Why I love Creatine...& You Should Too!

⭐️ Giving all credit to the fabulous Jeanne Peters, Rd. for the research used for this week's blog post. She shared a brilliant handout with me to educate my patients which she uses with her own clientele.

I am sharing the information with you within this post. ⭐️

Creatine has been long villainized by women worried about getting "bulky". Strength-training seems scary enough. Then, add creatine, and the visualization turns to worry about looking more like Arnold than Jane.

Creatine is not testosterone.

While it helps build muscle, creatine does not create bulk. If you were actively trying to bulk up - pairing creatine with a massive excess in daily calorie consumption and lifting heavy (all together as a program) - creatine would help you acheive that goal. But taking creatine as part of a daily wellness program will not have that result.

Creatine does pull more water into muscles, so you may experience water weight gain when you initially start creatine use. But this isnt a bad thing - our muscles need water to heal, grow and be well hydrated. Stay well hydrated and this should even out after a week or two of use.

Creatine will not make you put on fat. It does not have calories, nor does in impact fat metabolism on its own. Gain lean muscle, however, and that will help your body composition and fight that pesky hormone-related fat that likes to creep up on us in perimenopause and menopause.

More lean muscle mass = Higher metabolism

If you take creatine, and do not exercise, you will not magically gain muscle. Wouldn't that be sweet? But creatine will still have the cognitive and brain-boosting effects, even in people with sedentary lifestyles.

I would like to note that I take creatine for both my own body composition as well as my mental functioning. After all of the brain surgeries and whatnot, this has been vital to my own recovery. I recommend creatine to my patients for the same dual purposes. As one final aside, creatine is well documented in the recovery from and management of concussions. Something to consider for people of all ages! And yes, it is safe for use with youth athletes.

When shopping, search for Creatine Monohydrate powder. You can mix it with water or any liquid - its tasteless! - during any workout, or just 1-2x/day. One scoop (5g) is a serving. Avoid liquid creatine or creatine ethyl ester (CEE) as both are quite unstable. Pre-workouts touting creatine often don't have enough creatine to be effective, so read labels thoroughly and be mindful. The creatine I personally use is linked below.

Click on any of the hyperlinks below to find supporting research. Creatine is one of the most well-documented supplements for all of the following health benefits.

Lastly, before we get to Jeanne's amazing educational material, I would like to point out that people following vegan and vegetarian diets trend lower in their creatine levels than those who eat meat. No, I am not asking you to add meat if this is not for you. But please know that this is extra important information for you!

⭐️ Let's Go! This is so Good! ⭐️

Benefits of Creatine Monohydrate:

1. Helps Muscle Cells Produce More Energy

Creatine supplements increase your muscles' phosphocreatine stores (7, 8).

Creatine supplements increase your phosphocreatine stores, allowing you to produce more ATP energy to fuel your muscles during high-intensity exercise (10, 11).

Summary: Supplementing with creatine provides additional ATP energy, which improves high-intensity exercise performance.

2. Supports Many Other Functions in Muscles

Creatine is a popular and effective supplement for adding muscle mass (1, 4).

It can alter numerous cellular pathways that lead to new muscle growth. For example, it boosts the formation of proteins that create new muscle fibers (12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

It can also raise levels of IGF-1, a growth factor, which promotes an increase in muscle mass (12, 13).

What’s more, creatine supplements can increase the water content of your muscles. This is known as cell volumization and can quickly increase muscle size (15, 17).

Additionally, some research indicates that creatine decreases levels of myostatin, a molecule responsible for stunting muscle growth. Reducing myostatin can help you build muscle faster (18).

Summary: Creatine can stimulate several key biological processes that lead to increased muscle growth and size.

3. Improves High-Intensity Exercise Performance

Creatine's direct role in ATP production means it can drastically improve high-intensity exercise performance (1, 2, 19).Creatine improves numerous factors, including (6, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24):

• Strength

• Ballistic power

• Sprint ability

• Muscle endurance

• Resistance to fatigue

• Muscle mass

• Recovery

• Brain performance

Unlike supplements that only impact advanced athletes, creatine benefits you regardless of your fitness level (25, 26).

One review found that it improves high-intensity exercise performance by up to 15% (2).

Summary: Creatine is the world's most effective supplement for high-intensity sports. It offers benefits regardless of your current fitness level.

4. Speeds Up Muscle Growth

Creatine is the world's most effective supplement for adding muscle mass (1, 27).

Taking it for as few as 5–7 days has been shown to significantly increase lean body weight and muscle size.

Summary: Creatine can increase both short- and long-term muscle mass. It is the most effective muscle-building supplement available.

5. Can improve brain function

Creatine plays an important role in brain health and function (25Trusted Source).

Research demonstrates that your brain requires a significant amount of ATP when performing difficult tasks (25Trusted Source).

Supplements can increase phosphocreatine stores in your brain to help it produce more ATP. Creatine may also aid brain function by increasing dopamine levels and mitochondrial function (25Trusted Source, 45Trusted Source, 46Trusted Source).

As meat is the best dietary source of creatine, vegetarians often have low levels. One study on creatine supplements in vegetarians found a 20–50% improvement in some memory and intelligence test scores (25Trusted Source). For older individuals, supplementing with creatine for 2 weeks significantly improved memory and recall ability (47Trusted Source).

In older adults, creatine may boost brain function, protect against neurological diseases, and reduce age-related loss of muscle and strength (48Trusted Source)  Creatine deficiency is associated with neurological damage. 

Several animal studies have shown creatine to be effective in preventing or slowing the progression of Parkinson's disease.

Influential Harvard neurologists noted that "creatine is a critical component in maintaining cellular energy homeostasis, and its administration has been reported to be neuroprotective in a wide number of both acute and chronic experimental models of neurological disease." 

Studies have shown that creatine is safe and well tolerated by elderly patients with Parkinson's disease.

In 2006, the Neuroprotective Exploratory Trials in Parkinson’s Disease (NET-PD) group at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) studied 200 treatment-naïve subjects who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease within the past five years. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive creatine 10 grams/day, the antibiotic drug minocycline (a proposed neuroprotectant) 200 mg/day, or placebo for 12 months while their scores on a standard Parkinson's disease rating scale were monitored. Both creatine and minocycline performed well, yet creatine showed a substantial edge in performance over minocycline. Tolerability of the treatment was 91% in the creatine group and 77% in the minocycline group. 

SUMMARY: Supplementing with creatine can provide your brain with additional energy, thereby improving memory and intelligence in people with low levels of creatine.

Click here to work with Jeanne or to find out more about her practice, Nourishing Wellness Medical Center. Thank you, Jeanne, for your wisdom on aging well!