Everything You NEED To Know About The MIRACLE Supplement Creatine (SSOF Ep 119)

James de Lacey0:00

Now, there's obviously a philosophy and school of thought that, hey, you don't need any supplements. I tend to fall in the camp where if you can get a tiny edge out of something that's not going to harm you, I would take that. And I think creatine is well-studied enough to fit into that camp to be something you should be taking.

So let's just start with how creatine works. If we go into the energy system, I guess, model, we have the ATP-PCr system, or the alactic energy system. Essentially, this energy system is driven through phosphocreatine, which is that PCr. And that is the readily available energy source within the muscle. So when you're doing high-intensity exercise, that is the fastest energy source available because it's already there.

Essentially, PCr is a phosphate molecule and a creatine molecule, and they are paired together to make phosphocreatine. So what we're doing when we're taking more creatine in, we're able to accumulate more of these phosphocreatines, or those PCrs. And having more of these essentially floating around the muscle means we have more energy readily available.

Now we know that muscles, for energy, they use ATP, which you've probably heard of – adenosine triphosphate. And by triphosphate, it means there are three phosphate molecules on this ATP. And as energy is used, it loses a phosphate, so it becomes ADP – so that's diphosphate, so two phosphates. And it can go all the way down to one phosphate, but just to keep it simple, we go ATP, we lose a phosphate when we use it for energy, now it's ADP.

To replenish ADP back to ATP – so two phosphates to three phosphates – we can take a phosphate from this phosphocreatine that's floating around in the muscles. And that's how we readily, that's how we have readily available energy that's there for very short burst, high-intensity exercise. So by taking creatine, you have more of these around. You're able to essentially regenerate or resynthesize this ATP quickly and have more of it to do it, which is why we see typically improvements in strength, improvements in power, improvements in short event performance. So that's pretty much in a nutshell how creatine works.

Now, to go on to more frequently asked questions around creatine. And I think the first objection most people have are side effects. And you've probably heard them all. You may have even potentially experienced some of them yourself, or you've heard of people who say not to take it because of certain side effects. I will tell you now that pretty much every side effect is not actually a side effect. It's more of placebo and/or just people being stupid. So I'll run through, I guess, most of the common ones that stop people from taking it.

And the first one I think is weight gain. And so many people will look at creatine, be like, hey, if I take creatine, I'm going to add two, three pounds or whatever it is in water weight, so it's not going to help me, and then it's going to be harder for me to stay in my weight class, etc. Now, the problem is, this small amount of initial weight gain is a good thing. That's what you need for that phosphocreatine to be around in your muscles.

And typically, you're looking at, I think, it's around 1.2% increase in body weight from taking creatine. And this doesn't seem to last long-term. It seems to be just through the initial phases of when you're saturating the muscle with creatine, and then it kind of dies down. So it's not something that's permanent. One, two, it's a helpful thing to help you with the energy system, too.

And if you really are, say, maybe on the edge of your weight class and you can't afford to have that, you can stop taking creatine about four to six weeks out from weighing in and you're still going to retain the benefits of creatine. It takes a while for, I guess, the performance benefits of creatine to wash out. So you have quite a bit of time where you can, say, stop taking it and have that water weight drop but still have the benefits of creatine. So that solves that problem.

The other thing is if you're a responder or non-responder. I myself, I'm a non-responder to creatine, meaning my weight doesn't change at all. Honestly, I don't feel any difference with pretty much any supplement, but you'll find that you're either a responder or a non-responder, and it doesn't matter too much. It could be down to dietary-related, whereas you're getting quite a bit of creatine already through your diet. Still not going to get the maximum amount, but you might be getting enough to saturate the muscles, and that little top-up doesn't make much difference.

Obviously, if you are vegan or vegetarian, then yes, you're going to see the most pronounced changes because you're getting pretty much zero creatine into your diet because you're getting it mainly from red meat. So bear that in mind. If being a responder or non-responder, again, just because you're a non-responder doesn't mean that creatine doesn't help you. It just means that you might not see the weight changes. So just bear that in mind.

