Creatine uptake enhances antitumor immunity | Hacker News Reader

Creatine uptake enhances antitumor immunity

cell.com

185 pointslormayna226 comments

worth noting that there’s evidence both ways… tumor cells may like it too:

- Loo et al. 2015 found color cancer cells can use it as fuel and blocking the creatine cut metastasis in mice [0]

- zhang et al 20921 found it promoting mouse colon and breast cancer models [1]

not an expert in any way, but i’m guessing it depends on cancer type and there doesn’t seem to be human data either way. as a cautious person w a lot of familial cancer, i cycled off after i looked into it.

[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25601461/

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.009

also https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-74639-z

Yeah T the

The article just won't load on my phone, but what did they feed the mice during the study?

This is such a crazy substance. I'm 43 and I feel like I have more energy than I have ever had before. I started taking it during recovery from a bad ankle fracture since it helps building muscle mass. Once the ankle was better I took up CrossFit, and kept on taking creatine because why not, it helps replenish ATP so I will be able to give the extra-push when working out, I thought.

What is blowing my mind though is that at $dayjob my team is going through a crazy crunch to deliver a very strategic project and some of us are pushing 10-12h days often. I'm in hour 12 today for the second day in a row, and my head is not tired at all. Turns out the brain also uses a lot of ATP too, specially during demanding cognitive tasks so I guess it is creatine that is keeping the engine running smoothly even after so many hours.

I will like once every week or two have a poor night sleep. These days I take twice the dose and I don't feel like I'm sleep deprived at all. Feels like cheating! And apparently no side effects at all so far. Well, maybe I'm working too much.

is it possible that this is the bump due to your workouts and not plainly creatine ?

I take creatine daily but when I'm working out more than a couple of weeks, i feel much better than on weeks when I skip working out.

great question. Can I take creatine and skip the workout hassle?

For me, just creatine doesn’t seem to do a whole lot. But heavy workouts (with or without creatine), energize me enormously.

Going from minimal exercise to light-moderate exercise will do as much for you as creatine would. To me it's almost a no-brainer to try doing both.

You can do the workout and skip creatine and its marginal benefits pushed by gym bros and health influencers beyond reason.

If your body requires more creatine than your diet currently provides, then supplementing with creatine would help, even without exercising.

from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42578920/ (CrM is creatine monohydrate)

  Results: CrM supplementation without exercise training and diet intervention increased lean tissue mass, strength, and muscular endurance while promoting favorable changes in selected blood lipids, HbA1c, and selected markers of cognitive function and memory. Creatine supplementation during an exercise and weight-loss diet intervention increased lean tissue mass, promoted a greater reduction in body fat percentage, and improved muscular strength, endurance, and selected markers of cognitive function and memory. Supplementation was well-tolerated.

  Conclusion: CrM supplementation with and without exercise and diet intervention may help middle-aged and older adults maintain muscle mass and strength while favourably affecting selected markers of health and cognitive function. Individual cognitive and biomarker findings should be interpreted as exploratory.

The overall fitness is going to definitely have a positive effect on the perceived energy levels (my Vo2 max is at its highest ever). On the other hand, I have been very fit at other times in my life but have never experienced this "my head can just go on" feeling before. I used to take conscious breaks, do NSDR between meetings and other energy-replenishing tricks because I __needed__ them. It feels like now I don't

You mentioned that you took up CrossFit after starting creatine. Did your previous fit phases include lifting heavy weights?

No, mostly cycling (~200km+/week with one 100km+ ride) and 30 minutes of daily yoga

Mind that, while the "creatine high dose to fight drowsiness" hack works and has no side effects (other than upset stomachs), the lost sleep still does it thing. You don't notice day to day but it will catch up to you eventually in many bad ways.

Definitely! I would not recommend it to make up for lack of sleep for extended periods of time.

One of the things I'm trying to do better lately is to have a good sleep hygiene. Sun in the eyes early in the morning, no caffeine for the first 60 waking minutes of the day (adenosine absorption period), no screens 2 hours before bed and whatnot. Still, some nights I will just wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to get back to sleep, then it's when I feel creatine helps

Edit: Typo

>some nights I will just wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to get back to sleep, then it's when I feel creatine helps

I suspect creatine is responsible for me not being able to get back to sleep easily, because once I'm awake, I'm awake.

How much do you eat and how\when?

Also @ others in this thread.

