Creatine for Midlife: Muscle, Brain, Sleep & How to Use It Correctly

*]:pointer-events-auto scroll-mt-(--header-height)" dir="auto" tabindex="-1" data-turn-id= "c7ff5041-d173-4b2d-b16f-e1c1aa8324c1" data-testid= "conversation-turn-39" data-scroll-anchor="false" data-turn="user"> *]:pointer-events-auto scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" tabindex="-1" data-turn-id= "661d2e6b-4d38-477a-81d5-fdb0aa644ab6" data-testid= "conversation-turn-40" data-scroll-anchor="true" data-turn= "assistant"> If your workouts feel harder than they used to… If your recovery takes longer… If your brain feels foggier after a stressful day… You need to hear this. It's not about motivation. It's not about discipline. And it's not because you're "getting older." In this episode, Dr. Mindy breaks down a shift that almost no one explains to women: Estrogen stimulates creatine production. And when estrogen declines in perimenopause and menopause, creatine can decline too. Creatine isn't just a gym supplement. It's critical for cellular energy. It helps recycle ATP, the fuel your muscles and brain run on. When ATP drops, strength, recovery, and mental clarity can shift with it. This conversation will change how you think about midlife performance. In this episode, you'll learn: What creatine actually does inside the female body Why creatine matters more after 40 The connection between estrogen, ATP, and muscle strength How creatine supports brain energy and stress resilience What the research says about safety and dosing Who should consider creatine, and who shouldn't How to support strength long term through physiology, not willpower If you're lifting heavier but building less muscle… If your brain feels slower under pressure… If you've been blaming yourself for feeling "off"… Bookmark this episode. Share it with a friend who's navigating perimenopause or menopause. Because when you understand your biology, you stop fighting your body. For more resources related to today's episode, visit the podcast episode page. https://drmindypelz.com/ep328/ Connect with Dr. Mindy: Watch the episodes on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DrMindyPelz?sub_confirmation=1 Follow Dr. Mindy on Instagram https://instagram.com/dr.mindypelz/ Join the Reset Academy https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/reset-academy Subscribe to Dr. Mindy's newsletter https://drmindypelz.com Explore her books, including Fast Like a Girl and Age Like a Girl https://drmindypelz.com/books/ Disclaimer https://drmindypelz.com/disclaimer

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, so I've been wanting to bring this synthesized information on creatine to you all for a long time. Because there's a lot of conversation going on on social media, within our Reset Academy. We've been answering questions on creatine and I think it's a very exciting supplement. I think it's great for many different reasons. And most importantly, I want to make sure you know how to use it right. Because if you don't know the protocols behind them, you actually might end up with this supplement either not working or what some people are noticing is that it can cause you to gain weight. And we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that here.

• 0:48Mindy Pelz?

  So let's dive in to everything you need to know about creatine so you can succeed at taking these supplements. And if maybe creatine isn't right for you, let's help you make that decision as we go through this video as well. Ready? Okay, here we go. So for starters, creatine's been a bodybuilding supplement for a while. This is not, this isn't new. It's just in the trend right now. And the research on creatine has been incredibly good. Whether you're watching this on video or listening to it on my podcast, I'm gonna go through four major things that creatine can support you with. But what I think is really important for us to note

• 1:30Mindy Pelz?

  is that this is a naturally occurring molecule that your body makes every day. So remember, when we go into supplements, we really have to remember that we are filling in a deficit, something where your body has maybe depleted its stores. A great example of this is vitamin D. So you go and get a vitamin D test, you know your numbers are low, you take a supplement, so then all of a sudden your vitamin D levels go up, you take another blood test, and now your vitamin D levels are fine and you get off the supplement. Honestly, that's how supplements work. should be taken. So with creatine, it's no different, except we don't really have a test to tell you if

• 2:15Mindy Pelz?

  you're low in it. We have to go off of symptoms. And so I'm going to go through what those symptoms are. But once the symptoms go away, then I would really look at this as a supplement you would only use in strategic cases, and I'll show you what those strategic cases are. But the thing that you want, I want you to know is your body makes it. So there are foods you can do, there are activities you can do, there are other things you can do beyond supplementation. But let's break down exactly what creatine is doing in your body. So first, it's naturally occurring and it's found in two different places. It's found in your muscles and it's found in your brain.

