What 120+ Creatine Studies Reveal About Longevity, Aging & Your Brain | Dr. Darren Candow

[00:00:00]I currently take creatine. I've been taking it for about 25 years daily. My liver and kidneys are fine.

[00:00:05]>> Creatine is everywhere right now. From social media to health podcasts, everyone seems to be talking about it.

[00:00:12]But why has one scientist spent more than 20 years studying this single natural compound, publishing over 120 research papers? And why are brain experts now paying attention to it? The answers may completely change the way you think about creatine.

[00:00:29]>> So, let's start with the basics. What exactly is creatine? And why does our body make it in the first place? At its core, creatine is a molecule that helps your body produce energy.

[00:00:41]>> Every time you lift a weight, climb a flight of stairs, or even think intensely, your cells rely on a molecule called ATP, the body's primary energy currency. Creatine helps replenish that energy, allowing your muscles and other high-energy tissues to perform at their best.

[00:01:00]>> Creatine basically maintains ATP. If you have more creatine in your cells, you can actually perform more work. So, think of exercise. You can do more reps, you get stronger. Activities of daily living, getting out of a chair. So, for example, older adults, sitting down isn't important for them to be able to get out of a chair with leg strength. It is. Off the toilet, out of bed. We don't really think of it, but these are some of the things that's actually starting to come into uh evidence-based research.

[00:01:28]>> But where does creatine come from?

[00:01:30]Although it's best known for its role in muscles, creatine is actually produced naturally by your body, mainly in the liver and kidneys, with a small contribution from the pancreas. You can also obtain creatine from foods, such as red meat and fish. Once it's made or absorbed from your diet, it's carried through the bloodstream to your muscles, brain, and other organs, where it helps meet their constant energy demands.

[00:01:54]>> Creatine, it's a nitrogen-containing compound created from three amino acids.

[00:01:59]So, arginine, glycine, and methionine.

[00:02:02]So, you can get it through food. We'll talk about the difficulty with that, but you may not know that you're actually making it right now while you're sitting here. In your liver, you're making a small amount. And new evidence to suggest that in the brain, we're actually making some creatine as well.

[00:02:17]So, that begs the question, do you need the supplement? Okay? For the undergrad students in here, that's going to be part of the test later. Do you need to supplement? What if you're a vegan? What if you're a vegetarian or someone on a plant-based diet? Because it gets a little tricky. The only dietary sources of creatine, like not a supplement, are in animal-based flesh. Red meat, seafood, there's small amounts in poultry. And the last count is you would have to drink all the milk from a Jersey cow to get a small dose of creatine. So, if you're consuming red meat or seafood on a daily basis, you're getting a small amount. You're synthesizing about 1 to 2 g a day. And you also pee out about 1 to 2 g. Now, here's the difficulty. To get a small amount of creatine is really difficult in a landlocked province like Saskatchewan, it gets even more difficult, okay? So, you can see here to get as little as 3 g of creatine, so that's a quarter of a teaspoon, you'd have to eat an entire kilogram of cod fish. So, that's about $30. If you want to get a little bit more from red meat, you go to the Keg or Golf's, whichever it is. A $50 steak will give you about 5 or 6 g. So, the difficulty becomes can I afford it? Am I getting enough? And what are some other alternatives?

[00:03:29]>> But before we discuss how to choose a high-quality creatine supplement, let's first look at what decades of scientific research actually tell us.

[00:03:39]How does creatine affect our muscles, bones, and brain? And more importantly, what does the evidence really support?

[00:03:47]>> I think most of us are very familiar with creatine and muscle. I think 99% of the research, is over 1,000 peer reviewed articles on creatine. It's clearly shown that it improves muscle strength, endurance, power, and muscle mass.

[00:04:00]>> Creatine by itself has never been shown to be a stand alone.

[00:04:02]>> Creatine and resistance training or brisk walking in combination was shown to still increase lean body mass by about 1.8 kg or sorry, 1.18 kg or about 3 lb on average. So, you're thinking is that even meaningful? Is there any potential issues with this? The big factor is this was lean body mass. The question you should be asking is it muscle? Do you know no studies ever measured muscle when it comes to creatine supplementation?

[00:04:33]>> And I hate to tell you this, but the biological processes of aging start when you're 40 years of age or older. We're going to talk about the prevalence of sarcopenia, but when you hit that 40th birthday, the tears might start cry or coming down a little bit more because you're losing uh facing muscle morphology, type two muscle fibers are starting to process.

[00:04:54]Are you willing to go out and buy 700 g of muscle?

[00:04:58]I am because I'm already losing. So, now we're actually showing that resistance training and creatine can be a mitigating effect for sarcopenia. The question begs, is it weight training or is it creatine? Uh but this clearly showed that without exercise a small dose of creatine on a daily basis for over 200 individuals, and as we all know when you're doing creatine human research, it's very difficult to get adequately sample size uh populations, uh creatine had sort of a minimal effect if anything. So, I think the driving force from a lean body mass or muscle mass perspective is exercise, weight-bearing exercise primarily.