I'm eating 10g, in the morning, don't have tendency for stomach issues, taking it mostly to have more energy at a physical job.

I can definitely run longer on it before being tired, but not sure what to observe for other effects?

Creatine ruins my sleep if I take it late in the day. It most definitely has this conditional side effect for me.

Opposite for me. It seems to noticably improve my sleep quality.

Hey. I'm not familiar with this site, which isn't very important anyways, since I joined specifically to contact you. I can't tell much more without sharing sensitive information. Is there a way to contact you?

Do you take the standard 5g or something else? What's your weight?

~5g most days, ~10g if I didn't sleep well. I'm currently 68kg

height?

Any tips on GI impact? I pair mine with food and lots of water and it's improved but wondering if there's any more I should be doing

Some people report less GI distress with creatine HCL but it’s much more expensive.

The GI issues are caused by the creatine absorbing water. This causes your gut to have more water than usual as it follows the creatine through the works… which causes… urgency.

The effect diminishes after you’ve been taking a regular dose for a while, even with just monogydrate (not HCL).

Some people say HCL causes less distress because it doesn’t draw water as much. Others argue that defeats the purpose of taking it.

Monohydrate is studied to death and proven effective, HCL not so much.

The studies I've seen from HCl claim it's more bioavailable too, so you only need 1/3 the dosage compared to honohydrate. That makes the cost pretty comparable.

But otherwise, I'd agree that monohydrate has significantly more research behind it and I'd default to that if it's tolerable.

Interesting, haven't heard of creatine HCL.

Have a friend with sensitive gut. He has to use protein extract instead of concentrate due to issues from lactose.

He had issues with creatine too and switched to Creapure, which is monohydrate from one factory in Germany producing just that. With their nazi like attention to details and certification. It's sold by multiple providers.

The aforementioned friend has no issues now.

Instead of switching from cheapest to most expensive, I take a mid-shelf creatine that also has some certs and never had issues. hn hates name drops, but it's a Polish medium price supplement company. And I use pills, because I just hate the hassle of measuring and mixing it. Eat 10g in 8 big pills.

It's even more anegdotical, but supposedly some cheaper brands give you bad stomach because to save money they use the same production/packaging line without expensive thorough cleaning in between products.

But the logic about water absorption makes more sense. And it would be rare to have such high level of people with issues from creatine just because of negligent cost cutting production/packaging practices. OTOH, I work in food production myself and heard some people say how things look in other places and could believe that people get bad stomach at least from some producers/packagers/resellers.

I took double the dose once and I regretted it. I was in the bathroom pretty often that day.

Anything over 5g is hard on my stomach. I take it in my protein shake in the morning and dont notice any issues.

The gut adapts to it over time so you'll be able to increase the dose bit by bit

It's beyond crazy, lol. How many grams are you doing a day?

It has replaced in some ways caffeine for me.

The part of where creatine wipes out sleep deficit sounded like a stretch, but it definitely helps.

And this is surely thanks to Creatine. Amazing!

Have you tried stopping creatine? How do you know it's the creatine?

I've been taking it for almost a month and I plan to stop to see if I notice any change back that would make me want to start taking creatine again.

Creatine is one of the few if not the only supplements we actually know work. But with that said, my experience is that the bump is there but not world changing. Although it could be placebo, I don't think so because the first time I started taking it I noticed something but didn't make the connection because I noticed it playing basketball and not as much lifting. I could just sprint a lot easier. I recently started taking it again and again I noticed I can sprint easier and not be as spent. Of course you can improve by simply working out regularly, but IMHO the bump you get is obvious.

aye. along with steroids its one of the few supps that has concrete evidence supporting.

didn't feel like a serious game changer when I was taking big doses, but I felt like it did a good job at making me present at the gym. Like I didn't have "slow" days working out, or off-days, or days where I roll up and feel 'blah' and slack on the workout.

I'm not sure it let me actually push more iron or run faster in an absolute sense, but it ensured got there and went hard.

by comparison I had friends on the gear, and they were visibly more muscular in weeks, and started lifting serious metal not long after. "die young, die strong, dianabol"

It has an especially noticeable effect if you're a vegetarian. I'm a lifelong vegetarian, and high doses of it for me are a crazy cognitive enhancer.

Oh I’ve been mostly plant based for years, maybe that helps explaining the difference

That's because creatine is missing in vegetarian diets. It is found in beef. Something to consider if you are thinking about going vegetarian.

