The Perfect Creatine Doses for Building Muscle, Longevity, Brain Function & Fat Loss | Dr. Candow

dosing creatine properly is a delicate artart and there's also a lot of different kinds of creatine that are out there and it's easy to spend way too much money or totally get misled into the wrong kind of creatine not to mention the wrong amount so I've got Dr Darren kandow who is one of the leading researchers in the world of creatine let's start with just the different forms of creatine you know so this is kind of just a basic guy for people what how much creatine should I take what should I look for like what are the types of creatine out there after today's video I put a link down below for high mult multivitamin so if you have kids you've got to try this with them it's a monk fruit sweetened chewable multivitamin and they now also have a sleep formula too which is just going to be Gaba and theanine so super mild so you can give it to kids table multivitamin type and helps them just relax no melatonin doesn't sedate them but the multivitamin is great because like with my little kids at the time of filming this they're almost six and three and like still like to help get them a little bit more in the way of nutrients if their diet had some gaps that day and they love it it's like a ritual for them but the best thing is for you that's a 50% off like literally half off discount link for highya multivitamins so check that link out at the top line of the description underneath this video for your kids for your grandkids for your neighbor kids whatever that link down below so there's probably about 30 to 50 different types of Market at creatine on uh that's available uh today but from a research evidence-based perspective when we mentioned the word creatine we're referring to creatine monohydrate and creatine monohydrate I think anybody that's watching has heard about it it's simply creatine with a water molecule attached to it and when you consume it the water molecule gets dissolved in your stomach and GI tract so the Crum monohydrate eventually is identical to what's produced in the body and that probably would uh uh sort of validate why Crum monohydrate is the safest and most effective form of of creatine ever been assessed there's other types that have been shown to get into the bloodstream and have some beneficial effects but the totality of evidence suggests no other form of creatine whatever it's called comes close to the overall effectiveness of creatin monohydrate and it also happens to be the least expensive it's very cheap it can be very boring it doesn't have a fancy label so to speak uh but there's a lot out there and a couple things for uh to be aware of for creatine be effective it has to go through your GI track and get into the bloodstream and if it gets into the bloodstream then it has has to go to your demanding tissues and for most people's interest is primarily your muscle but if creatine does not get through your GI track and does not get into the bloodstream no matter how fancy it's marketed or how cool that label looks it's not going to be an affect the form of creatine creatine is a very straightforward process it enters doorways or Transporters it's very specific and monohydrates seems to be the the most effective so are there ways that you can ensure better absorption through the GI tract or is that just bios specific yeah so the nice thing with creatine is almost 100% bioavailable and and it does does basically will leave the GI tra in the small intestine and get in the blood very specific there's not a lot of strategies to enhance that one thing that was theorized is increasing the temperature um of the water that you're mixing your creating in um but if you want to mix it in yogurt or just take it dry scooping uh it'll still uh get 100% bioavailability in the bloodstream as well um dry scooping you're serious man no so dry scooping some will take it but I totally will uh against that because you're not taking yeah exactly you're not taking the the water with it um and then the stability of creatine has always come into question it's not stable in solution for long periods of time um so that's why creatine in commercial beverages has never been shown to Be an Effective form it has to be in the crystallized powder uh there is some new companies putting in in gummies or candies uh and that seems to have some promise for bioavailability um but the powder or suspension has the ones been shown to be very effective and consuming red meat or seafood will give you creatine in the in bloodstream as well interesting okay so let's just you know talk dosing for a little bit um I know you have some specific ways to dose uh that you've kind of worked on in you know your lab uh but generally speaking what is a minimum effective dose of creatine so if you want to take it daily uh three gram seems to be the minimum effective dose from a muscle perspective um and you can take three grams a day uh every day basically for the rest of your life uh for uh athletes primarily a loading phase which a lot of L of people would have heard about 20 gram a day for about seven uh days but after that you can reduce as little as 2 grams a day so if you want to take that loading phase and really top up your energy stores of creatine after that you can reduce it uh to about 2 to