[00:05:34]Creatine is sort of going to be an adjunct to that. And an entire year of supervised training 3 days a week in our labs, you can see that creatine increased lower leg muscle density by three-dimensional pQCT by a very, very, very, very, very small amount. The group who just performed resistance training had no creatine, actually got a slight decrease. So again, the crappy biological process of aging is detrimental. Even exercise. The most potent non-pharmacological intervention we have, you have to do it. If you're not currently doing exercise, please start immediately because most of the world's population are doing nothing. So look at the catastrophic effects there.

[00:06:14]So I think exercise is really something that goes hand in hand with creatine.

[00:06:17]Remember, you're losing on a daily basis. Every time you get out of bed, cardiovascular function goes down, muscle mass can go down as well. One day of bed rest reduces muscle proteins by about 6%.

[00:06:29]So if you exercise and take creatine, you can get a slight reversal.

[00:06:36]Like, I'm not talking massive amounts, but I think for my grandparents and parents, this is something to consider.

[00:06:42]Move the body and maybe creatine is just something very small, but really, really important. So from a healthy aging perspective, I think it is viable from a lean tissue and or muscle growth perspective.

[00:06:56]>> We've established that creatine may help slow age-related muscle loss, but could its benefits extend to our bones as well?

[00:07:04]Let's see what the research has found.

[00:07:06]>> Bone benefits. The lowest dose ever has been shown to have bone benefits is 8 g all the way up to 12. 3 to 5 g seems to be really good for muscle. So a little bit more is fine, but bone needs to be a little bit more and that's primarily based on some of our work from our lab where we've shown that about 8 to 12 g a day with exercise, and that's crucial.

[00:07:26]If you do not exercise, there's never been a study ever shown to have bone benefits, but if you do perform weightlifting, one of the very cool things in postmenopausal females is that creatine seemed to reduce the rate of bone mineral density loss around on hip region.

[00:07:41]So it didn't increase bone density, but it decreased bone density loss, and it also seemed to maintain or improve the structure of the bone a little bit more.

[00:07:50]So, that has profound beneficial effects, especially as we get older. If those individuals on creatine were to fall, maybe they might not fracture their hip. And as we both know, if you fracture your hip, you're going to be placed in long-term care, or you're going to be inactive for at least 6 months. So, creatine has some bone benefits. They're not great. They don't improve bone density, so they're not going to be an osteoporotic cure, but there is something there, especially if you're prone to osteoporosis or osteopenia.

[00:08:16]>> After decades of research, Dr. Candow's conclusion is remarkably consistent. The strongest evidence shows that creatine, especially when combined with resistance training, can improve muscle strength, increase lean muscle mass, and help older adults maintain their physical function as they age. Research also suggests it may support bone health.

[00:08:38]But perhaps the most exciting question scientists are asking today is this: If creatine can fuel our muscles so effectively, could it also benefit another organ with enormous energy demands?

[00:08:51]The brain?

[00:08:52]>> So, our brain is very metabolically active. It's only about 2 kg, but it occupies about 20% of your metabolic rate. So, it's highly involved in brain bioenergetics. But to set the stage, it's really effective when you're stressed. Can creatine get in our brain?

[00:09:09]And if it can, and does it have therapeutic applications? The best overall studies currently right now that use an MRI for the brain have showed about 20 g seems to have some effect acutely. But the two studies last year out of Germany even showed this. So, a classic study was done last year when they gave 30 g to a group of young individuals who volunteered to be sleep deprived for 21 hours. And that level of creatine increased creatine levels in the brain, and it offset some of the negative effects. Remember, that was an acute episode of 21 hours of sleep deprivation. They've done a subsequent study going down to about 0.2 g or about 14 g. It didn't have the same effect.

[00:09:48]Remember, a healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine. But a stressed brain likely does and the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come into play. There's a lot of nuances with the brain. Obviously, we just showed different regions, which we don't have a lot of information, but overall, it seems that 20 g seems to be the most viable dose when the brain is stressed.

[00:10:09]>> The science is one thing, but how does Dr. Candow apply it himself? How much creatine does he personally take? And what does he look for when choosing a high-quality supplement? Let's hear how Dr. Candow uses creatine himself.

[00:10:24]>> I currently take creatine. I've been taking it for about 25 years daily. My liver and kidney is fine. I take a bit higher dose than you're probably expecting, at least 10 g a day. I also consult for or supplement companies who make creatine, so there's a disclosure.

[00:10:37]Right now, I'm taking 20 g a day. I started 4 days ago. I'm probably the most saturated person on the planet.

[00:10:43]I've been taking creatine daily for two decades and I've even increased it up to 20. The hope it's going to allow me to stand up here, present data, being totally jet-lagged with no sleep.

[00:10:53]>> What three criteria should you look for when choosing a high-quality creatine supplement?

[00:10:59]>> So, those are the three things that I personally would look for. Monohydrate, Creapure is the type, and then NSF certified or third-party certified. You always want to make sure the company's third-party tested. It uses a high-quality creatine and it actually has a source of creatine in there as well. I think one of the best ways to take it that never gets any press is I put 5 g in my water bottle during my workout. And so now, I'm consuming a little bit of creatine as I do my weightlifting or cardio and then I'll consume a little bit in the morning as well. So, I take about 10 g a day at minimum on on a daily basis.