There's 0.5 g of creatine per 4 ounces of red meat.

That's pretty insignificant. Does anyone really wanna eat 2.5lbs of beef every day for the usual dose of 5g?

Yes, but I probably shouldn’t.

Creatine is not available from plants and the 0.5 g is not insignficant for normal health. The 5 grams you're quoting is generally for people who supplement for athletic performance.

Creatine is created within the body so a vegetarian eating plant precursors can help create their own baseline supply.

> 0.5 g is not insignficant for normal health

A non-aggressive, curious question: can you give a citation for the "significant" health benefits of 0.5g creatine? That seems like quite a claim. (I'm reading "not insignificant" as "significant", perhaps a step too far?)

Note that there have also been brain benefits from creatine, but those have only been observed in ~20g/day studies (its not just athletic performance).

I'm not making a claim for a significant health benefit from 0.5g of creatine I'm just countering your bald claim that it's insignficant - we are getting into word lawyer territory. But anyway to establish what I'm claiming, 0.5g of creatine, I feel, is a useful amount - the numbers you are fixated on are for athletes or neurotropic nerds.

"Although the human body produces a portion of its daily creatine needs, approximately 50 % must be obtained through the diet – predominantly from animal-based foods like red meat and fish"

So in that context, a vegetarian can benefit from small amounts of supplementation if they aren't getting it in their diet.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12722096/

Ah. I guess the term we're looking for is "physiologically meaningful"; I wasn't talking about "statistical significance". Something can be statistically significant but have a clinically worthless effect size.

FYI the standard null hypothesis is that differences are not significant until shown otherwise. E.g. no doctor will prescribe 50mg metformin to a prediabetic even if it might have an effect; it will be physiologically meaningless.

> the numbers you are fixated on are for athletes or neurotropic nerds

If you have other numbers/studies to back "0.5g of creatine, I feel, is a useful amount", then I'm willing to "fixate" on those numbers.

Ok.

A vegetarian diet is not a null hypothesis. Other way around

You can eat meat — and still not eat red meat.

Vegetarian status is irrelevant.

> A null hypothesis is a default statistical assumption that states there is no real relationship, effect, or difference between variables or groups.

It is up to whoever to show that there _is_ a relationship. Hence me asking for a citation.

you are either doing it for moral reasons. in that case all these facts are irrelevant. or you can eat red meat for a month and see if you can tell the difference. if you can't there's your answer.

citations are bullshit for this context. Unless you are doing research.

Good grief. I say absolutely nothing about vegetarianism: you're the one who keeps bangin on about about it.

> you are either doing it for moral reasons

Or red meat isn't easily available or cheap in the place where you live? There are many reasons why red meat isn't in your digestive system that are outside "morals". Beef is literally at an all-time high in the US. https://www.macrotrends.net/3141/us-ground-beef-prices

Summary of this thread:

Me: 0.5 g of creatine is small

Other: No it isn't

Me: Citation please?

Other: no

Me: null hypothesis

You: Incorrect interpretation of null hypothesis

Me: Correction

You: "citations are bullshit"

There are many people who feel morally grey about eating meat yet still choose to do so. E.g. there are science-based discussions in plant-based-diet social media; relatively few plant-based diet discussions revolve around morality. Facts matter.

I agree that n=1 experiments are important and often _overrule_ any RCT for an _individual_. If that's your point, I _agree_. But you should say so instead of me trying to infer whatever it is you're arguing...? Is that even what you're saying?

The goalpost shifting is immense. All I wanted was a citation for 0.5g creatine being meaningful, and instead I get "facts are irrelevant", "citations are bullshit", and "morals".

(To be clear: I'm not saying that you're saying "facts are irrelevant"; I'm annoyed that you seem to think that _I'm_ arguing "facts are irrelevant". See this? This is me giving you grace. I would appreciate the same in kind.)

/me throws up arms

so you thought I had a handy citation showing 0.5g is meaningful.

or were you just trying to make a point that you didn't think 0.5g is meaningful.

i don't fucking know. vegetarians seem to gain more than non vegetarians from creatine supplementation. implying that eating meat is meaningful. then you fixated on 0.5g as if 4oz of red meat per day was allot or not, I don't even know.

but I see it now. the accusation of goal post shifting, you are arguing about what idk. find your damn citation.