The other one is stomach issues. So I'm sure you've heard, like, people talk about creatine potentially upsetting their stomach. Now, if that's the case, it could be the creatine, it could be the supplement, particular brand or what it's worth. So not all creatines are pure creatines. I'll run through some of that a little later, but if you're getting creatine with dextrose and a bunch of other stuff, yeah, that could cause problems for sure.

The International Society of Sports Nutrition, they concluded there's no evidence that exists that creatine intake increases the risk of gut issues. And this is like diarrhea, cramping, bloating, if taken in the recommended doses. So if you're taking five grams a day, I'm not going to say you're not going to have stomach issues, but it's going to be pretty rare, and it's probably not going to be the creatine.

So, for example, the study involving 59 elite male soccer players, they were segregated into three groups: a placebo group, a group that received two daily doses of five grams each, and a group receiving a single 10-gram dose daily for 28 days. There were no significant gastrointestinal issues in the placebo and the five-gram creatine dose group. However, some stomach issues were reported in the 10-gram group.

So it could be a dose thing. If you are seeing stomach problems taking creatine, which means you just take five grams a day instead of 10, and I'm going to go into dosing just after the side effects stuff anyway, so I'll cover that as well.

The other one is obviously kidney function. This is probably the number one reason people will say not to take creatine. And it's often, I guess, you could say, misinformed. So we have, and I think the reason for that is, people confuse creatine with creatinine, which are two different things. Creatinine is a marker of stress and kidney function, whereas creatine is the creatine molecule. So the International Society of Sports Nutrition, they concluded that, based on all the available evidence on...

And kidney function, creatine does not negatively impact kidney function of both athletes and non-athletes. And this includes studies in American football players, healthy athletes, diabetic patients, resistance training athletes, and even patients with renal disease. So even patients with kidney problems, they don't see problems taking creatine. So it is very unlikely that if you are having kidney problems, it is from the creatine. Again, obviously consult your health professional. This is not medical advice.

But you will probably see elevated creatinine levels in blood tests obviously from creatine, which is completely fine. Obviously there could be other underlying things, so again, consult medical professional, et cetera, et cetera.

The other one is dehydration. So people talk about, "Oh, I take creatine. I have to drink more water, otherwise I'm going to be dehydrated and I'm going to get cramp," which is another lot of [expletive]. Honestly, I hate this one so much because I've had so many athletes say this to me. Obviously, I don't force any athlete to take supplements. It's their choice, but it's just a funny one that always seems to come up.

So some athletes claim they have dry mouth or dehydration when they take creatine, or they cramp. That's a very common one as well, even though dehydration is not the cause of cramp. Cramp is a multifactorial problem, and dehydration may be part of it, but being dehydrated is not why you're cramping. And there's a really good paper on that I broke it down a long time ago.

I have to go back and revisit it. But essentially, it's an overexcitation of some of the nerves. And that's why when you say drink pickle juice or you have vinegar and hot chilies and things, or you just hold a stretch, you can mitigate that cramp. Because you can essentially send those nerve impulses somewhere else. But yeah, that's another different topic.

But essentially, there's no concrete evidence of dehydration when taking creatine. So numerous studies have indicated that incorporating creatine supplementation into training and/or competition either exhibits no impact or diminishes the occurrence of injuries, dehydration, or muscle cramp. So funny enough, within the research, creatine tends to help these problems, not make it worse.

And these studies showed that athletes undergoing rigorous training could receive 15 to 25 grams a day of creatine for 4 to 12 weeks with no documented side effects. So again, dehydration is not one of those things that's going to happen when you take creatine. It may even help.

Obviously, the other one is hair loss. It's a funny one because this myth is still around, and it's just based off one study that didn't even actually look at hair loss. That is, it looked at DHT. So essentially, it can be traced back to a single study in 2009. Basically, males aged between 18 and 19, they took 25 grams of creatine per day for a week, which would be quote-unquote the loading phase, and then they followed a maintenance phase of 14 days. Now, I'm going to cover loading and stuff like that in a bit.