• 2:56Mindy Pelz?

  And what creatine does is it recycles energy in your cells. Now just, I'm going to go into a little bit of chemistry here. So I don't want to lose people, but I think it's important to understand what it means to recycle energy in your cells, because this is the number one job of creatine. So energy in our cells is called ATP. And you've heard me talk about ATP before, and it stands for adenosine triphosphate. And it's the basic energetic currency of our cells. So the way I always explain ATP to my patients is it's like, you know how when your cellphone powers down and all of a sudden it doesn't have as much power, you can't use it as

• 3:41Mindy Pelz?

  much? When you plug it in, it, the power surges it back up. That's ATP. When your cells, which are making enough ATP, which is the mitochondria of your cell, making enough ATP, then that cellular processing, that cellular activation is going to work. So if it's a cell that is supposed to help your metabolism and it has enough ATP to do that, then the cells that are helping metabolism are going to function well. Maybe it's ATP helping your thyroid function well. If you have enough ATP going to the cells of the thyroid, then the thyroid is going to function well.

• 4:22Mindy Pelz?

  So it is a critical unit of energy in our body and creatine recycles it. That's why this is so important. Remember how in the biohacking world, we got all into mitochondria and everybody wants to hack their mitochondria? Well, we're sort of moving out of that conversation and moving more into the conversation of what can we do to support the other things that those mitochondria do? And one of them is make ATP, which also we can use creatine to support. Okay, now, having said that, I'm going to put up, for those of you watching on YouTube, I'm going to put up a picture right here of a diagram of ATP.

• 5:05Mindy Pelz?

  And ATP has three Ts, that's the triphosphate, and one A, the adenosine. Okay, so we have one A and three Ps. And when your muscles need energy, they still steal a P. They steal the phosphate. So now your adenosine di phosphate, you only have two of the phosphate. Again, we're in chemistry. I know some of you are being traumatized right now, listening to this, going back into your chemistry class from high school, but it's important to understand that. When you work out, when your muscles need energy for anything, it's going to steal

• 5:48Mindy Pelz?

  these phosphate molecules. And if you don't have enough to replenish it, then you're left with a deficit of phosphate, which gives you less energy. So when you, the depleted form of ATP is actually ADP, and it's a, it's a signal that we need to power up your energy system again. So if you push, let's, let's put this into an example. If you push your muscles really hard, say you're doing heavy squats at the gym and your body can't keep up, you're going to walk out of that gym, depleting a lot of ATP and your muscles are going

• 6:30Mindy Pelz?

  ...feel fatigued and it takes about one to two minutes for your ATP to refill its energy stores. Well, this is where creatine comes in. And this is why bodybuilders have been using creatine for some time is because it restores muscle energy. And instead of you needing two minutes after your exercise, two minutes of rest to be able to restore your muscle power, you might only need 90 seconds if your creatine stores are at their max because creatine's job is to make sure you put another P on the ADP. That's its number purpose. So you will recover so much faster if you have high creatine stores.

• 7:15Mindy Pelz?

  And because it works so quickly, extra creatine also lets you push through a few harder sets. So those of you, like we've been talking here a lot about lifting heavy weights and for menopausal women, the general formula for lifting heavy weights is that you want to make sure that you do eight reps at max weight, like the most you can do. The experts are saying that by the time you get to that eighth rep, you should be barely able to pick that weight up. Well, if you're one of those people that at six reps, you're exhausted, making sure your creatine stores are higher can give you that extra push and that extra muscle

• 7:58Mindy Pelz?

  energy to be able to put in another rep to get you to eight. Again, this is why bodybuilders have been using it for a while. And it works really quickly. When you have enough creatine stores, your muscles will reboot, grab another phosphate, get the ATP back on track if you have enough stores. Now, I am going to go into a lot of detail on this masterclass, but for my menopausal women, what I want you to know is that estrogen stimulated creatine production in your body. And this might be why a lot of you are going into the gym not being able to do what you were able to do before because your creatine levels are depleted, so you have less muscle energy.

