← Health vs Hype with the American Medical Association
Health vs Hype with the American Medical Association
Creatine for Muscle, Aging, and Brain Health: What the Science Really Says
00:35:04
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- [00:04]
Tony Coffey
Ruby,
- [00:07]
Leslie White
There were a few people saying, are you taking creatine? Are you taking creatine? That led me back onto the Internet to look.
- [00:14]
Tony Coffey
People romanticize the idea of being able to take a pill and for it to solve a lot of different problems.
- [00:21]
Cynthia Haid
We've been taking creatine for maybe just under a year, and I don't know whether that's enough to see anything substantial.
- [00:30]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
Could this work for endurance? Could it work for muscle mass maintenance in the elderly? Could it work for brain health? That's exciting for folks.
- [00:37]
Trace Dominguez
When you hear creatine, you might picture a chalky powder mixed into a protein shake or a gym bro chasing bigger biceps. But that outdated image is fading fast. Today, creatine has gone mainstream. Fueled by social media. It's now a supplement being touted for everything from building muscle to boosting brain power. It's no wonder so many people are suddenly talking about it. But can creatine really do all that? This is just one of the questions people have about it. Fitness influencer Tony Coffey would know. Creatine questions show up in his DMs all the time.
- [01:14]
Tony Coffey
I don't know if you've seen creatine content online. Whenever you talk about it, you get no less than 100 different questions about it.
- [01:22]
Trace Dominguez
Twin sisters and healthy aging advocates Cynthia Haid and Leslie White have their own questions about it. You'll hear Cynthia first then, than Leslie.
- [01:30]
Cynthia Haid
I'm not a scientist or a data collector or whatever you want to call it, but am I losing muscle mass? No. Am I building it? Maybe a little here and there. So, you know, what aspects of creatine contribute to that versus how many times am I going to the gym? And what kind of strength training am I doing? Like, who knows?
- [01:50]
Leslie White
And I think therein lies the rub, right? Is you. You want to think that you're doing something good for your body, but I don't know how to measure that. And I would take it even further. I was so exc.
- [02:02]
Cynthia Haid
When I.
- [02:02]
Leslie White
When I learned that this had benefits for the brain, I was like, oh, I am all in. I am all in on that. And, you know, I kind of walk around going, am I more alert? Am I more like, you know, whatever?
- [02:18]
Trace Dominguez
And doctors like Jason Mitchell have the answers.
- [02:22]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
Most of the creatine that you get, you know, it's produced in your body by a few of your organs, and it also comes through taking, you know, protein intake as you're eating your normal diet.
- [02:30]
Trace Dominguez
Welcome back to Health versus Hype with the American Medical Association. I'm your host Trace Dominguez. Today we're answering questions about creatine. It's been around for decades as a performance supplement, but thanks to TikTok and Instagram, it is suddenly everywhere. There's creatine nitrate, creatine hci, creatine ethyl ester, micronized creatine, buffered creatine, creatine magnesium chelate, creatine monohydrate. It comes in powder form, capsules and gummies. But what exactly is creatine, and should we all be taking it? Join me as we find out whether creatine is all health or just hype. This is an iHeart podcast.
- [03:11]
Cynthia Haid
Guaranteed Human.
- [03:13]
American Medical Association Narrator
Your social media feed delivers plenty of advice, but it doesn't know you. It doesn't ask questions. It doesn't give physical exams or order tests doctors do. At the American Medical association, we believe the best care starts with a real conversation, with someone who understands the science and your unique health. So stay curious, ask questions. But when it's time to make decisions, make them with a doctor. Learn more@amahealthvshype.org that's amahealthvshipe.org.
- [03:53]
Trace Dominguez
Scroll your feed and eventually you're gonna see it. Somebody trying to sell you creatine. The claims are big, constant, and not always easy to fact check. That's why we're here talking about it today, to fact check the claims. Does creatine help you build muscle mass? Does it help your athletic performance? Can it protect cognition as you age? First, we really need to understand the evolution of creatine's popularity. Tony, a fitness influencer who talks about creatine all the time, has a front row seat to this surge in interest, especially from his own followers. So I asked him, why is everyone suddenly so curious about creatine?
