The Guide to Creatine & Why you do not need it! (Probably)

Creatine has come a wide way and is nowadays one of the best researched and most supplemented substances available. Especially us in the fitness world should know creatine, at least by name.

This is not surprising regarding its well-documented benefits for strength – but also impacts are becoming obvious in matters such as bone health and brain health. These become especially for people not eating creatine-rich foods such as meat or fish – looking at you, vegans. I am certain that creatine is a necessary substance for humans uniquely found in animal foods, like many other highly important molecules.

But before we get into creatine, nutrition, and how to use it as a supplement, we will talk a bit about its biochemistry¹ and head out to bust myths! Unfortunately, there are still many creatine myths around – likewise a lot of other stubbornly marketed substances within our fitness world. I still remember my first contact point with this substance:

• A former friend from school started taking it when he started out at the gym around the age of 16. We all thought it would be something like true steroids and as illegal as the punk-*** quality of cannabis sold around the school.
• Especially regarding his huge successes in getting swole, one could not come around the thought of creatine as very potent!²

That’s where we start this post – diving into the science and the mythological stories told. After this deep plunge into real, as well as bro-science, we’re looking at the nutritional use of creatine and how you should approach it – if you really need it…

After its job is done to create energy within the creatinergic pathway, which we will talk about in the next section, creatine gets transported back to your kidneys, where it is partly recycled.³

That’s the life of one creatine molecule. Let’s see where you naturally find creatine before we get into the weeds of how it works!

Creatine in Foods and your Nutrition

Creatine* is exclusively found in other animal foods and products, but there is no creatine in plant foods. Most of the creatine is found in pork muscle meat, beef muscle meat and fish, but you also find it in organs and chicken. That makes totally sense, right?

Where to look for a substance primarily used within your muscles? In animal muscles! Contrary to plants, animals operate on the same operating system as humans do. I got the idea of different operating systems, like Windows vs. Mac for example, from Dr. Paul Saladino’s Carnivore Code*. They also need creatine to quickly synthesise energy for high-intensity outputs. Despite muscles, you also find it in hearts and brain – two other organs with high energy output. The following list shows the amounts per kg of foods consumed⁴:

Creatine is one of those many many substances vegan diets and plant-based diets lack. Be warned though, the list is a lot longer than solely creatine! I am wholeheartedly convinced, that you can get all the nutrients you need either exclusively from other animals as you would on a nose-to-tail carnivore diet or my preference a modified animal-based diet because that’s what’s ancestrally consistent when we look at how humans evolved. But that’s a topic for another long-ass post. Let’s go on with the workings of creatine – brace yourself for some biochemistry!

How does Creatine work?

The Creatinergic Pathway

To get a rough overview, the creatinergic pathway is one of 3 main pathways your body uses energy within the muscle cells. Besides creatine, it can use glucose – the glycolytic pathway – and fats to win ATP.⁵ The main difference between these 3, despite their source material, is their efficiency.

• Your body uses creatine to produce a buffer of quickly available energy on demand. The buffer is stored in the form of creatine phosphate (PCr).
• Within your cells, creatine phosphate acts as a donor of phosphate. Simply said your body takes creatines phosphate molecules to rebuild our energy source ATP from ADP. The difference between ATP and ADP is solely one molecule of phosphor.
• This molecule is transferred to each other through the enzyme of Creatine Kinase – abbreviated as CK in the image.

Creatine kinase works in both ways it can build up the stores of creatine phosphate and build them also down. And as an interesting fun fact, if you’ve ever got some blood work done many clinicians look at a marker called CK which is our creatine kinase. It then acts as an indicator of muscular damage or kidney issues.⁶

This mechanism is most important in terms of maximum strength. After around 10-15s your body depletes the buffered stores of creatine phosphate and relies on other mechanisms to win energy – it burns glucose:

1. First, you will use the energy provides through the creatinergic pathway. This is your maximum strength and you can produce around 80-90% of your maximum strength for ~10s.
2. After that, the glycolytic pathway will keep the strength output around 60-80% for 30-60s.
3. The fat-oxidating pathway can work for a much longer time, but its overall output is around 30-60%.

