I started taking a scoop of the Creatine Hydrate from Costco every afternoon because why not. Wife had bought it and the bag was sitting right there.
I honestly don't know whether it made a difference. Sleep didn't get worse, no noticeable metabolic effects. Possibly the "perma tired muscles" I've been suffering from increasingly since about age 57 (I'm an active cyclist) have gotten a bit better, with <50% of days affected rather than >90% last year, but even that is subjective.
If "taking the stuff" means "more uptake" (does it?) and there are other beneficial effects, bring it on.
I can concur on the short-term benefits for longer sets as well as the shorter recovery. Creatine is just one of those no-brainer supplements.
It's safe, cheap, and long-term-study proven to be extremely effective.
You will want to increase your daily hydration (at least for otherwise healthy men, a good sign is that you're "peeing clear") as Creatine does increase water retention.
This is such a crazy substance. I'm 43 and I feel like I have more energy than I have ever had before. I started taking it during recovery from a bad ankle fracture since it helps building muscle mass. Once the ankle was better I took up CrossFit, and kept on taking creatine because why not, it helps replenish ATP so I will be able to give the extra-push when working out, I thought.
What is blowing my mind though is that at $dayjob my team is going through a crazy crunch to deliver a very strategic project and some of us are pushing 10-12h days often. I'm in hour 12 today for the second day in a row, and my head is not tired at all. Turns out the brain also uses a lot of ATP too, specially during demanding cognitive tasks so I guess it is creatine that is keeping the engine running smoothly even after so many hours.
I will like once every week or two have a poor night sleep. These days I take twice the dose and I don't feel like I'm sleep deprived at all. Feels like cheating! And apparently no side effects at all so far. Well, maybe I'm working too much.
Mind that, while the "creatine high dose to fight drowsiness" hack works and has no side effects (other than upset stomachs), the lost sleep still does it thing. You don't notice day to day but it will catch up to you eventually in many bad ways.
Definitely! I would not recommend it to make up for lack of sleep for extended periods of time.
One of the things I'm trying to do better lately is to have a good sleep hygiene. Sun in the eyes early in the morning, no caffeine for the first 60 waking minutes of the day (adenosine absorption period), no screens 2 hours before bed and whatnot. Still, some nights I will just wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to get back to sleep, then it's when I feel creatine helps
The overall fitness is going to definitely have a positive effect on the perceived energy levels (my Vo2 max is at its highest ever). On the other hand, I have been very fit at other times in my life but have never experienced this "my head can just go on" feeling before. I used to take conscious breaks, do NSDR between meetings and other energy-replenishing tricks because I __needed__ them. It feels like now I don't
Thankyou!! I'm sure if you have experience in the medical space this sort of thing seems obvious, but to me (non-medical), the original phrasing was so confusing. Your explanation makes sense.
Your own link shows that what is considered toxic levels are far higher than most people would expect. Vitamin D toxicity is not that easy to accidentally hit.
Overdose has been observed at 1,925 μg/d (77,000 IU per day). Acute overdose requires between 15,000 μg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 μg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over several days to months.
And, if you drink a glass of carrot juice a day, you'll receive toxic levels of vitamin A!
~40% of people don't get enough vitamin D [1]. It's not useful to categorize it as some trend, based on people just not following general recommended dosing (with more precise dosing depending entirely on personal sun exposure and skin color).
edit: As an office worker, I take 10k IU per day when I'm entirely indoors (most of the time), but vary it based on sun exposure. I based this on recent studies, and have my doctors approval with an exactly center-of-the-nominal-range vitamin D serum level.
My doctor added vitamin D test to his patients recurring blood work since the start of COVID, and found out just about all his patients was deficient or near it.
If you don't have a primarily fish based diet or spend hours under direct overhead sunlight every day without a shirt on, you're probably deficient as well.
I've also heard about it 'hardening' in the bloodstream and that you should really be taking it with K2 as well. This is anecdotal so someone please do more research than basing anything from this comment
I get severe cramping from it (reproducible). All I can find are papers about this being a myth and some reddit threads about other people having this.
I get it too if I don't drink a lot more water. So did many people on my sports team.
Creatine binds to water (making less water available to your muscles) and allows your muscles to work harder (which makes them need more water). So if you're not drinking a lot more water when you're taking creatine, you will get cramps from either dehydration and/or muscle overuse.
But once you're past the loading phase for creatine and getting sufficient hydration, it's supposed to lessen cramps because the water bound to creatine also becomes available for use again as the creatine is used by the body.
I get this unless I drink a lot of water. About 48 fl oz seems to be the right amount for 10g creatine. Sometimes this needs to be combined with a light snack, like a handful of nuts.
