00:00:00
A healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine. But what if you're stressed? What about sleep deprivation? Night
00:00:06
shift workers, university students cramming for a midterm. Then all of a sudden, the healthy brain becomes a
00:00:11
metabolically stressed brain. And most people fall into the stressed environment. And that's where creatine
00:00:17
comes to the rescue. And we'll talk about how much, but the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come
00:00:22
into play. >> And is there anyone that shouldn't take creatine? >> Well, I've published over 120 papers
00:00:27
just on creatine alone. And we've done at least 30 to 40 studies in our lab. And I can't find anybody that can't or
00:00:33
shouldn't take creatine. So, for example, at recommended dosages, creatine can not only have potential
00:00:38
anti-cancer properties, but really speed up rehabilitation. And there's a lot of
00:00:42
hope, especially around Alzheimer's. >> And what about kids? >> The current body of evidence suggests
00:00:46
they want to get at least one gram per day because in children, they want to have optimization for bone health as
00:00:51
well as muscle development. And so I'm fascinated that this nutrient discovered in 1832 like boring for the longest time
00:00:57
as having these profound benefits we never even thought would happen. And so your viewers today will be surprised
00:01:02
about some of the things I'm going to talk about including micro doing >> and we've got this thing here in front
00:01:06
of us. This is the dosing dilemma. And I want to talk about how much I need to take for all these things. And I want to
00:01:10
talk about nutrition, protein, weight training, etc. But before that, you've got five myths in front of you. Can you
00:01:16
reveal one by one what they are? >> So this is Oh, I can't believe you did this one to me. Creatine causes hair
00:01:21
loss. I was going bald before I started taking creatine. Myth number two. Oh, so
00:01:27
this is by far the biggest myth and that is this is super interesting to me. My team
00:01:34
given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe and some of you have told us according
00:01:38
to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you please could you check right
00:01:44
now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're
00:01:48
approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free
00:01:54
thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over
00:02:00
year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll
00:02:04
ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every
00:02:10
single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want
00:02:14
to hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the diio and I will not let you down. Please
00:02:20
help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. >> Dr. Darren Kandow, what is the mission
00:02:31
that you're on in your life? >> I think right now it would be to promote health and make people live longer free
00:02:38
of disease. It's fascinating how we've transcended our understanding of weight training and now weight training is
00:02:43
seeming to have these profound effects that cardiovascular exercise has and it gives you a bit more. So really focusing
00:02:49
now on the benefits of lifting things around the house and how exercise and then of course nutrition. We're going to
00:02:55
talk about creatine but also how other macronutrients especially protein come into play. And then when you combine
00:03:00
those two, are we doing enough to optimize longevity? And we hope that we are. Yeah. And so what are the reference
00:03:07
points you're drawing on? How do you know the things you know? Are you doing your own research?
00:03:11
>> Yeah. So I did my uh graduate school in Canada uh cell biology degree and then I
00:03:15
moved into my masters and PhD looking in kinesiology. So it's interesting that I
00:03:19
fell into creatine supplementation research by accident. I was doing my masters on an amino acid called
00:03:25
glutamine. And at the time about 20 30 years ago, glutamine was the biggest rage. Everybody was taking this
00:03:30
non-essential amino acid and hoping that it would have body composition improvements. uh and I sort of
00:03:36
determined it was worthless in young healthy individuals from a body composition uh standpoint. And at the
00:03:42
same time, a good colleague of mine was doing creatine and I started to know that these young biological males were
00:03:48
getting bigger, stronger, faster. And then another study bigger, stronger, faster. And then when you go to the
00:03:54
research on creatine, it was very stimulating in a sense that we're now improving things that we know with aging
00:04:01
go down. So then I turned my focus completely to healthy aging and trying to get, you know, grandparents and
00:04:07
great-grandparents and your parents to live longer, free of disease. But wait, let's start young. Start as early as you
00:04:13
can and move forward. Yeah. >> And so you got really compelled by creatine. I want to talk about all these
00:04:16
things, nutrition, protein, weight training, etc. >> But on this subject of creatine, what
00:04:21
was it that compelled you so much to start you you did started doing your own research on creatine?
00:04:25
>> I did and I started to take creatine. So, you know, it was this natural metabolite that we're synthesizing in
00:04:30
the liver and brain. If you take a little bit more, not a lot, just a little bit more than what we're probably
00:04:36
taking in from the food, uh, sources such as red meat and seafood, can it have benefits? And sure enough, it's now
00:04:42
the most researched supplement out there. It's overtaken protein and caffeine, uh, from an erogenic
00:04:46
perspective, and it's gone global, not just for males, but of course, uh, females and centurions and elderly. So
00:04:53
it's very fascinating the explosion in this research project. >> What is the sort of um not evolutionary
00:05:00
backdrop but I guess physiological backdrop of why humans need creatine but also why they might not be getting
00:05:05
optimal amounts. >> Yeah, that's a great question. So uh adenazine triphosphate or ATP is the
00:05:10
energy currency of all our cells. And think of your muscle doing work or shoveling the driveway or or walking.
00:05:16
You're using your muscles and you need to maintain that level of energy to to maintain exercise. Well, creatine comes
00:05:23
to the rescue to help maintain your energy currency. So, if Batman, which gets all the press, is ATP, Robin is
00:05:31
creatine. Creatine comes to the rescue. It's his best friend to help maintain these levels. Now, when you exercise at
00:05:37
a high intensity, you know, sprinting, weightlifting, those ATP stores do become jeopardized, and that's why
00:05:43
creatine sort of sacrifices itself uh to come to the rescue. So that's why anorobic sports the world cup just
00:05:50
started. These individuals will be using a lot of creatine stores in their muscle. The question is do they have
00:05:55
enough and if they had more could they play better and so our body makes creatine naturally.
00:06:00
>> That's correct. It is making about 1 to three grams a day but only in two areas.
00:06:04
So this will be quite shocking for people. We're only actually making it in the liver and the brain. We don't make
00:06:10
it in skeletal muscle but you store 95% in our muscle. So when it's being made in the liver or brain, the brain will
00:06:17
keep it there, but in the liver it will get transported in the blood up to your or skeletal muscle. The question is,
00:06:23
well, what if we need more? And that's where dietary creatine from red meat or seafood or supplementation comes into
00:06:29
play. >> So are we deficient in creatine? >> There are small populations with unfortunately they were born with the
00:06:37
inability to synthesize creatine. Uh they would have a deficiency and they are required to take supplementation.
00:06:44
The other unique population is vegans and vegetarians. So vegan and vegetarian diet is extremely healthy. The downfall
00:06:50
though is they're not getting any dietary creatine because creatine is only found in animal-based flesh. So red
00:06:55
meat, seafood, and poultry. They're naturally synthesizing about one to two, maybe even three grams a day through
00:07:02
amino acids in their food. But vegans and vegetarians respond literally the best on the planet because now they're
00:07:09
taking in a supplement to allow that in. And is it thought that historically we would naturally have consumed more
00:07:13
creatine? >> That's a good point. So back, you know, hunter and gather age, a lot of meat,
00:07:17
they were consuming quite a bit through dietary products. Just say if you only wanted to get three grams of creatine
00:07:23
through food, you'd have to eat quite a bit of meat to do that. And then it comes into the dilemma of what if you
00:07:28
don't eat meat or you just can't afford it. Yeah, >> creatine has exploded over the rec over
00:07:33
the last couple of years. I I saw a stat that said I think in women it had gone up to about 3% of women take the
00:07:39
creatine and Um, in men it's slightly higher. >> It's still a little bit lower in terms
00:07:44
of consumption in women from the stats that I saw. And I think that in part is because there's still some prevailing
00:07:50
myths about creatine. When I when I speak to some of my friends, people know that I interview a lot of um, health
00:07:55
experts and scientists and PhDs on that have done research on supplements. They ask me the first question I get asked a
00:08:00
lot is what other supplements should I definitely take? >> Yes. >> And when I mention creatine, it's always
00:08:04
met with a certain set of rebuttals because there are some prevailing myths. >> You've got some myths.
00:08:09
>> Yes. about creatine on the cards in front of you. Can you reveal one by one what they are?
00:08:14
>> So this is definitely the number one myth. Creatine damages your kidneys. So when you take in creatine to the body it
00:08:21
gets stored as creatine. But when you metabolize it sort of sort of thinking leaking from the muscle it gets leaked
00:08:27
out as creatinin. And most people watching like oh that was on my blood requisition form and right below creatin
00:08:33
was something called EGFR. So glomeir filtration rate is an estimation of your kidney health. So the
00:08:39
problem is when individuals on creatine supplementation, they go to their doctor
00:08:44
for their annual blood work, their creatinin might be a little bit elevated and that's only from the breakdown of
00:08:49
the uh the compound and then unfortunately their filtration rate is lower. So then their doctor gets really
00:08:55
surprised and they're like stop taking creatine because it's hurting your kidneys. What typically happens they go
00:09:00
back or stopping creatine and then they check their kidneys again and it's fine.
00:09:04
So I would say 99 out of 100 times uh that it's a false positive. So, this is by far the biggest uh myth and there's
00:09:11
been randomized control trials for several years showing that creatine causes no detrimental effects to the
00:09:16
kidneys. >> I had exactly that twice on my blood test. >> Yes. And if you're also creatin can be
00:09:20
elevated if you're on a high meat diet, a little bit dehydrated. So, those that are exercising uh is very very elevated.
00:09:26
So, always tell your doctor you're on creatine supplementation because your creatin could be a little bit higher.
00:09:31
>> Okay. >> Yep. Myth number two, creatine makes you retain water. So, this is really
00:09:36
important and I think this is one of the main reasons females were really hesitant to take creatine. If you take
00:09:43
too much too soon, it can lead to an increase in water retention. So, you've probably heard of the creatine loading
00:09:49
phase. This is where supplement companies want you to take about 20 or 30 grams a day for about 5 or 7 days.
