All right. Welcome back to Uplift For Her, where we take an integrative approach to women's health. You have asked, and I am answering, what is the lowdown on creatine? We are diving into all things creatine today, and I can promise you it's going to be really exciting. This is something that I had to prepare a lot for, and I learned so much. And I really think you're going to take away some fascinating pieces of information. So we're going to talk about creatine, its benefits. I'm not giving any spoilers here, so tune in and we're going to learn all about creatine and how and why you should be taking it. I guess I'll give that one spoiler you should be that's the answer. But stay tuned. Let's dive in and talk about all things creatine.
I am really excited about this, because this seems like we're hearing about it every five minutes, is you should be taking creatine. And a lot of people will come and say, Is that for real? Should I really? So I am wrapping up some evidence for you and really giving you what the guidelines show, what the evidence shows of why we should or shouldn't be taking creatine. And spoiler, we should, we really should. But listen up, because there are some really fascinating things that I think are going to be really interesting. I don't have any affiliation with anyone that sells creatine, so I don't have anything to gain from this, but it really is pretty fascinating when we understand what creatine is doing in the body and how it may help us, especially as women. And I can almost guarantee you that there are some benefits here that you haven't heard about. So here let's let's go ahead and get started now first of all, what is creatine? Creatine is a nutrient that we pull from food, and we mostly hear about it as a supplement for bodybuilders, right? Men have been taking creatine forever when they were trying to build muscle, because it works, and there's good data that shows it works to build muscle. But then there's the question of, does it work the same way in women as it does in men? And it does a lot of the ways, but we're going to go into the details a little bit more. It is one of the most studied supplements in the world. So this is not something that is brand new. This is not something that is experimental. This is something that has really good data and more and more data on the horizon. And one of the most fascinating things that I learned is that creatine may be even more beneficial for women than it is for men. So it's not just about building muscle. Creatine, as I mentioned, is a nutrient that's broken down from the food that we eat and then used as an ingredient to generate energy. And so a lot of you have heard of cellular energy called ATP right? The ATP molecule is what our cells use for energy, and creatine is one of the factors that can go in to power ATP, to regenerate ATP. When we're thinking of creatine, think about it like a recharge for your cells, like a portable battery pack. If you have an energy source that you have to go plug into the wall, then that's going to be slower to rejuvenate. And so if you have a big burst of energy, or have a need for a big burst of energy, then afterwards, you're going to have to go plug it into the wall and charge it. But with creatine, it's like a vehicle of energy. It just sort of carries the necessary ingredients around to generate more ATP, so it sort of just follows you around with its little hand open, saying, Would you like more? And like a battery pack? And so if you use it up, then it instantly gives you more from that battery pack, and that's one of the reasons why creatine is helpful, but it also helps us understand the theories and some of the data behind what else creatine can be beneficial for. Think about then, any time that our body has high utilization of energy, what we think of is building muscle, right, lifting, heavy sprinting, doing high intensity interval training. But you can also think of other times when our body has a high need for energy, if we're thinking really hard, if we're concentrating really hard, studying, multitasking, all of these tasks in our brain that really are expensive for our brain to use, we'll use creatine to regenerate that energy, and if we don't have direct availability of that energy store, then we might feel burdened down. We might feel that brain fatigue. Another time that we think about increased need for energy is pregnancy, right? Can you think of a higher utilizing energy state than pregnancy? It is just taking every energy source we can get and putting it into maintaining the health of the mom and building a baby. So that's a really high intensity time of energy utilization. And one of the times that they're looking at using creatine, another time, is across our menstrual cycle. So our follicular phase, we sort of hear about the first part of the menstrual cycle where we feel really good, but we're really not having to do very much during the follicular phase, and then you hit ovulation and get ready to support a pregnancy, and the body really starts churning. It really starts using up energy, which can lead us to feel that fatigue, or that kind of settling down during the luteal phase. But. Also one of the times when our bodies may use the most energy, ATP energy, and having creatine during that time is another time that we can benefit potentially from creatine. I'm going to get into all of this, but I was just, it's just really exciting reviewing all of the data. So we'll, we'll get into the details of this. And then