• 8:43Mindy Pelz?

  Does that make sense? So, let's focus on the four main benefits of creatine and the science behind it. First, benefit number one is muscle strength. And we just talked about how creatine can affect muscle. But it affects muscle in two ways. So let's break this down so you really understand it. One is it gives you muscle endurance. When you take creatine, your muscles will store more energy in reserve. So you can push through at a higher intensity and only have a few minutes of fatigue. So that yay for those of you that are trying to build muscle. The second thing it does when it comes to muscle, it helps you recover faster.

• 9:24Mindy Pelz?

  So creatine rapidly restores the depleted energy in your muscles. And if you normally have to wait two minutes to recover between sprints or lifting weights, creatine may get that down to 90 seconds, 60 seconds. So your recovery will be better. And anytime you are doing brief, high intensity exercise, creatine can help you perform better. So those of you who are walking, maybe rucking, maybe swimming, like you're just doing general exercise. This creatine may not give you that extra boost. But if you're doing HIIT training, where you're like pushing yourself really hard, or you're doing, you know, muscle lifting, where you're trying to get to these eight reps

• 10:07Mindy Pelz?

  with the highest amount of muscle, of weight possible. This is where creatine can really help you. Because intense exercise that lasts less than 30 seconds, creatine can make a very, very big difference for you. So those of you lifting weights, I hope you're getting that creatine can be the secret ingredient to help you push through this. And there are literally decades of research that prove this. And, and so let's dive into some of that. One of them that I found is a large 2025 review that found that creatine significantly increases muscle mass and strength

• 10:52Mindy Pelz?

  in pretty much everyone, regardless of age or sex. That I find fascinating. And people who took creatine were stronger and gained muscle faster. And young or old, women or man, doesn't matter. If you're in a high performance sport, you're pushing your body, creatine can be incredible. ...helpful. So this is why we've been taking it since the 1980s. Benefit number two, brain function. Now, this is one I'm going to dive into here because I've been using creatine for brain function and it's been a game changer. For a long time, we thought creatine only enhanced physical performance.

• 11:35Mindy Pelz?

  But in recent years, they've dove back into the, the science and they found that 95% of the creatine that your body makes, or of the supplements you take, 95% of that is going to go to your muscles. The other 5% is going to go to your brain for cognitive ability. Now, let me tell you a story on this because I'm starting to see this deeply in myself. What I've noticed is the days that I go and do the hardest workout, I actually have the most trouble sleeping that night. So I started to do a little trick because I knew, well, wait, my, I may have depleted

• 12:17Mindy Pelz?

  my creatine stores today because I went on a two-hour hike and I pushed myself really hard and fast on that hike. And so maybe I depleted my creatine stores, which ultimately affected my brain when it, when it came time to sleep. And we'll talk about sleep here in a minute. So knowing that, what I did is I started taking creatine before I went to bed on the days that I had my hardest workout. And I will tell you that my sleep was significantly better, my body relaxed more. I do have a genetic predisposition for restless leg syndrome and I notice when I start to work out super hard, that when I go to bed at night, the restless legs are significantly

• 13:02Mindy Pelz?

  more difficult. But if you go with this logic of 95% of creatine goes to your muscles and only 5% goes to your brain, when you use your muscles in a very extreme way, it depletes those creatine stores. Your muscles aren't going to relax, your brain's going to be wound up. So I've been looking at my tough workout days. And saying, hey, I need to backfill in with creatine because I really depleted it yesterday in that workout. And what we know about the cognitive piece of creatine is that there are several ways that it can absolutely help brain function.

• 13:42Mindy Pelz?

  So there was a 2018 review in the Experimental Gerontology Journal, and it found that creatine improved short-term memory and it improved reasoning, problem-solving skills. So let's put this through a menopausal lens again. I go into my 40s, I lose estrogen. With estrogen, I lose creatine because estrogen stimulated creatine. I'm not eating enough foods, we're going to talk about foods here in a second, that bring creatine back. I'm doubling down on my exercise because I'm trying to lose weight because the menopausal belly is growing, and all of a sudden, I'm having short-term memory problems.

• 14:25Mindy Pelz?