00:09:54
That has been shown to increase water retention acutely. So maybe it'll reside there for about three to five days but
00:10:01
after that when you go on a maintenance phase of about three to five grams a day
00:10:05
uh that water retention goes away. So in the initial stages if done improperly or
00:10:10
too much it can cause a little bit of water retention. The good news for everybody watching is after about the
00:10:16
first week that water's inside our muscle. So now we're volumizing the size of our muscle sort of like a balloon
00:10:23
here. It's full of water. Now after a while the water is now going into our muscle. It's a lot bigger compared to a
00:10:29
deflated balloon or muscle that didn't have any water. So creatine is osmotic. Water likes to follow creatine. So by
00:10:36
taking it into the muscle, it gets a lot bigger. And that's good because a swollen muscle stimulates protein
00:10:42
synthesis to get bigger and stronger. >> Oh, really? A swollen muscle stimulates
00:10:46
protein synthesis. >> Synthesis. Yeah. So when you have water coming in, that's a really good thing.
00:10:51
And creatine does that. And that's one of the main mechanisms why it works. >> So what does that mean? Does that mean
00:10:55
that if I have creatine in my muscle, I'm more likely to gain muscle? >> That is potentially the the factor
00:11:00
because when you're having or trapping water, it turns on all these signaling pathways that are involved in protein
00:11:05
synthesis. And one of the biggest robust evidence is that creatine increases lean
00:11:09
tissue mass and regional muscle thickness with weight training over time. >> Oh wow. Okay. Yeah. Because a lot of
00:11:14
people are concerned that they're going to put on lots of weight and be bloated with creatine.
00:11:18
>> The interesting there is if you take smaller, more micro doing there's hardly
00:11:21
any effect. And this might come surprising, but if you did a 6 week study pre and post after creatine, you
00:11:27
only increase mass by86 kg. >> Oh wow. >> And the majority of that is lean mass.
00:11:33
So at the end of the day, you know, a pound and a half is not a lot. >> Lean mass.
00:11:37
>> Lean mass. Yeah. >> Which is >> we think of lean mass, most people think of it as muscle, but lean mass in our
00:11:43
body, that includes water, connective tissue, organs, as well as skeletal muscle. And about 50% of our lean mass
00:11:48
is muscle. >> Okay. Yeah. >> It's great. >> Okay. Okay, myth number three, creatine
00:11:53
is only for men. Uh this is 100% false. When you go through the totality of all the evidence, uh females respond
00:12:01
extremely robustly to creatine supplementation. They get profound benefits in strength, endurance, and
00:12:06
performance. They lose a little bit of body fat. So, there's another idea that people thought water retention was
00:12:13
causing an increase in in fat mass. We've done some meta analysis now showing that creatine reduces fat mass.
00:12:18
Uh, females get an increase in lean mass as well. Uh, and I'm happy this one came
00:12:23
up because from our lab with bone health, females do respond very favorably with creatine and bone. And we
00:12:30
can talk about that as well. Myth number four. Oh, I can't believe you did this one to me. Creatine causes hair loss.
00:12:38
So, obviously looking at me and uh I'm a prolific uh creatine researcher and taking creatine religiously for like the
00:12:44
last two and a half decades. People would look at me and say, "Well, obviously looking at him, creatine
00:12:49
caused this." And I was going bald before I started taking creatine. This myth came from a study in rugby players
00:12:57
decades ago, uh, where creatine about 20 to 25 grams a day for 7 days, increase a
00:13:01
hormone called DHT. It's a precursor for testosterone, which unfortunately has been linked to hair follicle loss and
00:13:08
thinning. Uh but the ironic thing is when creatine was given to these young males the hormone went up but it was
00:13:15
still within the biological range and no measure of hair follicle thinning or loss uh was done. The cool thing is just
00:13:21
a few years ago they decided to put this uh uh theory to the test and 5 g in young males for about 6 to 8 weeks of
00:13:28
training caused no uh detrimental effect uh from hair thinning foll so my appearance was probably based on
00:13:34
something else. So there's no evidence to that as well. Myth number five, creatine causes muscle cramps. No, I
00:13:40
think this is so overplayed. When creatine t is taken into the body and water will follow it, now you're super
00:13:47
hydrating the muscle. So, one of the main issues with muscle cramps is it could be, you know, uh uh dehydration in
00:13:53
the muscle. Some people have heard of sodium potassium. That's why Gatorade was invented. But if anything, sodium
00:13:58
decreases muscle cramps and it super hydrates. So, in the hotter environments, June, July, August,
00:14:04
creatine is going to be one of your best friends. So those are the five myths. We talked
00:14:08
there about weight training. What is this very curious graph? It seems to show that creatine
00:14:15
helped gain muscle mass through a training regime. >> Oh yes. So this is actually showing now
00:14:22
that uh when you take creatine supplementation, you're actually getting an improvement in training volume. So
00:14:27
when you go in the weight room, you look at the load you're lifting by the reps by the sets. So it actually goes up. Um,
00:14:33
and then when you don't, obviously, it would go down over time as well. So, the cool thing here is that one of the main
00:14:39
reasons you get an enhancement in performance is that creatine seems to enhance training capacity. So, a lot of
00:14:45
people say, I've taken creatine, now I got an increase in the number of reps or uh sets that I can perform that probably
00:14:51
leads to a stimulation over time. >> So, this is a 8week study. >> That is an 8week study, very short term
00:14:56
as well. Also, you can see that the number of weeks came uh down when they weren't taking creatine and then when
00:15:01
they started to take it, it went up as well. And this leads to another important point. So, and it's often not
00:15:06
talked about when you take creatine for at least a month. People say, "Well, how
00:15:11
long does it stay in my muscles if I go on vacation? What if I can't take creatine?" And in skeletal muscle, it
00:15:17
takes about a month for those elevated levels to come back down. In the brain, we don't have a lot of evidence, but
00:15:23
it's speculated it takes about anywhere between five uh weeks to about three months for those elevations to come back
00:15:29
down. >> And this essentially means that if I take creatine, I will be able to train
00:15:34
harder, >> harder or longer or more frequent. So, one of the things with creatine, it
00:15:39
allows the muscle to recover quicker. So, you might be able to get back to the uh you know, if an athletes training
00:15:44
twice a day. Um, so either one of those seems to be one of the most plausible mechanisms. And why is there a big dip
00:15:49
in the middle of this graph? >> So that is actually showing where the individuals would train and then without
00:15:54
creatine and then take it over time as well. >> Oh, okay. So they'd they'd stop.
00:15:57
>> It's a draining and then taking it again. Correct. >> Okay. So they start taking it
00:16:02
>> uh taking it at at week four and then that's where the elevations go up. >> Oh
00:16:06
>> yeah. So it goes to show that when you have creatine everything is elevated. If
00:16:11
you stop taking it, it takes about four weeks to come back down. But you'll notice that it was at the same level as
00:16:15
a placebo. And then when they take it again, they get a rebound effect. So I think this has application for people
00:16:21
who have injured themselves and they now need to go back and start training. If you take creatine, it can accelerate the
00:16:26
rehabilitation program. >> H and it does it I guess because it makes your training volume increase.
00:16:32
Correct. >> It makes your muscle mass gain increase. >> It can gain increase in muscle mass.
00:16:37
It's not great. That's probably going to be a bit surprising to a lot of people.
00:16:40
A lot of people take creatine for huge increases in muscle. You get an increase in lean mass by about 1.2 2 kg. But as I
00:16:48
I said previously, remember only half of that is skeletal muscle. So creatine, yes, can with weight training improve
00:16:54
muscle mass, but it has more robust evidence for muscle performance. >> Is there anything else we need to know
00:16:58
about creatine's link to muscle mass? >> I think one of the big things is that it
00:17:02
decreases something called protein breakdown. So that might allow the muscle to maintain its integrity or
00:17:08
recover quicker. Uh but overall when you combine creatine with a standard weight
00:17:13
training program you should expect a greater increase than weight training alone. Absolutely. And that is that's
00:17:18
across all ages which is really important. >> Okay. And the studies you've done in
00:17:23
your own lab what are those? How wide varing are those and how many have you done?
00:17:27
>> We've oh god we've done at least 30 to 40 studies um in our lab. I've published
00:17:32
over 120 papers just on creatine alone. Wow. And the interesting thing is that from young individuals to middle age to
00:17:38
older adults, we see a very common uh theme that combined with weight training uh creatine about 5 g or more uh we use
00:17:46
typically a little bit more seems to have uh beneficial effects on muscle mass uh muscle strength as well as
00:17:52
performance. Absolutely. >> Can you show me what 5 g looks like? >> Absolutely. So this would be a standard
00:17:58
5 g dose >> which is one scoop really >> one scoop. Now, keep in mind that can be
00:18:04
found in in meat or seafood, but you're going to require a lot. Yeah. >> Okay. So, 5 g is one scoop.
00:18:09
>> One scoop. >> And you're saying we don't necessarily need to do this loading phase that
00:18:13
bodybuilders would >> correct. So, the loading phase is the most rapid way to saturate your muscles.
00:18:18
Now, that's very beneficial, but that would be four scoops. So four scoops is a loading phase per day and it's very
00:18:26
effective but the issue is can it cause some adverse GI tract irritation things like that's where anidoli people report
00:18:32
that but a lot of people from a muscle perspective will start with just five grams a day and that's very beneficial
00:18:37
>> and at five grams a day what benefits am I getting >> five oh across from a skeletal muscle
00:18:41
perspective you get a whole plethora so you definitely get an increase in lean tissue mass or muscle size uh and then
00:18:46
again muscle performance uh muscle strength power and endurance and the other one that never gets a lot of press
00:18:51
which should is function functional ability, an older adult to sit to stand. Uh, this has applications getting off
00:18:56
the toilet, out of the bed, out of a car. So, as we get older, we're losing muscle strength and performance as well
00:19:02
as functionality, and creatine and weight training seems to come to the rescue there.
