How Creatine Supports Exercise and Brain Energy

Tim Ferriss: Speaking of not getting enough sleep, let's hop to creatine because I God, I don't know where I read this, but that higher doses of creatine, maybe like 25 grams, 20 25 grams, could combat sleep loss or some of the effects of sleep loss. What should we know about creatine? Creatine's been around for a long time. There are dozens of questionable sports performance, athletic performance products come out every year. Most of them are all marketing, no substance. Creatine has been used by athletes for a very long time, but for at least the last five years, I have been taking it typically five grams a day more for the cognitive or potential cognitive benefits. Right. But what else should we know about creatine? Because you what you put in your newsletter not too long ago was forwarded to me and then you told me via text and I was like, "Okay, we should probably talk about this."

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes.

Tim Ferriss: So, how should we think about creatine and best practices for different applications?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, it's funny as you mentioned, it's one of those supplements that have been it was like in the gym bro world forever and still people associate it with that, but yet it's been one of the supplements that's actually stuck, It's worked and there's been countless studies showing its effectiveness, particularly with respect to increasing exercise volume. So, in other words, what creatine is it's essentially it's stored in our muscles as something called phosphocreatine. When you take a creatine exogenously, it's stored in our muscles as phosphocreatine and then used for energy. So, it's a way to make energy quicker. And so, the more of it you have stored, the quicker you can sort of make that energy. And so, what it's been shown to do is really help with increasing exercise volume. In other words, you can do one to two more reps per set or sets., you can do an extra set or whatever it is you're doing, And that leads to obviously if you're increasing your workload, you're going to have increased muscle mass and muscle strength because you're increasing your workload. It doesn't work like protein in the sense that you can increase muscle mass because it's anabolic. You need to put the work in. So creatine by itself isn't going to make your muscles grow, but it is going to make you work harder. It's going to be easier for you to work harder. And so you end up increasing your exercise volume, which then has adaptations on your muscle, And that's why a lot of people like it because for one, they want their muscles to grow bigger and stronger and two, some people like to use it during competitions or something because they want to be able to increase that exercise volume as well. It's also really good for that explosive power type of exercise again because you're getting that quick mobilization of producing energy.

And I'm just glossing over decades of research and a lot of specifics here because I want to get to the brain. But it turns out creatine is something that our liver makes a little bit I think like one maybe 1 to two grams a day. It's also something that's found in dietary sources particularly animal products. So it's high in like meat, poultry, fish, dairy, not so much in vegetables. So vegans and vegetarians actually end up they can have lower creatine if they're not supplementing with it because they're not eating animal products, Well, it turns out that it seems as though if you're if you're supplementing and eating a high meat diet, you're getting a good amount of creatine, five grams seems to be about the point at which your muscles get saturated at least over the course of like a month or so.

So, if you've been using creatine for a month or two, your muscle stores are saturated and 5 grams a day is kind of what's consumed by the muscle on a daily basis to kind of maintain that. So, I would argue that you might want to go above that to get the brain benefits. And here's why. Because your muscle is a very, very greedy when it comes to creatine. So, that five grams that you're taking, I used to take five grams a day until about last April or March or something like that. So, the five grams a day is what's been shown in countless studies, and that's probably why you take it. I took it because it was countless studies showing five grams a day was like the dose. That was the dose that you needed to get the muscle benefits. All these brain benefits now coming out seem to be at higher doses. And you mentioned one that was 25 grams. I mean 20 to 25 grams, which is kind of a crazy study where they did about 21 hours of sleep deprivation essentially. They were barely sleeping at all. And giving them the 25 g of creatine, 20 to 25 grams depending on their weight, seemed to not only negate the negative effects of sleep deprivation on their cognition, but it also improved their cognition beyond what their baseline normal cognition is when they were sleeping.

Yeah. And that's what was really intriguing to me as well as some of the other studies where older adults are given, 20 grams of creatine and it improve their cognition. We now have the first pilot study in Alzheimer's disease where again 20 grams were given to a very small number of people with Alzheimer's disease. It also improved cognition. It turns out that when you start to go above the five grams and you get into more the 10 grams range, then some of that creatine is getting into the brain versus being all consumed by the muscle.

I personally use creatine now. I do 10 grams a day every day. And what I have noticed, and this could be totally placebo, but I'll tell you when I don't do my 10 grams a day, what I have noticed is that the afternoon sleepiness kind of slump I get is completely gone if I take my 10 grams a day.