  All of a sudden, I can't focus, my problem-solving skills are low. At that moment, do I just say, oh, it's menopause? Or do I actually move into action and say, huh, maybe my creatine levels need to be brought up? And so many studies are showing that you can increase focus and you can decrease mental fatigue by making sure that you backfill in with your creatine reserves. This review I just talked about also found that stressed people and people over 55 had greater cognitive abilities from taking creatine.

• 15:06Mindy Pelz?

  So stress depletes creatine stores, hard exercise depletes creatine stores, menopause depletes creatine stores, aging depletes creatine stores. So what this review is saying is if you're 55 or older, and I would probably say it's more in women than men for this particular statistic, making sure your creatine levels are high is not only going to have the muscle benefit I talked about, but it's really going to have the brain benefit by improving focus and decreasing mental fatigue. Now, a final note that the authors of this review found that's really interesting is that vegetarians saw a bigger

• 15:48Mindy Pelz?

  ...boost in memory after taking creatine compared to meat eaters. So this ties in to the fact that you can get creatine from food. And I'm going to go through that here in a moment. So don't click away yet. But if you are a vegetarian, there's a large chance you're not getting enough creatine. And I think this is a really important point. We've talked, I talked a lot about this when Eat Like a Girl came out because we wanted to do a plant-based recipes for you. We wanted to do meat-based recipes. And so I wanted to make sure that my plant-based friends had, were invited into the conversation of fasting and eating like a girl.

• 16:31Mindy Pelz?

  And one of my big warnings to my plant-based friends was that you have to remember you're not getting a complete set of aminos if you're not eating meat. Well, what this study is saying is that you also may not be getting enough creatine because creatine is found in animal meat. And we'll go through, you might, you know, I told my vegetarian patients forever, you need to fill in, backfill in with amino acids. And I'm going to add to that now, and creatine. So if creatine is a great solution for you for better brain function, especially if

• 17:09Mindy Pelz?

  you're over 55, especially if you're chronically stressed, and especially if you are a vegetarian. Okay. Benefit number three, and this is one I've been really playing with a lot, which is a deeper sleep. So creatine can help you sleep deeper. And there was a 25 study in nutrition and health that looked at creatine levels and sleep quality in nearly 6,000 US adults. And it found that people in the highest level for creatine intake were about 25% less likely to have sleep problems. I wanted to dive into this even more, so I went and looked at other research.

• 17:54Mindy Pelz?

  A 24 study in nutrients found that women, yay, a women's study, who took five grams of creatine a day slept longer and better. than women who did a placebo effect. So why is that? Let's think this through. So, you know, these were women's studies. So I don't know the age of these women. But I would say, again, we have to look at this through the lens of menopause. And as you are losing estrogen, you're losing creatine. And if you're not eating enough animal protein and you're chronically stressed and you're working out really hard, when you put your head on the pillow every night,

• 18:36Mindy Pelz?

  your creatine stores are probably low. So by taking five grams, I personally have been taking 10 grams at night. And we'll talk about the dosage here in a moment. Before you go to sleep, it's going to bring those stores back up and make it so that your brain can relax and go into a deep sleep. And as I've mentioned to you all before, deep sleep is really important because deep sleep is where your brain actually shrinks. And you start to get more cerebral spinal fluid going through your brain, washing your brain out. And that's important for detoxing the brain. When we look at things like Alzheimer's and dementia,

• 19:19Mindy Pelz?

  we see that one of the things that happens to people who have Alzheimer's and dementia is that they can go back 10, 20 years earlier and they can see that they've had poor sleep for a significant amount of time. And poor sleep leads to more toxins in the brain. More toxins in the brain leads to these tau proteins that are contributing to these cognitive challenges. So creatine before sleep to make sure your brain is fully relaxed and can go into the deep sleep so it can detox you. Okay, benefit number four, jet lag. Now, I've made a pact recently that I'm not traveling too far anymore

• 20:02Mindy Pelz?

  because I got really tired of jet lag. But I wish I had known the studies on jet lag and creatine that I'm going to report to you. So here's what a 24 study in Nature Scientific reports that creatine

• 20:17Mindy Pelz?

