Dr. Darren Candow

The downfall, though, is they're not getting any dietary creatine because creatine is only found in animal-based flesh, so red meat, seafood, and poultry.

They're naturally synthesizing about one to two, maybe even three grams a day through amino acids in their food.

But vegans and vegetarians respond literally the best on the planet because now they're taking in a supplement to allow that in.

That's a good point.

So back, you know, hunter and gatherer age, a lot of meat, they were consuming quite a bit through dietary products.

Just say if you only wanted to get three grams of creatine through food, you'd have to eat quite a bit of meat to do that.

And then it comes into the dilemma of what if you don't eat meat or you just can't afford it.

Yeah.

So this is definitely the number one myth.

Creatine damages your kidneys.

So when you take in creatine to the body, it gets stored as creatine.

But when you metabolize it, sort of thinking leaking from the muscle, it gets leaked out as creatinine.

And most people watching is like, oh, that was on my blood requisition form and right below creatinine was something called EGFR.

So glomerular filtration rate is an estimation of your kidney health.

So the problem is when individuals on creatine supplementation, they go to their doctor for their annual blood work.

Their creatinine might be a little bit elevated and that's only from the breakdown of the compound.

And then unfortunately, their filtration rate is lower.

So then their doctor gets really surprised and they're like, stop taking creatine because it's hurting your kidneys.

What typically happens is they go back or stop in creatine and then they check their kidneys again and it's fine.

So I would say 99 out of 100 times that it's a false positive.