Fitness buffs online can’t stop raving about creatine. They say it is THE supplement to get you shredded in no time — and that it can even boost your brain and memory too. Are they right? We dive into the science of creatine and talk to anatomy Professor Darryn Willoughby, physicist Dr. Ali Gordji-Nejad, and psychology researcher Julia Fabienne Sandkühler. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsCreatine In this episode, we cover: (00:00) The hype around creatine (02:40) How creatine builds muscle (08:41) Are the gains all muscle? (17:23) Does creatine help with sleep deprivation? (22:10) Does creatine boost cognition? (27:05) Is creatine safe? This episode was produced by Michelle Dang, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Meryl Horn, Rose Rimler, and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Marlowe Starling. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wylie, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord. A special thanks to the researchers we reached out to, including Dr. Imtiaz Desai and Prof. Phil Chilibeck. Thanks to Larry Lee and Lee Physical Therapy & Wellness. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the hype around creatine?
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, we're pitting facts against fitness buffs.
Want to work out harder? Increase your stamina, endurance, scientifically formulated to get results.
Expect more from Workouts.
And you know how we're going to get that greatness from our workouts? With one supplement that everyone is talking about.
This is creatine. Take creatine. How important creatine supplementation is.
A wonderful, wonderful supplement. It's the best thing ever. Creatine. It's huge if you want to get huge. People are saying that if you want to build muscles, you have to take this.
Here's how to use creatine to get bigger and stronger.
If you're a gym girly with a flat ass, I have a supplement that will help.
Creatine. Creatine. Girl, creatine made that booty grow. But it's not just about your booty and muscles. More and more, we're hearing that creatine can also boost your brain power, too.
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Chapter 2: How does creatine build muscle?
Yeah. A piece of mussel will actually pooch into that window, and that chopper just then just cuts it right off and then saves it.
They use an anesthetic, but Darren says that this basically feels like getting punched in the thigh.
So when he got the muscle biopsies, did he see a difference between the people who were taking creatine and those who weren't?
Yes, he did see a difference. So he took out a bit of muscle from them, did this chemical analysis, and found more of these muscle proteins, one called myosin heavy chain and another one called myofibrillar protein. And there was more of this stuff in the people that took creatine. meaning that their muscles had grown, indeed grown more. Oh, that's cool.
You could say the actual muscle was getting bigger?
Yeah, like the density of the muscles growing. You have more units of this microscopic muscle that's actually being grown and built. And the people in the study were feeling a bit stronger too.
The creatine group actually got stronger. It wasn't dramatic, but it was enough that it was certainly of impact.
So how is creatine actually doing this? Is it building the muscle for you?
Well, Darren said it's not physically building muscle for you. Instead, it works by getting you extra energy during your workout. So like as you're working out, you're rapidly using up fuel in your body, which is ATP or adenosine triphosphate. Uh-huh. And your body like eats it up really quickly, runs out of ATP, and then needs to recycle it to use it again.
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Chapter 3: Are the gains from creatine all muscle?
Yes.
That's what a lot of these studies find. Creatine can work, but it's not this huge change. Like it's not a night and day difference from how you were working out before. Darren told me maybe I'll help you do like two to three extra reps, like a few extra push-ups or lifts per set at the gym.
Maybe just a meathead in the gym like me and you get a couple of extra reps per set.
And one review of 10 studies that followed people for different times, about a week all the way up to a year, imaged their muscles and found that creatine compared to placebo increased the thickness of their muscles by about a tenth of a centimeter.
A tenth of a centimeter more muscle. That's like a tenth of a belly button?
Yeah. Right. So these differences are not huge. And, you know, these extra reps you can do thanks to creatine, it might add up for some people. Darren reckons it's worth trying. Right. But big picture here, let me tell you about the Olympics. They have this huge list of banned substances. You can't use steroids or this and that, but you can use creatine. It is not a banned substance.
Oh. It is not a banned substance.
Yeah, it's not a banned substance. And some have suggested that this is because it's a naturally occurring substance that the body makes from food. However, we also reached out to the World Anti-Doping Agency and asked them, like, why isn't this stuff banned? And they told us there's this criteria for banning substances. One is, quote, it has the potential to enhance sport performance.
Yes, which you would think if it's building muscle, it obviously has the potential to enhance your sport performance. Yes, yes.
