151: Creatine 101 - Everything You Should Know

In this episode, I break down creatine in a way that actually makes sense—what creatine is, how creatine works in your body, and the real creatine benefits you should care about. We walk through the science in simple terms, its rise as a staple supplement, and how it supports muscle growth, performance, and everyday life. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 01:04 Call to Action: Why You Should Take Creatine 02:36 About Creapure: The Purest Creatine 08:01 Understanding Creatine: What It Is and How It Works 17:16 The History and Evolution of Creatine 25:31 Creatine Benefits: Athletic Performance and Beyond 41:25 Debunking Common Creatine Myths 49:11 How to Use Creatine Effectively 54:11 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Creatine Monohydrate sourced from Creapure®, shown to increase strength, power and performance. https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/products/creatine-monohydrate?srsltid=AfmBOor45H8LbefuyPJdo3ga7WBC812wxJmpvNg1yFaCcC-Ky5Rk9UTd ORDER MY BOOK HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://bpn.team/member IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

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

• 0:05Nick Bare?

  Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is all about creatine.

• 0:16Nick Bare?

  What creatine is, the benefits, some of the history about how creatine came to be and has become so popular these last couple of years. I'd say even so, as I'm recording this, December 2025, in the last 12 months, creatine has become very, very popular, not just in terms of athletic performance, improving, enhancing, optimizing athletic performance, but for the mental benefits, mental processing, memory, longevity.

• 0:58Nick Bare?

  There's a lot that I want to dive into in all things creatine. But before we do, I do have a call to action within this episode. There's actually two calls to action. The first is, I hope that by the time you're done listening to this episode, if you're not supplementing with creatine on a daily basis, you go buy creatine right away. Creatine is one of those supplements that I believe everybody, just about everybody, depending on some of your medical conditions.

• 1:33Nick Bare?

  Almost everybody should be supplementing their diet with creatine monohydrate every single day, every single day. Now, we don't monetize this podcast, as you might know. We don't run ads on this podcast and we don't plan to.

• 1:53Nick Bare?

  We want to provide, I want to provide a lot of value to the listeners. And really, the goal of this podcast for me and the BPN brand is if you enjoy the content, if you find it valuable and you listen to it on a regular basis. My hope is that you go support us by purchasing BARE Performance Nutrition Supplements. Go to bpnsubs.com and try and purchase our, our products. That's the best way to support me, to support us through this podcast and the content. Like I said, we, we don't run ads, we don't monetize, we don't plan to ever monetize this podcast. Now, we sell creatine monohydrate.

• 2:40Nick Bare?

  On our website, you can get 60 servings, that's 65 gram servings, or 30 servings, 35 gram servings. And we exclusively source our creatine monohydrate from a brand called Creapure. And we've been selling Creapure creatine monohydrate for years now. And the reason that's super important, and I share that, is because the brand name of Creapure is the most pure creatine monohydrate you can get. It is produced by a company called Alschem in Germany. Creapure is the most widely studied form of creatine in the market, and it's proven to be safe and effective.

• 3:25Nick Bare?

  And what makes Creapure so unique and different compared to a lot of the other creatines that are widely available online, in retail, is the way that it is produced.

• 3:41Nick Bare?

  Creapure uses a unique, safe and effective way to produce creatine without the undesirable byproducts, which are actually commonly found in some of the creatine products in the market. Some of those byproducts, I don't want to butcher this, okay? So it's called DCD, which is di-syanid diamide and DHT, dihydrotryazine. Those are two commonly undesirable byproducts.

• 4:15Nick Bare?

  That can occur in the creatine production process. But because of Al's Chem's unique production process that is proprietary to them, they have found a way to produce creatine without these nasty undesirable byproducts. So you know that when you're purchasing and consuming Creapure, it is safe, it is effective, it is pure, and it is without the nasty undesirable byproducts. That's what makes Creapure so unique, so special, so beneficial. And in my honest opinion, this is not just because we sell Creapure creatine monohydrate.

• 4:58Nick Bare?

  It is the only creatine you should be consuming. Because you know how good it is, how good it is for you, and you don't get any of the nasty sides that come with a less pure product. Now, on top of that, we get all of our supplements. Every supplement we sell here at BPN is NSF certified for sport. So this is a program that we are enrolled in. And NSF certified for sport verifies that the product does not contain unsafe levels of contaminants, prohibited substances, or masking agents. And what is on the label actually matches what is in the product.

• 5:43Nick Bare?