As you can see as their efficiency declines you get weaker. One note aside, all of these numbers are rough estimates, and these processes happen intertwined. Well-trained individuals will score much better in their area of expertise. But it is important to notice that the creatine mechanism is the least trainable.⁷

Furthermore, when using creatine your body creates H+ Ions that act as a buffer within the cell. This process could be viewed as a secondary performance increasing effect and explain many of the other benefits on non-maximal strength effects like for example better the aerobic capacity, optimized creatine stores help with.
As you see creatine has a crucial role to fulfil within each vertebrae’s metabolism. Alright now we got talked about the science upfront – the rest will get more into praxis and come intuitively.

What does Science say to the Benefits of Creatine?

Creatine for muscular Strength  & Performance

Strength is the area where most improvements related to creatine were discovered, as that’s the primary realm this substance influences.
As creatine is mostly used within the first 15s of any activity especially maximum strength focussed sports, as weightlifting, sprinting, jumping and calisthenics can benefit well from it. But that effect is not only important for athletes, also for the ageing population to stay strong and muscular, as these two markers are very important longevity factors. Eat your red meat, grampa.

Science found a performance gain of around 4-10% by loading one’s creatine stores completely. Combining supplementation (or sufficient amounts from diet) with training showed significant increases in strength and muscle mass. On top of that, it can also inhibit myostatin a peptide, slowing down muscle growth. ⁸ Examine wrote a great and short article about creatine and the benefits it showed in studies. Go check it out for a brief overview.

Creatine for Endurance

Besides strength, there is also evidence that creatine can increase your performance as a runner. By that I mean of course in high-intensity runs, but also lower intensity aerobic runs. But it is rather mixed. Some studies show improvements, while others don’t.

One might ask – why does it improve endurance when it primarily enhances the first ~15s of a given activity? Researchers linked this effect to the H+-Buffer and the ongoing use of phosphates even during activities that are considered low-intensity cardio. ⁹ Plus, building stronger muscles within general strength training as a runner definitely have a carryover to endurance performance. While we do not clearly know what causes the effect, we know that there is an effect.

Creatine and your Brain

5% of your overall creatine is stored within your brain. These stores also bulk up while supplementing creatine. And because your brain is a behemoth when it comes to energy use within your body increased cognition could be a real effect of creatine supplementation. ¹⁰

I found this correlation very interesting because I would’ve never thought of better brain function by taking a supplement only thought ‘to increase strength’. But it is important to note that this effect only occurred in people with deficits in creatine – studies showed this brain performance increasing effect, especially in vegetarians that by definition don’t get a lot of nutritional creatine, as well as the elderly population.
A great podcast wrapping creatine and the brain up is this episode of Smart Drugs Smarts by Jessie Lawler.

Besides performance, creatine also affects mental disorders such as depression, Parkinson’s, and at least in animal models many other neurological disorders. For example, Creatine is shown in humans to aid patients suffering from Parkinson’s to reduce the rate at which they lose strength and muscular control. It is thought that creatine upregulates certain genes, shuts others off and the pure presence of creatine acts as a buffer that can protect against certain things. It does so by influencing the ATP-ratio beneficially and avoiding its depletion.¹¹

Creatine for strong Bones

Another currently hot topic linked to creatine is bone health. Resistance training and overall bone health are already tightly linked together – by being able to lift more weight, keeping and building overall muscle mass, your bones will benefit, too. This gets increasingly interesting within older groups of people as an intervention to keep them overall healthy. By optimizing creatine stores combined with resistance training one can do a lot for many intertwined systems. On top of that creatine is shown to influence certain genes responsible for building up bones. The activation of those leads to more bone-building cells.

Could your grandpa also benefit from good old creatine, like his grandson does while bulking up? Sure he does.