  Improves cognitive performance when you are sleep deprived. So, sleep deprived, this is a quote from the study. Sleep deprived people maintained strong cognitive performance after taking a single dose of creatine, while people who took a placebo showed a major drop in focus and slower mental processing speed. Now, with this one, for sure, you know, when, if you're one of those people that you get on to your new time zone and you've got to perform, like I used to have to be on for two, three hour interviews, you're doing anything to get that cognitive performance to happen and most of us are grabbing on to our cup of coffee.

• 21:01Mindy Pelz?

  Caffeine's a very interesting molecule. It's actually a nootropic, which enhances brain function. But any of us who have been sleep deprived because of jet lag will say like, two, three, four cups of coffee to try to get yourself on that time zone is only going to lead you to worse sleep at night. So, what this 24th study said is that if you need to stay alert after switching time zones, take 15 to 20 grams of creatine when you land. That's what this study says. Other studies will say up to 25 grams when you land.

• 21:41Mindy Pelz?

  But it can really help you stay sharp and combat jet lag and give you at these higher doses, especially, I want to point out one thing, creatine can dehydrate you. So at these higher doses, make sure that you're drinking plenty of water as well. So those are the four benefits: muscle growth, jet lag, deep sleep, and brain function. Those are the main things that creatine is going to help you with. Now, what are the best sources for creatine? So if this topic fascinates you, you want to dive into it more, I just want to remind you that I did a whole chapter on exercise the menopause way in Age Like a Girl,

• 22:26Mindy Pelz?

  and on page 1 For those of you that have the book, I have a creatine and collagen checklist to make sure that you are actually getting all the possible sources that you can possibly get. I'm a huge fan of you getting any nutrient through food as opposed to supplement. It's just that creatine sources are a little limited. So the best sources of creatine are meat and fish. But there is some nuance here because creatine is on its own is heat stable. But the second it comes in contact with a liquid, it starts to break down at high heat.

• 23:08Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, we're going to talk about this one because there's nothing more that I like than having a ton of people come at me with a question trying to prove me wrong, and I don't mind being wrong, and tell me that I misread a study or I didn't add into my protocol some little piece of information. And the feedback that I'm getting from a lot of people right now on my socials is you can't put creatine in your coffee because I'd love to put creatine in my coffee in the morning. I love to do it before a workout when I have a cup of coffee. But here's the deal, just if you're like, wait a second, creatine breaks down if you heat it up.

• 23:49Mindy Pelz?

  Anything over 140 or up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit causes creatine to degrade. So if your cup of coffee is 140 to 150 degrees in temperature and you put creatine into it, yes, the creatine will break down and you won't get the effects. For me, my coffee is not that hot. And one of the things I love to do is put some creatine in my coffee in the morning, put a little bit of collagen powder before I go out and surf or hike or workout.

• 24:28Mindy Pelz?

  I absolutely notice a difference when I take it in the morning before a big workout. It is Absolutely a game changer for workouts and I personally like it in my coffee. And I don't drink coffee at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So if you have really hot coffee, it might not be the place for you to put your creatine. Okay, so in order to get creatine from food, this also means that we can't get our beef and fish sources cannot be heated up to 140 or 150 degrees Fahrenheit. So this means you're going to want to keep your beef or lamb rare to medium rare.

• 25:13Mindy Pelz?

  That's, that's, that's music to my ears because that's how I like my food to be cooked. Rare meat is between 125 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, which preserves the creatine. And you'll get a big dose of it if you eat your meat on the cooler side. But anything past medium is going to be too hot. Another suggestion that some of the studies showed is beef tartare, raw beef. If that works for you, it's even better. And it's really high in creatine. The other great source of creatine is raw fish. So sushi, sashimi are all great sources of creatine because you haven't heated it

• 25:56Mindy Pelz?

  up and broken that creatine down. Now, two other animal proteins that aren't great in creatine are chicken and pork. They're just, don't have as much in it. And by the time you cook them to a safe temperature, most of the creatine is gone. So we really need to look at beef. I would encourage you to do grass-fed beef. And fish, I would encourage you to do wild fish so that you're maximizing the creatine load. Now, a lot of people will say, that's confusing, or I don't, I don't eat, I don't eat raw meat, or rare meat, or medium rare meat, and I don't eat fish. Well, this is where you would supplement.