  And NSF certified for sport is the only independent third-party certification program recognized by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, also known as USADA. So not only do we here at BPN sell creatine monohydrate, we only sell Creapure creatine monohydrate. And our creatine, just like all of our other supplements that we offer, are tested and certified by NSF for sport. So that's the call to action before we dive into all this material.

• 6:22Nick Bare?

  If you're not taking creatine, start taking creatine. And if you're gonna take creatine, make sure you're taking and consuming Creapure Creatine Monohydrate.

• 6:35Nick Bare?

  Now, I've been an advocate, I've been a fan of creatine supplementation for years now. I've been using creatine

• 6:46Nick Bare?

  since I was 18 years old. So for the last 15 years, I've been supplementing with creatine. Five grams a day minimum, sometimes even 10 grams of a day of creatine.

• 7:07Nick Bare?

  I've always been a fan, an advocate of creatine. But even more so, as I was preparing for this episode, I read a few books, I went through some of the more recent research and studies. I'm even more sold on creatine supplementation now than ever before. And like I said in the beginning of this episode, it is a product, it is a supplement that I believe everybody should be taking.

• 7:38Nick Bare?

  So, those are some of the things I wanted to get out of the way before we dive into some of the meat and potatoes of this episode. But I, I feel this strong conviction around creatine supplementation, not just for athletic performance, but for all the health benefits that come with and from creatine. Now, what is creatine? Okay, creatine is synthesized from three amino acids. Those amino acids are arginine, glycine, and methionine. Now amino acids are the building blocks of protein.

• 8:22Nick Bare?

  The way that I want to think about, or I should say, the way that I would love for you to think about creatine,

• 8:30Nick Bare?

  it's all about energy.

• 8:33Nick Bare?

  Creatine is an enabler. It enables movement, it enables performance, and it enables endurance at the cellular level.

• 8:49Nick Bare?

  Creatine is mostly stored in the muscles and in the brain as a phosphocreatine. And we'll get into phosphocreatine here in a little bit. But just remember that phosphocreatine is the way that your body stores creatine. After your body either produces it, or it's consumed through food or supplementation. Creatine is a naturally occurring compound. And our bodies naturally produce about 1 to 2 grams of creatine daily. So it's naturally occurring, and our bodies actually produce it.

• 9:32Nick Bare?

  But not enough. Because our bodies use a lot of energy. And like what I said, creatine is an energy enabler. So there's, you know, whatever your opinions, thoughts, or historical perspectives about creatine are. I'm sure a lot of people, myself included, have always viewed creatine as a bodybuilding, muscle building, strength supplement. But let's shift the narrative, let's shift the perspective. It is an energy enabler, an energy fuel source. Okay, that's what creatine is.

• 10:17Nick Bare?

  So our bodies naturally produce about 1 to 2 grams per day. And then you can also get creatine from your diet. Now, you're gonna get creatine from your diet through meat sources. And for most people, on a common diet, you're consuming about 1 to 2 grams of creatine daily. And like I said, this is coming from meats primarily. So if you are a vegetarian, if you are vegan, if you don't consume meat sources, you're probably not getting any creatine in your diet, which is even more reason to supplement with creatine monohydrate.

• 11:04Nick Bare?

  Now, the way that creatine works. Okay, like I mentioned, phosphocreatine. The creatine, phosphocreatine system. This is how your body is going to utilize creatine to create this energy. So, we're gonna get a little scientific here, but I'm gonna try to keep it high level. And my goal here is just to provide education and context that arms you with how creatine works within the body. So you know why you should be consuming it and what benefits you might be provided.

• 11:40Nick Bare?

  So our body, our bodies, use ATP for energy. This is our body's energy currency. And our bodies use ATP for nearly every

• 11:56Nick Bare?

  function within the body that requires energy. Now, the cells can only store a small amount of ATP. And during

• 12:09Nick Bare?

  high intensity activity or movement, this supply of ATP is depleted very quickly. The higher the intensity, the faster it's depleted.

• 12:22Nick Bare?

  And when I say fast, I mean within seconds. And this is why it's so beneficial for strength training or athletic performance, which we'll get into. Because at higher levels of intensity, we're burning through this ATP, the cellular level of energy, very fast, very quickly.

• 12:44Nick Bare?

