#348 NEW Superior Form of Creatine and Other Workout Supplements - w/ Lucas Aoun of Ergogenic Health

Lucas Aoun (0:00)

And we can now completely eliminate that myth. Protein is not an issue for, like, the majority of the population who has no issues with their kidneys. Between 1 to 2 grams. And they were still seeing beneficial effects.

Siim Land (0:13)

Do you want to look and feel younger? If you do, I'm looking for a few more people who want to reverse their biological clock.

If you're interested, message me on Instagram the word health, and I'll send you the details, or send me an email to siim at siimland.com. Lucas, welcome back to the show.

Lucas Aoun (0:30)

Siim, what's going on, man?

Siim Land (0:33)

It's going good.

Yeah, and we decided to do another podcast together. The first one was about testosterone, of how you raised your testosterone very high naturally.

And I think the second one was about no tropics. So both of those are really like amazing information about those topics. But yeah, I guess we decided to do another podcast because there's a lot of these new compounds and supplements coming out there that could also have some, let's say, human enhancement effects beyond what we currently know naturally. So yeah, I guess we can start with some of the creatine, a new form of creatine that actually many people are interested in. So maybe you can discuss about that.

Lucas Aoun (1:22)

Yeah, for sure. And thanks again for having me on the show. Siim, it's always a pleasure chatting. I love talking about new and novel ingredients in the supplement space. But yeah, obviously, we're here today to talk about this new form of creatine. I guess we can frame it and give it some context. So as it stands now, most people would say that creatine monohydrate is the best and most well-studied form of creatine.

And that is true. Creatine monohydrate does appear to have the most amount of research. It's probably one of the best and most highly utilized supplements in the natural muscle growth space.

But as I was coming across some newer research on a newer form of creatine known as kregatine, I was interested in learning about its mechanism of action and also some of the initial human studies. And what really piqued my interest was the fact that they did a head-to-head comparison between creatine monohydrate and kregatine.

And this new form was 8.5 times more effective at saturating skeletal muscle cells compared to creatine monohydrate. What most people don't really realize is that creatine monohydrate, its bioavailability is actually very poor. Only about 2% can get absorbed into skeletal muscle. Whereas this new form of creatine, about 16.9% uptake into skeletal muscle tissues, which just makes it so much more superior to a supplement that we already know is so good.

Siim Land (3:04)

Yeah, I mean, like they have in always these different forms of creatine coming out over the last few decades, but creatine monohydrate has kind of stood the test of time in that sense that, yeah, so far, I haven't found any like these other forms of creatine being superior or necessary than creatine monohydrate. So, yeah, like, what have this has like done any studies about this new form or how does it like, yeah, how does it actually, is it actually better?

Lucas Aoun (3:39)

Yeah, well, this form of creatine is actually creatine monohydrate bound to creatine precursor, which is GAA. So that's guanidinoacetic acid. And that guanidinoacetic acid or GAA is a natural amino acid derivative of glycine and al arginine. So GAA, if you go on to PubMed and look up the studies on GAA, you'll see that a lot of the preliminary research was back in the early 1990s, where they were looking at how GAA can saturate into brain tissue and actually increase creatine phosphate levels in the brain, much more effectively than creatine monohydrate.

So as far as how this particular combination works, well, first of all, the most important point to understand is that this form of creatine has four ways to enter the cell, whereas normal creatine monohydrate only has one way to enter the cell, which is the creatine transporter number one, whereas this one has, it can enter the cell through taurine receptors, GABA receptors, passive diffusion, and that original creatine transporter one. So that straight away tells us this has better uptake across cellular membranes. It can increase creatine levels in the brain much more significantly. In fact, they looked at how this particular form of creatine can increase the creatine content of gray matter in the brain, but 3.9 times more effectively than creatine monohydrate, and 1.9 times more effectively saturating in the white matter of the brain.

So theoretically, and even based off my initial experimentations and trials with this form of creatine, one thing that I definitely noticed after the first week was a much more significant ability to recall my dreams and had much more vivid dreams, which is a similar effect that I get from other like acetylcholine based nootropics. So that was the initial effect that I noticed.