- [04:30]
Tony Coffey
People romanticize the idea of being able to take a pill and for it to solve a lot of different problems. When you tell someone that has a problem, hey, this pill will fix it. Whether or not that's true, people are going to want to believe it or at least keep watching it. And that's just true with any supplement or nutrition advice that's online that catches. I think creatine stands out, which is in that rare space of when people just don't understand what something is, but they have a lot of preconceived thoughts about it. If it's dangerous, if it's safe, if it's for gym bros, right? If you just ask someone, like, what is creatine? It's like, oh, it's a gym bro Thing, and you're like, okay, well what is it? They'll be like, I have zero clue.
- [05:05]
Trace Dominguez
Creatine has always had this reputation for being a jim bro supplement. That's the perception Leslie White and her twin sister Cynthia Haid first had of it when creatine started popping up in their social circles. But the conversation started changing pretty quickly. Maybe creatine isn't just for bodybuilder types. Maybe it could be good for healthy aging, for maintaining muscle mass, or for brain health. As women in their 60s, this plot twist piqued their curiosity. You'll hear Leslie first and then her sister Cynthia.
- [05:34]
Leslie White
I always thought initially it was for those sort of gym brats. And it was, you know, this muscle mass thing, and it wasn't for me and da la la. And then I started just saying, well, why are you taking it? And, you know, it really is a very well researched supplement. So if you actually do go online and look at all sorts of different things, there's all sorts to read about it. So that piqued my interest as well. And I thought, huh, this supplement seems to be something that may be helpful for my health in the long term. So I'm going to dig in as a curious person and as a person that is now really attuned to it, because that's the information.
- [06:18]
Cynthia Haid
And I do think that, you know, there's so much information about what happens to women's bodies as we age in terms of the muscle mass loss. So it was also twofold for me. It was that the information about how to build and keep your muscle, I mean, we all know that strength training and working out and all of that is important. So I was interested in it to go, oh, does this actually support and do more for my workouts? Because, you know, that's an important piece and I wanted to feel like I was progressing. So that's number one. And then number two, we started learning a little bit more about the possible advantages for your brain health.
- [07:02]
Trace Dominguez
So brain health, that's a compelling reason to take a closer look, right? A lot of Tony's followers, they show up for muscle gains, but that's not the most relatable hook for everyone exploring creatine but wanting to age well to stay sharp and protect your brain, that is universal. Right now, more people than ever are looking for answers about longevity and cognitive health. Tony noticed that shift in how people are talking about creatine really just transforming
- [07:31]
Tony Coffey
from something that I really thought was a gym bro, for lack of a better term supplement, into something that I now buy for my 83 year old grandmother for Christmas every year and have my parents taking and usually recommend it to virtually anybody, whether they work out or not, as long as they already have like a healthy functioning body and kidneys. Right. There's some specific cases where you shouldn't, but for virtually everybody it's becoming more of like a longevity supplement, not just a gym one. And I find that pretty cool.
- [07:58]
Trace Dominguez
What kind of changes did you notice after you started taking creatine?
- [08:02]
Tony Coffey
It's tough to look back because although creatine has one of the largest effect sizes for what any supplement can do, a lot of people, I think, overestimate what that really looks like. For example, creatine can maybe on a good end of things, increase your strength by like 5 to 15% on a certain lift or help you pump out like one or two extra repetitions on a set in the gym. Most people aren't paying close enough to their training where they would even notice that in the first place. Like what's one rep? Or if you're a woman who's, let's say dumbbell bicep curling. Fifteen pounds. An extra 5% of strength on that. What's that now? Fifteen and a half pounds is your now total potential to lift. So it's, it's not like a massively noticeable effect in the gym, but it's something that compounds over time. So I would like to say that I noticed a difference being stronger and, and endurance lasting a little bit longer in the gym. That could have also been placebo because of the, the actual size of things.
