Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 385: 12 reasons to supplement with creatine

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

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Hey everybody, welcome into another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga, and in this episode, we are talking all things creatine. You see, when I was scouring a recent Q&A to determine what questions I'd like to pull for a recent episode or upcoming episode, this one will probably have dropped by the time you hear this, I just couldn't get over how many questions there were about creatine. And I said, you know, it's been a while since I've discussed the reasons and the rationale

behind creatine supplementation in long form, with some science with some evidence that expands beyond just the enhancements in musculature and muscle strength and in the stuff that's so frequently discussed when we discuss creatine. So really deep diving here and unpacking creatine for a little bit in a kind of dedicated episode that I think will bring many of you up to speed and serve as a great resource moving forward. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners like Elementee. Elementee makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my Elementee each and every morning before I have coffee

so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support brain and body hydration. This combination of electrolytes improves health, performance, body and brain performance, mind you, helps to reduce cramps

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And again, it's not just me. Elemente is the official sports drink of Team USA weightlifting, and it's used by athletes in the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, as well as athletes like you and I looking to take your fitness to the next level. My favorite flavors are definitely the raspberry and citrus. When I put a box together,

I try to load up on raspberry and citrus. And when you put your box together, you can get a free sample pack containing all of elements amazing flavors like mango chili citrus raspberry orange and more to get access to this free gift with purchase scroll down to the show notes and Check out using the special link for dynamic dialogue listeners What's going on guys coach Danny here taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-one fully

tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online,

somebody who has licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need. With custom training designed for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your limitations and your goals, nothing cookie cutter here, as well as easy to follow macro nutrition programs that are non-restrictive, you'll get customized

support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals, as well as provides you with accountability and the expertise you need to succeed, as well as biofeedback monitoring, baked-in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option.

And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry So head over to core coaching method comm and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today So when it comes to creatine I think what I need to you know get across first is we're going to be talking about creatine Monohydrate that is the form of creatine I will be referencing because

all of the studies, all of the science, all of the evidence basis that I'm referencing when I say creatine can do this, creatine may help with this, etc etc. Those claims are backed by research showing the efficacy of creatine monohydrate. Okay, there's other forms. This is the only form I would recommend, creatine monohydrate. Another housekeeping kind of question before we get into it, who can take creatine monohydrate? Pretty much anybody who doesn't have a pre-existing maybe kidney or liver thing, you should always check with your doctor. I'm not a doctor, but they have studied creatine safety in

women, men, teenagers of both genders, children, even infants, breastfeeding women, and there are no, you know, standout red flags. Okay, still check with your physician, but the safety profile of creatine is extremely high compared to other supplements. Another question about creatine that's a good rules for the road thing. What the hell is it? It is a combination of a few amino acids. It's organic, we make it in our own bodies, we tend to get it in our diets from red meat and fatty fish. If you are active and do a lot of work

where you contract your muscles, or you care about specifically the development of strength, speed, power, athleticism, creatine supplementation probably makes sense. But there's a lot of other reasons to take it, which we'll probably outline today. The safety profile, like I said, is very high. So is the affordability. Creatine is one of the most affordable supplements on a per serving basis.

Additionally, it's pretty widely available, easy to access in good forms. And frankly, as far as supplements go, while some people do often, I'd say like 5 to 10% of people communicate either headaches or GI distress, most people have zero side effects associated with creatine supplementation whatsoever. So let's get into why you would take it 12 reasons really to supplement with it beginning with the first four which we're going to categorize under the umbrella of physical performance. So the first and of course most obvious reason you might want to take creatine is for increased

muscle mass actually building more muscle. Now, I will be honest with you, the literature I've seen around just how much muscle creatine can help you build is a little bit unimpressive. It seems to me to be the case that creatine might make a 10 to 25% difference in the total amount of muscle you build as a natural athlete, and man, I'd probably skew closer to like the 10% side, and most of that's indirect. It makes

a difference but not a huge difference but we can say that creatine via either direct mechanisms that grow the cytoplasm, the actual innards of the muscle cell, the the liquid part via mechanisms that just allow for more mechanical tension to occur over time that you should see increased muscle mass with creatine supplementation One thing for sure we're gonna see moving on to the second reason to supplement with creatine is Improved strength and power so a lot of you might wonder okay How is it that I can you know actually develop more strength and more power? Like, how does creatine literally help me do that?