Creatine’s role in Methylation

Methylation is the process of your body juggling around methyl groups. Methyl groups are an important cellular currency, building block, and system of information. Within this cycle, your body transfers these groups from one substance to another to create certain molecules at various points of the cycle. It is pretty complex, but important to know for our endpoints are the products: One end product of methylation is phosphocreatine, methylation is your body’s way to synthesize it. Another big one is phosphatidylcholine. These two make up the biggest burden on the methylation cycle, as they consume most methyl groups and take them away from other duties.

By supplementing or ingesting sufficient creatine and choline, this burden diminishes, and methyl groups are freed up for other jobs. I think that’s how nature intended this mechanism. To have more methyl-group at leisure is a far-reaching effect, that all too often is forgotten when one talks about creatine.

Creatine Myths and Bro-Science

Creatine bloats you up

The thought that creatine * draws water within your muscles is right. Where stuff often gets confused is that creatine pulls the water right into your cells – that’s why after the loading of creatine is completed, one weighs ~1-2kgs more. Nonetheless, you won’t look like the guy the tire-giant Michelin advertises with.

Because the water is within your cells the only thing that happens is that your muscles might look bigger. This is no issue, as long as you’re not dependent on your weight like a boxer for example. Myth busted!

Creatine kills Kidneys

There is a strong belief that creatine might damage your kidneys. It is so far logical as creatine gets eliminated by your kidneys and more creatine might logically place a slightly higher workload on these two buddies. Plus, an important renal health marker is called creatinine – sounds the same, doesn’t it?

That’s because creatinine is a product that gets made when creatine is recycled and eliminated. In sick individuals, one way to point at kidney diseases is to observe rising levels of creatinine. Although this marker is reliable within healthy individuals and can help to make a guess, in some cases it is unreliable and can be manipulated.
If you would purely judge on this marker then, it could look like one’s renal function is inhibited while in reality, they’re fine. They only might have more overall muscle mass and creatine and therefore eliminated more. No kidney damage prevalent, only healthy metabolism. That’s why one marker is just one part of the whole. ¹²

Taking creatine can tilt this marker upwards – but this isn’t because your kidneys malfunction, rather it is a symptom of more creatine within your body. If you’re concerned about that there is another, much more reliable creatinine equation, that can be measured through cystatin c – the reason it isn’t the first measurement is that it takes a bit more work.

Creatine used cyclic in high doses

Cycling creatine is so 1990. Taking one’s creatine this way feels like taking Tren or undergoing Methadone therapy.

While it is not wrong to cycle creatine, I believe the method of taking it daily has a few more benefits. Especially if you take it daily within your normal nutrition, as consuming creatine in foods is the easiest way. Both methods of course lead to the goal of creating a full storage. But especially the practicability and low-impact on one’s intestines are worth mentioning. We’ll get to these methods more down below!

Should I follow the Hype and supplement Creatine?

Creatine is the most widely consumed, performance-increasing supplement, right behind caffeine. Especially in gyms, the fitness world, and for strength-focused athletes, the mention exists that one should take creatine.

Every human, not only athletes, should have optimized creatine stores, but I believe that taking creatine isn’t necessary and most people could eliminate this supplement.

Why you probably shouldn’t supplement Creatine!

Creatine is found in all kinds of animal meats, especially within the muscles and the brain. And as we know meats not only contain creatine, but also a myriad of other health-promoting substances. I often advise people therefore to eat around 1.5-2.0lb of meat per day from various sources, but preferably grass-fed ruminants cleverly spiced up with seafood and fish.

Solely by eating around 1.5lb/300g of meat a day you get approximately 2-3g of creatine depending on the meat you eat. That is plenty of creatine! Spend your money therefore not on powder and invest the saved bucks in better or more meat. Go animal-based, man. You’ll get a lot more out of natural high-quality meats and organs than from a questionably produced powder.

When you should supplement Creatine

On the flip side, people in need to supplement creatine are the people avoiding meat. While I would never advise doing that, as I believe a meat-free diet runs into a lot of long-term health issues and isn’t sustainable, the moral decision is one everybody individually makes, and I wholeheartedly respect it.

Vegetarians are on the better side, they could eat lots of fish, like herring, cod, or salmon, and get their creatine and many other substances from there. Then their creatine should be in check, although they miss out on other substances like Vitamin K2, Carnosine, or Copper. The most important point to think about then is to avoid predatory fish high in the food chain which accumulates heavy metals like crazy.