- [08:58]
Trace Dominguez
Yeah. One or two extra reps when lifting. I'm not sure I'm convinced yet that creatine is worth it. There's gotta be more to it than that, right?
- [09:06]
Tony Coffey
Where I notice it the most is as I've started to experiment with it more on the cognitive side of things. So that's where I've noticed it more with my attention, my focus and just overall energy and managing fatigue through the day.
- [09:19]
Trace Dominguez
There it is again, a reference to cognitive benefits. We'll definitely fact check that with our medical expert a bit later. Before we get to that, I want to spend a little more time with Tony and some of the misconceptions around creatine he's come across online. His experience can help us notice red flags to avoid.
- [09:36]
Tony Coffey
Whenever you talk about it, you get no less than a hundred different questions about it. Like different questions. And that's not being like hyperbolic. Like you get hundreds of different questions. People are so confused by it. They thought it was a steroid, which is the funniest thing in the world when you understand like on a molecule level what it does.
- [09:53]
Trace Dominguez
I want to take a second here to explain this further. Creatine and steroids, they're often confused, but they are very different. Creatine is a natural compound. It helps your muscles produce energy which can improve performance during exercise. Anabolic steroids, on the other hand, those are synthetic drugs that mimic testosterone. Creatine supports muscle growth through training and steroids force rapid muscle growth by altering your hormones. But since the results of taking each are quite similar, bulkier muscles, people often confuse them.
- [10:23]
Tony Coffey
Funny enough, that's like the first question I probably get asked is, is it a steroid? Is it safe? What does it do to random things? Like if I have it with my coffee, is it going to cancel out the effects? Or if I have it at this time of day, is it better or worse than this? So it really is more just on how you dose it, how you take it, am I going to be safe? What happens if I stop taking it? Which for some reason I don't notice. The same amount of questions or varying questions when I talk about virtually anything else. Any other supplement. It's creatine specific that people are a little extra up in arms about for some reason. I think that's from the just not knowing what it is standpoint.
- [11:00]
Trace Dominguez
So you work in the fitness space, obviously. So how do you think about the line between sharing your experience, giving advice versus, you know, when you kind of drift into medical advice and medical guidance?
- [11:12]
Tony Coffey
It's a very fine line that you have to learn to walk and it's, you have to be responsible. I think when you're talking about people's health, right, this is not just something that they might waste their free time on or even something that people might waste their money on. But when you waste your health or it could potentially impact that, that's a line I think people really need to consider putting a little extra effort and attention to detail in when they speak about it. My personal approach is never to bring up anecdotes or recommendations. I just more review what's out there, how things work in the data to give people the tools they need to make their decisions, at least a little bit more informed to talk about it with their doctor, to bring something up that they at least now understand rather than just like, oh, so and so online told me to do this. Why? I have no idea. But they're jacked or they look healthy. They're what I want so I'm going to do it.
- [12:04]
Trace Dominguez
Cynthia and Leslie have a similarly balanced approach to how they talk about creatine. Here's Leslie.
- [12:09]
Leslie White
When we went out and said, oh, we're trying creatine and this is how we're using it and this is what we hope to get from it. We got a bunch of people saying, and you guys are not qualified to be even talking about this. And we were very, very upfront about saying we're not health practitioners. Like, if you start something new, go and talk to your doctor. We're just really talking about what we live and what we do.
- [12:34]
Cynthia Haid
Yeah.
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Leslie White
So there's a lot of. There's a lot of that. And the ones that are putting it out as a magic bullet, I think is a really. Or a magic pill or a magic supplement or whatever, I think are really doing it a disservice. If you pop in the comments, you'll see that. And while social media usually gets a very bad rap for these kinds of things, I think sometimes communities can course correct in that, but a lot of people don't go into the conversation to see that. Would you agree, Cynth? Like, that's what I see all the time. Yeah. And I think you have to.
- [13:13]
Cynthia Haid
I mean, it's sort of. It's a bigger social media question overall, really. You know, you have to tailor who you're going to listen to and who you're going to connect with and be smart about it. I can't stress that enough. It's like there's a lot of people out there that are selling something and, you know, you just have to see. See through the agendas, so to speak.