• 26:41Mindy Pelz?

  So this is the exact way in which you would supplement, just like the amino acids. When I worked with my My vegetarian patients, and I was like, you're not getting enough amino acids. So therefore, you're not going to build as much muscle and you're not going to have, you need amino acids for hormones and neurotransmitter production. And so I would put them all on an amino acid supplement. So again, as much as I am a fan of teaching you everything you can about supplementing your health with good food, if we're not doing certain foods, then we're not supplementing it in, which means we need to go to the supplement itself. So, how do you supplement with creatine?

• 27:23Mindy Pelz?

  Because it's not just like you take a scoop full and off you go. So the first thing to know is that you want to make sure you get creatine monohydrate. It is the gold standard for what people have been taking for over 50 years. There are a lot of other options for creatine, but I think that the world is understanding monohydrate is your primary source. But if you see creatine hydrochloride, or creatine HCl for short, or creatine ethyl ester, CEE for short, or liquid creatine drinks, those are not going to give you the same creatine burst.

• 28:07Mindy Pelz?

  And they're probably cheaper to make, so make sure you don't get pulled into, oh, this is the least expensive. You want creatine monohydrate. Now, for me, many of you ask me, well, what are you taking? The brand that I prefer is put out by a company that I really respect called Qualia. And they have a creatine, we'll leave a link in the show notes here, and they have discount codes. And I just want to say, I have used other creatine sources, so there's a lot of good ones out there. Personally, I trust Qualia because they always have clean ingredients, I know the company, and I've seen the results in myself.

• 28:52Mindy Pelz?

  So if you had, you know, if you asked me at a preference, I would say creatine Creatine monohydrate from Qualia would be my resource. But in a pinch, if you need to go down to your local GNC, or you go down to your local health food store, you might find that you just grab a creatine monohydrate and it will be just fine. So, but make sure it's monohydrate. Now, how much should you take? So, the standard dose that everybody is saying is 5 grams a day, mixed in water. It doesn't taste like anything. I mean, it's not like yummy, but it's not, it doesn't have much of a taste to me. It's just a little gritty, I think, when I drink it in water.

• 29:36Mindy Pelz?

  And remember, it takes a while for creatine to build up in the muscles. So, it's gonna go there first. So, what the literature recommends is that when you first start taking creatine, that you do a loading phase. And the loading phase that science is recommending is 15 grams of creatine a day. And they recommend you do that for one week. And that you split it into 5 grams 3 times a day. So, you go 5 grams in the morning, let your muscles take that in, 5 grams midday, and 5 grams at the end of the day. And then after you do that for a week,

• 30:16Mindy Pelz?

  the assumption is going to be that your creatine stores have come back to their normal levels. And so, you can just drop down to 5 grams a day. So, you're not meant to take 15 grams a day all the time. Let's go to the jet lag one. Well, you're in a new environment. That's stressful, so stress went up. Remember, we talked about stress being a depletion of creatine. So, you're gonna need to take a 15 to 20 gram dose. If you have to take it all at once, you take it all at once. But if you can, split it up, split it up. But just the sheer act of going to a new time zone depleted your creatine stores in your brain, but you've gotta build it up in your muscles first,

• 31:01Mindy Pelz?

  because 95% of it goes to your muscles. And then you gotta get it to a level where it tips over into the 5% that goes to your brain. Are you catching me? If you have a hard workout, you might come home and immediately do 5 grams. ...grams to restore what was lost after the workout. I use it at the end of the day. Sometimes if I've had hard workouts, used my brain a lot, and I want to sleep, I'll do five to 10 grams before I go to sleep. So do you see that there is this rhythm of your body restores it? You deplete it. Your body fills it back up? You deplete it.

• 31:43Mindy Pelz?

  Now, you're not going to restore your creatine levels as much if you're menopausal, if you're over 55, if you're a vegetarian, and if you're stressed out, or you go to a new time zone. So then we're going to need to really backfill in with larger doses. Now, two things about creatine that you should really know, because it can shock you when you first start taking creatine supplements. First, creatine is very dehydrating. So make sure you drink a lot of water. I started doing, because I've been really honing in on my sleep this year, and so I decided to play with the dosage before I went to bed. And I tried a 20-milligram dose one night.