00:19:06
>> And is there anyone that shouldn't take creatine, >> you know? I can't find anybody that
00:19:12
can't or shouldn't. The safety profile is exceptional. If they have pre-existing medical conditions, they
00:19:17
definitely need to speak to their doctor. Uh besides that, I'm not seeing any reason a healthy individual can't
00:19:22
take or shouldn't take creatine >> and pregnant women. >> So that's an interesting uh colleague of
00:19:26
mine, Dr. Stacy Eller of Australia is now finally looking at human uh trials with pregnancy uh going into breast milk
00:19:33
into uh the fetus. So uh it's still in its infancy. The jury is still out, but as it currently stands, it seems to be
00:19:39
relatively safe and well tolerated. >> Okay. So not all creatine is made the same,
00:19:44
>> right? Correct. >> There's lots of different types of creatine. People Some people take
00:19:47
creatine gummies. Um, I mean I have some different types of creatine here. Creatine monohydrate, creatine
00:19:53
hydrochlorate. >> Okay. >> I remember looking when I was in a shelf a couple of months ago and seeing like
00:19:58
five or six different types of creatine. >> Um, what is the the optimal type of creatine to take and why?
00:20:04
>> So, by far creatine monohydrate >> and that goes against all the new marketing forms. So, creatine
00:20:10
monohydrate is simply creatine linked to one water molecule. When you take it into the body, the water molecule
00:20:15
dissolves. is identical to uh what's being produced in the liver and the brain. All the evidence that you ever
00:20:21
hear about the safety and efficacy of creatine is based on the old boring from 1832 creatine monohydrate. There's new
00:20:28
market forms of creatine such as hydrochloride which does have evidence behind it. There's many other forms, but
00:20:34
the only downfall with all these market forms is it's never been shown to be safer or more effective than creatine
00:20:41
monohydrate. The other big thing for your viewers is make sure it has crea pure or some form of creatine
00:20:47
monohydrate on uh the label and then and that it's also third party tested. >> Create pure.
00:20:52
>> Creapure is from Germany. It has the highest um standard of of qualification and um scrutiny and then NSF certified
00:21:00
or another third party certified. So those are the three things that I personally would look for. Monohydrate,
00:21:05
creure is the type and then NSF certified or third party certification >> which is that little logo at the bottom.
00:21:10
>> That little logo here at the bottom. That's right. What does that mean? So NSF is the National Sanitation
00:21:14
Foundation. It's a third party organization that will independently take the the supplement and then third
00:21:19
party test it and then you get a certificate of analysis to make so there there's no contaminants like lead or
00:21:24
arsenic or things like that. So that's something for the consumers watching to definitely be aware of when you go to uh
00:21:29
the store. >> And we've got this uh thing here in front of us. This is the dosing dilemma.
00:21:34
>> Um we talked about muscle there. >> Have we checked muscle off or is there anything else to cover?
00:21:38
>> No. So, how many scoops do you think is optimal for skeletal muscle? >> Oh, uh, skeletal muscle.
00:21:46
>> Yeah. Your bicep, your tricep, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger. >> Five. Five grams.
00:21:51
>> Five grams. So, that's only going to be one little scoop. >> Okay. >> Okay. That's probably very viable. And
00:21:57
you're correct. Across the lifespan, five grams has been shown to be effective. But here's a little bit of
00:22:02
caveat. If you're over the age of 50, maybe you want to have a little bit more because as we get older, the creatine in
00:22:10
our lower legs is more jeopardized and therefore you might need a bit more. >> Okay.
00:22:14
>> Okay. This is without the loading phase. So this is if you just want to take a
00:22:18
little bit per day >> and do you have to take it consistently? >> Good question. So ideally, yes, there is
00:22:23
evidence that you can just take it on the training days, but we haven't talked about the brain yet. And the reason why
00:22:29
I think you should take it every day is it likes to go to other tissues on a daily basis.
00:22:33
>> So that's about seven grams. How much? >> That's about seven or eight grams. And
00:22:36
that seems to be very safe and viable uh dose to be shown to be effective for improving muscle mass.
00:22:42
>> Okay. >> And performance. >> I I do have um an issue sometimes when I take a little bit more creatine which is
00:22:47
I feel >> I wouldn't say laded but I get a little bit dizzy almost. >> 100%. >> What is that?
00:22:53
>> So there is a mechanism. So creatine is the biggest methyl scavenger in the body
00:22:57
and without boring your viewers but methyl groups are used for everything. They're also used to synthesize
00:23:02
something called adrenaline and our neurotransmitters. You know the things that we get excited about. So when you
00:23:06
take in too much creatine typically on an empty stomach or in a dehydrated state that will spare methyl groups in
00:23:12
the body to be used because you're taking so much in and then it says where can I go? So since creatine is now being
00:23:18
taken into a supplement, these methyl groups are available in your body to go elsewhere to do work and they like to
00:23:23
synthesize adrenaline and that's why you feel more uh um energetic so to speak. >> When you say synthesize adrenaline, what
00:23:29
does that mean? >> Yeah, that means you're creating more of the hormone called epinephrine and that
00:23:33
you know you hear about fight or flight or you're nervous or whichever it is, it
00:23:36
gives you a little bit more of that. So that's why sometimes you feel a little bit jittery or things like that.
00:23:41
>> Yeah. Sometimes I can feel a little bit sick as well if I do too much. >> Yeah. And so that's where it's sort of
00:23:46
the new area of interest for me is this micro doing based on that. So we're starting to see some evidence now that
00:23:51
if you take smaller amounts all throughout the day, it does not have any adverse effects. If anything, it seems
00:23:57
to be a little bit more tolerable. Um so you could take a few grams in the morning, a few grams in the evening or
00:24:02
whichever. I think one of the best uh ways to take it that never gets any press is I put five grams in my water
00:24:09
bottle during my workout. Mhm. >> And so now I'm consuming a little bit of creatine as I do my weight liifting or
00:24:16
cardio and then I'll consume a little bit in the morning as well. So I take about 10 grams a day at minimum on on a
00:24:21
daily basis. Other people will take more or less but that's just how I get it in.
00:24:25
Yeah. >> I find that if I do take a little bit in the morning and then a little bit later
00:24:28
it's much better. >> 100% >> into I don't get any weird feelings. >> That's correct. And uh it seems to be
00:24:34
more consistent and appreciated for individuals because if you do or are susceptible to any fluctuations in
00:24:40
weight gain, water retention or GI tract irritation, those seem to to definitely
00:24:43
go away. And we've god, we've assessed over a thousand individuals in my lab and that seems to be a very viable
00:24:49
approach. Not a lot of taste to it, is there? >> It's not the best tasting. >> It's very bland, very boring. Um but
00:24:58
there's other companies trying to make it more flavorful, things like that. The cool thing is with uh creatine, you can
00:25:02
put it in anything. You can put it in yogurt, uh, uh, a juice, whichever it is. You can now put it in coffee.
00:25:07
There's a little bit of controversy over the dose of caffeine. I think anywhere lower than 350 milligrams is fine, and
00:25:14
that's going to be most standard uh, coffees or teas as well. So, whichever allows you to become consistent is is a
00:25:19
great way to do it. Yeah, >> there should be a button just down below here, and if it says subscribed, you're
00:25:25
already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please
00:25:30
could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm,
00:25:34
you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much.
00:25:39
>> Okay, so bone. Tell me what I need to know about bone. >> So now we talked about muscle. How many
00:25:43
do you think for the skeleton here? >> Um, the same. >> Okay, seven. >> Unfortunately, the lowest dose ever been
00:25:50
shown to have bone benefits is 8 g all the way up to 12. So now we're in a dosing dilemma already. We just started.
00:25:57
We have a little bit disconnect between muscle and bone. 3 to 5 gram seems to be
00:26:01
really good for muscle. A little bit more is fine, but bone needs to be a little bit more. And that's primarily
00:26:06
based on some of our work from our lab where we've shown that about 8 to 12 grams a day with exercise and that's
00:26:13
crucial. If you do not exercise, there's never been a study ever uh shown to have
00:26:17
bone benefits. But if you do perform weightlifting, one of the very cool things in post-menopausal females is
00:26:23
that creatine seemed to reduce the rate of bone mineral density loss around the hip region. So it didn't increase bone
00:26:30
density, but it decrease bone density loss. And it also seemed to maintain or improve the structure of the bone a
00:26:37
little bit more. So that has profound beneficial effects, especially as we get older. If those individuals on creatine
00:26:43
were to fall, maybe they might not fracture their hip. And as we both know, if you fracture your hip, you're going
00:26:48
to be placed in long-term care or you're going to be inactive for at least 6 months. So, creatine has some bone
00:26:53
benefits. They're not great. They don't improve bone density. So, they're not going to be an osteoprotic cure, but
00:26:59
there is something there, especially if you're prone to uh osteoporosis or osteopenia.
00:27:03
>> And what's the mechanism there that's stopping bone loss? >> Yeah, it's very interesting. So, if you
00:27:09
understand a 24-hour cycle that creatine sort of stimulates these bone building cells to become more energized. Think of
00:27:15
Super Mario, the original Nintendo when he got the mushroom, he became energized. Creatine does that as well.
00:27:20
And then on the flip side, creatine seems to decrease uh the osteoclass or bone breakdown cells. So by a
00:27:27
synergistic uh mechanism, it seems to cause this turnover to go a little bit better causing the bone to maintain its
00:27:33
structure. It's very similar to a bisphosphinate that someone would be taking to maintain their bone health.
00:27:38
>> A bisphosphinate. >> Yeah. It's a drug that a lot of individuals will take if they're prone
00:27:42
to bone loss. Uh, obviously creatine is not a drug, but it has some of those similar properties.
00:27:47
>> So, we've got muscle. I need to take about seven or eight grams to get those benefits. With bone, it's a little bit
00:27:51
more. >> A little bit more. >> You don't mean additionally. >> No, in in total. So, now this is where
00:27:56
we get into the daily dosing dilemma. We've gone from 3 to 5 g or a little bit more for muscle. Bone is maybe 8 to 10
00:28:02
or a little bit more. So, what do you think on the brain? The hottest topic. >> 10.
00:28:06
>> 10. Okay. So, that would be, you know, two scoops. >> I'm just assuming this increases.