It's not steroids. Is it it actually is through ATP, which many of you probably have some familiarity with and might remember from high school biology class. ATP is one of those things that you learned about for sure. It's made in many cases in the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. And so long story short, when you're doing vigorous exercise,

you deplete ATP pretty quickly. And creatine helps regenerate ATP from ADP by carrying a phosphate group back to ADP, turning it back into ATP. So that's going to help with energy production inside of the cells. And it's interesting, a lot of people tend not to remember this, but you have many different mechanisms of ATP production or energy production, muscle contraction in the body. One of them is the ATP PC system, the adenosine triphosphate or phosphocreatine or phosphagen system. That powers some of the most explosive exercise we do. I want you to think of the hundred yard dash. That's actually powered in many ways

just by ATP and creatine. Not by carbohydrate, not by fat. Walking up a gentle incline, that's gonna be mostly fat. Doing 12 reps on the bench press, that's gonna be a combination of creatine, but mostly probably glycolytic. However, it is through this phosphagenic pathway that we produce a ton of power. This is powered in large part due to stored creatine,

and having more stored creatine can help with this. The third way creatine can enhance physical performance, the third reason to take it, is for the enhanced recovery. Creatine can reduce cell damage and inflammation following exercise, leading to better recovery, and it can also help you hold more fluid in your muscle tissue, which is generally going to be beneficial for recovery. It could also be the case that creatine may help with the absorption of other nutrients or when consumed with nutrients like protein and carbohydrate

might have enhanced absorptive qualities. So it's not a bad thing to take around your workout or post-workout. It should get into your muscle cells pretty quickly and pull some water in there with it to help with recovery and it to take around your workout or post-workout. It should get into your muscle cells pretty quickly and pull some water in there with it to help with recovery. And it might even bring some amino acids in with it. The fourth reason to take it is for increased long form output, you could call this endurance. Now creatine is primarily going to be beneficial

for high intensity output, specifically the sprinting work, the high power work, the high rep strength work we talked about, but it could also be beneficial for endurance athletes. So I wanted to highlight that as a fourth reason to take it. It is not just beneficial to have for people who do a lot of power training. I would say creatine is highly beneficial even for aerobic athletes as it helps with that little bit of like, NOS or like extra gear that you need to tap into sometimes. Having a little creatine on board could very well help with that.

Now, let's talk about another area where creatine supplementation has really garnered a lot of attention. And this is the area that I'm probably the least qualified to talk about because I am not a cognition expert. I'm not a brain expert. However, I've recorded multiple podcasts with people in this field and creatine experts, where we discuss the link between creatine and the health of the brain and the long-term capabilities and facult health of the brain and the long-term capabilities and faculties of the brain.

And I continue to be impressed. No matter who I talk to, I remain pretty impressed with how creatine can impact our brain. Now it's important to remember in the body, most of the creatine we store is in our muscle tissue for all the reasons we outlined earlier. Increased muscle mass, improved strength and power, enhanced recovery, increased endurance. Wouldn't it make sense that if you supplemented with creatine and got those benefits,

it was probably because a lot of that creatine was going to your muscles? Duh. And that's what happens. But not all of the creatine goes to your muscles. In fact, some of it goes to your liver and some of it goes to your muscles. In fact, some of it goes to your liver and some of it goes to your brain. And it's interesting that it seems to be that there is an association,

this does not mean anything, but there is an association between creatine supplementation and improved cognitive function, especially in short-term memory and quick thinking in older adults. And to me that might make sense because I know this is true for a lot of my older clients as they age, their dietary practices change, their appetite changes, and oftentimes this reflects, I don't want to say a disinterest, but certainly less excitement around the ingestion of large amounts of meat. This is a trend, this is not general, so I can't say this is true for everybody, but I've generally seen, or I'd see a trend of as people age, they tend to eat a little less meat.

