, is there anything else out there? I would say in the last couple of minutes that you would recommend from a supplement standpoint that endurance athletes should be considering for their health and performance.

Speaker 2:

Beach juice, so the juice from Beats, and you can make that in your home by juicing Beats. You can purchase products that are beach juice and the reason is because it has high levels of nitrates. There's some really great research there for endurance athletes. So if I had to pick one other, that's a really interesting one to try out. Sometimes we'll use tart cherry juice, but that's more so for recovery, not so much performance.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I am not a huge supplement person. I'm not an expert in this field. I know some right, but I did a whole podcast on beach juice. Dietary nitrate I fully agree. If we're going training, there's going to be some beat in the system and you'll go pretty good then. So short endorsement for Beats, Anything beat related, Cool. Well, I'd say to take this thing home, Nicole. We talked about beta-aliening, we talked about creatine. We talked about the implication to endurance athletics. It seems like beta-aliening would do more in the way of performance, especially in the way of 30 to 60 seconds and then up to 10 minutes of high intensity sport. But there's other stuff that goes on with building that up in the body Creatine, short-term duration as well, not so much in the way of endurance capacity, but there's a lot of peripheral benefit. What else am I missing? What else did we discuss today, and what are the take-home points that you'd want our athletes to take away from this podcast?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Those are the big highlights of each of those supplements. So, assessing your own training regimen, the type of racing that you like to do, the function of these supplements and does it align with what you're doing on the bike making sure that you're taking the supplement appropriately in terms of dosing and, if you did need to periodize it, how might that work within your year-long training program?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, excellent points To kind of like not only fully optimized training but also keep the health factor in mind too, because you know, again, there's pseudo science out there, there's a lot of BS, in other words, and so we don't fully know the ramifications of long-term dosing with a lot of this. I'd argue with the creatine we actually do have quite a bit of knowledge on that. However, I think with most things, including macro nutrients, I mean, cycling stuff through is very healthy for our human bodies, as we're matching energy, you know, intake to outputs in the season of life, the season of training. So I think cycling these things through, never really taking something full on all the time, is also really good advice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Nicole, thank you again for joining us. If our audience is, like mind blown by your mind in what we shared today, can they reach out to you? Are you taking on clients right now? How does that work?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I we are taking on clients. I have a whole team of dieticians that work for me and they're all wonderful and they each have different specialties. So when someone reaches out.

Speaker 2:

I like to try and pair them up with the dietician that I think is going to be the best fit for them, but of course, some people have a preference as to who they want to work with, and so they might request that. My email is Nicole and I see OLE at racersedgenutritioncom. You can also check out our website, racersedgenutritioncom, and we work with athletes from all over, so we primarily do telehealth and zoom like visits with our athletes.

Speaker 1:

Gosh, yeah, that's great, just like coaching. Then we're pair it with the right person and and have an individual consult or a whole program. It sounds like.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, everything is really individualized because, as you know, everyone's needs are so different and so we value that and really try and make sure that whatever that athlete's need is that that is what we're focusing on they're not just entering into some static program, it's all one-on-one, individualized services.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's definitely the way to go. So, racersedge nutrition, check them out, everybody, and definitely, if some of this resonated with you today and if you want to go deeper on what some of these supplements or other supplements or just general nutrition means for you and how to individualize it into your training block, go see Nicole and her team over at racersedge nutrition.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, Anna.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, thank you so much and we'll put your email into our show notes, as well as some research and links to beat Alanine Creeyateen some other stuff. So, Nicole, thank you so much for joining us on the Time Crunched Cyclist podcast.

Speaker 2:

You're welcome. Thanks, Adam.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunched Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.

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