lastly, menopause, when our hormone levels go down, we're really working harder to use energy. So it may not necessarily be that we're using more energy, but we may not have the same battery packs. We may not have the same resources at our disposal. So relatively speaking, we have higher utilization of energy. And as I mentioned, given all of this, potentially and likely there's actually a greater need for women to be taking creatine than men. Men use it to build muscle, and that's great. Women use it to build muscle, but there can be way more benefits for women other than just building muscle. They have found that women have lower baseline creatine stores by almost 80% than men, and so when we're trying to use up this energy really quickly, if we are storing less creatine, then that's going to make it more difficult for us then to use the creatine also. The dietary intake in women is also frequently lower than compared to men. So men may have creatine on hand, more likely from their diet, and because they're storing more of it where women are not another factor that plays into women and creatine is the effect of estrogen interplaying with creatine. So estrogen can really have a big effect on the way that we're making the creatine molecule and transporting the creatine molecule. We may see that as our bodies go into low states of estrogen that we're not as good at taking up and utilizing that creatine, which is one of the things that they've looked at, is, could we actually change our creatine supplementation depending on where we're at in our cycle and where we're at in our estrogen levels? So pregnancy and postpartum, perimenopause and menopause and luteal phase? So looking at the use of creatine across our lifestyle, there's several studies that have been done looking at benefits in different stages of a woman's life. When we talk about a woman's life and different stages, it's so different than a man's because a man doesn't have as many hormonal shifts. So both of us go through puberty, and then men kind of stay stable until andropause, which is when the hormones can change again. But for men, that hormonal shift is slow and gradual. And for women, their hormones go little bonkers in puberty, and then might stabilize for a little bit, until we have a baby, and then they go bonkers, and then postpartum, they say little bonkers, and then they might stabilize. But the more babies you have, then the more you have these fluctuations all the way until perimenopause. And if these hormonal fluctuations are changing our energy utilization, then you can see how much of a moving target a woman's body is. Mostly I just have a lot of empathy for all of us, a lot of sympathy for all of us to say like, wow, our bodies are fancy and need. Need a lot of support.
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If you're curious, just visit the link in the show notes. There's also a link on our website and through our Instagram account to explore all of my favorites in one place. When you purchase through the link, you get 15% off. Now back to the show. So when we're talking about this energy, one of the things I want to start with is pregnancy. Pregnancy is actually one of the times that we have the least data, but we do have good safety data, and they've looked at more in animal models using supplementation for protection of the fetal brain, especially during times of higher need, when there may be greater stress on the baby. So periods of hypoxia, that's something that we know about in pregnancy and childbirth. That is a really big deal. If the brain, if the fetus's brain, or the baby's brain, lacks oxygen for a time, there can be lifelong impacts of that of the brain not developing appropriately or not working as well. Also times when the baby may not be growing appropriately. So low birth weight, if the baby is not growing well for some reason, then they've looked at, especially in animal models, supplementing with creatine to improve fetal outcomes. And the data is really promising. And creatine is so easy, it's low cost, it's easy to take. Week and it's safe. So I hope to see more data in the future looking at pregnancy support for the baby, but also for the mom. There have been data looking at, and I'll come back to this in a second, looking at improvements in depression in general, and in even in adolescence. But so it makes me wonder in pregnancy, where we see moods kind of sagging, and energy sagging, and the brain, we call it pregnancy brain, right? Is it possible that some of this effect is due to just it's difficult to get energy from our bodies, from creatine, maybe our diets are lacking, but also the estrogen is is in flux, and may make it more difficult for us to take up this energy. So these are areas in future, areas of study that are ongoing and hopefully will show some improvements in fetal outcomes, especially, but also in in the outcomes of us moms, of like, could we feel a little bit better? Could we have fewer of these side effects than that? Maybe we don't need to have there is some data in postpartum that is not yet complete, but is promising in the same way that when suddenly we have this massive still utilization of energy to breastfeed and to heal and to recover, our hormones are going a little bonkers, usually suppressed. Is it a time that taking creatine may be beneficial, and at least we know that that's safe? It's a time that would be safe to try and see if that could help with your brain and your energy there, skipping ahead, and then I'll