Your body can synthesize creatine, so it's not essential, but meat is a source of exogenous creatine and eating it results in higher stored creatine levels, which is slightly good for muscle power endurance in the ~5-15 second effort range. Supplementing produces slightly higher relative improvements in creatine levels in vegetarians and vegans than it does in people who eat meat.
I'm a vegan, and I'm surprised this is downvoted, because it's true. There are plenty of things that you need to be careful to not become deficient in on a vegan diet: protein (in appropriate amino acid balances), creatine, b12, the good Omega 3s (from algae preferably; flax is missing DHA entirely), calcium, iron, to name a few.
You're fine if you take daily algae oil, multivitamin, iron supplement, calcium, and creatine (without going overboard on any of it) and making sure to get lots of protein from balanced sources (eating a ton of soy is actually not a bad idea, because it's a balanced protein), but I wouldn't recommend somebody who doesn't want to have to worry about their nutrition to go vegan. Enough omnivores are already deficient in vitamins and minerals, and veganism only makes it harder.
Well, if vegetarians and those of the Vegan religion don't get enough creatine it is most likely related to them not partaking of an important source of the substance: meat.
Not vouching for creatine, but in general, humans get some vital nutrients from animal consumption. Vegans have to take some B-vitamins for best health due to what they don't get from meat. I assume creatine is the same.
Excessively large doses make your stomach and perhaps your kidneys unhappy and supplements being lightly regulated there may be purity issues where the risk is what else is in it.
Please remember that this is a study not the ads and pop-sci articles usually posted here. That means it’s meant to elucidate at most some biological pathways and not to present an overall recommendation. Maybe creatine has strong anti-tumor activity through one pathway and strongly tumor-promoting impacts elsewhere.
Please… just read it as the isolated and interesting insight into biology that it is. It’s a fascinating in vitro result that shows a potentially important role for creatinine in a certain immune response.
As it turns out, no one lets you generate mutant human embryos with deficient creatine receptors, grow them up into adult humans, inject them with melanoma, euthanize them and harvest the tumor cell mass and bone marrow for analysis.
Now I am imagining a 501-C where school children are encouraged to read studies to mice. Children get better at reading technical papers, mice learn more about their options! Win Win!
I started taking a scoop of the Creatine Hydrate from Costco every afternoon because why not. Wife had bought it and the bag was sitting right there.
I honestly don't know whether it made a difference. Sleep didn't get worse, no noticeable metabolic effects. Possibly the "perma tired muscles" I've been suffering from increasingly since about age 57 (I'm an active cyclist) have gotten a bit better, with <50% of days affected rather than >90% last year, but even that is subjective.
If "taking the stuff" means "more uptake" (does it?) and there are other beneficial effects, bring it on.
If you start lifting weight at the gym you quickly will feel the difference: your muscles recover much better during the set breaks.
I can concur on the short-term benefits for longer sets as well as the shorter recovery. Creatine is just one of those no-brainer supplements.
It's safe, cheap, and long-term-study proven to be extremely effective.
You will want to increase your daily hydration (at least for otherwise healthy men, a good sign is that you're "peeing clear") as Creatine does increase water retention.
This is such a crazy substance. I'm 43 and I feel like I have more energy than I have ever had before. I started taking it during recovery from a bad ankle fracture since it helps building muscle mass. Once the ankle was better I took up CrossFit, and kept on taking creatine because why not, it helps replenish ATP so I will be able to give the extra-push when working out, I thought.
What is blowing my mind though is that at $dayjob my team is going through a crazy crunch to deliver a very strategic project and some of us are pushing 10-12h days often. I'm in hour 12 today for the second day in a row, and my head is not tired at all. Turns out the brain also uses a lot of ATP too, specially during demanding cognitive tasks so I guess it is creatine that is keeping the engine running smoothly even after so many hours.
I will like once every week or two have a poor night sleep. These days I take twice the dose and I don't feel like I'm sleep deprived at all. Feels like cheating! And apparently no side effects at all so far. Well, maybe I'm working too much.
Mind that, while the "creatine high dose to fight drowsiness" hack works and has no side effects (other than upset stomachs), the lost sleep still does it thing. You don't notice day to day but it will catch up to you eventually in many bad ways.
Definitely! I would not recommend it to make up for lack of sleep for extended periods of time.
One of the things I'm trying to do better lately is to have a good sleep hygiene. Sun in the eyes early in the morning, no caffeine for the first 60 waking minutes of the day (adenosine absorption period), no screens 2 hours before bed and whatnot. Still, some nights I will just wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to get back to sleep, then it's when I feel creatine helps
Edit: Typo
is it possible that this is the bump due to your workouts and not plainly creatine ?
I take creatine daily but when I'm working out more than a couple of weeks, i feel much better than on weeks when I skip working out.
