The best supplement for vegetarians…you’ve never heard of!

August 14, 2024 Stan

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There are some supplements which are fantastic. They have a solid evidence base behind them and are backed by science.

Whether it’s for weight loss, sporting performance gains, or supporting the average person in daily life, they have clear benefits and are definitely worth considering.

Then there’s the other side of supplements. Some don’t have any good research to support them and are really just a waste of your money.

Today we’re going to talk about creatine, and by the end of this episode, you’ll know which side of the fence creatine sits on and whether it’s something that you should use.

And don’t worry if you don’t really know what creatine is, I’ll run through this with you and give you one pretty amazing bit of information early on which I think will surprise you.

Listen to it here on your favourite provider.

My Experience with Supplements

In my role as a registered sports nutritionist and advanced clinical practitioner in family medicine, supplements are something which I end up discussing a lot.

Whether that’s immune-boosting supplements, ones to help you smash out a few more running intervals, or perhaps one that could induce weight loss, I get a heck of a lot of questions about them.

Creatine is a super common one, and a lot of people are curious about it, in part because it seems to be so widely used. You’ll see people on Instagram posting about it, online ads telling you to use it, and heaps of YouTube videos aimed at pretty much any demographic out there.

Understanding Creatine

So, we need to talk about it properly here and dive deep into whether it truly has benefits, and whether it’s something that you should use. Now, I mentioned at the start of this podcast about an amazing bit of information that might surprise you, and I’m not gonna make you wait around after promising it.

Creatine’s Role in the Body

Lots of people worry about taking creatine because of putting a manufactured supplement into their body and that it could be harmful, and this is something that I’m totally on board with.

It’s your body, you’ve only got the one, and you’ve got to be careful. But the incredible thing about creatine that not many people know is that you already have creatine in your body.

You have lots of it; your body uses and regenerates it every day, and you wouldn’t really be able to survive without it.

So supplementing with creatine is very much as the name suggests: you are topping up your body’s natural stores of creatine with the hope of receiving benefits from it.

Creatine in High-Intensity Activities

Now let’s have a little fun science dive into creatine and what it actually does, but don’t worry, it’s not gonna be too detailed and I’ll make this relatable for you.

Creatine is a compound that is naturally produced, and it is involved in energy production in your body.

The most critical system that it’s involved in is called the phosphocreatine system, and this is the system that produces rapid energy in short bursts, for example, when you jump in the air or run across the road. This system is the dominant energy system for this sort of high-intensity movement, and this is where most of the focus for creatine as a supplement is.

Creatine’s Impact on Muscle Mass

The rationale is that by having more creatine available, you have better capacity for these sorts of movements.

Most discussion on the benefits of creatine revolves around doing weight training or high-intensity interval training, where you can essentially squeeze out a little more work than you might have without creatine.

So, think of a couple of more seconds of high-intensity running or another rep or two within a weight set. Now depending on your goals, this might not sound that appealing to you, but there is actually more potential benefit to creatine, and we’re going to dig into this more later.

But let’s talk about the high-intensity benefits of creatine a little bit more. Is it worth it, and does it actually have any evidence to show it can help you? In terms of evidence, absolutely. Creatine is one of the most researched supplements and has shown clear benefits in improving time to fatigue in these small, high-intensity bouts.

Does Creatine Really Matter?

This probably does only mean that you can eke out a few seconds or reps, but it is clearly beneficial.

But the follow-on question for me is: does this really matter? Sure, you might be able to do a little bit more, but what is the end result?

A meta-analysis, which is an overview of all studies investigating a certain area, looked at the effect of creatine supplementation and resistance training.

It found that those who supplemented with creatine had a small but significant increase in their skeletal muscle in both their upper and lower body. In short, they had more muscle.

The Importance of Muscle Mass

As you might know from previous episodes, I’m all about more muscle for pretty much anyone.

And this doesn’t mean big bulky muscle; this just means functional muscle that helps you carry out your everyday activities, play with your kids or grandkids, and walk up the stairs.

And if creatine helps you to grow and maintain muscle, then that’s an absolute win.

But there’s a big caveat here for me, and that’s that in order for it to have the most benefit, you need to make sure you do resistance training, or strength training as some people know it.

This means you need to do this regularly, and we’re talking a minimum of two times a week, to get the most benefit from it.

Which means that creatine might not be worth it for someone who isn’t regularly doing resistance training because you’re not going to get all the muscular benefits from it.

Now there is some suggestion that actually, independent of resistance training, there has been improvement in muscle mass and strength in elderly populations when they have supplemented creatine.

Creatine for the Elderly

This is really quite amazing and suggests that it’s beneficial whether or not they are exercising. If that then reduces the amount of muscle they lose as they age and, for example, reduces the risk of someone falling, then I’m all for it.

But I definitely would still encourage resistance training because it has so many benefits.

If you want to know more about this, you can listen to episode 3, “How Resistance Training Can Help You Live For Longer In Better Health.” However, this is actually a nice segue into the next section – you would be forgiven for thinking I’d planned this – because there is more to creatine than just muscle.

Creatine’s Effect on Mood and Cognition

Creatine’s involvement in mood and its relation to depression is currently being investigated extensively in multiple studies. There is mounting evidence to suggest that creatine is involved with brain pathways that affect mood, and it may have the potential to reduce the features of clinical depression.