come back to this as well. There is some data looking at sleep deprivation. If you think about sleep deprivation, having to function in the setting of sleep deprivation is hard, right? It takes our brains a lot of energy to try to to work if I am very pregnant right now and did not get a good night's sleep last night, and can feel my brain just operating a little bit more slowly and kind of working harder to function. And is this a time that creatine may be beneficial? Well, there has been data showing benefit in sleep deprivation and actually improved cognitive outcomes and fine motor skills following periods of sleep deprivation. But could we extrapolate that to postpartum please? Can we? Can we find that out if that might be beneficial that time when you're sleep deprived, your energy consumption is just going up so much again as you're breastfeeding and healing and recovering, and then the worry and the brain effort of multitasking, maybe taking care of other children, or figuring out how to keep your baby okay and thriving. This might be a time that we would really benefit from creatine supplementation, so I hope to see more data on that as it relates to pregnancy. But there are some really promising things coming up there now backing up a little bit, when we think about different stages of a one's life, if we think about perimenopause and menopause, one of the things that we hear more than anything is how beneficial, I hope you're hearing this is how beneficial it is to build muscle that a lot of us are worried about not being chubby or not having extra weight on board, but that Our priorities should shift to first build muscle. You can shed fat later, but first build muscle, and that muscle can be helpful for our bones, our brain, our longevity, insulin resistance. We want these bigger muscle stores. We want to have some muscles on us. And creatine has shown over and over and over to be beneficial to building muscle. It shows that when women, and there's plenty of data on men, but there is now specific data on women, that when women take creatine, especially combined with resistance training, that they have better build up of lean muscle mass and of non fat mass, meaning everything in your body besides fat, which is overall a good thing. Some of that's water, but overall that's a good thing, that we can build more muscle more efficiently as we are giving our bodies the energy to do so. Now, when we combine that with resistance training, think about what we talked about with the physiology. If the cells have the energy to build muscle, then they're going to do it better. If you're trying to build muscle, but you don't have the right energy or the right ingredients to do that. You can be lifting weights all day, but you're going to get fatigued and you're going to feel bad, and you're still not going to be as efficient to build a muscle. So when we fuel our bodies to complete the process, then it turns out it pays off. So creatine, alongside of strength training, definitely builds muscle. I think for a lot of people, it will will also show and the data shows this as well. It will also show improved performance. So they've done this, especially with athletes, with with college or professional athletes, some of us, like me, are not athletes, and we wonder, could that still be the same? But I do think it's it. I do think we can extrapolate it and say, if we have that energy that our cells need, that we're going to feel better during the workout, especially if you are feeling like a workout is making you crash. This might be something worth trying. Is doing the creatine supplementation as you're building slowly up, as you're building up the intensity of your workouts, and seeing how you. Feel that being said, what I wouldn't do is, if you are the type who works out and crashes oftentimes, that's a sign that we actually need to back way up and actually pull back on exercise, instead of just adding stress and fuel to the fire. What I would say is pull way back on exercise, add the creatine, start giving your body the fuel, and then very slowly creep your way forward on duration and intensity of exercise, but you may find that your body is able to tolerate that better if we get that energy that we need. Now, of course, creatine is not the only thing that our cells use for energy. We also need other amino acids, and we need protein, and we need fuel and we need sleep. So this is, this is looking at a really narrow lens of energy utilization, but still, it's exciting to think, gosh, maybe that could help me feel better if I'm feeling like I'm struggling to have the performance I'm looking for in a workout. So better muscle building, but also better performance, better repeated high intensity efforts were shown in these studies, including sprints lifting high intensity interval training. They've also looked at weight gain in women. There were some concerns that maybe adding creatine causes weight gain, and that has not been shown to be the case. I do think some people it can cause some water retention and some bloating. And you can experiment with different brands and different formulations of creatine. A lot of people's bodies are not picky about what type of creatine so you may be able to get by with a pretty inexpensive version of creatine. If it's causing a lot of bloating and water retention, then you may need to change to a different formulation and seeing if it if it feels better in your body. But the data has shown consistently that it does not cause weight