Vegans have it much more complicated. They need to supplement creatine externally, as there is no source of creatine in the plant kingdom. Plus, carnosine, plus carnitine, plus taurine, plus K2, plus hemeiron, plus B12, plus a myriad more. I think you get my concerns. Constructing a diet is a difficult art!

MTHFR Issues and polymorphisms can lead to increased needs for methyl groups, and in fact, these are quite common. You can easily find out if you possess some of these with companies like InsideTracker* that analyze certain genes, such as MTHFR. Supplementing creatine can help to reduce its burden on the cycle. In tandem with enough choline, glycine, riboflavin, methylcobalamin, and methylfolate, one can optimize its workings.

Elderly people often lose some of their appetite for a host of reasons. Less food comes with less nutrients, creatine included. Plus, one of the many problems our ageing population faces is sarcopenia, the loss of muscle tissue. For these reasons the supplementation of creatine – before the body of knowledge regarding its beneficial effects on strength, muscle mass, brain function and many others – should be worth considering for people with advancing age.

How much creatine should I take? 

The next two parts are for the people in need of creatine – the people not eating 1.5-2lb of meat a day. And I’d rather advise anyone to fix that rather than supplementing creatine. But if you’re in one of the above groups these two sections are for you!

There are two common methods to take creatine despite simply eating meat: the fast-creatine-loading-cycle and the-daily-intake.

While the first will ramp up your stores in under a week the second method needs around 4 weeks to achieve the same. The question coming up is – which makes more sense? To cycle or not to cycle? …that is the question – to steal from Hamlet. For many years cycling creatine was the gold standard. I view it as somewhat critical. Cycling and getting down from creatine always sounded to me like taking a shady steroid-like prohormone.

While loading creatine is efficient to fully load your stores within under a week – is it necessary? 

• Many complain about gastrointestinal issues when consuming huge portions of around 20-25g of creatine per day – moreover, why would you want to ramp up your stores that fast?
• The overall difference in loading is around 10 additional mmol if we’d look at the concentration within muscle tissues.
• On the other hand, there is the steady-low-doses-method of taking creatine each day. I found this method easier to follow and much friendlier to your intestines. The rule of thumb is to consume ~20g of creatine per week, which is roughly 2g per day. Or 5g every 4 days is fine, too.

Everybody should sustain 3g of creatine with minimal to non-existent side effects. I never experienced them. Plus, adding half a scoop of creatine each morning to your yogurt is very convenient.

Which Form of Creatine should I take?

If you visit any supplement shop you will find at least 5 different forms of creatine. Creatine monohydrate*, CreaPure, Creatine HCL, Buffered Creatine, and probably many more.
One is quickly overwhelmed by this range, while if we look at the data the only difference from one another is in the price tag and lofty product descriptions some marketing geek came up with.

Science strongly suggests that if you need to supplement creatine¹³ taking monohydrate is the way to go. There is no benefit in taking other forms – despite the seller, as these are rare premium forms that come for a premium tag.

Don’t be conned, buy Monohydrate – and spend your saved money better on cookies. Or Programs. Or Meat and ditch the supplementing entirely.

Creatine and Meat – Let’s wrap it up!

To wrap it up I’d always recommend people to get all the nutrients they need within their regular diet. And fortunately getting enough creatine in foods is super easy once one eats an adequate portion of meat a day – especially muscle meat. Don’t get me wrong eating an animal from nose-to-tail has plenty of benefits and organs are in fact real superfood, unlike acai, spirulina, and all the hoax plants.