  Now, when our body utilizes this energy source being ATP, it breaks down into ADP. So imagine you're in the gym and you're bench pressing. Let's just use very common, basic movements and function. You're in the gym, you're bench pressing. You have a moderate amount of weight on the bar. And you start performing some repetitions. Your body needs energy. So it is breaking down the energy source ATP

• 13:19Nick Bare?

  by donating a phosphate molecule. When ATP is broken down, it's broken down into ADP.

• 13:29Nick Bare?

  This is where your body now has to regenerate

• 13:34Nick Bare?

  energy to keep performing.

• 13:37Nick Bare?

  This is where phosphocreatine comes into play. So you're bench pressing.

• 13:44Nick Bare?

  At the cellular level, you're breaking down ATP into ADP.

• 13:51Nick Bare?

  And now your body wants to regenerate

• 13:56Nick Bare?

  energy. So it's donating a phosphocreatine molecule to ADP to turn that ADP back into ATP quickly and efficiently.

• 14:13Nick Bare?

  ATP regeneration is catalyzed by the enzyme creatine kinase. And this is one of the fastest energy regeneration processes in the entire human body, which is quite significant to say.

• 14:31Nick Bare?

  The more phosphocreatine available in your muscles, the faster you can regenerate ATP during high intensity efforts, which means the more total work volume you can perform. So when you supplement with creatine

• 14:50Nick Bare?

  and the recommended dose is about five grams every day, your body will store that creatine in the muscles and in the brain primarily as phosphocreatine. Okay, so our goal with supplementing with creatine is that we want to saturate our muscles and the brain with phosphocreatine. Just like the way when you consume carbohydrates and your body breaks down those carbohydrates and stores them in the muscle and in the liver as glycogen.

• 15:24Nick Bare?

  This is the same way, or at least similar, that when you consume creatine, your body breaks down and stores creatine in the muscles and in the brain as phosphocreatine. You want to saturate. Just like your glycogen stores, your phosphocreatine stores, so that your body can tap into those stores and regenerate energy, regenerate ATP as it's being broken down.

• 15:55Nick Bare?

  So when our phosphocretine stores are available, again, in the muscle and in the brain, when it comes to athletic performance, we can perform more repetitions. We have improved faster recovery between sets of exercise, and we can maintain higher intensity for longer periods of time.

• 16:19Nick Bare?

  So that's what creatine is. That's how it's stored. That's how it's utilized. And now you can hopefully view creatine. And we'll get into some of the myths a little bit later in this episode. You can start viewing and thinking about creatine, not as a muscle building supplement necessarily, not as a steroid, as people used to think and believe, and I think some people still do.

• 16:47Nick Bare?

  It is an energy regeneration, regenerating molecule in substance. We want to saturate our muscles and our brain because the brain uses phosphocretine as well, so that we can regenerate energy. We can regenerate fuel. We can regenerate ATP.

• 17:16Nick Bare?

  So let's talk about the origins and introduction of creatine primarily into the fitness industry. I found this very interesting. I didn't know a lot of this before some of my research, and it's quite interesting if you kind of track, you know, the origin stories and the evolution of creatine. So it was first identified in the early 1800s by a French scientist named Michael Eugene Travell.

• 17:52Nick Bare?

  And its name, creatine, comes from a Greek word, krias, which means meat, due to its concentration in muscle-rich foods like beef and fish. As I previously mentioned, creatine is naturally occurring, and you can get, like I said, one to two grams.

• 18:15Nick Bare?

  From your your food supply daily, primarily coming from meats like beef and fish. In 1927,

• 18:27Nick Bare?

  a man by the name of Lomon discovered phosphocreatine,

• 18:34Nick Bare?

  the energy storing form of creatine,

• 18:38Nick Bare?

  which, like I said, it acts as a rapid reserve for ATP regeneration. So in 1927, the discovery and some of the science started coming out about how creatine is actually used, how it's stored and how your body utilizes it to regenerate energy being ATP.

• 19:02Nick Bare?

  Now, it wasn't until the 1990s that creatine entered the fitness industry as a legal and effective way to improve athletic performance. I found this so interesting. In 1992, at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, there was a British sprinter named Winfried Christie. And he credited his success in part, not fully, but in part, to creatine monohydrate supplementation in his build and his training in the process to perform at such an elite level in the 92 Olympics. And this kind of created this flywheel of interest

• 19:46Nick Bare?

  and more research in the attraction to creatine supplementation in terms of athletic performance.

• 19:56Nick Bare?