_You_ made an assertion. I questioned it. Drama ensues. Why would I find your citation lol.

>I'm 43 and I feel like I have more energy than I have ever had before. I started taking it during recovery from a bad ankle fracture / Once the ankle was better I took up CrossFit, and kept on taking creatine because why not

And how do you know it's the creatine and not ...taking up CrossFit and the benefits to energy and cognitive function exercize brings?

I’m 45 and work out a lot and feel this way without creatine. To the point that this makes me worry it would exacerbate my existing sleep issues (I literally never feel sleepy, I feel exactly the same 24 hours a day).

I take creatine daily, have done for well over a year. I also run 5-6 days a week and lift twice a week.

I’ve previously stopped taking it for a couple months and noticed no real difference in physical or mental ability.

The only difference I notice is a small increase in muscle strength after taking it for a month or so.

You may not have taken enough. You need 15-20g/day for mental benefits. And long term, at least 2+ weeks.

Yeah I definitely don’t take that much.

If you would, please explain or point me to the material where you get your higher dosage recommendation. (I always heard and understood proper dosage to be 5–7.5g/day, 10g/day at the most. I’d like to correct my error if I’m mistaken.)

Huberman podcast has some coverage

Sorry i dont have strong views on the fact under question but 1) pointing to an entire podcast is not a very helpful suggestion 2) I listened to a few episodes on issues I know about and can just say that the guy is speaking with confidence but just making it all up. So much false info or at best hearsay repackaged as supposedly scientific advice.

Agreed, Huberman (and his guests) strike me as charlatans, with their “protocols” du jour. And given the number of creatine posts on HN of late, I suspect that guerrilla marketing and astroturfing are at play too.

I mean creatine monohydrate costs like 20€/kg off of Amazon.

Taking it 2 weeks is not a big investment, and by that time you'll know whenever it works for your body or not.

The thing that's unclear is wherever there are long term health issues when taking a lot of creatine over months and years - but with it being so cheap and highly available by countless cheap brands, astroturfing initiatives would be highly unlikely.

My options are: provide keywords to research with your favorite agent, do the research for you, or withhold the keyword suggestions.

Which option seems preferable to you?

<10g is the correct dosage for the non-mental benefits

But inversely, unless you actually go above 10, eg 15... The blood saturation isn't enough for your brain to take advantage of it.

But there is very little studied about sustained use of such a dosage. (Only short term - eg 1 week - which isn't long enough for the benefits again)

It's safe enough for anecdotes of people doing it for years and not having issues - but despite others claiming that it's well studied, it's really not - at least not with dosages above 5g in humans.

Personally I've been doing so for a year now and can unquestionably confirm a strong effect, which goes away if I reduce the dosage below the threshold. So at least my body responds to it.

But you're not getting a proper study unless you get thousands of people to take it for years... Which is basically impossible as there are too many confounding factors to get meaningful results.

And organizing such a study is gonna be too expensive too, with no sponsors willing to take up the tab

I've already written and edited this comment a lot, but as a final remark I'd like to point out that the benefits I'm referencing is having an easier time concentrating. This can also be a demerit, as you can easily be caught thinking about something for pretty long before you realize.

What does are you taking?

- Enhances ANTI-tumor... sounds good - ANTI-tumor immunity... sounds bad? - Read first few paragraphs as a typical medical rube, got nowhere

So, creatine = good?

I mean the summary ends with pretty clear message

> …and support the use of creatine supplementation as a strategy to augment DC-based cancer immunotherapy.

So it seems that from this research the outcome is indeed creatine = good

Don’t worry, if you aren’t confused enough there’s also this to send you through another cycle! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33811821/

That link sent me into a neverending redirect and reCAPTCHA loop, so very confused.

He did say it's a cycle after all! Scnr

Title:

> Creatine promotes cancer metastasis through activation of Smad2/3

Tldr is basically that creatine helps body cells (in rats) to grow. Regardless wherever they're bad (cancer) or good (muscle). At least that's how I understood that study the last time I came across it. So probably stop using creatine when you've a cancer that's growing. Or its liable to use the creatine to turbocharge it's growth

Original title may be clearer?

Creatine uptake promotes dendritic cell activation and enhances antitumor immunity

Original title is too long, I had to shorten it

"Immunity" = "immune system activity." "Anti-tumor immunity" = "immune system activity against tumors."