It doesn't mean less protein, just less meat, and that could mean they get a little less creatine. And it could be the case that they don't get enough. And when they eat just a little bit more red meat or supplement with creatine, that additional creatine that can be partitioned to the brain can really increase their cognitive output. And I say this because I have yet to see literature that's as encouraging for younger people in terms of cognition. We'll talk about mood in a second and how interesting I think that is. Creatine and mood,

there's some really interesting research on creatine and depression. But to me, just fascinating. Creatine clearly accumulates in the brain. It certainly seems to help a cohort of people who might not eat as much red meat, cold water water fatty fish, or creatine rich foods or supplement with creatine and when you give it to them, much like that is often the case in literature where you give it to plant-based dieters, they see an even

greater benefit. So seniors, anyone who wants to, you know, improve their cognition, short-term recall, I would definitely recommend this for healthy seniors, anyone with Parkinson's disease, anybody with a motor disease where muscle loss or sarcopenia might be enhanced, an absolute must, in my opinion. That was the fifth reason to take creatine. The second of two in the category of cognition

and brain health is neuroprotection. So creatine has shown some potential neuroprotective properties. I was first introduced to this about five years ago in Sacramento at a sports, what would we call that? Sports performance, sports physiology symposium where the Sacramento Kings play, that NBA team. They have the Golden One Center,

that really beautiful arena, and underneath they have a pretty bad, pretty bad ass practice center and sports science facility. And they had a woman from UC Davis there speaking about creatine and fish oil and their efficacy as neuroprotective agents in combat sports, in contact sports where concussion is high. And I thought it was fascinating because some of the follow-up literature and follow-up

commentary I've seen since has been so strong and so robust as to say that like if you let your kid play football but you don't like let your kid take creatine, you're a bad parent. Because there's so much emerging literature about like creatine and TBI, traumatic brain injury, and a lot of parents are worried about creatine because they don't understand the safety profile and maybe they've seen it misrepresent or had it misrepresented to them as being potentially a steroid or a performance enhancer that might harm the health of their child. So I understand that. But wow, can creatine be uniquely helpful in that category? And there are some promising snippets of literature around certain neurodegenerative diseases.

Of course, my dad having Parkinson's when I saw there might be a connection between creatine and Parkinson's, I got super amped. But in general, it's very difficult for me to say that I see a particular... It's hard for me to say that I see a particular path forward for anything more than creatine helping these diseases in indirect ways. Could it help the brain? Indirectly, yes. Could it help the muscle loss that's associated with certain neurodegenerative

diseases like maybe MS and Parkinson's? Yes. But I would never, I would never, ever want to give someone too much hope. It tends to be the case that when you are using supplements to enhance, to entreat illness, you end up improving quality of life. But, you know, treating illness is more for doctors, not for podcast bros. But the literature to me is exciting. And I think that anybody who's dealing with a neurodegenerative illness should totally talk to their doctor and see what they think about creatine. Let's talk about general health and wellness as a category that I have four things written down for. So the one of them, two of them, frankly, three of them you could argue are very similar to what we just talked about with neurodegenerative disease.

But the first is just general healthy aging. We already talked about how creatine can increase muscle mass, strength, power, and enhance recovery, muscular hydration, and ability to just perform work. That tends to become harder and harder as we age, and healthy aging also coincides with sarcopenia, muscle loss, osteopenia, bone loss. We will talk about one of those in greater detail, but in this example specifically, when I talk about healthy aging, I talk about, I mean aging with muscle, contractile tissue, so you can do shit and your quality of life remains

really good comparatively speaking, right? Like compared to the other people your age, you're able to do the shit you still want to do. You've made less concessions in life. Creatine supplementation can certainly help with that. I think all six of the points we've made so far in improving muscle mass strength, power, recovery, endurance, cognitive function and neuroprotection make this probably a must take for any healthy senior that can clear it with their physician. But I would just say the seventh reason to take it, the first in the category of health and wellness, is this is up there in my opinion in terms of just

a generally good supplement to support overall healthy aging. Now let's talk specifically about the population of osteopenia and osteoporosis, people with diminishing bone density. So one thing for sure that most physicians would prescribe to anyone with osteoporosis and osteopenia is some type of weight-bearing exercise. How weight-bearing that might be depends on specifically your physical capabilities and all of these things. But one of the common things is swimming, weight training, walking, calisthenics, anything like that. And if you pair those things with creatine, you actually see improved bone health. So, people with osteoporosis, osteopenia, might benefit uniquely from supplementing with creatine.

And that's a very common and very prevalent diagnosis. And you see people take things frequently, like collagen, frequently like glucosamine and chondroitin, that I'm not going to say don't have any evidence to support their use, but they don't have nearly evidence to support their use, but they don't have nearly as robust a use case as creatine, and they don't have as nearly as many ancillary benefits. The third is blood sugar regulation. You could call this glucose metabolism.