But compared to the placebo group, the creatine group had a 56% increase in DHT levels, which is a hormone associated with hair loss, after the loading phase, and a 40% increase above the initial levels during the maintenance phase. Now, although the study did not specifically investigate hair loss as an outcome, many individuals inferred a potential link between creatine and hair loss due to this increase in DHT.

Now, a review of all the literature on hair loss and creatine use found no evidence that creatine use leads to hair loss. So it's basically never been replicated, even within the meta-analysis or systematic reviews. Again, no outcome of hair loss taking creatine. So yeah, I wouldn't even worry about that.

Even within hormones as well, like 12 other studies have looked at effects of creatine supplements on testosterone with pretty high dosing protocols, through to 25 grams for 6 days to 12 weeks. Essentially, 10 studies found no significant variations in testosterone. Five studies found no increase in free testosterone, and only two found small, insignificant increases in testosterone after 6 to 7 days of supplementation.

So you're not going to have any hormonal changes either, which is why creatine is not a steroid, even though that still lives on for some reason. Creatine is seen as this gateway drug or something into injecting your butt with all sorts of stuff.

So I think that covers all the side effects. So again, pretty much nothing innocuous going on. Creatine is literally found in food. So if you're having problems with creatine, you probably are going to have problems with red meat and stuff. So just bear that in mind.

So let's cover some more of these questions around creatine, mechanisms, how to take it. I'm going to cover all of it. So let's start with, is there a best time to take your creatine? And there is not, to put it bluntly. But there is one study that showed the potential for it to have better impact on hypertrophy if you take it after training versus another time, but not on strength.

But this was one study, and we know creatine does not have any acute effects on performance, recovery, et cetera. It's something you have to take daily to accumulate. So the mechanisms don't really match up there. And again, hasn't been replicated, anything like that.

So my advice, if you're taking creatine, you've got to take it daily because that's just how you're going to keep your muscles fully saturated.

Now, how long does creatine take to work? So if you're not on creatine or you haven't started taking creatine, whatever, how long does it take to work? This is when we can get into the different protocols here as well. So a typical diet has 1 to 2 grams of creatine a day, which is what I was going to say, which kind of backs up my point earlier when I'm saying, "Okay, it's hard to get creatine just through your diet, because you're going to have to eat a [expletive] ton of meat, and it's going to cost too much." It's also, you can't train if eating that much meat. You'll be stuck on the couch and on the toilet.

So what we can do is, depending on the protocol you use, is how fast it's going to take to fully saturate the muscles with creatine. So typically you're looking at a month if you're taking just the maintenance, or quote-unquote maintenance dose, daily, which is around 3 to 5 grams. So 28 days or a month, it's going to take there.

Or you can load the creatine, and it'll take you a week. And just to run through the creatine loading, typically you're taking 20 grams a day. So you're splitting that dose maybe into four, two or four doses a day, and you're doing that for a week, and then you're going back down to 3 to 5 grams a day. And that will be your way of essentially getting there faster.

Now, it is not necessary to load creatine. Well, many people will say you need to load it, and then you need to go on maintenance, and then you need to cycle off. That's the most [expletive] [expletive] I've ever heard in my life. I can't believe people still talk about cycling creatine. You're not doing steroids when you take creatine. You take it daily because you want to just keep the muscle saturated with creatine. That's it. You just literally take 5 grams, your teaspoon or serving size, whatever is in that creatine supplement. You take it daily, and that's all you do. That's it.

You don't need to load it, maintenance, then go off, then, yeah, it basically goes against everything to do with common sense, research, science, mechanisms, everything. So you don't have to load. It's if you want to maybe get there faster, you can, but again, it's just much easier just to take a scoop every day or 5 grams every day versus just loading it. And don't cycle it. That's pretty simple.

Now, another question often comes up is if you should take creatine on rest days. Yes, because you want to take it every day. And that just keeps you essentially topped up. And if you miss a day, don't worry about it. Again, the washout period is 4 to 6 weeks, so you're good there.

Now, in terms of what you should have your creatine with, many people talk about, "Okay, going to mix it in orange juice," or the old creatine formulations back in the early 2010s or maybe the early 2000s. Where it was, I think it was MuscleTech. They had one that was with 50 grams of carbs. So no wonder everyone saw a huge weight gain taking it, because they were taking in 200 plus calories every time of just pure sugar when they were taking their creatine.

