Transcription
Had a big debate this Christmas with my girlfriend about creatine. So, we're in Cape Town, South Africa, and I went and bought creatine. I put it on the table and said, "I'm going to start taking creatine," right? That's so me, not really knowing what it is or what it's for. That's all right. She picked it up, looked at the label, and gave it back to me, saying, "Creatine's not for women." She felt, and I think a lot of people feel this, which is why I wanted to ask you. She thought creatine was for bodybuilders. I Googled it, showed her the Google results, and she was amazed. She started taking creatine, but I imagine there are a lot of people out there who think creatine is just for people that want to get stacked.
Great question! Sometimes you get deep in your own world and forget what people really think outside of that. There’s a website and a company called examine.com. I have no affiliation with them, but it is an unbiased place where you can go and ask questions about any supplement. You can ask about creatine, Arginine, Tongkat Ali, or whatever you want. You can also ask about the best supplements for fat loss, brain function, cardiovascular health, and it will give you answers based on that. It’s a really phenomenal site.
So, when you ask, "Does it work?" well, work for what? And how much? Those are the two questions. In the case of creatine, it improves muscle strength, which is probably why she had that perception of muscle size. What's the weight of the evidence? There are lots of studies—hundreds and hundreds of studies on men, women, young, old, children, all kinds of stuff, including astronauts in space flight and bed rest. Tons and tons of research.
Okay, check that box. What's the magnitude of effect? You're probably looking at somewhere between a 3% to 12% improvement. That’s a pretty good magnitude of effect for something that has an insanely good risk profile. You can't cause imbalances with it; it's not a hormone, and it's not a mineral, so it's not causing oxidative stress anywhere. It's really robust.
When you look at it, you go, "Okay, great, pretty easy choice here." It’s not like the hormone stuff, where you're turning on something; it's a fuel source. In fact, remember earlier when I said metabolism? You're either using carbohydrates or fat as fuel. Actually, creatine is the third one; it's a faster one. The stoichiometry is one-to-one, so you can break down one molecule of phosphocreatine to give you one molecule of ATP. It's the fastest one, but it gives you the lowest energetic output.
So, it's a fuel. Because of this, there is extensive research on performance-based outcomes. This is where it started. In fact, I remember as a kid when the entire BALCO and steroid thing hit baseball in the early 2000s; creatine was on that list. That’s where this entire association came from because Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds were using performance-enhancing drugs, and they were also using things like creatine. So, that just kind of got lumped in as, "Oh, it's a steroid," because it came from that world, and most of the evidence and research was on that.
Fortunately, in the last 20 years, people have sort of moved away from that with creatine because we know the answer there. More interesting stuff is coming in, like bone health. My friend Darren Kandow just finished a really great two-year study on postmenopausal women at a 20-gram-a-day dosage. The typical dosage for a bodybuilder at the gym is 5 grams a day. He put this in postmenopausal women, increased the dose, and did it for two years. There were no adverse effects, no kidney issues, no problems, and it improved some of the bone markers, particularly in the femur area. I don't remember exactly, but it didn't improve others. It's not a miracle; it's not a panacea, but it was like, "Hey, it didn't do anything bad," and it has the potential to help bone mineral density in a population that really needs it from just a simple fuel.
Rather than thinking about it like a mineral, vitamin, or hormone, think of it more like protein powder. It's a nutrient that fuels your body. In addition, there have been at least two trials that I can think of off the top of my head that have shown it may enhance things like mood. There’s a ton of research on traumatic brain injury and long-term physical brain health. Because it is such a fast fuel source, it’s actually a preferred fuel source in your brain. Your astrocytes, which are kind of like the central nervous system cells, thrive on creatine, so they absolutely love it. It is neurological as well, so it’ll help the nervous system and brain health. There are tons of studies showing it has some mild antioxidant properties and a bunch of other benefits.
While I understand a lot of people still hear and think about it as just a muscle thing, that’s because that’s where it came from and the dominant research. But really, I would encourage people to look at more of the last 20 years of what researchers studying creatine are actually focusing on, and it’s not just muscle growth in young, healthy guys.
Does red light play a role? For Christmas, she got me two massive red light panels.
Yeah, there’s a lot of data on red light therapy. This is actually a good example of something that I missed the boat on. I’ve changed my tune on this one big time. I didn’t think there was anything here, and I was wrong. There’s a lot of research.
What is red light therapy doing? In my head, I was like, "Maybe it’s mimicking the sun or something." I don’t know. There are a couple of wavelengths—one around 640 nanometers and another about 850 nanometers, plus or minus. What we’re looking at here is that red light therapy in those wavelengths has the ability to penetrate tissue. It can get past your skin layer and activate a whole series of cascades that are beneficial for skin health.
We’ve seen improvements in injury recovery, and we’ve actually seen changes in the endocrine system and hormone balances. It’s pretty impressive what it’s actually doing because it can get in and stimulate. It can mimic the sun; there’s data showing it potentially improves vision when used in the eye. Work with your eye doctors on that one, please—your ophthalmologists and stuff.
You can actually see this used a lot for overall global recovery, again for muscle soreness and muscle damage. It can actually benefit those as well. I have them, and there’s a bunch of research coming out. They actually get hyperspecific and focus on a certain area of your body that is damaged. We’ve used them a lot with athletes coming back from surgery.
Specifically, one of our quarterbacks this year had a pretty gnarly lower body injury at the very beginning of the season, and we were able to get him back in pretty good shape pretty fast. We used many different things, but red light was certainly one of them. I haven’t found many people yet where I’m like, "You definitely have to go get red light." It’s one of those things where I’m like, "Oh, you got it? Oh, cool! I would do it." Or, "Hey, you have a $60 million contract this year on the line? Well, we’re doing everything—bring it all on."
That’s kind of where I stand with it. It’s another area that I am paying attention to more and more to see what more things come out. But really, the ability for those wavelengths to penetrate skin and actually get into tissue is what’s causing active change inside your physiology.
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