00:28:11
>> Yeah. So the interesting thing here is that the brain will naturally make its
00:28:16
own creatine very similar to the liver. So since the brain is actually making its own creatine, it may not require as
00:28:23
much or any on a daily basis. So here's the brain obviously and in different regions creatine is being synthesized
00:28:30
and being used all throughout. So this organ is about 2 kg but uses 20% of our daily energy at rest. So just think
00:28:40
about that. 20% of the amount of energy we're consuming from food or using is being used by the brain. But what if
00:28:45
you're stressed? Sleep deprivation. Your dog got you up in the middle of the night to pee and you couldn't fall back
00:28:50
to sleep. Uh university students cramming for a midterm. Um now all the countries look at the World Cup, they're
00:28:56
going to be up stress, you know, different time zones. Then all of a sudden the healthy brain becomes a
00:29:02
metabolically stressed brain. So your guess about 10 grams on average is fine because the brain on a nonstress day is
00:29:09
naturally making is enough and it's healthy. But now we get into a more difficult what about those metabolic
00:29:16
stressors? So again all the neurons in the brain are being used. So what about sleep deprivation?
00:29:22
>> 10 g >> for sleep deprived. >> You >> when was the last time you slept 10 straight hours?
00:29:30
>> It's been a while. It's been a while for even you to pause there. You know, that's that's alarming because you're
00:29:35
thinking, "When was the last time I got a really good night's sleep?" >> Mhm. >> What if you were up for 24 hours?
00:29:42
>> Gosh. >> An ER doctor traveling different time zones, all these come into play.
00:29:47
>> Yeah. >> Remember on a healthy brain, you know, adequate sleep, uh prop the brain is
00:29:52
actually making enough. But when you're stressed, night shift workers, uh, military pilots, ER doctors, whichever
00:29:59
it is, that's where the brain starts to rely on supplementation. So, unfortunately for the brain,
00:30:05
creatine really struggles to get through the bloodb brain barrier. But if it does, now you might need longer or
00:30:11
higher dosages. So, what about sleep deprived? >> I have no idea. >> Okay, so let's say there's five,
00:30:20
there's 10. What do you think? >> It's going to be more, isn't it? >> It's going to be a lot more. Here's 15.
00:30:28
Couple studies showed some benefits. Now, let's do 20. Remember that loading phase?
00:30:35
>> The best overall studies currently right now that use an MRI for the brain have
00:30:40
showed about 20 grams seems to have some effect acutely. But the two studies last year out of
00:30:47
Germany even showed this. There's 25 And here's 30. So a classic study was done last year
00:30:56
when they gave 30 grams to a group of young individuals who volunteered to be sleepd deprived for 21 hours. And that
00:31:05
level of creatine increased uh creatine levels in the brain and it offset some of the negative effects. Remember that
00:31:11
was an acute episode of 21 hours of sleep deprivation. They've done a subsequent study going down to about uh
00:31:17
0.2 grams or about 14 grams. it didn't have the same effect. >> So remember, a healthy brain likely
00:31:23
doesn't need any creatine, but a stressed brain likely does. And the more stressed it is, the higher the dose
00:31:30
seems to come into play. There's a lot of nuances with the brain. Obviously, we just show different regions, which we
00:31:35
don't have a lot of information, but overall, it seems that 20 gram seems to be the most viable dose. When the brain
00:31:41
is stressed, we basically need to start dumping out quite a bit more. So when you get from this area on, the brain
00:31:50
healthy likely doesn't benefit from any type of supplementation cuz it's making its own. But in these areas when you're
00:31:56
stressed, it likely does. The area of nuance or why it's become so popular is I think most people fall into the
00:32:04
stressed environment. And if they're not getting enough creatine through their diet and or
00:32:10
supplementation, that's why this big explosion on let's take more to sort of check off all the boxes. So I take 10
00:32:18
grams a day at minimum to check off muscle, right? That checks off bone for the most part. And I'm pretty sure over
00:32:25
time 10 grams would do the most part for stress. Now, since I just flown different time zones today, I'm taking
00:32:33
20 to 25 grams based on this acutely. And then when I go back to a non-stressed environment back to Canada,
00:32:39
I'll go back to my regular 10. So, I look at the 10 g dose or a little bit more as kind of being like a safety net.
00:32:47
If you're only taking three to five, you definitely will get muscle benefits. Will you eventually get brain benefits?
00:32:53
There's a small chance, but taking a little bit more, and remember the cool thing for your viewers, we're not
00:32:59
talking about protein. If we were talking about protein, the entire thing would be hundreds of grams. We're only
00:33:03
talking about maybe 20 grams. And that may only need to be done acutely. You know, when you're really going through
00:33:08
metabolic stress, look at university students, five final exams, hardly any sleep for a week. This is where this
00:33:14
would come into play. I look at flight attendants or pilots. They'll fly from Canada to Europe and then they go back
00:33:20
home. their circadium rhythms are are all over the place. So I I think of of all these scenarios. The area that I was
00:33:27
surprised I watched one of the episodes of the Aerys tour and you know money can't stop circadian rhythm. So as much
00:33:33
as Taylor Swift would have I was marveled by 3 hours of performance in 90 to 100,000 people of all her running
00:33:39
around and then when you see her they're totally gassed. They finish the concert
00:33:43
they're totally mentally exhausted. That's a situation where this could come into enhanced performance. Then you
00:33:49
think of uh celebrities, you think of uh uh athletes, these a lot of high pressure things like imagine being in
00:33:56
the World Cup final. The pressure, the mental capacity, that's where creatine seems to come into play. There's a lot
00:34:02
of nuances. Um we still don't know a lot. So I think the big takehome for people is that if you're going through
00:34:08
periods of stress, a little bit more is okay. Uh we don't know any adverse effects. We don't think there are any.
00:34:14
Um, but again, if you're just taking creatine for muscle, bone, and the brain, you're likely going to be
00:34:18
checking off all those boxes. >> And when we start getting the the brain benefits up at this end,
00:34:23
>> what are those brain benefits that were recorded in the studies? Is it I'm going
00:34:26
to feel like I slept or is it something more internal? >> You likely won't feel anything.
00:34:32
>> Ah, okay. >> However, when you get to tasks the next day, so for example, you're up all
00:34:36
night, you take a high dose of creatine, then you have to go write the final or the midterm or you can't remember. It's
00:34:42
those things when your memory and and and doing puzzles or basic tasks or what about a stroke test?
00:34:49
>> What's a strip test? >> So, I'm going to get you to do this. I apologize in advance.
00:34:54
>> It's one of the most fatiguing things that you can do and it was one of the most robust studies to show the efficacy
00:35:00
behind creatine. So, all I simply want you to do is you can see that there's uh words and then corresponding letters.
00:35:06
But you'll notice that the color is incorrect. So up here you would see, you know, you have red, blue, green, blue,
00:35:13
black. But the Stroop test is now looking at the bottom part. >> Okay. >> So I've tried it. I can only get the
00:35:20
line two without making a mistake. >> Okay. >> Okay. So I want you to do this out loud,
00:35:26
but as fast as possible. >> And am I reading the words or the color? >> You're reading the color.
00:35:31
>> Okay. So the first one is green. Yeah. >> Uh yes. >> Okay, fine. You want to do it as fast as
00:35:36
possible. >> As fast as possible. >> Okay. So, let's see how you do. >> Gosh, this is confusing already. I hit
00:35:40
the second one and I got it wrong in my head. >> Depends how much creatine you told me.
00:35:43
>> I don't think I've had creatine today. Okay. >> Okay. Green, red, yellow, green, blue,
00:35:48
black, orange, red, blue, green, blue, pink, black, gray, yellow, red, blue, green. Oh, [ __ ]
00:36:01
>> There you go. See, I failed. The study that they did, get this, they had to do
00:36:05
this for 90 straight minutes. >> Oh wow. >> So you can imagine how fatiguing that is
00:36:11
for someone studying for the MCATs for medical school or you know midterms being sleepd deprived and you're not
00:36:17
sleep deprived and you struggled and you got slower. Now you have to do this for
00:36:20
90 minutes. Wow. And in this classic study they gave 20 grams of creatine uh before they did the test and then after
00:36:26
and it really improved their ability with speed and cognition there. It's just a simple example to show wow our
00:36:33
brain is seeing one thing we got to me maintain memory and cognition and creatine can help maintain some of those
00:36:39
uh factors. So you won't feel anything but performance of activities like that come into play.
00:36:44
>> Do you know how much it improved the performance on the street? >> I would have to get the graph but it did
00:36:49
prove statistically significant. Yeah. >> What else is there for me to know about
00:36:53
the impact that creatine can have on the brain? Yeah, you know, I think as a as a
00:36:57
podcaster who sometimes sits here for many, many hours interviewing people on a range of subjects. I'm always trying
00:37:01
to find if there's any way that I can perform better mentally. >> Yeah. So, it doesn't boost the brain. It
00:37:07
likely just brings those levels back up to normal levels before stress and it might give you a little bit more. So, uh
00:37:13
there's been populations Alzheimer's disease, clinical depression, uh concussion. When those populations are
00:37:19
evident, one of the biggest uh uh factors is that they have reduced creatine in their brain. So maybe
00:37:24
supplementation can get through the bloodb brain barrier. The brain says, "I need help." And that's why you see some
00:37:29
improvements there as well. So I like to think of the brain that creatine can act
00:37:32
as a safety net. Um, and it certainly won't cause any detrimental effects. But it's always good to have that because
00:37:38
you never know when I give you a stroop test. Like I'm going to find you tomorrow and give you this and say
00:37:43
you're going to be practicing all night. Will you perform better? But that's just
00:37:46
an example of something that we go through on a daily basis. if someone's working on Wall Street or whichever it
00:37:51
is, a really high stress demand, uh you know, stuck in traffic for two hours, these all add up and it's a cascade of
00:37:57
stressors that unfortunately most people go through. And now we have a nutrient that is being made in the brain. But
00:38:03
during times of stress, it likely needs a little bit of help. For the last couple years, I've been working on
00:38:08
something that I realized every podcaster listening to this, but actually probably every creator
00:38:12
listening to this might just need. Podcasting is difficult for many reasons and one of them is that these hosting
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through every single platform uploading it to YouTube and then taking the same big old video file and uploading it to
00:38:27
Spotify's platform. It takes huge amounts of time and that friction means most of us don't do it. That is the
00:38:33
problem we set out to solve. And so we built something called Flightcast which you can find at flightcast.com. And
00:38:37
today Flightcast is also one of our show sponsors. And some of the world's biggest podcasters are now using our
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platforms don't have. So podcasters that are using Flightcast have this unfair advantage. So go to flightcast.com/doac.