You could call this blood sugar, and that would be creatine's unique in that it can improve glucose metabolism. This could be because oftentimes when we study people who take creatine, unique in that it can improve glucose metabolism. This could be because oftentimes when we study people who take creatine, they're often active. But it seems to be the case that creatine is associated with better nutrient partitioning, specifically carbohydrate partitioning could be beneficial. If you are a little more sedentary, maybe having a harder time managing your blood glucose. And again again with management of blood sugar more muscle tends to help contractile tissue acts as a glucose sink, a reservoir if you will for muscle or for glucose and so the more muscle you have

the more insulin sensitive you often tend to be. Again this could be and this is something that I actually learned quite a bit about from a client who I worked with for a very long time. She was a teacher in Australia and one of the things we talked about on the phone when I first onboarded her was her dad had a muscular disease. And there are some muscular diseases where in which creatine has actually been used as a therapeutic aid such as muscular dystrophy. And that was one of the things we ended up talking about and I ended up researching. She wanted to know if it was safe to take and it ended up being the case that in her specific

context it made a ton of sense and it even maybe ended up making sense for her dad who had this muscular condition and it opened my eyes to the fact that hey there are certain populations who would benefit from taking this even if we classically don't think of them as quote unquote fitness able. They might literally have a motor disability or a muscular disability and you might think, well, what good is a supplement that helps with muscle mass for someone like that? And you know, I would say it may could make a huge difference. Um, you know, we have to look at outside of the realm of just sports performance when we think about how these kinds of things might help people and might make a difference.

And creatine is just one of those supplements that I think, like fish oil or omega-3s, like vitamin D, like calcium, multivitamins, is going to hopefully become so mainstream that people take it, and I could be wrong, and if it ends up becoming the case that creatine was a bad idea, I'd be shocked, but if that does end up becoming the case, I'll definitely change my position to reflect whatever is safest for everyone, but it seems like creatine's so damn safe for so many people that, you know, for healthy aging, for people who have bone degeneration, muscle loss,

irregular blood glucose, neurodegenerative diseases, have any desire to look or perform at a high level, or even a muscular disease, creatine probably makes sense. So here's two additional benefits, number 11 and 12 that I think are kind of interesting. So one thing you'll hear a lot when it comes to creatine is, ah, what about the water weight? And so creatine actually does add water weight, but in a good way, and it improves hydration in the process.

So creatine draws water into your muscle cells. That's where the water weight goes. Not in your skin, not into fat, in your muscle cells making them look fuller which is cool right? But creatine also helps maintain the right hydration status which could be good for getting a pump, performing a little bit better, and looking a little bit better in a tank top. The second thing that's cool that I alluded to earlier, and again, I have not nearly as much evidence to support this as I do some of these other claims, but it's some of the unique kind of exciting evidence on creatine's potential ability to alleviate certain symptoms of depression. As somebody who has been diagnosed with depression, it's definitely cool to me to see that creatine could be helping me in

that area. I have not tried to, you know, take the time to directly correlate my symptomology with creatine supplementation because I take creatine every day and some days I am depressed, some days I'm not. I'd say for the most part I do a pretty darn good job. And that is another reason I might tip my hat to creatine because, and I've said on the podcast many times, I'm not anti-medication,

but I'm able to manage that pretty well. And one of the regular daily consistent things in my routine is creatine for what it's worth. So 12 reasons to supplement with creatine that I believe are evidence-based and sensible. You can, number one, expect for some increase in muscle mass compared to taking nothing. Number two, certainly expect increases in speed, strength, power. Number three, expect a little less soreness, better hydration from hard exercise. Number four, expect a little bit more juice even for endurance athletes. Number five, better cognitive function for seniors and aging adults. Jury's still out for young people.

Number six, could be neuroprotective long-term. Number seven, right up there with some of the best generally healthy aging supplements I can think of. Number eight, improve bone health and bone density. Number nine, better glucose regulation, blood sugar management. Number 10, could be beneficial for diseases that affect the muscle system. Number 11, definitely going to help with hydration. And number 12 could be interesting for people dealing with depression if you can clear it

with your doctor. Again, I'm not a physician, guys. These are just general, my general consensus on the literature. I'm very bullish on creatine. I think it's a great supplement. I take Legion's creatine monohydrate, it's a very affordable form. One bottle could last two months if you're on the smaller side and take a 3 gram a day dose. I take almost 10 grams a day, no issues. Anyway folks, hope you have a wonderful day, thanks so much for listening, leave me a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and I'll catch you on the next one.