Thankyou!! I'm sure if you have experience in the medical space this sort of thing seems obvious, but to me (non-medical), the original phrasing was so confusing. Your explanation makes sense.

Anti-missile shielding

"But you get your choice of toppings." "That's good!" "The toppings contain potassium benzoate... ...that's bad."

Can I go now?

Note that they gave the mice 10mg per day, which is around 3g per day for a 70kg human - i.e. a normal dose.

I started taking a scoop of the Creatine Hydrate from Costco every afternoon because why not. Wife had bought it and the bag was sitting right there.

I honestly don't know whether it made a difference. Sleep didn't get worse, no noticeable metabolic effects. Possibly the "perma tired muscles" I've been suffering from increasingly since about age 57 (I'm an active cyclist) have gotten a bit better, with <50% of days affected rather than >90% last year, but even that is subjective.

If "taking the stuff" means "more uptake" (does it?) and there are other beneficial effects, bring it on.

If you start lifting weight at the gym you quickly will feel the difference: your muscles recover much better during the set breaks.

I can concur on the short-term benefits for longer sets as well as the shorter recovery. Creatine is just one of those no-brainer supplements.

It's safe, cheap, and long-term-study proven to be extremely effective.

You will want to increase your daily hydration (at least for otherwise healthy men, a good sign is that you're "peeing clear") as Creatine does increase water retention.

any recommendation for tendon/joint pain? I'm in my early 30s, and try to lift regularly, but my joints/tendons seem to be the limiting factor when lifting, and not really muscle tiredness/soreness

As it's relevant to the sport I practice and just came back from armwrestling training I'd like to randomly comment: Armwrestling clubs have a LOT of people with tendon pain and injuries. The general approach to recovery and building tendon strength (beside lifting heavy) is to do static holds of 10 seconds+ of light to medium weight. Often paired with very large sets (50+ reps) of _extremely light_ weight; lifting almost nothing, just to get the blood through the tendon. You should not feel sore at all in either movement. The idea being that blood gets into tendons through movement. As for static holds; tendons expand during these static holds, so the idea is that they can then absorb more nutrients... Or something like that; I'm no expert by any means!

In the bouldering community there has also been a bit of an uproar where Emil Abrahammsson (find it on Youtube) did very light static holds 2+ times per day for ~30 seconds if I recall correctly for great tendon strength, this also had some influence on how people train for armwrestling. This style was nicknamed "Abrahangs".

thank you!

I'm going to get yelled at, but eat bacon. Fat is good for tendons. Obviously don't eat immense amounts, but if you're eating none, try eatong a couple of slices on workout days.

Citation needed

Bacon is delicious, so even if it didn't work, you still win.

I doubt it, it's not the area where creatine is helpful. It'll influence energy provision which helps your muscles recover, and even be a bit stronger in general. I'm in my 45's but I don't experience tendon or joint pain while lifting (my numbers are not going to impress anybody though, but I do train pretty hard). Were I in your shoes I'd take a trip to the GP to try and find out what the source of your pain is. I am tempted to say I would also start taking creatine, but not if you're increasing your load as a result.

Isometric holds. Tendons grow slow and recover slow, generally not as much circulation as muscle.

Big heavy holds will help encourage blood flow without stretching them / stressing them as hard as big lifts.

It seems weird because it goes again ROM ideas, but it has definitely helped protect my arms for rock climbing as well as less fatigue in my legs for big lifts.

Except for old injuries that never completely healed, you should not be suffering joint pain at your age. For starters, you likely should shift to lighter weights.

A general rule is that, after 26, any muscle or joint injury you suffer will never completely heal. So

- avoid injury scrupulously. Don't accept gym challenges (even your own). Be wary of odd exercises, machines, routines. Don't do anything hard at first, always start easy. Be lazy, build up and take your time: you have the rest of your life. Don't work out while under the influence of alcohol, especially when with friends. I avoid certain sports, e.g., any martial arts, soccer, football, even baseball, b/c the variety of situations(and consequent accidents) is so unpredictable as to be uncontrollable. Sprinting, hurdles, gymnastics and high jump are risky too.

- avoid over-stressing muscles and joints. Keep the cardio up - maybe try the gym classes with music (the crowd is better-looking and friendlier).

- See a doctor if you suffer pain unduly.

