Dr. Darren Candow

But the biggest thing is the ability to recruit not only type 1, but these type 2 muscle fibers as well.

And then, of course, if we're having greater muscle or motor unit recruitment, we can potentially lift longer, heavier, and over time get sort of an increase in strength.

The other big thing from a cellular perspective is that creatine causes calcium to come back in a little vesicle in our muscles.

If you take in high school biology or university, this will be your nightmare.

But I remember everybody talking about the sarcoplasma reticulum.

And it's an area that just releases calcium to allow our muscles to contract.

And creatine speeds up the uptake of calcium.

So some of the evidence out of Europe has shown that it increases relaxation time or the ability of the proteins in your muscle to grab hold of each other to contract.

So there's a cellular aspect there explaining why we think we get an increase in muscle performance.

I say strength, but endurance and power are all lumped in there as well.

So endurance is the ability to perform repetitions to fatigue or power, move an object as fast as you can.

They're all vitally important.

But we think strength is overall, from a global perspective, number one.

It's probably the main reason a lot of older adults are placed in long-term care facilities.

If they have a reduction in strength, they can't live independently.

So that's why, again, resistance training or weight-bearing exercise, as you mentioned, CrossFit, whichever it is, foundational.

I'm from Canada, so shoveling the driveway in the winter counts because anything that's a load against you is really beneficial to the body.

I think people underestimate the benefits of moving.

And then if anything can be taken in, in this form, creatine, it'd be very, very beneficial.

Yeah.