00:39:04
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one-year warranty. That's bondcharge.com/dac. >> What about inflammation in the body? So,
00:40:15
what is inflammation and is there a link between creatine supplementation and inflammation?
00:40:19
>> There is. So, unfortunately, uh I'm 49. So, at the age of 40, I have this systemic inflammation that went up. And
00:40:26
we all know this because around the age of 30, we're, you know, you can work out
00:40:30
and nothing hurts. And all of a sudden, you wake up one day when you're in your 40s and 50s and things hurt. And so,
00:40:35
systemic inflammation is happening all the time. And unfortunately, it accelerates aging. We're more sore more
00:40:42
often and it can lead to a lot of arthritis or or joint pain and things like that. Creatine does have
00:40:47
anti-inflammatory effects, but a big distinction. Creatine is not like acetaminophen or ibuprofen which
00:40:52
directly as a drug effect uh blocks that but it has been shown to decrease markers of inflammation specifically
00:40:59
during long duration exercise. So this is an important distinction. Weight training is too acute but when you do
00:41:06
iron man triathlon things like that those individuals who took creatine 20 grams a day for 5 days beforehand they
00:41:12
had reductions in inflammation markers. So that might allow that individual to recover quicker, not get ill and then
00:41:18
perform more optimally. From a weight training perspective, we see that it decreases markers of muscle damage. So
00:41:24
it has these anti-inflammatory and anti catabolic effects as well. >> Interesting.
00:41:28
>> Yeah. >> And what about people that have neurodeenerative disorders? >> Yes. So Alzheimer's is is the area we're
00:41:35
really starting to focus on. And a couple single arm studies came out last year by Matt Taylor and Aaron Smith
00:41:40
showing that 20 grams a day for eight weeks did increase brain creatine levels in Alzheimer's patients and it seemed to
00:41:46
improve measures of memory and cognition there as well. So again using the same mechanisms it decreases inflammation. It
00:41:53
maintains brain bioenergetics and it might actually have a neural protection effect as well. There's evidence in cell
00:41:59
cultures and in rodents that there's some lines there but in humans we're still in in the infancy. But if it can
00:42:05
have any benefit to any neurological disease, it's huge. And there's a lot of hope, especially around Alzheimer's.
00:42:10
>> There was an 8week trial in Alzheimer's patients that also showed modest muscle
00:42:13
gains and a 1.9 kg increase in hand grip strength, >> which is a key predicator of survival in
00:42:19
dementia patients. Correct. >> Um, which was a landmark study of 20 Alzheimer's patients found that taking
00:42:24
20 grams of creatine daily for 8 weeks increased brain creatine levels by 11% and significantly improved the cognitive
00:42:30
test scores they showed. That's the journal of psychiatry and brain science. >> And that one's really exciting and I
00:42:36
think more future studies will come out. The limitation with those is that there
00:42:39
was no placebo to compare to. But again, it's just showing that yes, creatine can
00:42:43
be used as an effective adjunct. Yeah. >> And because there is impact on our brain, is there impact on our mental
00:42:50
health >> with creatine? >> Excellent point. So the best lines of evidence here come from clinical
00:42:54
depression and anxiety. Uh the group out of Utah and the United States have clearly shown that creatine in addition
00:43:00
to other therapies. So this is important. Creatine by itself has never been shown to be a standalone, but with
00:43:05
SSRIs or cognitive behavior therapy or methamphetamine use in populations under medical supervision, the addition of
00:43:11
creatine seem to improve symptoms and it's likely going back to all the ones we've already talked about where it
00:43:17
improves uh bioenergetics. It improves uh neuro uh transmission or neuromodulation. Uh but it also in
00:43:24
animals has been shown to improve a protein called BDNF. Uh so this protein is involved in brain plasticity. So
00:43:31
there's a whole bunch of emerging evidence and hope that creatine one day will be used uh as a treatment in the
00:43:38
toolbox for a lot of these clinical uh issues. PTSD also comes to my mind. >> There was a study in Gatorade Sports
00:43:44
Science Institute which PubMed published that said a study of over 200,000 adults
00:43:49
found that those who consumed the least amount of creatine in their daily diet had the highest rates of depressive
00:43:55
symptoms. >> Yes, that's correct. And the common denominators those with clinical
00:43:59
depression or anxiety when you measure their baseline creatine stores very similar to concussion or Alzheimer's
00:44:03
they're reduced. So therefore obviously this condition or series of conditions is causing a disruption at the brain
00:44:11
bioenergetic level and creatine levels are decreasing. >> And there was another in PubMed that
00:44:15
said in a clinical trial of women with major depression adding 5 g of creatine to their daily anti-depressant Yes.
00:44:21
>> doubled their remission rate over 8 weeks. >> That's correct. Yes. And that group is
00:44:25
from Perry Renshaw's group out of Utah. Uh they do great work. Our hope and I'm collaborating uh with some colleagues
00:44:31
now to look at creatine as a standalone treatment versus placebo. Could it have some beneficial effects there? So that's
00:44:38
very exciting to come out. >> If I don't want to be supplementing with creatine, is there what are the foods
00:44:43
that I can eat that are high in creatine naturally? >> They're primarily uh animal based. So
00:44:47
seafood and red meat. Um you know, herring is going to have one of the highest concentrations. uh salmon uh as
00:44:53
well as beef. Uh very small amounts in milk and dairy. So you'd have to drink all the the milk in the Jersey cow to
00:45:00
get a sufficient amount. So uh it definitely comes down to animal based flesh. Yeah.
00:45:03
>> There's some other studies that I that I love that I've I think I've heard you
00:45:06
talk about before. One of them was um young athletes who took five grams of creatine daily slept an average of 1
00:45:10
hour longer on training days. >> Yeah, we did that study a few years ago in in young biological females who were
00:45:17
healthy and on the days that they trained and took creatine. This is interesting because they actually slept
00:45:22
an hour longer uh compared to a placebo. So this is a very interesting fact. So creatine, you know, we now know it has
00:45:31
brain bioenergetics. And there's two arguments. If it's making the brain recover, wouldn't you need less sleep?
00:45:37
Right now, in this study, it showed that improved. So maybe these individuals trained at a higher capacity and allowed
00:45:44
the brain to have more homeostasis to come back. So this is an air a study that needs to be replicated in males as
00:45:49
well to see can creatine improve sleep quantity and if it is I think that's a gamecher. I I think everybody on the
00:45:56
planet would raise their hand and say hey I need more sleep. >> Is there anything else we haven't
00:46:00
covered as it relates to creatine? >> You know the expected gains versus the hype gains. I think there's evidence
00:46:06
there that creatine can have an effect. I I think it's getting overhyped especially around the brain for what it
00:46:12
can do. It's one tool in the toolbox and I think it's it's one of those things that I'd like to show or you know talk
00:46:18
about for sure. Yeah. >> Well, what do you mean by that? >> So, if you think of a toolbox when it
00:46:23
comes to a plan, whenever you need to go fix things, you simply say, "Where's my
00:46:27
toolbox?" You can't do anything without a plan. And the way I like to preface this is the most popular tool in
00:46:32
anybody's toolbox is the hammer. Now, from a lifestyle perspective, what do you think the hammer represents? What
00:46:40
would you decide that the hammer represents? Um, as in like a >> is it weight training? Is it cardio? Is
00:46:46
it creatine? Is it protein? Or is it sleep? >> Sleep. >> Okay. So, I say weight training is going
00:46:53
to be the hammer. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Now, what about the screwdriver? Always need a screwdriver.
00:47:01
>> Creatine. >> No, I think aerobic training or sleep comes way before creatine.
00:47:06
>> Okay. >> But most people say, "Hey, I can fix a lot of things with that." Now remember,
00:47:10
we have a nice big toolbox. I like to think of creatine as the multiffactorial wrench or screwdriver
00:47:17
because creatine has profound benefits for muscle, a little bit for bone, of course, brain and other areas of the
00:47:23
body. So you can hit something with this. You can open it up and fix something with this. It's heavy. You can
00:47:30
also pull out the measuring tape. Your argument, sleep, this could be protein, whichever it is. So when you put all
00:47:36
these things in your toolbox, you're now having a greater comprehensive plan to improve health.
00:47:43
>> So you said weight training was the hammer >> hammer. I like to consider if you were
00:47:47
to choose one modality of exercise, weight training is a little bit superior to cardio. You get pretty much all the
00:47:53
same benefits of cardiovascular exercise and then you get more with obviously an
00:47:57
increase in lean tissue mass and performance. Uh weight training if done effectively can actually improve
00:48:01
mitochondrial health. you can improve V2 max if done correctly. Uh and you don't
00:48:06
need a lot of it. So I think we've switched from just doing cardio to now incorporating weight training to be
00:48:12
effective. >> So weight training. >> Yes. >> What are the the sort of misconceptions
00:48:15
about weight training and why are you so positive about it? >> Yeah. I think one of the biggest myths
00:48:21
is that you always need to lift heavy to put on muscle mass. And worldrenowned researchers in this area have clearly
00:48:27
shown now that lighter weights perform to a lot of effort almost to fatigue. If done correctly, you can get as the same
00:48:34
increases in muscle masses then compared to lifting heavy weights. However, if your goal is just to get stronger,
00:48:39
lifting heavy is always there. So, I think this is a cool thing for people. Some days if you have a little bit of
00:48:44
soreness or you don't have a lot of energy, you can lift lighter weights but just to fatigue. Whereas other days, you
00:48:48
come in Monday, you've had your coffee, whichever it is, you're ready to go. You
00:48:52
can lift heavy. So I think there's not one concrete way. There's a little bit of variety here as well.