three grams a day if you want on average we excrete about 2 grams in the urine in a form of something called creatinin so that's where this 5 gr dose seems to be the best overall from a muscle perspective uh but the dose we use in our lab a lot in our clinical trials is a relative dosage um and that's 0.1 G all the way up to 0.14 G per kilogram so let's say a 0.1 G dosage if you're 70 kg that individual takes seven grams a day if you're 100 kilograms they're taking 10 grams a day the theory here is some good reviews came out and said the larger the person is they have more doorways to allow creatine into the muscle the smaller the person is uh they might have less so it kind of makes sense very similar to caffeine the larger the person if they have more doorways to allow creatine in they may require more um uh creatin so we use a relative dosing meth method there it's been shown to be extremely effective with resulting in no adverse effects so overall you have three viable strategies loading phase with a huge reduction um after seven days you can take a small dose every day or you can do a relative dosing method of 0.1 gram all the way up to maybe 0.15 gr um per kilogram per day now if someone has a big event and let's say their normal training style is let's just say an hour hour a day 5 days a week and then they go into an intense training block where they start training two hours a day six days a week they more than double will they deplete those stores more should they increase their dose accordingly yes so exercise at higher intensity will decrease the amount of creatine in the muscle which will cause a rebound effect so when you increase the volume of creatine or the intensity of exercise if the muscle is not saturated it would probably be advisable to increase the the dosing and that's just from the muscle uh performance uh perspective and I also recommend to increase it because you now you have an accelerated rate of recovery and potentially cognition effects as well by increase in the volume of training so increasing the dosage could be advisable when you're increasing the volume of training absolutely interesting so even if someone is maybe increasing a a different training style we talked about in another video about the aid in recovery right um would that apply too so let's say like I am a someone that resistance trains let's just say again an hour a day five days per week but next week I do my normal level of resistance training hour a day 5 days a week but on top of that uh I also run a half marathon on the weekend and I throw some running into the mix common school of thought would say well that's just a completely different energy pathway so you're not going to have to change your creatine at all because your resistance train training didn't change but your endurance work increased um but there's a benefit to the creatine in aiding the support and inflammatory sort of modulation effect yeah I actually would probably argue from a theoretical perspective to have the same amount of or actually increase it when you change it up because now you're taxing a new types of muscle fibers and different modalities of exercise which might stimulate more an or inflammatory cyto kindes and more cognitive distress and sleep deprivation things like that over time so I think there's no viable reason why you would not increase creatine a little bit or there could be excellent evidence where you just keep creatine dosing the exact same if you're looking at it from a muscle and Recovery perspective I would probably if it was me and I changed my program so much I would actually top up my energy reserves with creatine that way a little bit more yeah and I'm I'm very careful to talk about this particular subject because don't want to make claims but I'm curious you know especially with endurance work and I don't want to go off on a tangent too much but like when when you're really demanding the body you see a heavy increase in upper respiratory tract infections with uh you know endurance athletes a lot of it being driven by the cyto kind storm that kind of happens after or after that endurance work can we elucidate from the data that creatine has its effect on inflammation and sort of reactive oxygen species or has there been any published data that creatine might actually help immune system responses there's been both primarily in animal models but there are actually some really elegant studies post Triathlon and post marathon where creatine given before the long duration event um had antiinflammatory effects so that allowed the muscle environment in the body to recover quicker um but from a reacto otive spe species and mitochondrial Health perspective it's been shown to have both prior to and then when we get into animal models some types of uh toxins were provided to cause a stimulating effect which we can't do in humans obviously and creatines seem to have not only an anti-inflammatory but an anti-catabolic effect as well so it's well known for its anabolic effects but I think what really needs to be brought to light is the uh recovery aspects from an anti-inflammatory or anti-catabolic effect that's very interesting I mean it's almost as though with endurance work or just any kind of taxing situation that the way that I look at it is you only have so much energy in the body