10 grams, I don't get afternoon sleepiness. I miss it, I get it. So, it's not like a stored up kind of thing. It's like, no, if I miss it that day, it's noticeable. If I travel and I don't have it, it's noticeable.

I'm hooked on the 10 grams a day. If it's placebo, I don't care. It works. On top of that, what I've also been doing, ever since, that study came out with the 21 hours of sleep deprivation, I take about 20 grams of creatine when I'm traveling and I have to give a talk or I'm doing a podcast. Particularly because often times I'm traveling either to central time or to Eastern time and I'm, giving a talk early in the morning, which is like 6:00 a.m. my time. I got to be like on my game. So, I take the 20 grams and I kid you not, it's like you get this brain boost but without like the caffeine. It's hard to explain

Tim Ferriss: without the creepy crawly ants on your skin,

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Without that like

Tim Ferriss: creepy-crawly caffeine overdose

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: creepy-crawly feeling. And even that sometimes the caffeine isn't enough.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: If you're really jet-lagged, it's just especially if you're going across time zones.

Tim Ferriss: Well, also for me it's like I'm a caffeine fast metabolizer. If I have a cup of coffee, I'm on fire for 25 minutes and then I'm sleepy. I think some of that is actually a glucose response, but that's a whole separate thing. Using glucometer when I was doing all my ketogenic experiments and so on, I'm like, "Wow, if I have too much coffee, there is a huge, which is not that surprising, spike in glucose and then a very predictable subsequent drop off." So it doesn't end up being net that helpful for me unless I'm doing a 20 minute sprint on something which is probably never. So the creatine is super interesting to me. Let me ask some very specific maybe mundane questions but I think they're practical which is when these subjects were taking 20 or 25 g was that in one sitting was that in multiple divided doses when you take it is it in powder form is it little sachets that you can take with you on travel days is it encapsulated what does it actually look Like

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: with respect to all the studies, I don't remember if they were in one sitting. A lot of studies are if they do like a 20 gram, it will be in one sitting.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: What I do is different. I do five gram doses. So creatine monohydrate is the form I take. It's the absolute tried and true.

Tim Ferriss: The gold standard.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It's the gold standard.

Tim Ferriss: It's been around forever.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. There's a lot of other marketing out there that talks about other types of creatine, but that's really the gold standard. And I had Dr. Darren Kando on my podcast. He's a creatine researcher at the University of Regina in Canada and like we talked all about this and he really convinced me creatine monohydrate is the way to go. I asked him about like every type of creatine under the sun.

But the way I take it is in five gram doses. And so I do five grams first thing in the morning and then I'll do my workout and then I do another five grams about 11:00 a.m. and that's my 10 grams that I get.

Tim Ferriss: Got it.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: When I'm traveling, I do have these sachets that again Thornne makes by the way. No affiliation. I mean, there's like probably a million other I like Thorn because their creatine is NSF certified and so it's free of contaminants. I really like that. So again, find your own favorite brand, but I like this brand and I like they have sachets which are 5 g sachets and so I will have my 10 g for the day or again if I'm traveling for workrelated purposes, I will take I will take 15 to 20 grams depending on how much I need. In that case, I will do 210 gram doses. Like for me, I can tolerate that. I don't have any GI problems with it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I was going to bring that up.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, some people do. I think doing the five gram doses is like pretty easy on the gut. Most people don't have a big problem with the five grams. It's when they go above that.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, five is fine, I'll say a few things. So, the NSF certified is a pretty simple cheat code just to use as a filtering mechanism for a lot of supplements. And it is shocking how inconsistent supplement contents are. I mean, I've looked at lab reviews of like 20 off-the-shelf melatonin products, and it ranges from zero melatonin up to like 20x the label amount. It's just bananas. I use Momentous Creatine, but it's passing the same hurdle, And I will say like good news, you can reduce the likelihood of cognitive deficit from sleep deprivation. Bad news is you could increase the likelihood of disaster pants if you have 20 grams at one sitting. And I will say maybe from personal experience, maybe I'm just talking about somebody else, but if you really want to increase the likelihood of disaster pants, then you can do like a bunch of caffeine like you double espresso or black coffee with MCT powder and then have your creatine around the same time. You're going to want to pack some Pampers in your travel kit if you do that. So, yeah, just be aware of the GI stuff.