00:48:57
>> And why are you putting it above cardiovascular work? >> Yeah, I think the benefits there is that
00:49:02
cardiovascular exercise will make you live longer and and healthier. But the downfall with cardiovascular exercise,
00:49:08
it doesn't stimulate strength or the muscle sceal system as much as we we'd hope. So improving muscle mass and that
00:49:14
is very difficult to do with cardio. Maybe sprint interval training will do that. But the cool thing with weight
00:49:19
training is you get cardiovascular benefits, but you also get those profound muscle scal benefits. So if I
00:49:24
was to tell anybody, if there's one form of exercise to do, it's weight training,
00:49:27
but you got to do cardio as well. So do both. >> And if I just do weight training, what
00:49:32
am I missing from not doing cardio training? >> Yeah. If you do weight training improperly where you're lifting heavy
00:49:37
heavy weight with low repetitions all the time, you're likely going to jeopardize capillary density or
00:49:41
mitochondrial health. These are things that sort of move blood flow to and from uh your muscles. You could decrease V2
00:49:47
max or a fitness parameter for uh metabolic health fitness. So at the end of the day, everybody should be doing
00:49:53
both, but if you only have time to do weight training or cardio, you still benefit because the majority of the
00:49:59
population doesn't do any. >> And how how much how often do you think? >> It's amazing that it's a small amount.
00:50:05
So let's just do cardio. Most countries will say 150 minutes of physical activity at a moderate level over a
00:50:11
week. Uh I'm okay with that. I'd like it to be higher. I'd also like the intensity to be a bit higher. So when
00:50:17
you tell an average individual 150 minutes a week, most people say, "Well, I'm going to do 70 or I'm going to do
00:50:22
30. I'm going to hold the couch down and watch Netflix." So we given 150 and we say, you know, if you can do 21 minutes
00:50:28
or 22 minutes a day for seven days a week, that's going to be a brisk walk or whatever. We'd like to be at a higher
00:50:34
intensity if possible. Now, when it comes to weight training, this might be surprising, but 2 days a week or more is
00:50:40
all you basically need. And you can do a whole body routine. So you don't need to
00:50:44
go in there and just do chest and biceps Monday and then legs Tuesday, you can. But if you say, I want to do whole body
00:50:50
of training Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that is great as well. So a little bit of volume or frequency goes a long way,
00:50:56
especially as we get older. That's the key. >> Why, especially as we get older? >> Well, based on this graph here, it's
00:51:02
clearly showing a detrimental effect. So if you can see here, you know, you have
00:51:07
muscle mass on the the x- axis or the y axis and then you're having all the catastrophic effects as we get older. So
00:51:14
unfortunately, you know, 20 and 30 looks great >> when you're 20 or 40 years old.
00:51:19
>> When you're 20 and 40 years old or all the way from 20 to 40, you can see great. That's probably the area that
00:51:24
you're going to have the most muscle. >> Yeah. >> But look what happens. 40, age 60, 80,
00:51:30
and if you live to be 100, it's catastrophic. You're losing muscle mass at an accelerated rate on average
00:51:38
is about 1% per year after the age of 40 >> even if you're training. >> So if you're training you're maintaining
00:51:45
that. So this is the average sedentary inactive population. You lose strength at about 1 point or 1 to 3% even faster.
00:51:52
Now if we were to maintain resistance training that muscle mass would plateau. So I can't stress this enough. Although
00:51:59
we focused on creatine, if you were to choose one thing to do today is exercise. And the only form of exercise
00:52:05
that really maintains muscle is weight bearing or u resistance training. And if that's the case, you're going to have
00:52:11
way more muscle later on in life. So you can pick up the grandkids, you can walk
00:52:15
those stairs, you can do more functionality things later on in life. >> Can you not just at, I don't know, 60
00:52:20
years old start training then? >> You can absolutely. And you get profound benefits. You can be 80 or 100 and you
00:52:26
still get benefits. It's never too late to start. But one of the things we've already talked about is if you do weight
00:52:31
training and add in a little bit of creatine, it gets a bit higher. If you added in protein, it gets even higher.
00:52:38
So again, nutrition, you know, if exercise is king, the queen is going to be nutrition. They go hand in hand all
00:52:44
throughout lifespan. You got to have both. >> And on the subject of protein, you're
00:52:48
saying that when combined with creatine, it's a force multiplier. >> It's it's a force multiplier when it
00:52:54
comes to performance and lean tissue mass. So there's been a few studies when you combine uh high quality protein with
00:52:58
creatine, they been shown to increase lean tissue mass and muscle performance a little bit more than each alone. Yeah.
00:53:04
>> Does the average person get enough protein through their diet? >> You know, I think nowadays we do. And
00:53:08
and I think this is overhyped as well. I think if you're getting about 1.2 to 1.6
00:53:13
g per kilogram. So, you know, if you're 70 kg, that's going to be on average about 84 to about 115 g of protein. I
00:53:21
think we're so conscious now of the health benefits of protein uh that most people are. I think if you're training
00:53:27
really intensely five, six days a week and you take a gram per pound, that's probably the max. But a lot of times
00:53:32
when you take an excess protein, it doesn't go to your body area that you're probably hoping. It doesn't all go to
00:53:37
your muscle. It's used for other things like hormones and uh blood cells, things
00:53:41
like that. But I think nowadays most people are likely getting enough protein. The question is, are they
00:53:46
getting enough high quality protein? So vegans and vegetarians can definitely get enough protein. They might just need
00:53:51
to eat a little bit more to get all those essential amino acids which we need. >> Much of the reason most people haven't
00:53:58
posted content or built their personal brand is because it's hard and it's timeconuming and we're all very very
00:54:03
busy and if you've never posted something before, there's so many factors in your psychology that stop you
00:54:10
wanting to post. What people will think of you am I doing this right? Is the thing I'm saying absolutely stupid? All
00:54:16
of these result in paralysis, which means you don't post and your feed goes bare. I'm an investor in a company
00:54:22
called Stanto, which you've probably heard me talk about. And what they've been building is this new tool called
00:54:27
Stanley that uses AI, looks at your feed, looks at your tone of voice, looks at your history, looks at your best
00:54:32
performing posts, and tells you what you should post, makes those posts for you.
00:54:36
You can also just use it for inspiration. And sometimes what we need when we're thinking about doing a post
00:54:41
for our social media channels is inspiration. Building an audience has fundamentally changed my life and I
00:54:46
think it could change yours, too. So, I'm inviting you to give this new tool a shot and let me know what you think. All
00:54:52
you have to do is search coach.stand.store now to get started. >> Menopause. >> Yes.
00:54:58
>> We talked a little bit briefly about menopause. Bringing both together the subjects of muscle but also of creatine.
00:55:05
>> Yes. >> How how does those two things impact a woman's journey through menopause?
00:55:10
>> Yeah. So we know from animal cells that estrogen is highly involved in creatine
00:55:13
metabolism. Estrogen seems to be implicated in the enzymes that are needed to make creatine and then
00:55:18
estrogen also has a huge impact on uh uh not only brain bioenergetics but muscle
00:55:23
metabolism as well. So as the the female goes from a premenopausal stage to permenopausal stage to the
00:55:29
post-menopausal transition if estrogen is decreasing uh and then independent of their diet we think creatine has bone
00:55:37
effects and muscle effects. And of course we've talked about the cognitive effects there. So from a whole skeleton
00:55:42
perspective I think everybody should be but of course the pmenopausal postmenopausal transition uh is good.
00:55:48
And then that brings up a question about what about really young premenopausal females you know optimal health. What if
00:55:54
we built up their tissues more? Maybe that would offset the rate of this decline over time as well. So that's
00:55:59
what we're hoping to get to. >> Is creatine safe for kids? >> So it's interesting you bring that up
00:56:03
and the current body of evidence suggests yes at recommended dosages. uh good researchers uh in in the United
00:56:09
States who put out multiple reviews at looking at creatine in adolescent children and teenagers improves balance,
00:56:15
agility, body composition. If anything, they want to get at least one gram per day because in children they want to
00:56:21
have an optimization for bone health as well as muscle development. Um but again, if any parents are watching,
00:56:27
obviously talk to their medical practitioner. Uh but all the current reviews um currently suggest that it's
00:56:32
safe. >> And we're talking about we're not talking about babies here. we're talking
00:56:35
about. >> Yeah, we're talking about adolescence all the way into teenage years. When it
00:56:38
comes to baby or infancy, um, out of Australia, Stacy is starting to do that work there as well, but we don't have a
00:56:44
lot of data in humans yet, but that is an area to to pay attention to for sure. Yeah.
00:56:48
>> What is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about, doctor?
00:56:51
>> Yeah, I think one of the big things is the safety profile of creatine. Uh, there's been, uh, you know, hundreds of
00:56:57
randomized control trials now on creatine. The safety profile is exceptional. Uh last year they put out a
00:57:03
study looking at over 25,000 cases and creatine even over 10 grams a day for many years has been very very safe and
00:57:09
effective. Uh one area that comes up is what about the timing? Does it matter when I take it? And and the cool thing
00:57:16
is we just got a paper accepted two days ago putting the nail in the coffin on this and at the end of the day you can
00:57:22
take creatine at any time of the day. You can take it in the morning with breakfast. You can take it right before
00:57:27
workout. I take some during. You can take it after go to bed. It doesn't matter when you take it as well.