- [13:37]
Trace Dominguez
Maybe you've seen some creatine content online before and after posts are pretty popular. Those are a big red flag for Tony.
- [13:45]
Tony Coffey
Yeah, the main thing that sticks out with creatine is more just before and after photos. I've seen it more common with women lately where they'll go through a crazy transformation over like 12 months that they put a ton of work into. Like props to them for doing it right. Like they'll lose £25. They'll go from maybe being a little bit fluffy, overweight, uncoordinated, to like very athletic, lean to a physique that a lot of people want.
- [14:09]
Trace Dominguez
But.
- [14:10]
Tony Coffey
But the only context given when they're showing these two clips next to each other are me before creatine, me after creatine, kind of insinuating like, oh, creatine did that. Not going to the gym five days a week for an hour at A time eating a high protein diet, sticking to a calorie deficit, you know, like all the things that actually got there, it, it, it's being made and pictured and painted as creatine did this. That's a very common trope. I see.
- [14:35]
Trace Dominguez
Creatine doesn't help you build muscle unless you pair it with weight training. But it's easy to be misled by influencers who don't give all the context around how the supplement works. And that's one of the reasons Cynthia had some initial reservations about starting creatine.
- [14:52]
Cynthia Haid
I was nervous about it when I first started because the whole supplement thing and what to do is kind of a big question. And if you go on social media, you can be led down wrong rabbit holes. Like just wrong rabbit holes. So for me, it was like I spoke with my doctor about it and asked her opinion. So that was a valuable, a valuable resource. I think it's just really important that you understand, you know, what, what you're supposed to be getting out of it and whether it's right for you, because obviously there's a whole lot of other things that, that have to be considered before you start taking anything so well.
- [15:36]
Leslie White
And also, I think for me, I started with a really low quantity and really I was listening to my body all the way along. Is anything adverse happening and paying attention to it over time, which is really important. And then like Synth said, as soon as the brain benefits started to percolate out there, I was like, okay, okay,
- [16:00]
Trace Dominguez
it's time to get the facts about creatine. To help me out, I asked Dr. Jason Mitchell, the chief medical officer for Geisinger in Pennsylvania, to join us. We'll start with an Easy one. Dr. Mitchell. What is creatine?
- [16:11]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
Creatine is essentially a natural energy buffer. It's produced in your body by a few of your organs, and it also comes through taking protein intake as you're eating your normal diet. And so that's normally where it comes from, the amounts that are studied for bodybuilding and just for fitness, you'd have to eat a lot of protein to get that much. And so that's why you see the creatine molecul monohydrate supplements, so you can get that levels to get the benefit that people are looking for.
- [16:35]
Trace Dominguez
Your body naturally makes creatine in your liver, kidneys and pancreas. About 95% of that creatine is sent to your skeletal muscles for physical activity. The rest supports your heart, brain and other tissues. Think of creatine as a kind of Backup battery for your muscles. Your body's main source of quick energy is a molecule called ATP, adenosine triphosphate. The problem is you only have a few seconds worth of ATP available at any given time, especially during short, intense efforts like sprinting or lifting weights. And that's where creatine comes in. Creatine is stored in your muscles as phosphocreatine, which acts like a rapid energy buffer. When your ATP runs low, phosphocreatine quickly helps regenerate it, so your muscles can keep working at high intensity for just a little longer. In simple terms, ATP equals primary energy and creatine equals the system that helps recharge it fast. This doesn't create energy out of nowhere, it just helps you maintain peak performance for longer bursts, which can translate to better workouts over time, which could explain its popularity amongst bodybuilders and athletes. Dr. Mitchell explains a little more.
- [17:50]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
If you look at studies of supplements, creatine has been really well studied. And we know that when you take creatine, appropriately, creatine monohydrate, in conjugation with strength training, you actually do build additional strength and do build additional muscle mass. And so a lot of people that body build use creatine because it's a creatine monohydrate is safe, it's been around a long time and it does improve their performance.
