#451 Creatine Masterclass: Benefits, Myths, Dosage and Loading with Dr Darren Candow

Dr. Darren Candow (0:00)

For a long time, we thought creatine was just for people who lifted weights, and we've clearly shown now that creatine has beneficial effects for them. And not just muscle, but we can talk about bone, brain, and some of the really popular things out there. The more creatine in the brain, the brain can actually function at a higher level, and or during times of sleep deprivation, hypoxia, jet lag, depression, clinical anxiety, maybe it's coming to the rescue.

Siim Land (0:25)

Dr. Darren, welcome to the show.

Dr. Darren Candow (0:27)

Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Siim Land (0:30)

Yeah, I'm excited to have you. And creatine is one of the most research supplements of all time. And you've done a lot of research and studies on creatine. So you're pretty much one of the best people to talk to when it comes to creatine. So I'm excited to have you on the show and discuss all things creatine.

Dr. Darren Candow (0:50)

Yeah, happy to be here. There's lots to talk about, so I'm sure.

Siim Land (0:53)

Yeah, so maybe we can start with, you know, I said creatine is one of the most studied supplements of all time. What is like the actual, do you have like any number of like how many clinical trials are there on creatine? And what is that kind of the pulse on creatine of what are like some major effects people will see?

Dr. Darren Candow (1:11)

Yeah, yeah. The last tally was over a thousand pure refereed studies, and that includes rodent animal models all the way up to the humans. And it's really exploded since the late 1990s, just looking at young males in the gym. And it's really looking at basically anybody on the planet from across the life span, females, older adults, we're actually looking at clinical populations. And so today, it'll be exciting to look at not just muscle, but we can talk about bone, brain, and some of the really popular things out there. We could even talk about pregnancy and some of the new emerging areas of that. So it's really exciting. Yeah.

Siim Land (1:44)

Right. So yeah, you mentioned brain, muscles, bones. There's some aspects of like sleep architecture as well.

Yeah. So why is it like sounds like a miracle molecule? So like why is it like what does creatine do to your body when you ingest it?

Dr. Darren Candow (2:00)

Yeah, like it was discovered in the 1800s. And of course, we all remember back to our own high school biology or physiology, that creatine is sort of helps maintain ATP. So adenosine, triphosphate, or the energy currency of all our cells.

And keep in mind, a lot of people think just muscle, but no, all our cells in bone and brain use ATP for existence and longevity and and sure enough, when you look at all this emerging data, there's a common denominator that creatine either through supplementation or through the diet or how we naturally produce it in the body. It seems to maintain ATP levels longer when we're doing activities of daily living or more importantly, exercise. So that might allow the person to exercise at a higher volume, and we think that's one of the main driving forces. But yeah, as you point out, in the last probably 20 or 30 years, now we're starting to have some beneficial effects on bone density for clinical populations. And from the neck up, it's really emerged. We're now talking about depression, anxiety, sleep. We just published a paper last year on getting a little bit more sleep. What about those susceptible to head trauma, athletes, concussion? So there's a lot of emerging areas. And I think the neck up is probably the biggest area we'll focus on, probably for the next 20 or 30 years. So yeah, it's gone from just young males getting bigger, stronger, faster, to probably having a global effort. I think the last estimate was about 35 million people on the plan to take creatine supplementation, and it's projected to be 350 million in 10 years. So I think with all the evidence-based research there, and of course, the safety profile is second to none. That's why a lot of people are having this new emerging interest in creatine.

Siim Land (3:41)

Yeah. So you mentioned that it helps with ATP production, creatine, and all the cells require ATP. So your muscles contain some creatine, right? And with the higher the creatine stores in the muscles, then you have availability to recycle the ATP more efficiently or for longer.

Dr. Darren Candow (4:05)

And I think your viewers would be more familiar with creatine in muscle or exercise performance. And yeah, maintaining ATP or energy of the cell is one of the biggest mechanisms. So the athlete or the individual can maybe do more repetitions, lift a little bit more. Also, recovery is a big thing between subsequent workouts. But then when you go inside the cell, creatine does seem to work from a sort of multifactorial way. It actually has been shown to increase things called satellite cells or growth factors. And a lot of your listeners would like, oh, wow, these are really important for contributing to protein synthesis. It also reduces things called reactive oxidative species or inflammation.