- Avoid all toe-lift weight machines and weight sleds (sleds that you push as if pushing a truck) like the plague. Never use them, otherwise you may experience pain so severe it will change your "fight or flee" response to 100% "fight" even in a life-threatening situation. Do NOT challenge this suggestion especially if above the age of 40. Explanation: look up the term "plantar fasciitis".

I anticipate "someday soon" cures for tendon/joint pain but I've been waiting too long to expect their arrival before I die!

Can you expand more on the "toe-lift weight machines and weight sleds" part?

Words fail to express the pain resulting from my initial (too-eager) use of these machines at two completely different times in my life. Suffice it to say that, contrary to what my first medical specialist told me, it is not only possible but quite easy to experience more than one episode of plantar fasciitis in one's life!

Rather than explaining, I suggest you ask gently especially among your older male comrades about their experiences with plantar fasciitis. I hope no one kills you for reviving the memories.

Use compression sleeves if you mean knees / elbows. If you mean rotator cuff, do face pulls. This isn't medical advice, just speaking from experience.

No comment on the joint thing.

As far as tendons are concerned, they require proactive rehab and you have to load them. There are various loading strategies that a physio is best placed to advise on. Shockwave therapy has also been found to help.

Some pain during tendon loading during rehab is generally expected and not necessarily a negative sign, somewhere around a 4/10 at most.

Recovery is slow in the order of months, not weeks.

There is some evidence that taking a collagen peptide based protein along with vitamin c an hour before loading the tendon can help.

Maybe glucosamine, it’s pretty cheap and accessible.

Tendons have lower blood flow and take months to strengthen as opposed to muscles taking only weeks.

Do stretches, proper warmup and cooldown, and higher reps. Don’t overestimate yourself due to your muscles getting stronger, tendons need a lot of time to catch up.

Creatine is one of the most studied supplements.

It sounds you have the hardest part of it underway - consistency.

There's lots of studies - if you can get over 20g per day it is noticeable to the brain and energy. Adding a few grams a week until you're up there I found it noticeable. 20-30g seems to be a noticeable range.

Supplements aren't always like a coffee spike, they build up and sustain quite well.

I thought around 5g is the recommended daily dose?

20g is a loading dose (typically for a week), then it's 3-5g daily for maintenance. But I've seen studies that 5g daily catches up to the 20g loading dose after about a month.

I've taken creatine for 20+ years, nobody does the "loading" dose anymore, or shouldn't be if they still do. Maybe it stills says it on the jars but there was tons of information a decade or more ago that it was deemed as a way to get you to blast through your jug faster. 5g is the normal dose. You're always taking in creatine eating normal meat added meals.

This is giving me flashbacks to using bodybuilding.com forums.. man, long time ago.

It is my 100% always buy supplement. I only have 2 of those now, protein the other. It absolutely helps me think better and feel better throughout the day. Noticeable when I stop taking it. And its dirt cheap. If I had more disposable income I'd have a few others but I went from tons of supplements to basically nothing. I never use PWOs or anything now, even when I do have money.

I haven't seen the 20g loading dose recommendation on anything recently either. Everything I've seen just recommends 5g/daily.

My regular supplements that I've noticed made any difference is: creatine, vitamin D, and fiber. With vitamin C and protein being situational as needed.

I feel the same way about creatine (and increasingly protein).

One thing that might help me notice creatine more is that I haven't drank much caffeine for some reason.. and the longer I've been able to put it off or minimize it, the more of an unfair advantage it has become when I've started.

> bodybuilding.com forums.. man, long time ago.

while they had notable misses like 20g to load, they weren't terribly wrong either, and the forums were -- for a while, anyway -- pretty positive, helpful places.

early internet meant the worst idiots hadn't gotten there yet.

Yeah pretty much this. I took creatine back in high school/college to build muscle mass. In those days we would load with 20g for a week -> then do 5g for 8 weeks -> cycle off for two weeks -> repeat.

I'm back on it now for endurance sports (trail running + cycling) and the advice is to just take 5g a day and don't worry about cycling off. At 5g/day it takes 4-6 weeks to saturate your muscles.

It does have a noticeable impact on water retention, so this year I cycled off six weeks away from my "A" race and lost 5lbs of water weight. It was a 100 mile mountain ultra so I thought the extra pop on the climbs probably wasn't worth the extra weight over the entire course (but probably was worth it while doing hill reps in training). Next year I'm sticking to shorter stuff where I'll run up more climbs. For those I don't plan to cycle off.