gain. Another thing that we see from the data is that it doesn't affect kidneys. This is still out there as a concern, obviously, if you have kidney disease, that may be different for you, but one of the things we know is that creatinine, which is a kidney function marker that we look at, can sometimes artificially be affected by people being on creatine. It can also be artificially affected by people who have bigger muscles. So oftentimes the kidney function will look worse in someone who has more muscle than it actually is. And we can do follow up testing for that to look at what's called the GFR, the glomerular filtration rate. We can measure that a couple different ways. And so oftentimes people on creatine will look like their kidney function is worse, and if you repeat it by a different measure, it will look fine. So there's really no evidence to suggest that creatine is a problem for kidneys, unless maybe you have kidney dysfunction already, then you should talk to your doctor first. But we may need to measure it a little bit differently to ensure that that everything is going okay. We also know that really, there's the that creatine is very safe in general, that most studies show no adverse effects at all, except maybe the bloating. So that's really exciting to see that we have a supplement that's fairly inexpensive, that's accessible, that's easy to add, and could have these benefits without any of the downside.
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So I don't have to spend time looking at the labels and trying to find the ingredients that trying to remember what I was supposed to avoid. They just do that all for me. So I know anything that I buy from them is already screened and is something that I can trust. Use code uplift for her for 10% off at just ingredients.us now, back to the show. Now, moving further with perimenopause and post menopause. As I mentioned before, when we have decreased estrogen, we also have decreased creatine synthesis and transport. So that's another time we may benefit from adding the creatine in and so looking at that coming out of the luteal phase, looking at even in adolescence, there have been some studies. There was one study in particular that's really interesting, looking at the rates of depression in adolescence and showing benefits from creatine supplementation. The studies that I looked at were done with antidepressants. So this isn't I don't know if someone is struggling with depression and just takes creatine. I'm not saying that will help, but it's sure an interesting idea and something that I think is safe to try. That being said, if someone has severe depression, they need to be under the care of a physician and actually managing the depression in the best way possible, not. Just trying various supplements. But if someone's starting to struggle with mood a little bit and maybe feeling worn down, or maybe feeling like they don't have good exercise tolerance, I do think that could be a safe option to try and see what it helps with. There is some confusion around benefit for bone health. In theory, it should help with bone benefits, but the studies haven't shown that it does anything to reverse osteoporosis or really help with bone metric. So I don't think it harms bones, and I think probably there's some benefit there, but in terms of what they're measuring, I don't think it's the the end all be all to hey, I have poor bone health. Let me take creatine. That being said, if we're taking creatine for these other benefits and it happens to help with our bone health, then I'm not mad about that. I can, I can handle that. There's also some studies looking at the effects in perimenopause and menopause. One of the things that happens in perimenopause and menopause is that we have more stress on the body. It's sort of one of the effects of just aging in general. We call it oxidative stress. It's something that says my cells are just a little less efficient. They're just not quite as good at repair, not quite as good at like, doing what they were doing in my 20s. And that probably resonates with most of us, that we can feel that, that that makes sense, and creatine can help, in theory, decrease that inflammation and improve that oxidative stress. So again, is it something I would take just for that? I don't know that we have the data to support that at this point, but if you're already taking it because you're doing resistance training and wanting to build muscle, then it's a safe thing to see if it could help with that. I mentioned earlier the studies on sleep deprivation, and that's something that can be beneficial. Is if we're in states of deprived sleep, that creatine may take the edge off of that. Now, should we stay in a sleep deprived state? No, we should not. We should sleep. But if you are in a state, I think of my colleagues and friends who work all night at labor and delivery, and those are the rest of you and us who are working graveyard or up in the middle of the night with children. This is something that may make it feel like, gosh, my brain is working a little bit better, or I feel like I'm recovering a little bit better from those nights where I don't quite get as much sleep. It's not the one thing you should do, but it could be a good adjunct if you are in a state of sleep deprivation. The studies on cognitive health are really exciting. There definitely are studies showing support in cognition, like I just talked about, in sleep deprivation, but also potentially in neuroprotection in case you