  By the mid 1990s, creatine was flying off supplement store shelves. And by 2003, over 200 peer reviewed studies had been published on creatine. And the International Society of Sports Nutrition, ISSN, actually issued a position stand on its safety and effectiveness. This is what they said. This was this was published in 2007.

• 20:25Nick Bare?

  By the ISSN, which is a big deal. Creatine monohydrate is the most effective nutrition supplement currently available to athletes in terms of increasing high intensity exercise capacity and lean body mass during training. And as of today, there are over 1,000 clinical studies, clinical studies

• 20:51Nick Bare?

  on creatine covering sports performance, cognitive health, injury recovery, and disease prevention. So when we say that creatine monohydrate supplementation is the most studied supplement in terms of not just athletic performance, but now cognitive health, injury recovery, disease prevention. It has been studied time and time again, showing its positive benefit, the results, and its significance on the impact of regenerating energy, regenerating ATP.

• 21:38Nick Bare?

  It's no longer a question of does creatine work, is creatine safe?

• 21:45Nick Bare?

  The answer is yes. It is safe, it is effective, it works. We know this.

• 21:55Nick Bare?

  I remember,

• 21:59Nick Bare?

  man, when, when I first got into the, the fitness space.

• 22:05Nick Bare?

  You know, this was

• 22:08Nick Bare?

  mid to late 2000s. And coming from a small town, central Pennsylvania. And, you know, my, my introduction into the fitness space, the fitness industry was primarily the bodybuilding space.

• 22:26Nick Bare?

  Creatine was popular, widely spread, acknowledged. But there was also this perception around creatine that it was unsafe, that it was just for bodybuilders. There were so many myths that were going around, and we'll get into some of those myths. I remember when my mom found out I was taking creatine when I was, you know, late in high school. She thought I was on steroids. She thought I was on drugs because of the perception that creatine had.

• 23:02Nick Bare?

  It is more than a sports performance supplement. And the thing about creatine is it's not a shortcut, but it is a science-backed, a science-accredited, a science-acknowledged, a science-studied advantage. It is an advantage that we can utilize to not just improve athletic performance, but also mental performance as well.

• 23:33Nick Bare?

  I love this, this term, and I'm gonna say it again, but energy or creatine is an energy enabler. Energy enabler. Just think of creatine in terms of that, as opposed to just a strength and muscle supplement. It enables energy at the cellular level, physical and mental performance.

• 23:55Nick Bare?

  And creatine studies have exploded over the last couple of years. Exploded.

• 24:02Nick Bare?

  We're now seeing

• 24:06Nick Bare?

  everyone of all ages, all fitness experiences, different jobs, different interests, consuming and using creatine.

• 24:18Nick Bare?

  And it's amazing to see. It's amazing to see how widespread and acknowledged it has become. And, and what's even more amazing to see, you know, you don't see this very often, when something gets such a bad reputation early on. I believe creatine got a bad reputation because of its perception in the bodybuilding and athletic or muscle building space and industry,

• 24:47Nick Bare?

  that it was put into a box. Creatine was put in this box of it's, it's for this sport, this activity, this purpose only.

• 24:56Nick Bare?

  And a lot of people who had a negative attitude or perception or connotation around creatine were not open minded to what else it could do because the the science wasn't widespread. The studies weren't acknowledged or widespread, so it was kept in this box, which is so unfortunate because of how powerful of a supplement it can and is for so many people outside of just the bodybuilding, muscle building, strength arena. So let's talk about some of the creatine benefits and these benefits I'm going to bring up

• 25:37Nick Bare?

  are backed by, as I mentioned, over 1,000 clinical studies.

• 25:46Nick Bare?

  You know, a lot of times you'll find supplements or products or ingredients, single ingredients that have research, that have studies, but it might be a few studies and some of those studies can be kind of weak, meaning there's bias, they have small sample sizes.

• 26:12Nick Bare?

  There's not a whole lot of validity behind them, but when it comes to creatine, over 1,000 clinical studies of really good studies, meaningful studies.

• 26:25Nick Bare?

  When it comes to clinical research and studies, not every study is

• 26:35Nick Bare?

  the same, but I guess I want to say not every study is credible. You know, sometimes you'll find a a study that shows

• 26:45Nick Bare?

  positive benefit or maybe in some cases negative consequences around a certain achievable outcome.

• 26:58Nick Bare?