right and if you have all this Demand Being allocated for Recovery because you just beat the crap out of your body right right then something has to take a backseat like something's got to give right there's no free rides right and if you're allowing for additional energy to basically be allocated appropriately then maybe those endogenous systems super oxide dismutates all those things that would otherwise be combating potential illness pens and kind of maybe they have a chance to actually do their job because they're not just trying to diffuse whatever crap you instill upon your body that's right yeah and that's a huge point and the other big thing about a lot of cardio as we know unfortunately you burn muscle protein and so one of the things that creatine does is decrease the rate of muscle protein loss primarily in males so for those that are saying I don't want to do a lot of cardio because I'm going to lose a lot more muscle protein I say well creatine may help offset the rate of muscle protein loss and if it causes an anabolic effect and reduces breakdown Maybe you might preserve more muscle when you engage in the health benefits of cardio or endurance type of sports as well so I think it has huge implications for all athletes I actually can't think of someone on the planet that won't get some type of benefit potentially from creatine based on evidence-based research so we talked about this in another video but how quickly after someone takes a dose of creatine can they expect to see a change so it'll it'll Peak into the bloodstream within about 2 hours and then there's two ways to clear creatine from the body it goes to your muscle primarily or you go to your kidney and you pee it down the toilet so the logic is that creatine will be taken up into the muscle so it will peak in about one to two hours and that's on doseage is less than 10 grams a day if you take a higher dose it takes about 3 hours to Peak uh but the cool thing is while it's accumulating in the blood it's entering your your demanding tissues so you can get an effect really uh quickly but that's just getting into the cell now it takes some time for the creatine to be linked to a phosphate Bond and called fossil creatine which kind of causes the magic of creatine to accumulate but in as little as 5 days at that loading phase you can saturate the muscle to have all the The Beneficial effects we don't see a lot of benefits from one acute or one day supplementation of creatine uh we did not find that in our lab but in as little as 5 days it seems to saturate the body and something that a lot of viewers may not know is that when you take a a creatine for a loading phase about 5 to 7 Days actually after about 2 days you don't need to do it anymore after about about 2 days is when the muscle seems to be saturated you're just excreting a lot of that creatine that you're taking on day 3 four five uh down the toilet so the theory is that maybe two days of loading and then reduce the amount uh to save a little bit of money or uh metabolically you're not basically excreting it in the urine um so unlike caffeine which you can get an effect pretty quickly uh that's a drug effect creating sort of accumulates and it's a little bit different is there an ideal time of day or pre-training posttraining or just for for the people that maybe aren't training or looking for just mental effect uh is there a best time of day to take it or is the time of day that you take it really just only beneficial because you save a little bit of money but not waste yeah that's 100% so it's fall in the same lines of protein I think we've now well known that the timing of protein is kind of irrelevant it's a total daily amount and creatine Falls in that same uh uh factor a lot of press or theory was that the timing is really critical and so we've looked at creatine before during as well as after exercise and we see beneficial effects with really no difference between those three modalities and a few other labs have looked at creatine in the morning and evening and you get a beneficial effect so when you look at all the data there's no timing effect um I think the important thing is to consume it but I will say that post exercise seems to be a very logical and probably an important time to consume Creatine um prior exercise or muscle contraction seem to turn on these doorways that allow creatine in so taking it post exercise may be a viable strategy and then you could also argue taking it before would probably have the same effect because it takes a little bit of time to get through the GI track in about an hour so pre-post is a very viable option but I think just taking it in a 24-hour period is a very effective way so the timing is irrelevant just make sure you take it if you are considering to take it yeah so is there a maximum dose that someone ah excellent question the highest dose we've seen in a in a research study is 30 grams a day for multiple years with no adverse effects and that was in clinical populations but I think if you're taking 50 60 70 grams l logically it makes sense that a majority of that's going to be excreted down uh um with your urine and if you did that over time could that have any adverse effects on kidney function we don't know um but if you take it within a normal uh range um and again from a muscle perspective