But typically, you mix it in anything. You can dry scoop it if you want and just drink water with it, or mix it in your smoothies, whatever. You can even mix it in hot liquid. It doesn't break it down or anything like that. So you've got a lot of places that you can put, take creatine. It's just a matter of taking it each day and making it a habit, essentially. If you have any questions, throw them down in the comments too.

There's also, and then I think that the last thing I'll cover before going into how to actually pick the creatine supplements that you want, is the type of creatine. And I will tell you now, every supplement company is trying to sell you a different form of creatine because you need to try and market something. And if you're just trying to market plain creatine monohydrate, that's pretty difficult because it's been around for so long and you're trying to look for a point of difference, okay?

So they're going to come up with every other creatine form: HCL, ethyl ester, creatine [expletive], I don't even know how many others there are. Creatine alkaline, there's a bunch. And you're paying more for nothing. In fact, often you're paying more for less.

Creatine monohydrate is shown to maximally saturate the muscle with creatine, and obviously you cannot get more than maximal. A lot of other forms of creatine don't actually maximally saturate the muscle, so you're getting essentially worse results taking other forms of creatine while spending more money. So that becomes a problem.

Now one of the more prominent forms is creatine HCl or hydrochloride, and people often market this or people will take it because, again, we talked about the stomach issues before around creatine monohydrate. They think, oh, creatine HCl, it comes with an acid, so it means that it's going to digest faster and it's going to absorb better and they're going to have less stomach issues.

Well, obviously digesting and absorbing better is already false because we know that creatine monohydrate maximally saturates the muscle, so that's obviously out the window. And then around stomach issues is going to cause less stomach discomfort. Well, we know if you just take 5 grams a day you're probably not going to have that problem.

Yeah, and it's not more bioavailable than monohydrate, so that pretty much cuts that whole line of thinking out. In terms of HCl being able to saturate the muscle, it seems to saturate muscle similar to monohydrate from the research we currently have. So you can take that, it's just going to cost you more, but it doesn't really have any other benefits. So bear that in mind as well.

Now, there's also micronized creatine. You often see that on labels as well, so you have creatine monohydrate and you have micronized creatine monohydrate. It's just essentially creatine broken down into smaller particles.

It does not mean, again, they often market it as, okay, it digests faster, it's more bioavailable. Again, creatine monohydrate 100% maximally saturates the muscle. You can't get any better, so it doesn't matter if even if it is more, if it digests better, etc., or absorbs better, because you're already getting maximum saturation through just normal monohydrate.

So again, if you just want maybe something that mixes a little better within liquid, micronized is an option. I wouldn't make that your main buying point for creatine supplement. So yeah, that's just something to be aware of as well.

And I think that pretty much covers everything regarding the actual creatine supplement. But I want to run through what it is to look for when you're buying creatine, because it's easy to go on Amazon and just pick the first thing that's on there, right, that it's 20 bucks, has 100 servings, cool, good to go. There are a few things you need to look out for, and I'll give you a quick, easy checklist that you can use.

The first one is the sourcing of the creatine. The ideal source is you want to find Creapure. So that's C-R-E-A-P-U-R-E, Creapure. And that is a brand of creatine. It's out of Germany, and it is the gold standard of creatine monohydrate because it's tested to 99.9% pure.

Creapure creatines are obviously a little more expensive than just a normal creatine monohydrate from China because of this gold standard. It typically costs companies, I think it's $17 or $18 a kilo to buy from there, because I've acquired from there before anyway, so I know. Which is why it'll cost you a bit more, but you know you're getting proper creatine and you know you're getting it that's not going to be mixed with some other [expletive].

So Creapure is something you should look for. It'll be on the label. There will be a little stamp on there and everything, so you'll know. And companies will not miss out on telling you if they have Creapure creatine. So that's number one.

Number two, because you are a competitive combat athlete, you want to look for third-party testing. And third-party testing is not the supplement saying it's third-party testing. Third-party testing is having a stamp from a testing body.

