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Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#21

Post by uptownfunk »

maaark wrote: post #14
jmnicolas wrote: post #12

No creatine, but I'd like to profit of this occasion to tell people that suffer from allergies to try high doses (several grams 1) of vitamin C. This has been a life changer, I can now mow the lawn without symptoms where even with antihistamines it wasn't possible (last year my father had to do it for me). I'm sharing it here because I wish I knew about vitamin C 30 years ago. 1- buy it in bulk powder form this will…

It's possible to overdose on Vit C. Please be careful.

It can give you the runs!

Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#22

Post by PaulHoule »

empressplay wrote: post #13
jmnicolas wrote: post #12

No creatine, but I'd like to profit of this occasion to tell people that suffer from allergies to try high doses (several grams 1) of vitamin C. This has been a life changer, I can now mow the lawn without symptoms where even with antihistamines it wasn't possible (last year my father had to do it for me). I'm sharing it here because I wish I knew about vitamin C 30 years ago. 1- buy it in bulk powder form this will…

How high?

Around 10g a day can cause kidney stones in some people.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#23

Post by notyourwork »

9gunpi wrote: post #6

That intelligence-boosting powder that's the basis for super-findings of gym broscience?

Creatine for physical exercise is not broscience, it has been shown to provide benefits. Whether it helps with cognitive functionality is not something I am familiar with.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#24

Post by 9gunpi »

notyourwork wrote: post #23
9gunpi wrote: post #6

That intelligence-boosting powder that's the basis for super-findings of gym broscience?

Creatine for physical exercise is not broscience, it has been shown to provide benefits. Whether it helps with cognitive functionality is not something I am familiar with.

Indeed. But many broscience PhDs are quite big on creatine, I heard.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#25

Post by aphextron »

jmnicolas wrote: post #12

No creatine, but I'd like to profit of this occasion to tell people that suffer from allergies to try high doses (several grams 1) of vitamin C. This has been a life changer, I can now mow the lawn without symptoms where even with antihistamines it wasn't possible (last year my father had to do it for me). I'm sharing it here because I wish I knew about vitamin C 30 years ago. 1- buy it in bulk powder form this will…

There's absolutely zero evidence that taking more than 100% of your daily required amount of any vitamin is effective for anything. Your body simply cannot absorb or make use of it. What you've described may very well be a placebo effect.

Take a daily supplement which ensures you are getting a sufficient amount, and nothing more. Anything beyond that is literally getting flushed down the toilet in your urine.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#26

Post by 45h34jh53k4j »

My current nootropic stack is:

* Pramiracetam 500mg * Alpha GPC 50% 600mg * Noopept 10mg * Agmatine Sulfate 500mg

I am convinced that these chemicals work, improve mental ability, memory/recall and focus. Ive found myself able to handle more task simultaneously, even able to understand to multiple conflicting conversations.

If you can handle the awful taste of Pramiracetam (its bad... probably the worst thing ive ever tasted) you may find quite the boost in awareness. Some may find it too intense. In general nootropics are non-addictive, especially with the awful taste of Pram, you might need to force yourself to take them...

Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#28

Post by jerf »

hannesfostie wrote: post #8

I've been using a daily dose of 5g of creatine for several months to help with climbing. Maybe I'm a non-responder, or maybe the effects are too subtle, but I haven't noticed anything. Definitely nothing in terms of brain functions or what not. It's cheap enough to continue to do it though, so I kind of keep at it.

I tried creatine out for a while. It definitely had an effect on me; previously I tended to tire out in my strength workout prior to really pulling the muscles and I tended not to have to be too careful about that. Creatine allowed me to workout longer without realizing it, to the point that I was in some pain for the next several days on those muscle groups, rather than "maybe sorta sore the next day for a bit".

Whoops.

With a bit more work I was able to tune myself to stop that, but it didn't buy me much.

In the meantime I noticed no cognitive effects strong enough to be noticeable without full-on Gwern-style careful testing. (My policy on that is that if the power of the result isn't big enough for me to notice in "normal life", I'm not that interested.)

I can believe that dedicated athletes can use it to good effect but I don't think I recommend it for casuals such as myself. I also definitely had to be extra-sure to drink more water than I felt like I needed or I would get dehydration headaches.

Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#29

Post by weego »

aphextron wrote: post #25
jmnicolas wrote: post #12

No creatine, but I'd like to profit of this occasion to tell people that suffer from allergies to try high doses (several grams 1) of vitamin C. This has been a life changer, I can now mow the lawn without symptoms where even with antihistamines it wasn't possible (last year my father had to do it for me). I'm sharing it here because I wish I knew about vitamin C 30 years ago. 1- buy it in bulk powder form this will…

There's absolutely zero evidence that taking more than 100% of your daily required amount of any vitamin is effective for anything. Your body simply cannot absorb or make use of it. What you've described may very well be a placebo effect. Take a daily supplement which ensures you are getting a sufficient amount, and nothing more. Anything beyond that is literally getting flushed down the toilet in your urine.

I know from experience that megadosing vitamin C is a sure fire way to get hot flushes and diarrhoea. Probably not the results people are after though!

Re: Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement?

#30

Post by Bartweiss »

opportune wrote: post #9

On a related note I'd like to say that you should in general be very wary of any substance that people claim to be a "nootropic" or to otherwise improve cognitive functions. A lot of the studies that these claims are based on are 1) funded by groups that would see benefit from the claims (supplement industry), 2) not reproducible / are one off studies / show statistically insignificant results given the sample size,…

This is true, and a good warning. There's a whole industry of stuff like AlphaBrain out there that's dubiously effective, understudied, under-tested for purity, and generally scary. But I also think there's an awful lot of literature about most single-substance nootropics. It's the complex stacks that are totally unstudied.

Creatine, for instance, has been studied for mental effects a bunch of times - the answers all seem to line up on "can definitely help some people, but probably insignificant to most". Other substances shake out similarly - the data on bacopa is inconclusive, but the studies are numerous enough to suggest that the inconclusiveness is about a very weak or situational effect, not a lack of literature.

The vegetarian point does touch on my larger concern, though: people talk like studies finding weak 'average effects' mean the drug is universally effective, but low-powered. That's possible, but it seems more likely that there are lots of drugs which are situationally powerful (e.g. based on diet or genetics) and hardly any that are good for everyone. Creatine is obvious, and I kind of suspect cholinergics and bacopa for this also. Gwern is really good about acknowledging that his studies (of n=1) aren't being designed to apply to anyone else, but most people don't offer that caveat.

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