it's little those 3 to 5 grams can have some very beneficial effects uh 8 to 10 grams for bone and potentially a little bit more for brain so I think going higher than that there's maybe not any need based on Research you can just take that daily go on about your daily life exercise when you can and get the beneficial effects from that so there's not really a uh above a certain amount not really a dose dependent increase in performance like that like someone's like say okay I take five grams you take 10 you take 15 the person with 15 it's like as long as you're saturated it that's really what matters that's correct after about 20 you plateau and taking 30 makes no difference very similar to caffeine after about 6 milligrams per kilogram taking eight is not going to do anything uh taking more is not going to do anything as well so uh we see a maximum Plateau after about 20 G and if you take multiple 5 G dosages during that um you don't see an effect and if you're just going to take it for uh health benefits 3 to 5 grams a day you never have to worry about that as well and again you can take it in one gram does if you want if you have those candies or whatever is very popular nowadays or you can take a half a teaspoon put it in your yogurt and and just go on with it doesn't there's no taste to it it it's very viable and and convenient I guess is the word and for those that are concerned about you know water retention which we'll talk about in another video as well you know you mentioned something earlier about you might reduce the risk of maybe retaining some water if you were to space it out throughout the day that's correct so where it's osmotic it likes to drag water in so if you take smaller dosages it's not going to have the same abrupt effect to accumulation over time and there has been one study where if you take one gram dosages 10 times a day you actually retain more of that creatine in the body than sometimes when you excrete it so those are some very viable options you can consume it with food the only one I would recommend not to consume it with is directly in black coffee or sorry coffee um the good evidence suggests that when you put creatine directly in caffeinated beverage uh such as coffee they may negate one another that's only if you take it for a long period of time if you're just doing it for one day um it should not affect it but there is some really good evidence from Europe suggesting that when you take creatine and caffeine simultaneously for extended period of time they may oppose one each other and that's from a cellular perspective so I think if you're going to take caffeine take it before exercise which makes sense it doesn't make really any sense after and take creatine after whichever you want Yeahs are a little bit different yeah why do you suppose that is mechanistically I'm just curious so there's something called the sarcoplasm reticulum which it's all based on calcium so caffeine as we consume it it releases calcium in the bloodstream and calcium is needed to allow muscle contraction to occur so the more calcium in theory the muscle uh crossbridge cycle can go over quicker but creatine says whoa I like to pull caffeine back to speed up that recovery so it's a tug of-war and that's been shown many times yeah interesting so how much time should you give it between caffeine like co-ingestion obviously not good but within an hour within two hours about an hour or longer so I usually recommend to a lot of my uh uh students or individuals who asked coffee before and by the time you work out creatine after or coffee before within an hour it'll Peak and then you can probably consume your creatine during your work go at the end of the day they may not really jeopardize each other over time um but the studies that shown where creatine was directly put in instead of sugar or splenda in your coffee that can have a detrimental effect at higher dosages interesting and then what about for for women do they need to increase or decrease dose based upon their cycle yes so that's a huge area of Interest right now and a good colleague of mine Abby Smith Ryan from North Carolina has looked at this many times and creatine can be very effective for females across the age uh Spectrum but it's so difficult to control the phases of the menal cycle if you start in the follicular phase is it 100% sure we're going to test you again in the luteal phase it's very difficult to do at the end of the day the phases of the mental cycle may be not nearly as important or irrelevant per se when it comes to Performance benefits I think they do respond over time so that's an area uh we need a lot more research primarily also in in during pregnancy um but we think that the phases of the mental cycle if they do play a role it may be minimal but then there's a lot more research that needs to play a role with that perfect well it sounds like at the end of the day it's you know The Sweet Spot is going to be you know again that that you know 0.1 per kilogram that sounds like the best space but if you need just a basic number it sounds like 5 to seven 5 to 10 grams is like the sweet spot that's correct yeah you can go lower but from a whole body perspective that's that's a good range yeah cool man well as always keep it locked here my channel and Dr kand thank you so much thanks so much