00:57:32
>> So you can take it right before sleep and it won't impact your sleep. >> No, currently we haven't exactly
00:57:38
assessed the effect on sleep but uh another study looked at it in the evening and it had no detrimental effect
00:57:43
there as well. >> And what else? What else is the other questions that you get messaged with or
00:57:47
asked most often? Dr. >> Yeah. Can I spread out creatine all throughout the day? So for example, we
00:57:53
have like if we were to take creatine in a gummy form or a candy, you can actually have, you know, one or two of
00:57:58
these every hour all throughout the day. You can have it uh periodically. So, you
00:58:02
don't have to take creatine all at once. You can take it in smaller amounts all throughout the day. And if anything,
00:58:07
there's been a study a few years ago showing that one gram every 30 minutes up to 20 gram dose uh seem to retain
00:58:13
more in the body and that was beneficial as well. >> What do you think of these gummies?
00:58:17
>> You know, there's only been a few companies that have actually shown some validity and reliability. Um, as long as
00:58:22
they're third party tested, they're very, very effective. Do you want to try one?
00:58:24
>> Are they Are they third party tested? >> They're third The green ones. Yeah. And
00:58:28
the bottom ones third party tested. Yep. Well, but you know, the stuff that makes
00:58:31
it a gummy, is that stuff is that stuff good for you? >> So, the issue there is, does the
00:58:35
manufacturing trying to keep the uh creatine together uh influence it? It can, and there's only been a few uh uh
00:58:41
companies out there. The one you're eating is by Create from the United States. They have had multiple trials.
00:58:46
They're the first uh company to actually look at a randomized control trial to show improvements in volleyball players
00:58:51
with the gummies. Children love them. older adults. This has become an area of interest where uh chewing ability or
00:58:57
taste sensation has gone down. Uh they seem to be very convenient and effective. Uh you can have these at your
00:59:03
desk, whichever. You don't need the white powder to mix. So there the companies are coming up with more viable
00:59:07
ways to get creatine in there. But to your point, you always want to make sure the company's third party tested. It
00:59:13
uses a high quality creatine and it actually has a source of creatine in there as well. Cuz I remember watching a
00:59:18
YouTube video by a guy called James Smith who's been on the show before and he did some testing on the offtheshelf
00:59:23
creatine um and found that a lot of them didn't contain any creatine. >> 90% and there was only a few and the one
00:59:28
that you did uh consume it did. Yeah. 1.5. >> Isn't that crazy that you can go buy
00:59:33
creatine and it has no creatine in it? >> Yeah. So that's why I think for the consumers watching you got to do a
00:59:37
little bit of homework and look at those three things. Make sure third party tested. It has a logo clearly on the
00:59:42
packaging. If it doesn't, I would strongly advise you not to consume it. of all the of all the studies that
00:59:48
you've encountered on all the subjects we talked about muscle, protein, creatine, are there studies that were
00:59:53
pivotal in how you think about these subjects? >> Yeah, there was so the the Landmark
00:59:57
study came out in 1992 uh and it clearly showed that five grams elevated creatine
01:00:02
in the blood, but if you took multiple five gram dosages, it maintained that throughout the day. So, this is where
01:00:08
the dose of five grams seems to be very, very viable. And the other one showed that, hey, I don't want to take five.
01:00:13
What if I only want to take three grams? So, three grams seems to be the lowest most effective dose and you just need to
01:00:19
take that for one month and you'll saturate your muscles. So, again, you have options to take as little an amount
01:00:24
or a high amount as as you want over time. But I think one of the biggest studies is that we did was a two-year
01:00:30
trial in post-menopausal women where we gave.14 grams of creatine and it really seemed to improve or have an effect on
01:00:36
bone preservation as well as muscle performance. So, these are the the studies that seem to come to my mind.
01:00:41
We've done quite a few uh but they seem to be the landmark ones. Yeah. >> And what are the supplements that you
01:00:46
take outside of creatine? >> Yes, for sure. So on a daily basis, it's a probiotic uh with food in the morning
01:00:51
and evening. And that's something I just recently learned. I was taking it on an
01:00:54
empty stomach. But probiotic, I take uh two forms of magnesium uh one before bed
01:00:58
and then one in the day, three and eight for uh uh cognition and function. I take
01:01:03
uh 2,000 international units of vitamin D. Um I always take protein on a sufficient basis as well. And then I
01:01:09
take about four grams of omega-3 fatty acids. And I always take one of the omega-3 fatty acids post exercise
01:01:15
because that seems to be the best time to take it. >> So omega-3, magnesium, vitamin D,
01:01:19
>> vitamin D, probiotics, of course, creatine and uh protein. I take powder andor through uh dietary food. Every now
01:01:26
and then I don't eat a lot of red meat, so I'll take iron. Um but um not on a consistent basis.
01:01:31
>> And you know, and I'm hoping the new one is this is an area of controversy. NAD
01:01:36
this is the you know it's a precursor for a main enzyme that's highly involved in metabolism there's been evidence to
01:01:43
suggest it goes down with aging so my eye is closely on that uh to see if that's going to be something to come up
01:01:48
into play and a multivitamin you know started with Flintstone vitamins as a kid and I take a multivitamin a day as a
01:01:54
safety net >> I noticed that when I looked at your video in the interview you did with Dr.
01:01:58
Ronda Patrick a lot of the comments were from people in their 60s7s and 80s >> and I wondered why that was if you just
01:02:05
I was just looking at the top three or four comments and >> it's a 71y old it's an 82y old it's a
01:02:10
53y old who's um contending with Alzheimer's >> right >> why is that >> yeah I think it's the awareness and
01:02:18
education now and social media has really helped with this getting our evidence-based research out to the
01:02:22
public and the awareness that creatine is just not for young males to get bigger stronger faster if anything when
01:02:28
you go to an aging body and they're predisposed to aging related muscle loss, strength loss, functionality, bone
01:02:34
loss and atrophy in the brain, creatine has been shown to have effects there as well. So I think a lot of older
01:02:39
individual populations are becoming more aware of the effects of creatine and of
01:02:43
course as we produce more research, it gets out to the public more often. So is I'm really excited and encouraged that
01:02:48
creatine has sort of taken on a life of its own in the last decade. And are there direct weight benefits if I'm
01:02:55
trying to cut fat by taking creatine or is it indirect? >> It's indirect. So it seems that if you
01:02:59
increase lean mass, it might stimulate energy expenditure or turnover. And then in animal models, it has been shown to
01:03:06
have some beneficial effects from a cellular perspective on fat. But at the end of the day, if you are seeing a
01:03:11
reduction in fat, it's likely that you're improving your metabolic health with lean tissue mass.
01:03:14
>> Do you think much about how to get these habits to stick? Because I imagine there's lots of people that are aware by
01:03:19
now that creatine is a a useful thing to take, but for whatever reason, >> they still don't take it.
01:03:25
>> Exactly. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons people don't. So, we got
01:03:28
to come up with ways to maintain consistency. And I think whatever vehicle you want to choose to maintain
01:03:34
that in the in the run of a day is the best. So, if it's putting in your coffee in the morning because you won't forget
01:03:38
it, great. If it's putting a little bit in Greek yogurt, if it's using the gummies, whichever it is, as long as
01:03:43
it's a viable source of creatine that makes it very practical and consistent for you, uh that's the best way.
01:03:48
>> Yeah. I found that um having it on route to where I'm going being really really
01:03:52
important. So when I come to my office in the morning, it's all on my desk. >> Yes.
01:03:56
>> Um so I have the supplements just on my desk and actually even before I walked
01:03:59
into the studio today, in the green room that I have, it's on the green room. >> When I'm at home, it is where the coffee
01:04:04
machine is. >> Correct. >> And that has radically helped me. Um, otherwise I if it wasn't within my my
01:04:10
routine, it would wouldn't happen. >> Yeah, we have a jug on the counter with all our other supplements, it's in the
01:04:14
pantry, it's close by. Because if it's in the garage, you're like, I forgot about it.
01:04:18
>> I think the other thing is with some things like creatine, it's hard to really notice the difference sometimes.
01:04:24
>> Uh, excellent point. Yeah, this is not like caffeine, you know, it's an immediate effect. So, unlike uh
01:04:29
caffeine, creatine takes a while to notice the effects, and they come in direct. You don't immediately notice a
01:04:34
massive increase in energy or alertness. It's like after a week of weight training or even two, you're like, "Wow,
01:04:39
I did more repetitions. I could do more weight. Uh, I recover quickly." Is one that we hear uh quite often. You'll
01:04:45
never notice with with your bone, but we have heard anecdotally with cognition, especially sleep deprivation, people do
01:04:51
notice the effects. And I'm an N of one, but I noticed jet lag goes down quite a
01:04:55
bit uh when I take a high dose of creatine. And you know when you start taking it if you start taking it today.
01:05:01
Yes. >> If I start taking so 3 to five grams of creatine today am I going to notice the
01:05:05
differences today? >> No. It'll pro with three to five grams you'll probably notice it in a few weeks
01:05:10
if not to a month from a muscle perspective. From a brain perspective that low you're likely not going to
01:05:15
notice any effect because the brain is probably making enough. But if you're really metabolically stressed then you
01:05:21
might notice some memory or cognitive uh benefits after a few days. But at such a
01:05:25
low dose you need to be a little bit patient. But again, three grams could saturate your skeletal muscle in 30
01:05:30
days. So it's not that long of a weight. >> And on the cognitive side, the cognitive
01:05:34
benefits that were observed when doing these Stroop tests, >> had they been taking it previously or
01:05:39
was it just administered on that particular day when the test happened? >> Yes. So that one was in a week in
01:05:43
advance with the loading phase. So they really saturated the body to try to get the effects.
01:05:47
>> Okay. So they were taking it for some time. >> Yeah. But on the sleep deprivation study
01:05:50
from Germany, they just gave it one bolus mega dose for 21 hours of sleep deprivation. And those individuals did
01:05:56
perform better from a number of tests like this the next day. So if you're like, "Wow, I got something coming up
01:06:01
Friday. Unfortunately, I'm not going to get any sleep at best one or two hours."
