How Creatine Supports Muscle and Brain Energy
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Creatine helps regenerate ATP during brief, high-intensity effort. In this clip from Dr. Rhonda Patrick's appearance on PBD Podcast, she explains how creatine monohydrate can support training volume, strength, and lean-mass gains when paired with resistance exercise. A meta-analysis of 22 trials with 721 older adults found that adding creatine to resistance training increased lean tissue mass and upper- and lower-body strength. [1]
Dr. Patrick also discusses creatine as a brain-energy buffer. In a small randomized crossover study, a single high dose during 21 hours of sleep deprivation changed brain-energy measures and improved selected cognitive tasks. A later crossover study using a lower weight-based dose found its clearest benefit in reasoning, while several memory, accuracy, fatigue, and sleepiness outcomes did not reliably improve. [2] [3]
Routine muscle supplementation and acute sleep-loss research use different protocols. Standard evidence-based approaches use creatine monohydrate, either about 0.3 grams per kilogram daily for five to seven days followed by 3 to 5 grams daily, or 3 to 5 grams daily without loading. The higher doses studied during sleep deprivation are research protocols, not replacements for sleep or universal daily brain doses. [4]
This clip is excerpted, with permission, from Dr. Rhonda Patrick's appearance on PBD Podcast. Thank you to PBD Podcast for allowing us to share it.
- ^ 10.2147/oajsm.s123529
- ^ Gordji-Nejad, Ali; Matusch, Andreas; Kleedörfer, Sophie; Jayeshkumar Patel, Harshal; Drzezga, Alexander; Elmenhorst, David, et al. (2024). Single Dose Creatine Improves Cognitive Performance And Induces Changes In Cerebral High Energy Phosphates During Sleep Deprivation Scientific Reports 14, 1.
- ^ 10.3390/nu18081192
- ^ 10.1186/s12970-017-0173-z
PBD Podcast Host: By the way, you also speak a lot about creatine. I remember when I was 14 or 15 years old, we were all bodybuilding and lifting weights, and EAS came out with creatine. Everybody was using creatine back then, and then it went away for 15 years. It looks like creatine is making a comeback. Tell me why you're so pro-creatine.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, I started taking creatine. I got really serious about resistance training a couple of years ago after having a lot of experts on my podcast. That really was compelling to me that muscle mass is very important to maintain as you age, right? And being someone that was so cardio focused, it was like, okay, I got to start really focusing also on resistance training.
PBD Podcast Host: Were you an athlete back in the day? Like did you compete?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I did. I was an interesting athlete. I was a competitive jump roper and ice skater. I know those are not the most common sports.
PBD Podcast Host: Jump roper.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I started a jump-rope team with my best friend when I was in second grade.
PBD Podcast Host: You say second grade?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes. San Diego Sands Skippers was the name of the jump-rope team. It was part of the international rope-skipping organization at the time. They have a different name now, but there were teams across the United States and around the world. We competed every year at a camp in Boulder, Colorado, where everyone came from around the world.
PBD Podcast Host: Jump rope is hard cardiovascular exercise. It works the shoulders, arms, and forearms.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It's a full-body exercise.
It is also weight-bearing, so you get bone-density benefits. I was a competitive jump-roper from about age 8 to 16, and it was a big part of my life. I also developed leadership skills by traveling to schools, giving demonstrations with my team, and starting teams at different schools. It was a great confidence-building experience.
PBD Podcast Host: In San Diego in California.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes, the team started in San Diego. That was a digression. I was not taking creatine then.
Fast-forward to a couple of years ago. I was probably 44 or 45 when I became serious about resistance training, and creatine became part of that for me. Creatine monohydrate is the most well-studied supplemental form.
In the body, creatine is converted into phosphocreatine and stored in tissues such as muscle. Its phosphate group helps regenerate energy. During resistance training, explosive training, high-intensity interval training, and even aerobic exercise, creatine can help make energy available faster and increase training volume. A person might complete one or two more repetitions per set because recovery is faster.
Studies comparing resistance training alone with resistance training plus creatine often report greater gains in lean mass and strength with creatine. Creatine itself is not anabolic. It allows more work, which can lead to greater muscle adaptation.
After reviewing the literature and speaking with Dr. Darren Candow at the University of Regina, it was clear to me that five grams per day can saturate muscle tissue in about three weeks. That was my initial dose. As I went deeper into the research, the effects from the neck up, in the brain, became especially interesting.
We make creatine in the body, including in the liver.