The overall fitness is going to definitely have a positive effect on the perceived energy levels (my Vo2 max is at its highest ever). On the other hand, I have been very fit at other times in my life but have never experienced this "my head can just go on" feeling before. I used to take conscious breaks, do NSDR between meetings and other energy-replenishing tricks because I __needed__ them. It feels like now I don't
You mentioned that you took up CrossFit after starting creatine. Did your previous fit phases include lifting heavy weights?
No, mostly cycling (~200km+/week with one 100km+ ride) and 30 minutes of daily yoga
great question. Can I take creatine and skip the workout hassle?
Going from minimal exercise to light-moderate exercise will do as much for you as creatine would. To me it's almost a no-brainer to try doing both.
For me, just creatine doesn’t seem to do a whole lot. But heavy workouts (with or without creatine), energize me enormously.
Do you take the standard 5g or something else? What's your weight?
~5g most days, ~10g if I didn't sleep well. I'm currently 68kg
worth noting that there’s evidence both ways… tumor cells may like it too:
- Loo et al. 2015 found color cancer cells can use it as fuel and blocking the creatine cut metastasis in mice [0]
- zhang et al 20921 found it promoting mouse colon and breast cancer models [1]
not an expert in any way, but i’m guessing it depends on cancer type and there doesn’t seem to be human data either way.
[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25601461/
[1]: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.009
also https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-74639-z
- Enhances ANTI-tumor... sounds good - ANTI-tumor immunity... sounds bad? - Read first few paragraphs as a typical medical rube, got nowhere
So, creatine = good?
"But you get your choice of toppings." "That's good!" "The toppings contain potassium benzoate... ...that's bad."
Can I go now?
Don’t worry, if you aren’t confused enough there’s also this to send you through another cycle! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33811821/
Original title may be clearer?
Creatine uptake promotes dendritic cell activation and enhances antitumor immunity
Original title is too long, I had to shorten it
"Immunity" = "immune system activity." "Anti-tumor immunity" = "immune system activity against tumors."
Thankyou!! I'm sure if you have experience in the medical space this sort of thing seems obvious, but to me (non-medical), the original phrasing was so confusing. Your explanation makes sense.
I mean the summary ends with pretty clear message
> …and support the use of creatine supplementation as a strategy to augment DC-based cancer immunotherapy.
So it seems that from this research the outcome is indeed creatine = good
Anti-missile shielding
Note that they gave the mice 10mg per day, which is around 3g per day for a 70kg human - i.e. a normal dose.
The whole creatine craze reminds me of Vitamin D a couple of years ago. Which also sounded harmless, but can go very wrong if not careful
> but can go very wrong if not careful
This is vague and doesn't explain anything. Can you share any references that communicate what you're thinking about?
They're talking about vitamin D, which accumulates due to being fat soluble and is indeed toxic at a certain level[1]
It became something of a panacea nutrient, recently around COVID.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_toxicity
Your own link shows that what is considered toxic levels are far higher than most people would expect. Vitamin D toxicity is not that easy to accidentally hit.
Overdose has been observed at 1,925 μg/d (77,000 IU per day). Acute overdose requires between 15,000 μg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 μg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over several days to months.
And, if you drink a glass of carrot juice a day, you'll receive toxic levels of vitamin A!
~40% of people don't get enough vitamin D [1]. It's not useful to categorize it as some trend, based on people just not following general recommended dosing (with more precise dosing depending entirely on personal sun exposure and skin color).
edit: As an office worker, I take 10k IU per day when I'm entirely indoors (most of the time), but vary it based on sun exposure. I based this on recent studies, and have my doctors approval with an exactly center-of-the-nominal-range vitamin D serum level.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9573946/
My doctor added vitamin D test to his patients recurring blood work since the start of COVID, and found out just about all his patients was deficient or near it.
If you don't have a primarily fish based diet or spend hours under direct overhead sunlight every day without a shirt on, you're probably deficient as well.
I've also heard about it 'hardening' in the bloodstream and that you should really be taking it with K2 as well. This is anecdotal so someone please do more research than basing anything from this comment
Unless you have specific issues, creatine is pretty easily excreted in excess, unlike fat-soluble vitamin D.
This doesn't mean you can just pound it, but for the most part it just becomes waste product.
You definitely want to take breaks from Creatine. It’s not something people should take year around.
[delayed]
Creatine related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346947
(I regret posting that blog post, but the study is interesting)
Are there risks to creatine?
As it was mentioned elsewhere it might make existing cancers worse, and decrease survivability. Cancer seems to love it.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25601461/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.009
More accessible video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcMgHncZVIw
Generally no, it's expensively studied and has had daily consumption to be safe for upto 5 years at least (studies haven't generally gone longer).
That being said some people do have adverse effects to supplementation, e.g. excessive water retention, bloating, stomach discomfort, &c.