To get enough creatine eat at least 1lb, better up to 2lb, of meat a day, preferably from grass-fed ruminants, but that also depends on your body composition and weight. I strongly believe that mixing it up with other sources such as fish, seafood, poultry or pork is the way to go. Not only will you get sufficient creatine by doing so but also plenty of other unique substances for human survival only found in animal products…

Other unique Substances in Meat

To get a quick sneak-peak of what other substances are unique to meat and not found in plants in a bioavailable form have a look at this list. And it isn’t by any means extensive, the list goes on and on:

• Carnitine
• Carnosine
• Taurine
• Hemeiron (Iron is not bioavialable in Plants)
• Vitamin B12 (Methycobolamin)
• Vitamin K2 (Menachinone in MK-3, Mk7, Mk-10, Mk-12 Forms)
• CoFactor Q10 (Ubiquinone)
• and the list goes on…

As you see eating animals is so much more than just protein and fats. Animals run on our operating system using the same substances we humans do. Plants are similar but so different. Just like Android and iPhones – similar, but your Android apps won’t work on an iPhone.
Vegans miss out on a lot of those substances entirely, and therefore constructing a healthy plant-based diet in my opinion is an arduous task that requires a lot of supplementation. There is no CoQ10 in plants, no bioavailable Iron, and we haven’t even talked about antinutrients yet, that hinder your body from resorbing the nutrients found in plants – because big news plants don’t want to be eaten. They needed to come up with different kinds of defense mechanisms because running away isn’t an option. If you want to learn more about that topic, you can have a look at a guide I created on these nutrients down below, plus there are many other posts online that cover it.

TL;DR Summary – Let’s wrap things up!

When it comes to creatine – you probably won’t need to supplement it. Although supplementing is easy, for the benefit of a lot of other substances rather approach your diet:

• Make sure to eat 1lb, better up to 2lb of muscle meat a day from various, high-quality sources.
• Supplement the muscle meat with organ meats. Do not forget about connective tissue to even out methionine with glycine.
• If you need to supplement, take 3g per day every day or 5g per day on 4 days per week – it should be around ~20g per week. Nonetheless, try to optimize your creatine through meat – meat contains many more nutrients, called Zoonutrients.
• If still struggling take creatine monohydrate*. There is no benefit in taking other fancy “premium” forms of creatine – only for the one setting the price tag.

Sources:

• I found Earl Mindell’s Vitamin Bible*, as well as Mark Moyad’s Supplement Guide* helpful – not only on creatine but on the wide range of supplements around.
• As said some times above, Examine does a great job in bringing science closer to the public eye – by wrapping it in short, well-readable text and presenting data in an easy manner. IMO, the number one to check out every supplement at first.
• On all things meat, have a look at the Carnivore Code* by Paul Saladino. I borrowed his operating system analogy. He makes a great job in promoting animal-based ideas and showing clearly the scientific benefits of eating meat and therefore ancestrally consistent.
• Living with MTHFR provides a lot of knowledge around the topic of creatine, and it’s use within various endpoints throughout the human body.

1. No worries, not too complex, nor a lot. Bear with me, buddy.
2. Rather these huge successes might be connected with his age – within our teens, we are bathed in a cocktail of anabolic hormones.
3. For more on creatine’s detailed biochemistry check out this really great article by NutritionX.
4. https://fitaudit.com/categories/mlk/creatine + https://bestfornutrition.com/foods-high-in-creatine/
5. Be aware though that this is a simplified statement for the sake of understanding. Burning Glucose and burning fat isn’t simply one process but rather a complex chain of different cycles that need to run in order to create usable energy within the muscle cells’ mitochondria.
6. You can read more about creatine kinase in this great Wikipedia article.
7. Let’s get onto a brief thought experiment: While untrained individuals might score with something like 8s, trained individuals might have a larger buffer of up to 15s – a sole difference of 7s. Not a lot for years of training, right?
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3407788/
9. https://www.strongerbyscience.com/creatine/
10. Your greedy-*** brain will take roughly 25% of your overall consumed calories for its own use. Read more here: https://www.brainfacts.org/brain-anatomy-and-function/anatomy/2019/how-much-energy-does-the-brain-use-020119#:~:text=How%20much%20energy%20does%20the%20brain%20require%3F,in%20terms%20of%20energy%20use.
11. https://www.livingwithmthfr.org/genetic-education/amino-acids/creatine-ck-cpk
12. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4170516/
13. Which you likely don’t need to do…