  And you can pick apart the study of finding out why. Maybe the sample size, for example, was too small. Sample size being if you're in a study and you have 10 participants, for example, that's a small sample size. It's really challenging to pull some really effective and meaningful data and reports and outcomes from a small sample size. When you have large sample sizes, dozens, hundreds, thousands of individuals who are going through a study, and you have multiple studies that are showing consistent results and outcomes,

• 27:38Nick Bare?

  you can build a lot of credibility and proof behind that research. When it comes to creatine, I mean, we have, as I've mentioned already, over 1,000 clinical studies with ranges of small sample sizes in some cases, and then huge, large sample sizes in some studies. So the benefits that we're about to talk about are not just, hey, we think this may happen. No, we know this happens based off of the research that has been done. And I think the, the, the main benefit that many of us know about

• 28:19Nick Bare?

  is strength and power, muscle building. Creatine started as an athletic performance supplement, and to this day, it's probably still mostly recognized and used for athletic performance, enhancing training ability. By supplementing with creatine, you can experience, you know, higher force output. You can maintain peak power for longer. You can increase your total working load or volume, and you can recover faster in between efforts. So how does this happen?

• 29:01Nick Bare?

  We'll go back to kind of what creatine is just briefly and how it works.

• 29:08Nick Bare?

  When you're in the gym and let's talk about resistance training. Classic resistance strength training right now. Where you're utilizing weights, whether that's machines, bars, dumbbells. There's a certain load on those machines or those bars or dumbbells being a weight. And you are resisting that weight as you perform the exercise.

• 29:36Nick Bare?

  We'll go back to the bench press or maybe in this case, let's use the barbell squat. You load the barbell with weight. You get under the bar and you start doing some reps.

• 29:47Nick Bare?

  Now you do that first set.

• 29:51Nick Bare?

  What is making you fatigue partly towards the end of that first set where you can't do any more reps is your muscles don't have any more energy.

• 30:01Nick Bare?

  So you're doing the set, you're performing the reps.

• 30:06Nick Bare?

  The ATP, the energy source in your muscles is breaking down to a point where you don't have any energy left. And you can't perform any more reps.

• 30:15Nick Bare?

  Once you re-rack that weight and you're not performing the exercise anymore and you start resting. This is the importance of rest in between sets and an appropriate amount of rest.

• 30:28Nick Bare?

  What's happening in the body right now is that ATP was broken down into ADP.

• 30:37Nick Bare?

  So it lost a phosphate molecule, it was broken down. This regeneration process happens so quickly that the phosphocretine that is stored in the muscle now donates a phosphate molecule to ADP. Turning it back into ATP. So that when you go back into that second set, your muscles now have energy again. And if your muscles are saturated with phosphocreatine, which will only happen if you are supplementing with creatine on a regular basis, you can then regenerate that ATP more efficiently and faster. So when you go into that second set,

• 31:24Nick Bare?

  you can perform more reps at a higher efforts, greater intensity. You rack the weight again, same process occurs. Your muscles donate a phosphate molecule from the phosphocreatine. It turns that ADP back into ATP, and you can hit your third, fourth, fifth set with more intensity at higher volumes.

• 31:54Nick Bare?

  So not only does creatine supplementation help you with generating higher force output,

• 32:06Nick Bare?

  you can do it for longer, and you recover more quickly and more efficiently in between sets. The more working volume you're doing in a workout, the more weight, the more reps, the more sets, the stronger you will become, the bigger your muscles will become, you'll get stronger, get faster, you get bigger.

• 32:31Nick Bare?

  It is amazing. It is amazing supplement for athletic performance in terms of strength, power, and muscle building. We're able to build more muscle if we can do more working volume. When it comes to athletic performance, a lot of times we talk about progressive overload. So progressive overload is, over a long period of time, doing more working volume, whether that's being able to lift more weight, or add in more reps, or add in more sets. And one of the science-backed advantages that we can offer our bodies is by saturating our muscles with phosphocreatine.

• 33:16Nick Bare?

  And we do this through creatine supplementation.

• 33:20Nick Bare?

  Now, another benefit

• 33:23Nick Bare?

  to creatine supplementation is recovery. It's been shown that

• 33:30Nick Bare?

  Creatine supplementation, having phosphocreatine stores saturated within the muscle can reduce inflammation. So it does this by inhibiting inflammatory cell adhesion and signaling. And it reduces oxidative stress similar to the way that antioxidants work within the body.

• 33:52Nick Bare?

