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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello. Good morning, everyone. So today's podcast, we're gonna jump straight into the world's number one supplement, the most tested supplement of all time, undoubtedly the most effective supplement, is creatine. But before I talk about creatine, it's important to know that in the supplement world you can easily get sucked in, you can easily get sucked into thinking this is the supplement that's going to change everything for me, if only I took this supplement, this might be the one, I'll take this stack, this stack, this stack, and you end up spending hundreds if not thousands on supplement stacks and things you think are going to sort you out. But unless you've got the big things consistently done, you should focus on them first.
Speaker 1:For example, are you going off steps a day? Are you going out in the day to get some sunlight? Are you eating a good amount of energy? Is your calorie intake in the place it's meant to be, whether that's a deficit or maintenance? Is your protein intake in the right place?
Speaker 1:And then we go on from F fibre potentially as well. Unless those are in place, when you start looking at little supplements that do this and that, don't think it's worthwhile digging into some of the fringe supplements that show some effectiveness in some people, in but some people they don't. But one supplement that is just a standout 100% worth trying is creatine. There's a new study now showing, so when it comes to creatine, you're meant to take it for about twenty to thirty days, around three to five grams a day, creatine monohydrate, you don't need to buy any other form of creatine, just buy creatine monohydrate, it's the cheapest form as well, so you need to saturate your muscle cells with creatine for twenty to thirty days to get the full benefit. This new study was looking at can it help you with your cognition, how you are mentally even when you're sleep deprived and can it happen from one dose or one super dose.
Speaker 1:More studies look at saturated dose and then strength training, but this one did look at brain power of creatine. So here's how the study worked. The German research team recruited 15 healthy young adults, average age of 23, for two nights of total sleep deprivation. So at 08:30PM the participants received either a massive dose of creatine monohydrate or an equal amount of cornstarch which was used as a placebo. For someone with eighty kilograms, that's twenty eight grams of creatine as a massive dose, so it's like going to be five times the normal dose you take if you're taking it daily.
Speaker 1:It's a double blind study, so neither the researchers nor the volunteers knew which they received on which night, which is brilliant. Because it was a crossover design, the 15 participants gave the researchers three data sets to compare. Baseline measurements of their cognitive ability and processing speed established with a series of tests they took when fully rested. Experimental measurements of those same abilities taken whilst they were sleep deprived and received a placebo, and then the third one was the same as number two, sleep deprived, but then after receiving the mega dose of creatine. So what did the study find?
Speaker 1:Sleep deprivation, as you'd expect, has cognitive consequences. Participants generally did worse on tests of memory and logic compared to their baseline non sleep deprived scores although interestingly they did better on a couple of them. This was true whether they received creatine or cornstarch. Processing speed was a different story. After taking the placebo the participants were slower on every test compared to their own scores when fully rested.
Speaker 1:After taking the placebo the participants were slower on every test compared to their own scores when fully rested. Placebo plus sleep deprived was nowhere near as good as fully rested which of course we kind of expect but perhaps the power of placebo would have helped but not yet. But with a creatine super dose, cognitive scores were better across the board whilst sleep deprived compared to the same participants after they'd taken the placebo. And here's the even bigger surprise. On most tests, sleep deprived participants' processing speed was dramatically better after taking creatine even compared to their baseline fully rested scores.
Speaker 1:Right? So that's quite crazy. So a single mechanism of creatine might improve brain function during the night without sleep. You know, this is a small study really, but it's quite interesting. Sleep deprived for two nights maybe, if people sleep poorly even more than that does it have an effect?
Speaker 1:Does it work? Is it just one super dose and it does it have one night effect or does it do the same the next night? So it's very fascinating actually because when we're thinking of a lot of you listening, a lot of you are working shift work or long hours, some of you are busy mothers, busy with your careers, you've got a lot of cram into your day, many of you probably don't sleep as well as you should be. We know a big factor in eating in a way we don't want to eat, so kind of maybe binge eating or just snacking all day and we know being sleep deprived causes a higher calorie intake post dinner snacks, so your snack intake post dinner goes up in most cases when you're sleep deprived. Can creatine, a omega dose of creatine when we really are sleep deprived, and I'm talking really bad, can it counteract this and in fact make our decision making better in the evenings?
Speaker 1:Because when it comes to the evenings that's where a lot of people struggle. Some of you are easy, you can go, you can miss breakfast if you want, you can have a small lunch, but when it gets to the night boredom sets in or you want to relax, you want watch TV and this kind of ritual is powerful and you've worked all day, your brain is fatigued, your cognitive load is at its highest and that's when you trip up essentially. So maybe there's one day a week or maybe it's towards the end of the week where you have to look at your data and you have to look at, you know what, it's every Thursday night it is for me. I'm so tired by Thursday night or Friday night that I'm just snackered and I'm just not thinking straight and I'm just eating so many snacks, I'm going way over my calorie target and it kind of is getting rid of my deficit, I've worked so hard in a week. What if you are creating mega dose strategically on that afternoon or that evening?
Speaker 1:How will it help? Will it help you think straight? Will it help you think clearly? These are questions that haven't been answered yet, but they may be worthwhile because the other benefits of creating are amazing. In terms of performance, unreal.
Speaker 1:But cognitive benefits have been reported for at least twenty years of creatine. There was a 1993 study as well that five grams per day for six weeks had a significant positive effect on working memory and intelligence and speed of processing was improved as well. We got thirty years plus of physical benefits of creatine, twenty plus years of evidence for cognitive benefits and no evidence of side effects or health risks, essentially, and the mega dose of twenty eight grams for an eighty kilogram person, there was no reports of gastrointestinal issues as well. So this supplement sounds too good to be true but it really is the only supplement of its kind, it's got so much information, so much research, so much proof evidence, millions of people take it. I've seen some things about improving menstrual symptoms as well, so brain fog, all this type of stuff.