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Chapter 4: Does creatine help with sleep deprivation?
And, you know, I've been taking it too. And me and Blythe, we're just an N of two. But I haven't noticed a difference either while taking creatine. But just because we haven't experienced a difference doesn't mean like you, listener, won't.
But then, I mean, just one more question on this muscle thing. What do you make of these videos where people...
get so huge like they'll have this before and after and they say the only thing that's changed is creatine why why are they so swole all of a sudden well one they could be exaggerating like how fast it took them but it's also possible that some people like are responding really well to creatine but kind of in a psychological way too
Darren told me that when you go to work out, you could be physically working harder because you think like, oh my God, this creatine is amazing. Here's Darren.
A lot of times that's because they're actually training harder or working harder, hoping that they're really going to get an impact from the supplement. So in the end, they have improved performance, period. That's all that matters, right? Whether it's a placebo effect or where it comes from creatine. Game on.
All right, so here's where we're at with creatine and building muscle. It does have the potential to help you build muscle through either giving you more energy to do more reps because you have more ATP to play with or because it's working on your mind of...
But it's not magic. Some people don't respond at all.
And even if you do respond, for most of us, it's not going to make us shredded.
Exactly. Okay.
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Chapter 5: Can creatine boost cognition?
Yes, that's right. You have more fuel, then you have more energy, you can do more reps. Yes.
Yeah. Well, the brain also uses ATP. So Ali Gorjanejan, a physicist from the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Germany, figured... We thought, okay, when that is working for the muscles, why not for the brain? So Ali wanted to know if creatine could really boost your brain power. And for this study, he wanted to get the brain when it's at its worst and really needs that fuel.
When it is totally exhausted, totally stressed.
And the totally exhausted, totally stressed state that he studied was the sleep deprived brain.
Ugh, this study is going to get rough.
Uh-huh. And so one evening, Ali brought 15 people into the lab and ran a bunch of tests on them. In one of these tests, he's looking at reaction times. So a green dot lights up on a screen, and you have to press a clicker as soon as you see it. But you get tired and more tired and you get really crappy at this.
Yes, I know. I've done this test actually while sleep deprived and you think it would be easy because you just see this damn green dot, but you're just, you know, missing the clicker at points. Yeah.
So there's also memory tests he did, stuff like that. And then Ali had to make sure that these folks didn't sleep. And for those who were struggling to stay awake, he had a cheeky trick.
I find out what controversial thematic issues are, and I take the opposite position.
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Chapter 6: Is creatine safe to use?
So we know from the hundreds of studies on creatine that it's safe on the recommended dose, three to five grams a day. One thing on the internet I hear a lot that people are worried about is putting on weight and bloating regularly. We think this sometimes happens because, as you heard before, creatine does this thing where it brings water into muscle cells.
So muscles around your body are holding on to a bit more water than it normally would. This can lead to that bloaty feeling. And that water retention might lead to a bit of weight gain on the scales.
Uh-huh. Okay.
But if this happens to you, you should feel back to normal pretty quickly. Okay. There's also this big idea that you'll get dehydrated from creatine. So people online say, like, drink tons of water to make up for this. But Darren, our bodybuilder, says you don't have to worry about this.
There's no concerns with any types of ongoing dehydration. There have been a number of studies that have shown that also to be true.
Just quickly, some people don't seem to digest creatine very well. You can get a bit of diarrhea or feel uncomfortable in your gut. Darren is actually one of these people. He said he gets gassy on creatine and he's tried all kinds of different forms of creatine to help, but nothing did. And
Also, if you're someone who has any kind of kidney conditions, you maybe shouldn't take creatine because it's going to give your kidneys a lot of extra work. But if your kidneys are healthy, that three to five gram dose should be perfectly fine for you. That's great. And if you do want to try this for your muscles, there's no need to be taking more than the recommended dose.
Oh, because people talk about taking a ton of this stuff when you first start, that loading phase.
Yeah, people claim you should take this loading phase of 20 to 25 grams of creatine a day for a week so that you saturate your muscles faster. And then you drop down to that lower dose. But Darren's actually said you don't need to do this. It's not necessary. He did a study on this looking at how much creatine came out of people's pee when they started their creatine regimens with a loading phase.
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