So you might see an Informed Sport tech, you might see NSF. There's a whole bunch of them, essentially. You want to see that Informed Sport or Tested for Sport. There's a bunch of different ones on there. And that means that the product, basically the company receives the product and they send one of the batch to a third-party manufacturer or factory where they test it. So that has nothing to do with the actual company itself. They test it, and then they essentially send a report back saying it has no contaminants, nothing that's going to get you banned under a drug test.

Now, there is also a certificate of analysis that companies will have, and that kind of just tells you, hey, my creatine is pure, it doesn't have heavy metals and other contaminants in it. But that does not tell you if it has, you know, Trenbolone, all that other [expletive] in there.

Now, people will talk about, if it doesn't, people talk about, oh, that's good, I want to get my supplements tainted so I make gains. The problem is that since such small amounts, it's not going to do anything for you. It's just going to get you popped in a drug test. And if you're competing obviously in a drug-tested sport, you know, NCAA, if you're in college, or more professional MMA or other organizations, obviously not jiu-jitsu, because everyone there is just [expletive] juiced to the gills.

Probably wouldn't even be worrying about creatine if you're doing a high-level jiu-jitsu and you're just poking yourself with needles. But you get my point.

So look, you can look at the COA, just certificate of analysis. All companies have them. You can ask the companies for them too. But the biggest thing is the Informed Sport tech for the third-party testing. So if you have Creapure and you have third-party testing, that's pretty much your top two things you're looking for.

Outside of that, it's pretty much just a preference on brand, price, anything like that. You should also just make sure that it's not, well, obviously you should make sure it's just pure creatine monohydrate. But typically you're trying to make sure there's nothing else in there.

So you can either go pure creatine unflavored, you can get flavored creatines if you want to drink your creatine flavored, you just want a flavored drink. That's completely fine. Obviously you're going to potentially have a few extra grams of carbohydrates in there or whatever else, but that's up to you and your call.

I typically find just pure creatine monohydrate itself, it's just easy enough to mix or do whatever you want. Obviously you have other forms. You have creatine capsules. I would avoid the pills and capsules, all cost. They cost so much more because you can't fit 5 grams into a capsule. You have to take four to six of them just to get, that's usually a 3-gram serving. And then, yeah, I wouldn't even bother with that. Get the powder, it's way cheaper.

Obviously now creatine gummies, the [expletive] new fad. I would typically, I mean, look, I wouldn't say avoid them, but you're typically taking in 7 grams of sugar with your serving each time. So if you can afford to do that, sure. But again, the powder makes it so much easier.

And I don't think there's any other forms of creatine currently. That's pretty much it: gummies, capsules, and powder. And the powder's usually the best way to go. Again, there are flavored formulations. They usually mix them with other things, or they have post-workout formulations to help with recovery and stuff. Sure, there's nothing wrong with doing something like that if you want to do that. But yeah, again, just plain creatine monohydrate is an easy way to go.

Now I'm not going to recommend any brands on here, just because it's so much easier. I gave you the blueprint of what to look for, and if you have a personal preference on a brand or whatever it is, there you go. Just be reminded on Amazon that I think it's only 8% of supplements or of creatine supplements on Amazon are actually third-party tested. So Amazon's typically not the best place to go for a creatine supplement.

And maybe, maybe I'll try to help you out with some companies off the top of my head. BPN would be, I know they third-party test, and they have athletes using that, so that's one of them. I think Legion supplements third-party test as well. Don't quote me on that. But again, I don't think they do pure creatine. I think theirs is a post-workout formula.

Honestly, I'm out of the loop with creatine, so I can't tell you what else there is. But essentially those are two brands that come to mind. But if you're just looking for Creapure, third-party testing, and then from there you're going to be sorted anyway. That's 99% of the job done.

So that wraps up this podcast. Please make sure to like, subscribe, check out the YouTube channel, the Instagram. I'm posting more, trying to get more content out there for you guys as well, just so we can keep spreading good training advice. And I'll catch you on the next podcast when we have a guest going on.