- [18:14]
Trace Dominguez
Yeah. What about you mentioned creatine monohydrate specifically, what are the other creatines? There are other formulations and I could see why people would confuse them. Do they?
- [18:26]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
They do. You have to look for creatine monohydrate. All the other creatines where something's added to it or you hear something after the word creatine, those do not have the studies and so I would not recommend those. It really is going to be about that creatine monohydrate.
- [18:39]
Trace Dominguez
Tony had a lot to say about this issue as well, and I think it's worth hearing at this point.
- [18:45]
Tony Coffey
There's over now 10 plus different forms of creatine other than creatine monohydrate, whether it's cre, alkaline, buffered creatine, they all sound pretty fancy and they come out with different claims. Like this buffered creatine will help the digestion process better, so you absorb more of it, or this will help increase your strength more than creatine monohydrate will. There's a lot of marketing around these different claims, but to that doctor's point, virtually all of the real meaningful Data out there is done on monohydrate. And the funniest thing to me is virtually every single one of these forms, at least that I'm familiar with right now, is not just a little bit more expensive, but massively more expensive than just plain old creatine monohydrate. For this same form. This is what you see people coming out with, oh, you've heard of creatine? Wait till you hear about this form of creatine. Everything that you've heard bad about it doesn't exist anymore. It's, that's, that's something that exists all the time in content. Drives me nuts because it's just another way to try to get money from people. It's ridiculous. I mean, it's not a 10% price spike. It's like a 2, 3, 4x price increase.
- [19:49]
Trace Dominguez
Whoa.
- [19:49]
Tony Coffey
It's absurd.
- [19:50]
Trace Dominguez
Yeah, creatine monohydrate, that's the one that's been around for decades. That's the one with the real research behind it. The rest of them, you'll probably just be wasting your money on an unproven version. Dr. Mitchell has some ideas about why creatine monohydrate is having a moment on social media and in wellness circles.
- [20:11]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
Yeah, I mean, think it's exploded because of social media and wellness circles. Right. So you've got a, you've got a well studied, you've got a well studied compound. And I have to think back to late 80s, early 90s, I was lifting weights and I used creatine back then. Right. It's been around a long time. There have been more recent studies looking at healthy aging, looking at brain health. And so some of those studies have come out and it's gotten people excited about, okay, this is not just for the bodybuilder or someone who wants a different physique or wants to work out harder. Could this work for endurance? Could it work for a muscle mass maintenance in the elderly? Could it work for brain health? And so I think these new research studies coming out have really triggered a lot of interest because now you're taking a well studied supplement and saying, well, what if it did these other things? And that's exciting for folks. So I think part of it is those studies that are coming out. And again, we can go into that, they're not all conclusive, but it creates interest in it and gets people wanting to say, okay, is there something else I can do to optimize my health?
- [21:08]
Trace Dominguez
Even though it's trending now, creatine isn't new. Scientists have Been studying it for nearly 200 years. It was first identified in the 1830s by a French chemist who found it in skeletal muscle. He named it after the Greek word for meat, krios, fitting right. Over the next century, researchers explored its role in the body and its potential to boost performance. But creatine really took off in the 1990s, thanks in part to Olympic athletes. Around that time, a researcher named Dr. Roger Harris published a key study showing that taking creatine as a supplement, like mixing it into a drink, for example, could increase creatine levels in the muscle and improve athletic performance. That research helped bring decades of science into the spotlight and put creatine on the map, Dr. Mitchell explains.
- [21:58]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
It was in the earlier research, just understanding muscles and the science and the biology and chemistry behind it. Then it went into performance. And then, interestingly, its popularity surged after the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, where there are anecdotal reports linked to the use of it in medal winning athletes. And so 1992 Barcelona athletes are using it. People started talking about it, and that's when you really saw it go kind of off the charts. Which is, which I think is super interesting.