There’s a lot more research needed here, but certainly, the early evidence points to it being a potential therapeutic agent, which is really exciting and absolutely a big plus for creatine if this were the case.

While I’m not sure in isolation there’s enough for me to say that it’s worth it for people who struggle with mood, it seems to me like it’s a possibility and shouldn’t be ignored.

Creatine and Cognitive Function

As well as that, creatine also seems to have some link to cognitive function, essentially how well your brain is working. In a review of the randomized controlled trials that investigated this, the summary was that there is evidence to suggest that it can improve short-term memory as well as intelligence and reasoning, with stronger benefits for the elderly as well as people who are experiencing high stress.

The rationale behind all this is again to do with increasing the amount of creatine that is available in your body, and in relation to cognition and mood, it’s the amount of creatine in your brain.

It seems that supplementing creatine can help with all these various aspects, and honestly, I find this really quite incredible.

Creatine for Vegetarians

Now I’m going to specifically talk about creatine supplementation in terms of how much it costs, what type of creatine to buy, whether you need to take it in bursts, and also whether there are any downsides to creatine. But first, let’s go through whether vegetarians should be supplementing creatine.

Creatine in the Vegetarian Diet

So creatine is naturally produced in your body and you have this store of it already, but it can also be consumed through your diet.

However, for vegetarians, this is very unlikely because the main source of dietary creatine is in animal protein such as meat and fish.

There may be a small amount of creatine in milk, but otherwise, vegetarians will have very limited exposure to creatine in their diet, if any.

And because there is evidence that even in meat eaters, creatine supplementation is beneficial, vegetarians will definitely stand to benefit from creatine supplementation which will increase that creatine store in their body.

So let’s say you decide you’d like to take creatine – what should you take and how frequently? I love this as a topic because there is so much rubbish out there on the internet about this.

There are different forms of creatine available with a huge variation in price, with claims around the different forms being more effective than the other.

Choosing the Right Creatine

I can make this super simple for you by saying that you should choose creatine monohydrate, and nothing

else. Studies show that 99% of creatine monohydrate is absorbed into muscle or naturally excreted through urine, and consistently show better results in studies compared to other forms of creatine.

The only issue is that creatine monohydrate is not as soluble as other forms, which means it can lead to a grainy texture if mixed with liquid. So the good news is that you don’t have to worry about any of the marketing claims – just choose creatine monohydrate.

When it comes to taking creatine, you might have heard of something called a loading dose. This is where you consume more creatine for something like 5-7 days, with the aim to increase your stores quickly and then settle into the daily dose. However, we now know that this isn’t required, and the advice is now to consume 5g of creatine per day, without any need for a loading dose.

Mixing Creatine

You can mix it in drinks, smoothies, or have it in something like overnight oats, which is actually what I do – as yep, I take creatine every day.

One of the common questions I get about creatine is whether you need to cycle it. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then don’t worry! Cycling creatine means taking it periodically, where for example you take it for a couple of months and then have a break. There’s no evidence to suggest that this is necessary and you can take it continuously.

Weight Gain and Creatine

One of the worries that people have about creatine is that it can cause weight gain. When you start consuming additional creatine, your body stores a little more water within your muscles, and this is why you see that increase. Typically, it’s about a 1-2 kg increase in weight.

It’s really important for me to highlight this is just water weight – so there’s no increase in fat here. Most people do not notice this and, in my opinion, this shouldn’t be a reason to put you off it.

Also, this probably isn’t a long-term thing either – so while you get a short-term increase, this is likely to tail off over the long term, so it’s even less of an issue.

Another concern that many people have is that creatine can cause kidney problems. Again, this is one of those things which is a historic worry, and we have a heck of a lot of evidence now to show that this isn’t the case.

Creatine and Kidney Health

In healthy individuals, there is no reason to worry about creatine harming your kidneys because all the evidence suggests there’s no issue there. If you have a diagnosis like chronic kidney disease where your kidney function is damaged, then this could be more of an issue and I’d suggest speaking with your family doctor if that’s the case.

Finally, there’s the issue of cost. While prices will vary, I buy creatine monohydrate without any sort of discount or affiliation for 25 British pounds for 400g of creatine, or 32 dollars. Given the daily dose of creatine is 5g, this means that it costs about 31 pence or 40 cents.

Is Creatine Expensive?

Obviously, this might be different depending on where you are in the world, but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s expensive or not for the potential benefits it could give you.

So really, creatine is quite an amazing supplement.

We already have it in our body, but supplementing, regardless of diet, has been shown to improve creatine levels which could then benefit exercise performance, muscle strength and size, cognition, and mood, and especially so in adult populations.

Final Thoughts on Creatine

While I can’t give you an individual recommendation, as far as supplements go, creatine is probably my #1 for genuine benefits, and I would find it difficult to say much negative about it.

Thank You and Goodbye

So I hope you found this episode interesting and that it gave you some helpful info about creatine. If you did find it useful, then please give the podcast a quick review on whatever platform you’re listening on.

It helps the podcast to spread to more like-minded people like you, and it’ll only take a moment. Super grateful, and see you next time.