  And there are anti-catabolic effects on muscle and bone with creatine supplementation. So it's not only helping us to generate more power and athletic performance when we're training, but it's also helping us to recover faster and more efficiently when we're not training. So it has performance and recovery benefits. It has also been shown to be beneficial for endurance training. This is a question that I have received many times over the year. Is creatine just for resistance training? Is it just for bodybuilding? Is it just for strength training?

• 34:33Nick Bare?

  Does creatine supplementation have any crossover application to endurance training?

• 34:40Nick Bare?

  And it actually does. There has been research showing it is positively beneficial for endurance training. And here's how. This is why consuming creatine with your post-workout meal or post-workout shake or just alongside of a meal is that creatine helps enhance glycogen storage. So when you consume carbohydrates, as we've talked about, you consume carbs, your body digests and breaks down carbohydrates. And for the glucose, the carbs that your body isn't using immediately,

• 35:20Nick Bare?

  it stores those carbohydrates in the form of glycogen in the muscle and in the liver. So that when we go out and perform longer distance endurance events later, what our body needs to break down a long-term energy storage solution, that being muscle glycogen, creatine supplementation can enhance our body's ability to store glycogen. Extremely beneficial for endurance athletes, endurance training.

• 35:56Nick Bare?

  It has been shown to reduce muscle damage. Great for endurance training, endurance athletes. And as we've already mentioned, it helps with recovery by reducing inflammation. And not only will you store more carbohydrates, reduce muscle damage, faster recovery. So creatine supplementation might not benefit endurance training and endurance athletes in the same way that it's benefiting strength athletes. You know, think of strength training in terms of creatine's primarily use being to regenerate ATP

• 36:41Nick Bare?

  in these quicker, faster, type 2 muscle fiber scenarios where you're performing fast repetitions, higher intensity, you need to regenerate this ATP very quickly. That's how it's being used around strength training, resistance training. But when it comes to endurance training, creatine is beneficial in terms of glycogen storage, reduce muscle damage, and recovery in between training sessions. Now here's where a lot of the more recent research has become very popular. Cognitive enhancement being a huge benefit for creatine.

• 37:25Nick Bare?

  Now, the brain uses about 20% of the body's energy, which is wild. Because on average, the brain is only about 2% of an individual's body weight, on average. A healthy individual, the brain, being only about 2% of our body weight, uses 20% of our body's energy, which is a significant amount.

• 38:00Nick Bare?

  A significant amount of that energy that our, our, our brains used is utilized for housekeeping, to maintain cells. But when the brain is engaged in more complex tasks, the energy consumption in that specific area of the brain can increase. It, it's minor compared to the brain's baseline energy use. But if we put more stress, more demand on our brain, our brains will use more energy. It needs more energy. Creatine is critical for energy metabolism, and its job is to transport energy where it needs to be.

• 38:42Nick Bare?

  So supplementing with creatine can increase brain energy. That's amazing. Because most of our phosphocreatine storage, like we've mentioned, is in the muscles and in the brain.

• 39:00Nick Bare?

  Research has shown that creatine supplementation can and will benefit cognitive function, particularly in the domains of memory, attention time, and information processing speed. And there's actually been some promising, yet still early, studies showing positive cognition boost in patients with Alzheimer's and dementia.

• 39:29Nick Bare?

  Which is remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. It can support emotional regulation and mood stability, and can reduce mental fatigue under stress or sleep loss. I've heard a lot of people talking about this recently, where if you are sleep deprived, you can actually minimize and in some cases eliminate the feelings of sleep deprivation and mental fatigue with larger doses of creatine supplementation and consumption.

• 40:08Nick Bare?

  So not only is creatine beneficial for strength, power, muscle building, improving lean body mass, recovery, endurance training, overall athletic performance, but now there's this, this aspect of cognitive enhancement and improvement, which in my opinion shifts creatine from being a sports performance supplement to a health supplement.

• 40:44Nick Bare?

  An energy enabler for everybody, not just for being in the gym, not just for building muscle and mass, but being able to perform on a daily basis. Memory, mood, mental processing time. You can show up for your job, your responsibilities, life in a more meaningful way because your brain is just firing and cooking in the same way that your body, your muscles are firing and cooking in the gym in between sessions.

• 41:18Nick Bare?

  It's a powerful supplement that has been shown to be beneficial, not just for the body, but also the mind. Now there are and had been a lot of creatine myths over the years. I've heard all of these myths. As I mentioned, when I first started using creatine, when I was a teenager, I had to hide my creatine in my drawer in my bedroom because my mom thought it was performance enhancing drugs. You know, it's had this negative connotation over the years, which I believe are now being debunked.