- [22:26]
Trace Dominguez
By the late 90s, about half of high school and college athletes reported using creatine, and the research largely backed up its benefits. Dr. Mitchell explained to me that creatine levels in your muscles can increase in just about five days. That's why people can often see results fairly quickly. A common approach is a short loading phase of around 20 grams a day for five days, followed by a maintenance phase of about 5 grams daily. And of course, those amounts will vary based on body size and goals. Some experts suggest skipping that loading phase altogether if you're not chasing those rapid results. But overall, these years of research show creatine can help improve strength and performance. But there's always a but. There's a catch. Most of those early studies did focus on people who were already training regularly. So what does that mean for the rest of us?
- [23:16]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
This is a term everyone hates. But as we age, which includes myself, you do lose lean body mass, you lose muscle. There are some really good studies that show that folks that are elderly that are doing strength training along with creatine, maintain more lean body mass, they maintain more muscle, which is great because you really want to maintain mobility. You think about people and you watch as they have trouble getting out of a chair, right? They lose some of that leg strength and body strength. Well, if you can maintain that, it improves our quality of life, includes our ability to live the life we want. So I think in that age group, it's pretty clear that with weight training and creatine, it can be helpful if people want to do that.
- [23:50]
Trace Dominguez
Wow. Interesting. If someone's not focused on athletic performance, is creatine going to move the needle for weight loss in a regular place? Or if I'm just going to the gym on a regular basis, am I going to lose weight or am I going to trim up while I'm gaining lean mass?
- [24:05]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
That's a great question. So lean body mass, just existing burns calories. So when you improve, when you increase your lean body mass, it needs more calories just to exist and increases your basic metabolic rate. And so one of the things I encourage my patients to do that are looking to lose weight is to include weight training.
- [24:24]
Trace Dominguez
Taking creatine monohydrate might make the scale go up, which might be unexpected, but that could be a very good thing.
- [24:32]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
Don't get disappointed because you start the creatine and two weeks later you weigh two or three pounds more and you're like, oh, my God, I gained weight. Yes, you will gain weight, but it's muscle weight and it's some water weight. So don't be disappointed in that. But know that that extra muscle is going to burn calories and ultimately that's going to help you burn fat later on. I think sometimes you'll see influencers saying, take creatine and you can lose fat. And that is not true. Right. The reason that it works is if you're taking creatine while doing weight training, you increase lean body mass and that ultimately decreases fat. So that's one of those misconceptions. Creatine alone will not make you lose fat at all, will not use any weight. If you're on a GLP1, it doesn't make it work even better. It doesn't do any of that.
- [25:11]
Trace Dominguez
When people hear influencers talking about creatine, what are they usually getting right when
- [25:16]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
they're talking about creatine monohydrate, That's a specific creatine. That's the one that's studied. And they tell you when you take this and you put it with exercise, you have increased exercise capacity. You're likely to build muscle more rapidly, develop more strength, to be able to do more reps. That is all really accurate. It's well studied when they say for healthy individuals that don't have medical illness or kidney problems, it's a safe supplement. It is a safe supplement that's been studied really, really well as well. So I think in Those categories, they're spot on. And it really becomes more of what physique do people want? Are they trying to push themselves on strength? And if those are things they want and they're otherwise healthy, it's a great supplement. And you do get results from it. And so I think that's what they get. Right. An interesting right, but maybe kind of wrong is it doesn't always make you look better. If you are a person who wants to be really cut and really defined and have great abs and you take creatine, it also hydrates the muscles, that creatine pulls water into the muscles, and so they look bigger, too. So not only do you grow more because of lean muscle mass, but you also look a little more swollen. And if you want ripped abs, you're not going to like what creatine does for you. And so there's. I've, I've seen, seen patients that took it and were super unhappy because they could never get the abs they wanted. And the advice was, why don't you try going off the creatine? And that's all it took.
- [26:41]
Trace Dominguez
So I don't lift weights. I do exercise sometimes. I chase my kid around, you know, things like that. You know, I ride my bike. Would there be a benefit to somebody like me who somebody doesn't necessarily train intensely, isn't necessarily looking for the great abs in my 40s, but, like, I'm doing my best. Would creatine have a benefit for somebody like me?
