Dr. Darren Candow

That's probably going to be a bit surprising to a lot of people.

A lot of people take creatine for huge increases in muscle.

You get an increase in lean mass by about 1.2 kilograms.

But as I said previously, remember only half of that is skeletal muscle.

So creatine, yes, can with weight training improve muscle mass, but it has more robust evidence for muscle performance.

I think one of the big things is that it decreases something called protein breakdown.

So that might allow the muscle to maintain its integrity or recover quicker.

But overall, when you combine creatine with a standard weight training program, you should expect a greater increase than weight training alone.

Absolutely.

And that's across all ages, which is really important.

We've, oh God, we've done at least 30 to 40 studies in our lab.

I've published over 120 papers just on creatine alone.

And the interesting thing is that from young individuals to middle-aged to older adults, we see a very common theme that combined with weight training, creatine, about five grams or more, we use typically a little bit more,

seems to have beneficial effects on muscle mass, muscle strength, as well as performance.

Absolutely.

Can you show me what five grams looks like?

Absolutely.

So this would be a standard five gram dose.

Which is one scoop.

One scoop.