Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study

thesciverse.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 395 posts

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

#271

Post by readthenotes1 »

s3graham wrote: post #83
ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth, its not bad for your kidneys. The reason this gets spread is because you will have higher levels of creatine in your urine if your Doctor tests your urine for kidney function, which indicates kidney disease. However, If you reveal to that doctor that you're supplementing Creatine it will not be concern them.

creatinine != creatine

I started taking creatine after trying to clarify which one of those was which and found the dearth of negative consequences

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

#272

Post by bl4ckneon »

mmanfrin wrote: post #268
syspec wrote: post #266

For someone who's always been interested in creatine, but never tried it due to being overwhelmed by choice... what's a standard go to product?

Powder, from any company that you find reputable. I like the micronized form. I would avoid any of the gummies, as a huge percentage of them have nowhere near the amount of creatine they claim (I believe the cooking process denatures it or something but this is just conjecture).

+1 a good video to watch if you like to watch informative/entertaining videos on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/7gLVOGJpSpE?si=kXNMStmNC1w7TpAX

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

#273

Post by kaitai »

cobolcomesback wrote: post #120
zug_zug wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can second this, do NOT start at 25g of creatine. If you're too lazy to read the literature a friendly AI tool will summarize it.

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.

The loading phase frankly was designed for studies. Studies are often short-term, say 6 weeks. You've got to get everyone's creatine supplies "loaded up" quickly in an effort to make sure the bulk of the study is on folks with relatively comparable creatine stores. The easiest way to do this is to have everyone do a loading phase to reach max intramuscular creatine concentration. It is not for the benefit of the study participants; it's for the benefit of the study.

We humans not in studies are generally looking for a health benefit, not max intramuscular creatine concentration as fast as possible at the price of side effects. We are optimizing for something different than study authors. 5 g is fine.

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

#274

Post by cadr »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #209
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.

Oh, fascinating. The latest one was definitely monohydrate - maybe I was using HCL years ago and just don't remember. I'll look into that. Thanks!

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

#275

Post by tensor »

baxtr wrote: post #154
WhitneyLand wrote: post #36

The article made up the claim it’s not from the paper itself. There was some improvement in cognitive scores, but no placebo group. Without a placebo group, there are a lot of explanations for the data.

FWIW creatine is "one of the most studied supplements for muscle and strength" . But at the same time "creatine’s brain benefits aren’t as exciting as social media makes them out to be. The research at this point just doesn’t support the hype" . Source: https://physiqonomics.com/creatine-cognitive-performance/

I think people often overestimate the effects of these things. It absolutely works for muscle growth but it's not like a steroid or something. Similarly there is enough evidence to suggest that it actually does have some small effect on cognition; I remember a study 10 years ago showing that in people who are creatine deficient (vegans) it improved cognition scores. But it's not going to be a huge effect for someone whose not deficient in some way.

It would actually make sense that as you age and eat less you might get creatine deficient so sure. I don't think it's bullshit, but it's not going to be a huge noticeable effect either.

All of this reminds me of people who don't weight lift "because they don't want to get built." They somehow think you lift some weights and boom you're looking like Arnold. No, it doesn't work that way.

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

#276

Post by tensor »

egfr wrote: post #257
ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth, its not bad for your kidneys. The reason this gets spread is because you will have higher levels of creatine in your urine if your Doctor tests your urine for kidney function, which indicates kidney disease. However, If you reveal to that doctor that you're supplementing Creatine it will not be concern them.

Careful. Creatine metabolizes into creatinine which is major indicator of kidney function because not being able to clear creatinine means your kidneys aren’t working. Adding more creatinine to your system decreases your ability to clear it leading to fatigue, edema, high blood pressure etc. So it isn’t bad for your kidneys: it is bad for everything else.

Except many many many decades of research has not shown any of that to be true.

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

#277

Post by tensor »

Insanity wrote: post #137
ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth, its not bad for your kidneys. The reason this gets spread is because you will have higher levels of creatine in your urine if your Doctor tests your urine for kidney function, which indicates kidney disease. However, If you reveal to that doctor that you're supplementing Creatine it will not be concern them.

At the risk of sounding stupid. Doesn’t this mean it would mask actual kidney disease? So you’d be ignoring potential warning signs.

If you have a good dr they'll just ask you to stop taking it for two weeks, then do a blood test.

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

#278

Post by terribleperson »

mulle_nat wrote: post #245
firefax wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I wouldn't ask this, but having seen the effects of Alzheimer's I must ask: is there any evidence that taking creatine will harm my brain? Let's be real: I take a lot of edibles. I smoke sometimes on a hike. Every once in a while I get a Guiness and a gyro. My health is by no means perfect, and if I'm willing to take in literal poison (yes, alchohol is that dangerous that I say such things even about my prec…

No sure about brain harm. But I used creatine for a few months and I got cramps in an intensity like I never experienced before. I then decided it was not worth it for a few watts of cycling FTP increase. So I would not consider it harmless for everbody, but this sideeffect seems pretty rare.

Could it have been dehydration?

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

#279

Post by karmakurtisaani »

RHSman2 wrote: post #155
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.

My personal experience has been dramatic: 5/6g a day. Very demanding job with lots of ‘thinking’ 3 times a week gym Pre creatine I would struggle to maintain ability to do the hard thinking around 3pm. Just like, fog or I could feel my brain didn’t have capacity. Now, I am capable till the end of the day. Feels like a well trained athlete at the end of a game being able to deliver rather than just holding on.

Same, I feel I have way less brain fog days after taking creatine. Might be also due to more active lifestyle, which creatine is a part of.

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

#280

Post by GeorgeKangas »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #36

The article made up the claim it’s not from the paper itself. There was some improvement in cognitive scores, but no placebo group. Without a placebo group, there are a lot of explanations for the data.

> Without a placebo group...

You just needed to read the next paragraph:

"The 2026 multicenter placebo-controlled trial extending this work..."

Post reply on HN