- [27:01]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
I think it's a great question. I think it comes back to, you know, what do you want to get out of it? And if you said, hey, I want to push myself harder when I'm exercising, I do want to grow a little more muscle mass, then you could say, sure, creatine makes a lot of sense, but in your head you're like, I love what I do. I'm having fun with my family, I'm riding my bike. Then spending the money on creatine probably doesn't make sense, Right, because you're doing great stuff. And creatine can have some little side effects too. So there's other things to be, to be aware of.
- [27:28]
Trace Dominguez
Yeah, well, you mentioned side effects. What are the side effects?
- [27:32]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
Yeah, the most common side effects that you get from creatine can be a little bit of nausea or GI discomfort. And then the other one is weight gain.
- [27:39]
Trace Dominguez
Creatine used to have kind of a more negative or, like, different reputation. Riskier to the kidneys, for example. Where did that come from?
- [27:49]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
Yeah, so creatinine, which Is something that we use to measure kidney function. Right. Is related to creatine. And so as you see those levers go up, you worry about kidney function function. And so there was a worry that in fact this could impact the kidneys negatively. The data has shown that it does not. If you are healthy and don't have a kidney problem, it's not going to impact your kidneys negatively.
- [28:11]
Trace Dominguez
Great. Is there anyone who should avoid creatine?
- [28:16]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
It's not been studied in pregnancy and lactation, so of course we're super sensitive to that. I wouldn't do it then. Certainly if you have kidney disease or other major medical illness, it's not something you want to take without talking to your doctor.
- [28:30]
Trace Dominguez
All right. We've covered a lot about creatine's physical benefits. It's been proven to help build lean muscle mass, which is great if you're lifting weights to bulk up, as is the case of Tony and many of his online followers. And if you're lifting weights to maintain muscle mass as you age, creatine, big win there. That's the case for Cynthia and Leslie and their online followers. But there's still one big question. What does creatine have to do with brain health? It's one of the biggest drivers of interest right now, including for Cynthia and Leslie, and it's constantly popping up in headlines. So does creatine actually support cognitive function or is that just hype? Dr. Mitchell has the answer. So let's get into it.
- [29:12]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
As you think about brain health, it's equivocal, it's interesting, it's intriguing, it's not definitive at this point. And so there's been a few studies and some meta analysis as well. There's in small numbers where you can say, okay, did it improve people's short term memory? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly there's nothing that shows improvements with dementia and that type of thing. And so in those studies, I think there's some interest. Creatine is in the brain. It's used there in those pathos as well for energy. The brain uses a lot of energy. So there's a natural extrapolation to what could it do in the brain. We don't have the data to say, yeah, this is something you should be taking for your brain. But I don't want to discount that there are some studies out there. There was a meta analysis done in 2023, and in that particular analysis, although it wasn't a large number, it was statistically significant and showed that in older adults. So they're the 66 to 76 year old, they really did have improvement in memory. Folks younger than that, they couldn't see any difference in it. So small study, significant. Not placebo controlled, but it says, hey, this is interesting. So I do want to say there's some interest there. And from a mechanism standpoint, it's certainly possible. There were some other studies, even down to a single dose, showing higher cognitive scores after a single dose. And again, that was in folks over 60. So there's some interesting data out there for the brain. We just still got to figure out when to use it, who should use it, and are they permanent changes? Is it temporary? So more to be done there.
- [30:43]
Trace Dominguez
Okay, so promising, but not conclusive yet. Since brain health was a big reason why Cynthia and Leslie got interested in creatine, I asked for their reactions to what Dr. Mitchell just shared with us. Here's Cynthia, then Leslie.
- [30:57]
Leslie White
Wow. Well, that's very positive.
- [31:00]
Cynthia Haid
And we're right in that demographic. Do they want to study us?
- [31:04]
Leslie White
We're coming up to that demographic. We're coming up to that demographic.