So try it, if you have a bad reaction stop.
Maybe
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3...
I get severe cramping from it (reproducible). All I can find are papers about this being a myth and some reddit threads about other people having this.
I get it too if I don't drink a lot more water. So did many people on my sports team.
Creatine binds to water (making less water available to your muscles) and allows your muscles to work harder (which makes them need more water). So if you're not drinking a lot more water when you're taking creatine, you will get cramps from either dehydration and/or muscle overuse.
But once you're past the loading phase for creatine and getting sufficient hydration, it's supposed to lessen cramps because the water bound to creatine also becomes available for use again as the creatine is used by the body.
How much water can 3g of creatine bind to? Is it like orbeez?
I get this unless I drink a lot of water. About 48 fl oz seems to be the right amount for 10g creatine. Sometimes this needs to be combined with a light snack, like a handful of nuts.
Did you try different sources I do not trust some of the stuff out there and often wonder if these supplements aren’t just generic white powder…
Essentially none. Creatine supplementation is a good idea for most people, especially vegans/vegetarians.
Why especially those?
Your body can synthesize creatine, so it's not essential, but meat is a source of exogenous creatine and eating it results in higher stored creatine levels, which is slightly good for muscle power endurance in the ~5-15 second effort range. Supplementing produces slightly higher relative improvements in creatine levels in vegetarians and vegans than it does in people who eat meat.
Nobody gets fired for supplementing vegans.
Because they lack all kinds of substances that meateaters get plenty of.
I'm a vegan, and I'm surprised this is downvoted, because it's true. There are plenty of things that you need to be careful to not become deficient in on a vegan diet: protein (in appropriate amino acid balances), creatine, b12, the good Omega 3s (from algae preferably; flax is missing DHA entirely), calcium, iron, to name a few.
You're fine if you take daily algae oil, multivitamin, iron supplement, calcium, and creatine (without going overboard on any of it) and making sure to get lots of protein from balanced sources (eating a ton of soy is actually not a bad idea, because it's a balanced protein), but I wouldn't recommend somebody who doesn't want to have to worry about their nutrition to go vegan. Enough omnivores are already deficient in vitamins and minerals, and veganism only makes it harder.
Because meat is the best source of creatine from diet.
Well, if vegetarians and those of the Vegan religion don't get enough creatine it is most likely related to them not partaking of an important source of the substance: meat.
Not vouching for creatine, but in general, humans get some vital nutrients from animal consumption. Vegans have to take some B-vitamins for best health due to what they don't get from meat. I assume creatine is the same.
It can make you hold more water weight so you should drink more water in response.
i personally have problems with tinnitus and hearing loss, and creatine use tends to trigger it due to water retention so i stay off the stuff.
Potentially lots poopies.
Worse beach looks
Creatine causes intramuscular water increases, not subcutaneous. Doesn't actually have a negative impact here.
Excessively large doses make your stomach and perhaps your kidneys unhappy and supplements being lightly regulated there may be purity issues where the risk is what else is in it.
But it's pretty safe at recommended doses.
None
Please remember that this is a study not the ads and pop-sci articles usually posted here. That means it’s meant to elucidate at most some biological pathways and not to present an overall recommendation. Maybe creatine has strong anti-tumor activity through one pathway and strongly tumor-promoting impacts elsewhere.
Please… just read it as the isolated and interesting insight into biology that it is. It’s a fascinating in vitro result that shows a potentially important role for creatinine in a certain immune response.
There’s just so much evidence that creatine is something people should take daily, and now this?
I’ve taken to snorting it. Straight to the brain it goes!
you joke, but that is a real issue for some
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_creatine_deficiency
I've been smoking mine
So what’s the latest? That everyone should take creatine and GLP-1s?
Adverse side effects of creatine are generally less severe than GLP-1s
With a peptide chaser.
I wasn’t being facetious. I seriously am asking if everyone should actually take creatinine and GLP-1.
Any reason someone at a healthy BMI should take GLP-1?
...in mice.
As it turns out, no one lets you generate mutant human embryos with deficient creatine receptors, grow them up into adult humans, inject them with melanoma, euthanize them and harvest the tumor cell mass and bone marrow for analysis.
Did you read it at all?
> Notably, creatine uptake similarly boosted the activation and immunostimulatory function of human monocyte-derived DCs.
Fair. Missed that bit tbh.
Imagine how healthy mice in general could live, if they were able to read all these research papers about themselves.
Now I am imagining a 501-C where school children are encouraged to read studies to mice. Children get better at reading technical papers, mice learn more about their options! Win Win!
They already do in their own dimension, all that dying and running down the wrong track in those mazes is just to befuddle us silly hominids.
Source: https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Mice
I, for one, welcome our future inmice overlords.