• 32:25Mindy Pelz?

  Oh my God, the next day, I was so thirsty, I couldn't get enough water. So make sure that you are drinking lots of water. And if you started getting a headache, or you're feeling tired after taking your creatine, that just might be dehydration. Okay, second thing I want you to think about, and this one's a biggie. I noticed this for myself when I started taking creatine, and it can cause people to shy away from it, is that you may gain a few pounds. Okay. Now you're like, "Oh, everything sounded good until that," right? Well, here's the thing, it's not fat. Creatine requires water to store itself in muscles.

• 33:09Mindy Pelz?

  This is why it dehydrates you, because it grabs onto those water molecules and pushes it into your muscles. And when you first start taking it, you can gain, if you're a scale watcher, you can gain two to four pounds. When you start taking it, but it's all water weight. So don't panic if the scale goes up. It's not fat and the water weight will balance out after about this. Especially if you're doing that loading week where you do like one week of 15 grams. You might feel like you're a little bit retaining more, more water. But if after that, you will notice that the, that you won't retain it as much.

• 33:50Mindy Pelz?

  And what I've noticed personally is as long as I'm doing some dosage of creatine every day, I don't end up with that water retention. I did notice the first time I started taking creatine that my cheeks looked a little pudgy. And I was like, what am I, what's going on? What am I doing? And then that's where I started to dive into this weight gain theory with creatine. But it's only in the beginning. If you take it regularly, it you'll, you're probably only going to see it in the, in the high doses. And just make sure you could keep drinking water so that your body doesn't hold on to water. It has enough water resources.

• 34:35Mindy Pelz?

  So, so that's creatine. I, I'm, I'm a fan. I would, I would say that it took me a lot of time to figure out when I wanted to take it for my lifestyle. I'm really enjoying taking it at the end of the day now. Although if I know I'm going to have a hard workout, I might do five grams in the morning and 10 grams at night. I think the, the water retention is real and you need to just be aware of it. And I think it's a hero for a lot of people, especially the menopausal woman, because it can really help her bring her cognitive capabilities back.

• 35:14Mindy Pelz?

  And this ties into a larger menopause conversation, which is we look at the brain fog. We look at the weight gain and we think our only solution, we look at the muscle. You know, a lot of times your muscles will break down when you go through, through menopause. And we think it's, oh, I gotta get on. I gotta, I gotta find the right doctor. It's because estrogen went down. But what I really was trying to bring forward in Age Like a Girl is that there's a lot of neurochemicals and molecules that suffer when estrogen goes down, and creatine is absolutely one of those. And so, we want to make sure that you're keeping your creatine levels high. I even saw a study the other day

• 35:59Mindy Pelz?

  that showed you can build muscle with creatine alone. So those of you who are obsessing on getting 1.2 grams to 1.6 grams, which is the new food pyramid recommendations for protein, and you're gaining weight eating so much protein, you might do a lot less protein and make sure that you keep your creatine stores through supplementation up. So, I hope that helps. I do want to tell you that I, if you're, I hope you're not confused, but if you are, or you want to have a deeper conversation with me and the community that I've created over on Substack, please join my Substack. It's called The Health Incubator. And what I'm doing over there

• 36:42Mindy Pelz?

  is I'm taking very specific topics, just like creatine. And with my subscribers, we are getting into the nuance of how does creatine work best for you. And I'm really excited to have this platform to be able to do that. Most of you are either hearing me on the podcast or hearing me on YouTube with this video, and you can leave a comment, but it's hard for us to get in a dialogue. So, at The Health Incubator, over in my Substack, we can have a dialogue about how do we make this fit right for you? We can learn from other people that are experimenting with things like creatine and what kind of results they are getting, and we can all learn together. So, if you want more information, you want to go deeper on this conversation,

• 37:27Mindy Pelz?

  come find me on my Substack. And, most importantly, let's explore this. Let's get curious about this and see how it can benefit each one of us uniquely. As always, I hope that helps. That helps.

• 37:42Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.