have an injury, like a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, and also just potentially supporting the brain as it ages to prevent cognitive decline. These are soft. These are not things that we have great data for. But again, going back to this idea of creatine is inexpensive, it's easy to take it has a great safety profile. We know it helps with muscle building, which is something that we all are striving to hopefully do as we age, is to be sturdier and stronger. Then, if it also helps decrease the risk of dementia or cognitive decline, if it also helps us as maybe we're going through periods of lack of sleep, if it also helps us when we're multitasking and our brains feel really weighed down and stressed, if it also helps us to recover and function better, then I would say, Yes, I will take some. I will do that. Now that we've talked about all of that, how do we do it? What do we do in the male population, oftentimes there's a loading dose, and they'll do high doses of creatine for a week to 10 days, and then drop it down and stay on five grams thereafter. It looks like the same as an option for women, but there may not be as much need or benefit for the loading dose. So the easiest thing is just going to be five grams a day. And in most creatines, it's a powder, and oftentimes the scoop is five grams a day. It shouldn't be a complicated thing. It should be kind of what we're already doing. There are some studies done at three grams that show benefit, and some studies it looking at other benefits, like mood, where it didn't show as much benefit at three grams. So I think five grams is probably the dose to start with, and it does require some consistency. It's not something that's typically beneficial. There may be some benefit. They looked at using it just in times of high X of high intensity, and there was some benefit, but that's going to be just in that cellular energy for that exercise, and not necessarily some of these bigger benefits that come from just always having this energy available to us in high need states. So I would say five grams of creatine every day is kind of the way to go. We do know it's safe for long term, as long as we're using these recommended doses. There was an alternate dosing schedule used in one study for brain support that would be cognitive or depression, and that one they used 15 to 20 grams. So that would be three to four of those scoops every day for a week, and they did that for in divided doses. So maybe you do one scoop three times a day for a week. Now this was done in a study, and I do think some people feel a little more bloaty and water retention, but that was what they looked at in one study for the or in a couple of the studies for brain support, they were looking at that higher dose for a week. But then going down to five to 10. So I think it's it's okay to do that loading dose, but I think it's okay just to stay at the regular five grams as well. Now, as I mentioned before, this is going to work best when you're also doing resistance training, especially for muscle building. There was some benefit in perimenopause and menopause, even without much resistance training in terms of just doing regular activities like standing up and and doing a little jump, but really what we want to be using it daily so that we can build on those types of exercise and build on that mobility anyway. So using it daily with resistance training is going to be the best way to do it. As I mentioned, lots of data in the pipeline, and I'll be really excited to follow it, especially for women's health, with pregnancy, with postpartum, with fertility, with period regulation, and then a lot of the brain support as well depression and other things like that. There's maybe a possible role in autoimmunity and inflammation and decreasing inflammation. So that will be interesting to see. And then maybe even experimenting, if you were in your pre menopausal phase, looking at your cycles and saying, I especially benefit if I take it during that luteal phase. I think sometimes life gets complicated, and sometimes I don't want to pay attention if I'm taking it in the follicular phase or the luteal phase, so I'm probably just going to go ahead and take it every day. But in theory, there would be more benefit from taking it in the luteal phase than in the the first half of the cycle. So exciting things here, I think this is something I've known about the benefits for muscle building for a while, and I've recently been learning more about the potential cognitive effects. But really preparing for this, I learned a lot, and it's it's definitely convincing to me. So I hope you'll give me some feedback. Let me know if there's anything you want to learn more about or if there's anything you learned here that we can do do more of in the future. We'd love to hear from you. This is how we can keep giving you good information if you need further support on your health journey. We're always here at uplift for her, and we've got practitioners to help you. If you're out of state, we've got health coach to help you, a dietitian to help you. So we hope to hear from you in person too. We'd love to hear from you. So I hope this is helpful, and we'll talk to you again next time. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening. We couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website, uplift for her, calm, YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. Lastly, this information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice.