• 41:57Nick Bare?

  But there, I wanted to make a note. I believe that creatine's early association with bodybuilding in the way that it started becoming more popular in the fitness space. You know, you go to the Arnold Fitness Expo or you'd be on the bodybuilding.com forums, or you'd be reading bodybuilding magazines and it's this jacked individual with a bottle of creatine in their hand. So there's this early association between creatine and bodybuilding. And then ultimately steroids. And it had a hard reputation from the beginning. And there was a lot of over cautious medical providers early on and probably still are today, who aren't familiar with the research and the studies,

• 42:41Nick Bare?

  who just uses blanket statement of, "No, don't take creatine because it causes X, Y, and Z." And we'll get into some of these X, Y, and Z's that people say creatine does, that it doesn't actually do. And these myths that I'm about to share have been debunked through research studies in science. It's not just he said, she said, or hearsay. No, these have been debunked and proven that they are not correct.

• 43:13Nick Bare?

  There is a myth that creatine causes negative effects on kidney and liver function. That has been debunked. Creatine has shown no adverse effects on kidney or liver function, even at higher doses for extended periods of time. There have been large, long-term studies in healthy adults, healthy adults, that showed no harmful effect on kidney function at the standard dose. Now, here is why people assumed early on that creatine supplementation had adverse effects on the kidney and liver.

• 43:59Nick Bare?

  Creatine may slightly raise serum creatinine. Okay, but this is not showing kidney damage. Creatine is a byproduct of creatine itself. So creatine is naturally, this naturally happens in the body. It is broken down into creatinine and then filtered by the kidneys. So doctors were seeing that

• 44:32Nick Bare?

  by supplementing with creatine, there was a slight raise in serum creatinine excreted, and they just assumed that this was showing kidney and liver damage. But that is not the case.

• 44:50Nick Bare?

  Creatine is naturally broken down into creatinine. It is a natural byproduct of creatine itself. It's going to be excreted. It is just part of the process. But it does not show kidney or liver dysfunction. So we've debunked that. A lot of people are going to say that creatine can and will cause bloating. This is not the case.

• 45:15Nick Bare?

  Creatine, however, does increase intracellular water, which is actually beneficial. We want water within the muscle.

• 45:30Nick Bare?

  But it doesn't typically cause visible or uncomfortable bloating, unless you are supplementing with a low-quality creatine. So as I mentioned earlier on, what makes Creapure so special is the production process that is proprietary to Alskem. And it doesn't create, through the production process, any of these nasty or unwanted byproducts. But if you are buying a cheap creatine, especially one that is not Creapure, you might get some of these negative side effects. One of those being bloating, visible or uncomfortable bloating.

• 46:13Nick Bare?

  We'll get into some of this intracellular water in a little bit. We'll talk about dehydration, but creatine does not cause bloating.

• 46:24Nick Bare?

  Some other myths that you have to cycle creatine. You don't have to cycle creatine. You can take creatine every single day of your life at an appropriate dose. There's a myth that creatine is only for bodybuilders. It's not. It's a supplement for just about everybody who wants to enable energy at the cellular level for their body and their mind. There's a myth that there's more effective forms of creatine on the market outside of creatine monohydrate. False. Creatine monohydrate is the most pure, studied, and effective form of creatine available.

• 47:07Nick Bare?

  There is a myth that creatine causes dehydration. I remember early on, this may have been when I was playing like baseball or sports and in college. You'd hear people saying, "I don't want to take creatine because I gotta consume extra water. I don't want to take creatine because I heard it dehydrates you and causes cramping." That is not the case. That is, it is far from the truth. There is this, this myth that is called the water shift myth that has been associated with creatine. So creatine, like I've said, increases intracellular water. And there's this myth that assumes that because creatine increases intracellular water,

• 47:51Nick Bare?

  so water within the cells, which is good, it's a hydrated cell. That's an effective optimized cell. The myth says that because water is moving intracellularly, that it means water is moving in other places that promote dehydration. So people assume that if water moves into the muscle, this is what the myth says, it must leave the rest of the body dehydrated. But this is not the way it works. It's not pulling water out of the bloodstream in a way that dehydrates you. It's simply improving muscle hydration. Studies have actually shown that with creatine supplementation,

• 48:35Nick Bare?

  there's no changes in blood electrolyte balance, no increase in dehydration markers, and actually often improves hydration during training. So it does quite the opposite. It doesn't dehydrate you. It improves dehydration levels of your muscles at the cellular level to perform better and more hydrated. So there's a lot of myths about creatine. And many of them, if not majority of them, have been debunked. Truthfully. Now, how to use creatine? Who should be using creatine? Almost everyone.