01:06:06
Then a high dose might come into play and then you can go back to your more consistent routine. I think what
01:06:10
happened or is happening is a lot of individuals are now thinking I need to take 20 or 30 grams on a daily basis
01:06:16
based on those studies. And I'm like, wait a minute, are you getting enough sleep the next day? because at that dose
01:06:22
we don't know if the neuron will swell with water and if that's the case is that potentially causing any detrimental
01:06:30
effects in the long term. So again I would not uh uh recommend taking a mega dose for consistently over time. Could
01:06:37
that downregulate your natural synthesis? Uh these are all questions that we need to look at. Yeah.
01:06:42
>> So outside of the realm of creatine, outside of the realm of muscle, outside of the realm of I guess nutrition
01:06:47
generally, what are you doing to keep yourself healthy? What is what is your routine?
01:06:50
>> Yeah. So, I'm religious with exercise, so I try to exercise at least 3 to 4 days a week with weight training. Uh,
01:06:56
and add in at least 20 to 30 minutes of either moderate intensity cardio or um like a spin class. I personally like to
01:07:03
do alternating days. So, I'll do weight training like maybe Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then cardio Tuesday,
01:07:08
Thursday. Uh, and then on the weekends, hiking, things like that. Um, pretty religious with nutrients as well. Try to
01:07:14
eat a really balanced diet. And my god, my failure is getting enough sleep. So, I've had to cut caffeine out quite a bit
01:07:20
by past noon to allow me I'm probably a slower metabolizer um with caffeine. So,
01:07:26
uh I try to really optimize evidence-based research, take it into my daily life and try to promote it that
01:07:31
way. Yeah. >> And is there anything you're particularly excited about in the work
01:07:34
and research that they do? >> I'm super fascinated with the movement from the neck up. I think we know a lot
01:07:39
about the neck down with creatine and exercise or other nutrients. I'm fascinated with the ability. What about
01:07:45
concussion? you know, can an uh the UFC fighter take creatine before they get hit? Could that decrease CTE or
01:07:52
concussion or brain trauma later on in life? I think a boxing Muhammad Ali uh things like that. So, there's evidence
01:07:59
in in Rodents that if you take creatine before head trauma, it really speeds up concussion recovery. So, I'm fascinated
01:08:05
with that as well, like almost a prophylactic. Anybody involved in head trauma, I think you should definitely
01:08:09
look at creatine as something to be taking just in case you get hit. And then of course everything with
01:08:14
Alzheimer's or other areas of depression. So I'm fascinated that this nutrient which was you know 1832 it was
01:08:21
discovered boring for the longest time because we thought we knew everything and now it's taking a life of its own as
01:08:27
having these profound benefits we never even thought would happen yet. >> A lot of people consider you to be the
01:08:32
sort of leading expert on this subject for many reasons. Do you think there'll be a time where you you stop researching
01:08:37
creatine and you move on to something else? >> You know that's interesting. I would
01:08:41
have said yes about 5 years ago, but now no. There's too much to do. Even with skeletal muscle, if you were to say,
01:08:47
"What's the best dose, Darren, to take?" I say, "I have no clue." Every creatine
01:08:51
researcher said, "I don't know." We still don't know the best dose that every person can take that will check
01:08:57
off all the boxes, especially in the brain. We're just giving an estimate that I take 10, maybe you take 12,
01:09:03
someone might take 15, but at the end of the day, we still don't know the best supplementation protocol, the best dose.
01:09:10
Uh, so there's so many areas. So for the next 20 years, I bet y'all still be focusing on creatine with other things
01:09:14
as well. Yeah. >> And on that doses, is that different for different people? >> Excellent question. So the thought was
01:09:21
that the larger you are, you have more storing capacity in your muscle for creatine. So it makes sense. If you're
01:09:27
50 kg and 150 kg, you're going to have greater storing capacity. So the dose on a relative basis is likely higher there
01:09:34
as well. the more stressed the person is, it's likely they're going to require more because their natural machinery in
01:09:39
the brain can't keep up. So, it is very individualistic. I think we give out general
01:09:45
recommendations to make it easy, but again, some people can take it very scientifically and base it on body
01:09:50
weight and you can't go wrong with both of them. >> I bet there's a lot of people that are
01:09:53
this far into the conversation and their their central question is, "Right, I've
01:09:56
got loved ones >> that I really really want to start um considering >> creatine supplementation for whatever
01:10:02
reason. It could be cognitive benefits, muscular benefits, whatever. >> They might end up
01:10:11
when I have that particular moving for me. >> If their loved ones are now listening,
01:10:15
>> y >> and you had to make a case to their loved ones about why they should take
01:10:20
>> creatine. >> Yeah. >> What would you say? I would say creatine is one tool in that health promotion um
01:10:27
toolbox that might help you live longer and better and allow you to maintain activities later on in life which you
01:10:34
wouldn't have been able to do and unfortunately that leads to accelerated aging and a poor way to go. It's like
01:10:39
it's like saying I'm going to save everything for retirement. My question is why? You might not make it to
01:10:44
retirement. So that's one of the things. Yeah. >> Aging. >> Yes. >> What is aging in your definition of the
01:10:49
word? >> It's catastrophic. Unfortunately, I'm going through it. You know, I've noticed
01:10:53
ever since I hit the fourth decade, things hurt a lot more and muscle mass to retain it a little bit harder. Um, so
01:10:59
unfortunately, think of the body's ability to withstand stress is not as high and things start to break down
01:11:06
quite fast. So, we all know, you know, things hurt more. We've lost muscle mass. I can't run as fast. So,
01:11:11
biological aging is kind of the deterioration of the human body. We need to with this conversation and others
01:11:18
come up with ways to stop the deterioration and if anything come up with ways to maintain that ability to
01:11:25
live longer free of disease. Yeah. >> We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a
01:11:30
question for the next not knowing who they're leaving it for. This one's quite a tricky question.
01:11:33
>> Okay. >> What is reality? What do you think all of this is? All this stuff that we can
01:11:39
see and all we experience. What do you think it is? Do you think it's a simulation? Do you think it's
01:11:43
>> this is all real for sure? because I think we can feel it. It's not a a big brother or anything that's a game show.
01:11:50
We all go through different emotions and things like that. So, I think you can feel it. Yeah.
01:11:53
>> Are you religious? >> Yes. Catholic. Roman Catholic. Yeah. >> And you're a family man. You've got got
01:11:58
some >> uh French bulldog and a cat as we talked about and wife at home. Yeah. And uh
01:12:02
really close to my family and stuff like that. Yeah. >> And what is your goal if we get to the
01:12:05
end of your career and this was your last day and you had been successful? >> Oh yeah. I think it would be a lasting
01:12:10
impression on my students that wow, he changed my life in some way. And if I can make one person live longer, free of
01:12:17
disease, and happier, I'm all for it. You know, when you start to see the human body as people get older, you're
01:12:23
like, "Oh, that person used to be young and vibrant." And then when you hear other people that can't do activities
01:12:29
they live in or they can't travel or they're afraid to. I'm like, you need to embrace today. I love that quote from
01:12:34
Morgan Freeman Shaw Shank. get busy living or get busy dying cuz honestly we have the ability with lifestyle choices
01:12:41
to improve optimization and I want to see people live to be 120 130 still active still going and I think we're on
01:12:48
the cusp with technology and I think awareness around nutrition exercise sleep uh laughter oh gez if I could ask
01:12:56
anybody to do one more thing it'd be just laugh more often for me to be just a small piece of the the puzzle
01:13:01
promoting it I think it's if anything it's it's just beyond I believe. Yeah. >> Why did this pull you in? I I I asked
01:13:09
that in part because it tends to be the case that the things that draw us in or pull on our make us curious, there tends
01:13:14
to always be a bit of a personal reason, >> right? Yeah. >> It was it was more that you know, am I
01:13:19
scared to death? 100%. Yeah. I can't I can't think of it. Yeah. Why? >> Yeah. I just think it's weird for me. I
01:13:25
get to a point uh maybe being religious and then you think about it and then I my brain stops. I can't think about it
01:13:30
really. >> Yeah. And it's this becomes it's almost like I want to live forever. And if I
01:13:34
can think of ways to make me live and partially get there, obviously it's not reality. But yeah, I'm uh scared to
01:13:40
death of dying. Yeah. >> Have you always been? >> Yep. 100%. Scared to death of heights.
01:13:44
And I can't even talk about the the death experience. Yeah. Cuz I think it it sort of brings into perspective
01:13:50
things that you just don't know. >> Did you ever lose anybody? >> Uh just uh friends and things like that,
01:13:56
but nothing um specific like parents or anything like that yet. But it's always been there. I don't know if it's the
01:14:01
Roman Catholic in me or not, but it's like, whoa, I don't want that at all. Yeah.
01:14:05
>> You can't even talk about it. >> Can't even talk about it. No. No. Yeah. >> Really?
01:14:09
>> Yeah. It's kind of like I can talk about it in a sense I understand it and it's
01:14:13
realistic, but it's it's more um that for some reason I don't even want to think about it cuz I have so much
01:14:19
passion for life that I don't even want to think about, oh [ __ ] this could happen. Yeah.
01:14:23
>> And you believe you go somewhere after death. >> Oh, for sure. Heaven. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:14:26
Yeah. Yeah. >> But if you do believe you're going to heaven, that sounds like a good place. a
01:14:30
great place. Yeah. I just want to spend more time here. There's still a lot of things to do. Yeah, for sure.
01:14:34
>> Makes sense. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you. Thank you for doing >> Thank you so much. This was great. Thank
01:14:38
you. Yes. I >> I have to say, you know, you've done so so much research on this subject that so
01:14:41
many of my previous guests site and talk about. And >> so, it's it's great to have the source
01:14:46
here. I I applaud you for the work you've done because at the end of the day I think I think a lot of people do
01:14:50
want to extend their health span >> which is to live healthier for longer cuz there's a real sort of epidemic of
01:14:57
people having short health spans being medicated from the age of 40 50 years old and then having that sort of last
01:15:02
couple of decades of our life being you know incapable of doing the things we care about
01:15:06
>> and I think a lot of this research gives us an option if we choose to take it
01:15:10
>> to live a to live a better life. >> Thank you so much. Yeah, it was great. So,
01:15:13
>> thank you so much. Well done. >> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you
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