Speaker 1:So if there is a supplement for you guys to try, is to try Creatine. Now the problem is you don't want to try too many new supplements at once because you won't really know what's what. So there's a lot of stuff now called nootropics. Nootropics have been around for a while. They're basically kind of like smart drugs, like how do we work the brain, what's a smart drug.
Speaker 1:When you look at all these ingredients there's really minimal evidence based research on a lot of these things, there's some interesting stuff that shows it could be potential, but what we do know for a fact that improves cognition, know creatine and we also know the main factor in most of these nootropic drinks and supplements is caffeine. Caffeine has just got so many benefits, but the problem is with caffeine is that it's got a super long half life, so if you take caffeine too late in the day it can impact your sleep. Caffeine again is a time specific thing. You should really not have any more caffeine after eleven, maximum 12 each day because you don't want it to impact your sleep and even then it could impact your sleep. And then you need more caffeine the next day to wake up and you think well if I have caffeine till two or 3PM it's going to keep me awake, but you're not realizing it's actually impacting your sleep.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of this loop that you need to get rid of. So more if caffeine was utilized slightly less but strategically, so when you wake up you have a bit of caffeine and You have creatine either five grams a day like just normal saturated dose. This is gonna improve your cognition, improve your strength in the gym, improve your, muscular endurance in that range as well. Or if you haven't saturated and you think I can't wait twenty, thirty days, you know taking a megadose potentially could give you that benefit when you really are having a sleep deprived day, so it's worth testing. So I thought that was interesting guys, but you know the philosophy really is like look after the main things first, add and creatine for sure when you've got some consistency in your protein, in your calories, in your steps and in your workouts because the thing is if you take creatine straight away when you're working out, you've got no baseline to compare it with so you can say, well I don't know what I was doing on squats or I don't know what I was doing on chest press or press ups or pull ups or dead lifts or whatever the lift is.
Speaker 1:You don't have a baseline for where you are strength wise so when you add in creatine before that you don't know how much it's impacted you because you could be a super responder, you could be someone that doesn't respond that much, that's true in the research as well. But if you go to the gym for four or five weeks, so you get four or five, maybe six weeks as a baseline in, you're like right, by week six you're saying, I can do 10 reps of goblet squats holding a 20 kilogram dumbbell, and I can do eight reps and you add creatine in and then in a month you look back at that workout you've done and you go, oh look, I'm now doing 25 kilograms or in pounds you go from 40 pounds to 50 pounds, This is again, you need to start tracking this stuff, but I thought that was interesting. I'll look into it, give it a go, give it a go. But I hope you have a good day, keep focusing on the big things. I've had many emails about how it's so useful that people are now focusing on just calories, protein and steps.
Speaker 1:I've had so many people say it's so helpful, it's less intimidating, it's kind of fun, it's easier, and they let him go of tracking everything for now just to get the main things done. And look, that's what you need to say to yourself, am I actually tracking consistently the main things or are you kind of deluding yourself where you're saying I want to track everything, I want to track my calories, protein, carbs, fat, fibre, saturated fat, salt, water, steps, workouts, mental cycle, mental health, stress, I want to track it all, which is great, the more data you have is very interesting. Ask yourself, how consistent have you been able to track all of that data and how long of a period of time can you do it for? Most of you will say, no, nowhere near enough time to have consistent data and all that because it's overwhelming for me. So that data becomes so blotchy that it's not really that useful.
Speaker 1:But when we say to ourselves I will track my steps, my protein and my calories and that's it and if I can get twelve weeks of data on that, especially with my weight as well, I'm going to start seeing some real picture from my data and I'll be able to have insight into myself and I can maintain that because it's not asking me to do too much. It's not asking me to think about more than that. And I've looked at the research, not a lot of research, I've looked at the stats as well and people that track their weight more per week lose more weight. This is just a fact in the app. So if you yourself weekly versus daily, the daily weigh in people lose more weight over time and are more consistent.
Speaker 1:The reason for this is a few things. Daily weigh ins give you an accurate weekly average and weekly average is what matters, so people that understand this put the pressure off the day. So if you wake up one day and your weight's gone up, you're like it doesn't really matter it's gone up, it's going to go up and down all week, my weekly average is what matters. And then the same lesson applies to calorie intake and protein. My calorie's higher today, that's fine, I'm going to roll with it, tomorrow it'll be lower.
Speaker 1:So they focus on the weekly average as opposed to day to day differences. The people that hyper focus on day to day differences tend to get really frustrated because your body is always changing and social life comes into stuff, but if you think of the weekly average, one day can't impact you that bad because you think, well I just have to slightly adjust the next or maybe the next will be different. So think in weekly averages and it removes a lot of the pressure, but collecting data daily is obviously useful so we have a weekly average number that's accurate and then we compare weekly averages and that's where we make our intelligent data informed decisions from and not day to day differences that can maybe cause some panic. So that's a lesson for you guys, if you can weigh yourself daily is awesome, if you don't want to see your weight daily get a smart scale, Just use the weight from air connected via Wi Fi or Bluetooth to your Apple Health, and they'll connect to the app. Then you don't even have to look at the number, just step on the scale, just send it to the phone.
Speaker 1:Happy days. You can crack on with your day. You don't have to worry about the weight. Let the app take the data and make the adjustments for you on the weekly check-in. That's it for today.
Speaker 1:Have a good day. Speak to you all soon.