Can Creatine Keep Your Brain Sharp After a Sleepless Night? | Dr Ali Gordji-Nejad

Benjamin Hopkins (0:04)

It's one more look, Dr. Ali Gorgi, welcome to Degrees of Health. Thank you so much.

Ali Gorji (0:08)

Yeah, thank you, Ben. Thank you for having me.

Benjamin Hopkins (0:10)

It's a pleasure.

I've been long interested in creatine. I've been taking it for maybe, well, I don't know, 15 years now, on and off. And the athletic benefits are robust and irrefutable. And there's also this large body of work for the mental benefits of creatine. You did a study in April with 29 participants studying creatine and sleep deprivation. Could you walk us through what led you to want to study that in the first place?

Ali Gorji (0:36)

Yeah. So let's start a little bit to talk about the whole idea of what was behind that. So we started, as you know, maybe with the first study that was 2024, two years ago, with a study with the main aim to investigate whether, if we can, let's say, prevent or modify sleep deprivation associated energy decline, which is leading to impairments or deterioration regarding cognitive performance and so on. As maybe you know, it is typical that if you're tired, if you have a long night or you're sleep deprived, that you have deterioration regarding cognitive performance. That could be, interestingly, very crucial or important for particular jobs like pilots, firefighters, and so on and so forth. The main idea was behind that creatine is anyway during the last two decades, it's showing benefits for also cognition. As maybe you know, previously or up to now, it's very established in the sport community. It's leading to improvements within a physiological condition, and it's well established. People are taking that and it's proven. But since two decades, studies started also with the aim or with the goal to check whether there are also benefits regarding cognition. And it turns out, yes, there is. That was also an interesting outcome or the most famous outcome, particularly regarding people who have by default lower creatine level, like vegetarians, for instance, or older people. Up to now, it has been shown that there, it was a positive effect.

And it is leading to improving your cognition performance, particularly regarding, for instance, short or term memory. But the point was, and this is crucial or totally important, that this creatine supplementation is a very long time consuming issue. You can you cannot have a short term effect. You don't have the effect immediately.

And therefore, you have to take it for weeks, for instance. And the reason behind is that the uptake is time consuming, the cellular uptake, particularly regarding the brain and neuronal cells. And therefore, the idea was, okay, it doesn't work. It is anyway only effective or positive after a few hours, a few weeks, sorry, a few weeks or even months. And since within one night, it doesn't make any sense. So, but we came to the idea, we were inspired by some studies.

They reported that apparently, if you have intense exercise, so your energy level are declined and you need a high energy demand, apparently the uptake is going to increase. You have apparently an accelerated process where the creatine uptake is gonna be faster. That was the inspiration to talk about, let's start or let's try it with one night, which is a big deal. And let's see whether we have there an effect, yes or not. And let's prepare a stressy condition where the people are tired and the energy demand is higher. And let's see what happens there, whether the creatine uptake is higher, yes or not. And that was the starting, the whole idea behind it. That was two years ago. And yeah, there was a result where we got a lot of attention. It was a big deal.

Benjamin Hopkins (4:08)

Okay, wonderful. So before we dive into the science, what was the most important thing you discovered in the study?

Ali Gorji (4:14)

Yeah, in the study was we did two outcomes, main outcomes. It was not only one. It was first of all, the cognitive performance. You have to consider if you're tired, particularly regarding sleep deprivation, you have impairments or deterioration, particularly regarding short-term memory or reaction time. You can not keep information in mind for a short time as well as when you are rested, for instance. And here you have the first effects or the first negative outcomes. And we got the most pronounced or most significant results exactly regarding these categories. The reaction time or short-term memories, where you have to keep information in mind for within a short time. It was a little bit similar to like sports. You have also there, and this is also quite fascinating, the most effects within the sprint, where you need a lot of energy within a short time range by 100 meter, where you have this so-called peak, you need a lot of, you have there the most effects. And also in our study, and that was fascinating, you have also the most effects regarding short-term memory, reaction time, interestingly, fast, the speed in processing time, the people were a lot of faster. And that was the one. The other was metabolites. We also checked or investigated the metabolites, particularly the metabolites which are involved. We can also later talk about that, a little bit more in detail or dive in. For instance, like phosphor creatine, adenosine 3-phosphide, and so on and so forth, creatine all indicated also that the creatine uptake has been increased. So with other words, we have proven in two categories the same results, and that was the outcome.