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Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

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Re: Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

#201

Post by foo12bar »

el_benhameen wrote: post #49

Curious if anyone has had hair issues while taking it. I’m aware that there’s no positive evidence for an effect, but there is an at least plausible mechanism. I’ve gone through two periods where I took it and liked the effects, but felt like I shed way more hair and stopped due to that.

I tried getting on it several times, I would feel energized at first but after a two or three days it would do the opposite and I would get very lethargic.

My body has a strange reaction to comonly used substances, though. For instance, even a single soda's worth of caffeine causes me to have an extreme 18-24 hour mania phase and then a two day crash afterwards. So, your mileage will definitely vary.

Re: Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

#202

Post by SkyPuncher »

kherud wrote: post #189

Feedback about creatine often seems mixed. Many love it, but many also report problems. Just in this thread there are people talking about heart palpitations and sleep problems. I have the theory that these side effects and mixed experiences come from impurities of lesser quality products. Apparently there are mostly two sources: Creatine mono-hydrate which mostly comes from China and "creapure", which is a patented…

Some people simply don’t digest the monohydrate form well. I get all of the symptoms you list.

The HCL form is more expensive, but does wonders for me. None of the negative side effects.

Re: Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

#203

Post by jcul »

almost_usual wrote: post #156
cadr wrote: post #142

I feel like for me it would be thwarted by the fact creatine seems to completely mess up my sleep. I don't remember that from when I was younger, but recently tried adding it to my diet and had to bail.

I counteract it with Magnesium Glycinate. Works well for me.

Magnesium has a crazy effect on my sleep, very very noticeably deeper.

Not necessarily more restful, but deep and I don't remember anything. With B6 it's deep but more interspersed with vivid dreams.

I take zinc with them too, my own zma stack basically. I'm not sure the zinc has a direct effect on sleep, I take it for testosterone benefits.

These made me realize that legal vitamins and supplements can have much more than a subtle effect.

Re: Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

#205

Post by vkazanov »

YZF wrote: post #185
vkazanov wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to do something similar. If you intend to have any benefits of going to the gym then protein (and overall calorie consumption) would have to be monitored. Running sort of conflicts with working out: it wants you to be light and burns plenty of energy. Gym wants you to gain mass. No mass gains -> gym us useless. Creatine is kind of an afterthought in this bigger picture. Might give you an extra rep or two but tha…

Agree on getting enough protein (and sleep, and recovery time). Strength training isn't all about mass. You can get stronger without gaining mass. There is a neural component and an efficiency component. At some point though you do need a bigger muscle to be stronger. There is also the question of whether you're optimizing for faster (fast twitch) or slower movements.

Strength training is not only about mass but for most intents and purposes it is about gaining as much muscle as possible while not gaining too much extra.

It's not like one can move from squating 100kg to squating 150kg without extra 2-3 kgs of meat.

And there is NO WAY of growing meat in a calorie deficit. And running often leads to that.

Re: Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

#206

Post by asdff »

skyberrys wrote: post #198
cobolcomesback wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most guidance I’ve seen says to start with a loading phase of 25-30g per day for several days, then go down to 5g per day maintenance.

This sounds intense... I'm a small female and I recently started at 5g a day and now I've dropped down to 2g a day because even at just 5g I was getting signs of dehydration, despite tripling my water intake. It does seem to make a difference in my physical performance so I'm overall happy with it. Also the NIH fact sheet for creatine specifically recommends against higher starting doses.

I did the 25g a day loading phase and I could not tell any sort of effect at all one way or another. I do lift either more weight or do more reps pretty much every time I work out now. What was repping to failure a month or two ago is not even a working set now.

Re: Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

#208

Post by amluto »

trehalose wrote: post #176
zug_zug wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Recently, a pilot study (single-arm) by Smith et al., recruited 20 patients (73 years of age) with AD and provided them with 20 grams/day of CrM for 8 weeks [20]. Serum creatine levels were increased at weeks 4 and 8 (p Yeah 20 patients is not a lot. I'm inferring this is a pre-post test. However some of those p-values are pretty good (.001 on reading and and sorting). Very promising pilot study but not conclusive…

I wouldn't even call it "promising but inconclusive" so much as "not conclusively a dead-end for further research". In a single-arm open-label study, with no blinding, both the participants and the researchers know who's getting what. You need a placebo and double-blinding for comparison against the active group and to adjust for any ways in which the researchers may have unwittingly influenced the results. (Or perha…

Worse: go look at the MMSE. I bet that, at least for patients with reasonably functional memory, taking the MMSE and then taking it again a few weeks later from the same examiner will tend to improve the score the second time.

Re: Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

#209

Post by SkyPuncher »

cadr wrote: post #142

I feel like for me it would be thwarted by the fact creatine seems to completely mess up my sleep. I don't remember that from when I was younger, but recently tried adding it to my diet and had to bail.

I discover the sleep issues were related to my inability to digest the monohydrate form. I’d get sweats, chills, all of the nasty side effects.

I switched to HCL and tolerate it massively better.

Re: Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

#210

Post by asdff »

basch wrote: post #177
cobolcomesback wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most guidance I’ve seen says to start with a loading phase of 25-30g per day for several days, then go down to 5g per day maintenance.

Per day being a key part of that. 30g at once is going to give a good chunk of people pretty severe cramping or a trip to the bathroom.

I don't think you can even do 30g at once in terms of mixing it. Even 5g in water it seems like theres some that will just stay crashed out of solution no matter what. I have done 25g over the course of a day though for a week long loading phase, and didn't notice any ill effects.

I think a lot of the anecdata on creatine is probably from people misplacing confounding issues to the creatine use. People in this thread are talking about heart palpitations or trouble sleeping. Stressful days at work are enough to trigger that.

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