- [31:08]
Cynthia Haid
I have to say, the single dose thing, I don't know about that. Like, what was the dose? You know, I'd like to know more about that. So I'm.
- [31:15]
Leslie White
I'm reacting differently. Okay, I'm going. Okay. So that it was a small study, no placebo. Yeah, single dose. Like that sounds back to my magic pill, like, you know, and how did they actually measure this? Like, how did they measure it? They gave you a dose and then they said, oh, I feel great. Like I. My brain's great. Or did they actually go in and do some MRI on the brain?
- [31:40]
Cynthia Haid
Or did they do memory tests? I don't know.
- [31:43]
Leslie White
I know, but some days you're good and some days you're not. Yeah, I know.
- [31:47]
Cynthia Haid
See, this is. This is what we do, right? I get excited and she goes, no, we gotta think about this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You just witnessed our dynamic here. And I'm like, okay.
- [31:59]
Leslie White
But overall, I'm very, very happy to hear the results. And that just makes me think, I'm gonna keep going. Cause I'm gonna get my brain really rocking and rolling every day with creatine.
- [32:12]
Cynthia Haid
Yeah.
- [32:13]
Trace Dominguez
Before you run out and buy a tub of creatine monohydrate. Dr. Mitchell helps put this potential around brain health into some perspective.
- [32:21]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
I mean, ultimately, good cardiovascular health. Right? So exercising, treating your high blood pressure, treat diabetes, stay active. That's the best thing you can possibly do for brain health. Don't drink alcohol. You know, those are Things that are great for brain health. This is a maybe this could be beneficial over the long term. So if you're really looking to maximize your brain and your longevity there, creatine would be low on the list as an interesting thing versus things we know really help it.
- [32:50]
Trace Dominguez
Well, I think we've covered most of the claims about creatine since it's been praised for so many different kinds of health and wellness benefits. I want to make sure we tie everything together before we say goodbye. So, Dr. Mitchell, does creatine live up
- [33:05]
Dr. Jason Mitchell
to its hype when it comes to creatine monohydrate and it comes to weightlifting and gaining muscle and strength? It lives up to the hype. If you look at the impact, it's about a 5 to 15% increase. You'll see in your overall amount that you can lift, so the actual weight load. Additionally, most data will show about a 5 to 15% increase in the number or duration of exercise you can do, the number of reps. So it's kind of fun to have a supplement that lives up to the hype because there's a lot of them that don't. And as a physician, you spend a lot of time talking about those things that people hear that you're like, no, I'm so sorry. And then this is when you're like, yeah, it does that. Yeah, no, this is exciting. Go take it. And yeah, it's pretty safe. Like, go build some muscle and have some fun. And I can tell that to my patients that are that are 20. And I can tell that to my patients that are 80 that want to weightlift and do this. So it's nice to have supplements that can do that type of thing.
- [33:59]
Trace Dominguez
Well, there you have it, the scoop on creatine monohydrate. That pun was intended. Remember, the monohydrate part is important. Drop a comment if you're curious about creatine or maybe you've already tried it and you have something to share. Either way, we would love to hear from you. Thanks again to Dr. Mitchell for explaining what creatine is and how it works. And thanks again to Tony and Leslie and Cynthia for sharing their stories and experiences with us. We did it again, y'. All. We got to the bottom of another popular health trend from. But there's still more to come. In the next episode, we're going to be exploring the world of high performance oxygen volume, Otherwise known as VO2 Max, and the many online claims surrounding the potential benefits or drawbacks of tracking your peak athletic Fitness using these VO2 trackers if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe or the Follow button and join us next time on Health versus Hype with the American Medical Association. For more information on all the topics on we're covering, visit amahealth versus hype.org that's amahealth v s hype.org Health versus Hype is a production of Ruby Studio from iheartmedia and the American Medical Association. I'm Trace Dominguez. Our producers are Matt Stillo and Pamela Lawrence. Michael Depot Wilson is our writer. The show is engineered and features original music by Matthew Ernest Filler. Health versus Hype is intended for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.