PBD Podcast Host: Steak?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well yeah so we make it we can make it without any steak without any meat. Our liver can make it one to three grams and our brain can make it again and then we can have a dietary source of it. As you mentioned the major dietary source is meat. Muscle meat being of course the highest because it's stored in muscle right. Poultry fish also has higher amounts of creatine. So, as you can imagine, vegetarians and vegans likely to have lower stores if they are not supplementing because they're only relying on what their body can produce. With that said, studies started coming out looking at the effects of creatine on the brain. And it's really to me very exciting. This area of research is new. I think it's the new part of creatine research that's kind of exploding now. A lot of creatine researchers were previously only looking at muscle. Now, they're also looking at the brain. So, the brain, as I mentioned, also makes its own creatine, but obviously the brain's using a lot of energy as well. And so, creatine being, stored as creatine phosphate is a great source of energy.
The problem is if you're only taking in five grams a day, your muscles are consuming all of it. It's saturating them. And so research out of Germany has shown that if you take 10 grams a day, you can actually increase the creatine levels in certain brain regions by twofold. Okay, that was the first study that to me that was convincing.
PBD Podcast Host: Interesting.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: 10 grams a day, right? Because you have to go above that five to get spillover to the brain. Okay, again, these are preliminary studies. A lot more to do. That is why I now take 10 grams a day.
PBD Podcast Host: You're going to get everybody using creatine now.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Now I take this is why I take 10 grams a day.
You take 10 a day. So creatine, let me just tell you. So, creatine for the brain, now the question is, well, if it's getting into the brain, what is it doing there, right? And so, there are studies showing that really creatine in the brain shines under a stressful condition. Okay? So, that could be psychological stress, that could be sleep deprivation, that could be brain aging, neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's disease, anything that's stressing the brain, that's where creatine shines because stress is an energy consumer. It is taking energy away from normal brain function. And so when you give yourself more energy, in the form of creatine, you're now allowing that energy to go to cognition, right? There are studies showing for example sleep deprivation being the classic way to stress your brain that if you take someone who's healthy and you sleep deprive them for 21 hours but you give them 20 to 25 grams of creatine their cognitive function is not only not compromised like it would be if you didn't sleep for 21 hours and then did a battery of brain tests, right? It was better than their baseline cognitive function. So it improved their cognitive function even more than their baseline which was before they were sleep deprived. There's also studies showing that Alzheimer's disease, people with, mild cognitive decline, early Alzheimer's disease, if they're given 10 or 20 grams of creatine, it can improve cognitive function as well. .
PBD Podcast Host: Do you drink it just with water? Do you mix it with grape juice? Well, I don't know if you've seen the studies, it's better if it's with grape juice. What do you mix it with?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I'm not a big fan of juice because it's really high in sugar without the fiber matrix. So, fiber matrix, like if it was a fruit, slows the glucose response. Juice, no bueno. I would say don't mix it with juice. I actually put my creatine in, first of all, I do 10 grams a day, and I usually split it up between five grams and five grams. And I usually do the first one in like my cup of coffee. Don't be worried about coffee negating the effects. I talked to the expert, Dr. Darren Candow. Unless you're consuming massive amounts of caffeine, like if you were doing like caffeine pills or something, then maybe I would be worried. But not with a normal amount of coffee.
PBD Podcast Host: You mix it with coffee.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I mix it with coffee
PBD Podcast Host: I do it all in the morning.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That's when I want my brain to function optimally.
Today, for example, I traveled from the West Coast to the East Coast and had to wake three hours earlier than normal. My brain was not working well because of sleep deprivation, so I took 20 grams this morning. I increase my usual 10 grams to 20 grams when I travel or am sleep-deprived. It is not a stimulant like caffeine, but I notice better cognitive function after taking 20 grams under those conditions. It might be a placebo effect because I know the studies, but placebo effects can still help.
PBD Podcast Host: That's funny.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That's where I'm at with creatine. I get my mom to take it. I think, aging itself is a stress on the brain. And like I said, it's the same thing as training. Creatine, if you're not training, isn't going to make you gain muscle mass or strength. Okay?
PBD Podcast Host: It can sometimes cause water retention. EAS brought creatine to the market in 1992. Bill Phillips published Muscle Media 2000, a bodybuilding magazine focused on science, and wrote Body for Life. Creatine monohydrate was introduced, followed by products such as vanadyl sulfate and HMB. HMB was popular in the early to mid-1990s. It is interesting to see creatine make a comeback, and it makes me consider taking it again. I have not taken creatine for more than 20 years.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Really? Do you exercise?
PBD Podcast Host: Yes. I have exercised for more than 20 years.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Oh you should be doing 10 grams a day.
PBD Podcast Host: Yeah. Well, I'll try it out and
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Let me know because for one, the training your training volume and recovery,
You should notice an effect there where it's like you'll, like I said, one to two more reps per set. Recovery is easier, but I'm really interested in the brain because
PBD Podcast Host: The brain on what it does.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I'll tell you for me, and again, I am totally like could be placebo. If I don't get my 10 grams in the day, I will have an afternoon slump.
If I get my 10 grams, I am good. I am good.
PBD Podcast Host: See, this is what makes you likable.
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