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Comment by king_zee | Hacker News Reader

I work out but I've never taken it. I feel like not everything has to be minmaxed, sometimes some things are better left to nature. Easy come easy go as they say

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That's a big odd - because creatine seems to be the universally beloved thing and that it's a bit natural and has positive effects with zero negative side effect. Not a criticism but aside fro proten, creatine seems to be 'the natural thing'. Pun intended.

There's two sides to this.

1. That's because it's true. Creatine is extremely well studied and the studies pretty much all tell you that Creatine is safe, it's great at what we know it's great for, and it turns out it might be good for things we didn't expect. So when people all say "wow it's so amazing" they're right.

2. Because of (1) being so blatantly true, if you want to push some other supplement, it adds a lot of legitimacy to say "Creatine is the number one supplement, but here's something that takes things to the next level". Since the Creatine claim is well supported and you're already marketing to a group that's taking a supplement (Creatine), it is likely good marketing to piggyback on that.

But this doesn't change the fact that Creatine is shockingly well supported as a supplement.

For me, besides creatine which has been genuinely transformative at age 50, I've gained a lot more from the stuff I've dropped (dairy milk, ~2/3 of my caffeine (mostly by drinking reduced-caff coffee or tea and eliminating soda), sweets of course) than stuff I've added. But of the latter, I'd say fiber and fruits have been the biggest additions, partly in themselves and partly that they make it easier to avoid the bad stuff. I tried experimenting with a few other supplements, but most of them were meh at best.

So, "take things to the next level" with some pears and oatmeal and chia seeds! Now I just need a sponsor.

If you dont eat meat nature will not help you here. It will change your life if you're vegan.

I don't know much about creatine, how's that supposed to help change one's life ? Is it from your experience ? A quick search learned me it helps for physical activities of the explosive type.

edit: I saw your other comment, if you want to give more information that would be helpful, thanks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346947#48347768

For me its changed my life in terms of energy levels.

I have bad sleep apnea and have totally gotten off of prescription stimulants because of high dose creatine.

Creatine seems to have a strong postive effect on the brain when taken in doses higher than those taken for exercise.

Im not interested at all in creatine for exercise. Just google: "Creatine for sleep deprevation"

And as a vegan you dont get any creatine since you're not eating meat, so your body has to make it itself, which requires a ton of methylation and if you're like me and have bad genes for methylation (google MTHFR gene polymorphism) your body had a hard time with it as it is. So by supplmenting creatine you're reducing burden on your body greatly.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16416332/

Also a lot of peoples diets have a high amount already. And certain things like energy drinks have a lot if you drink a those.

I think a lot of the minmaxed stuff people do working out is mostly placebo because very few people are actually pushing the limits of natural human physiology and hitting some nutrient bottleneck.

You're probably not getting much Creatine from your diet, definitely not supplement levels. I don't think energy drinks have it, maybe pre-workouts. Creatine doesn't dissolve well afaik so it's rare in energy drinks.

That's definitely the good attitude to have for that type of things

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