• 49:19Nick Bare?

  My wife's mom, so my mother-in-law is now supplementing with creatine 5 grams a day, which for me is a huge win. I love to see that. Not just for performance optimization, body composition optimization, but mental processing, brain, memory, mood optimization.

• 49:45Nick Bare?

  There's two traditional approaches to how to consume creatine. So there's this

• 49:51Nick Bare?

  traditional, what's called the loading phase, where an individual will consume 20 grams of creatine per day for the first week. And then it's followed by 5 gram maintenance every day after that. So if you want to take this approach, the loading phase approach, first week, 20 grams a day, you don't take all 20 grams at once. You do say

• 50:19Nick Bare?

  four, five gram doses throughout the day. Then after that first week, you just take 5 grams of creatine every single day after that. The second approach is a no loading phase. And this is where you just take 5 grams a day, every day. This is what I would recommend. Now, they both get to the same outcome.

• 50:45Nick Bare?

  The same outcome is being that you saturate the muscles with phosphocreatine. The loading phase, however, is going to saturate the muscles and the brain with phosphocreatine slightly faster.

• 50:59Nick Bare?

  What that means is if you take the loading approach, your muscles are going to be topped off on phosphocreatine a little bit faster, a little bit earlier than if you do the no loading approach. But I don't think the loading approach is honestly necessary. If you're going to start using creatine, just supplement with 5 grams a day, every single day, skip the loading phase. Eventually, you will saturate the muscles and the brain with phosphocreatine.

• 51:31Nick Bare?

  Should you and can you take more than 5 grams a day? You can. I've seen that some of the the mental benefits, the mental processing benefits come from higher doses. Say 10 grams of creatine a day. Some days I take 5 grams a day, some days I take 10 grams a day. Probably 3 to 4 days a week, I try to get 10 grams of creatine in daily. And even when I take 5 grams, it's a heaping scoop. So it's probably more like 5 to 8 grams at my minimum dose a day. But 5 grams, I would say is the minimum dose of creatine that you want to be supplementing with daily. Again, you don't have to cycle it, you don't have to take time off.

• 52:17Nick Bare?

  The biggest thing with creatine is being consistent.

• 52:23Nick Bare?

  I know so many people who they'll start supplementing with creatine and they'll do it for a month, 2 months, 3 months, and they just forget and they're not consistent with it. And they never see the long-term benefits of creatine supplementation. And that is because of lack of consistency. And I think part of that is because there's not necessarily acute benefits to creatine supplementation. Like when you take pre-workout or caffeine, you feel it within 20 to 30 minutes. With creatine, you're not feeling it within 20 to 30 minutes. You're not going to feel creatine after you use it.

• 53:03Nick Bare?

  So it's a supplement that's really easy to overlook and not be consistent with. But what I would challenge a lot of people is find a way that fits into your routine every single day. Like for me, as soon as I wake up, I consume 25 ounces of water. And within that water, I put a scoop of electrolytes and a heaping scoop of creatine. It's just part of my morning routine. So I know immediately, every single day, I'm consuming my creatine. Maybe for you... Every day you do a protein shake.

• 53:44Nick Bare?

  Maybe part of your routine to maintain consistency is you're just putting your creatine in your post-workout shake, or your shake throughout the day, every single day. Build it into your routine and your habits to make sure you can be consistent with supplementation. And you want to consume creatine on training days and non-training days. So just consume it every single day. Five grams is the recommended dose.

• 54:11Nick Bare?

  That's creatine. That is what it is. The origin of creatine, its benefits, how to use. Again, my call to action to you guys, listen to this episode, is if you're not supplementing with creatine yet, start right now. For the athletic performance benefits, for the mental benefits, for the recovery benefits, the reduced inflammation benefits. I can only imagine where the research behind creatine is going to go over the next couple of years.

• 54:48Nick Bare?

  But it's become

• 54:50Nick Bare?

  popular for the right reasons. It is researched, it is backed, it is shown to be effective and safe.

• 55:02Nick Bare?

  So take your creatine. Five grams every single day. Guys, thanks for tuning in. I appreciate you. I love you. As always, go one more.