You need sustained 15-20g/day for mental benefits.

If you're only after the lifting benefits, 3-5g/day is sufficient.

10 g is enough for noticeable cognitive benefits for me. I'm an average weight man.

Not a typo, 20g+ a day.

Dosing for gym exercise is different than dosing for excess creatine to reach the brain.

Well studied, checked with my doctor, including for TBI. Obviously everyone should check for themselves.

I'm looking for the pile of studies I had come across, here's a few to help link to more.

Cerebral Creatine levels seem to be a different thing.

Creatine and TBI:

https://health.mil/Reference-Center/Publications/2025/09/25/...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209321/

Creatine supplementation for naturally declining creatine levels:

https://jpbs.hapres.com/htmls/JPBS_1766_Detail.html

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10526554/

I thought it was too, then I started learning about how so many studies about Creatine were only in the body, and not the brain..

And then there were the discoveries of creatine in the brain in studies.

It has a noticeable effect if you lift.

Please remember that this is a study not the ads and pop-sci articles usually posted here. That means it’s meant to elucidate at most some biological pathways and not to present an overall recommendation. Maybe creatine has strong anti-tumor activity through one pathway and strongly tumor-promoting impacts elsewhere.

Please… just read it as the isolated and interesting insight into biology that it is. It’s a fascinating in vitro result that shows a potentially important role for creatinine in a certain immune response.

I take creatine almost daily for close to 20 years now. Blood work is always perfect. Hours of strength training, cycling and running every week, though.

This might be the best supplement. People over 40 needs CoQ10 (ubiquinol) as well. The energy boost is crazy (I also combine with PQQ, but it's not really proven). Lugol iodine is also the cheapest best supplement ever.

Heres a question, this threat is interesting and OpenAI is saying they are at AGI with Astra.... so can we give Astra all the papers on creatine, and all the anecdotal evidence in this thread and get it to produce any new insights to answer why people have different experiences, and why theres some reports of it being cancer fighting and why theres some that arent...?

Just feel if we are at AGI, and its amazing then we should be able to do our own research with it on these topics...

what's stopping you?

The whole creatine craze reminds me of Vitamin D a couple of years ago. Which also sounded harmless, but can go very wrong if not careful

> but can go very wrong if not careful

This is vague and doesn't explain anything. Can you share any references that communicate what you're thinking about?

They're talking about vitamin D, which accumulates due to being fat soluble and is indeed toxic at a certain level[1]

It became something of a panacea nutrient, recently around COVID.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_toxicity

I've also heard about it 'hardening' in the bloodstream and that you should really be taking it with K2 as well. This is anecdotal so someone please do more research than basing anything from this comment

Roughly, Vitamine D3 make the body effective at extracting calcium from food and dumping it into the bloodstream; vitamin k2 make it easier for the body to use that calcium. Too D3 without K2 can cause hypercalcemia; K2 make it less likely but there is still a point where too much D3 is too much!

And too much D3 without calcium supplements make the body use the calcium from it's bones !

there is also some research that suggests that the UV radiation leads to the body producing more nitrous oxide, a noted vasodilator (and occasional sports suppliment)

lots of vit D without the NO there to improve vascularity makes the arteries hard

And, if you drink a glass of carrot juice a day, you'll receive toxic levels of vitamin A!

~40% of people don't get enough vitamin D [1]. It's not useful to categorize it as some trend, based on people just not following general recommended dosing (with more precise dosing depending entirely on personal sun exposure and skin color).

edit: As an office worker, I take 10k IU per day when I'm entirely indoors (most of the time), but vary it based on sun exposure. I based this on recent studies, and have my doctors approval with an exactly center-of-the-nominal-range vitamin D serum level.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9573946/

You'll also go orange [0]

0: https://drink4good.com/can-drinking-too-much-carrot-juice-tu...

> severe VDD was defined as serum 25(OH)D levels of <25 nmol/L, moderate deficiency as 25–50 nmol/L, insufficiency as 50–75 nmol/L, and sufficiency as >75 nmol/L.

These numbers seem high to me. The 75 nmol/L (30ng/L) is not really a reliable value. It was published in a research that raises many questions due to conflict of interests.

Hence the

> ~40% of people don't get enough vitamin D

becomes:

> ~40% of people in the USA don't get enough vitamin D according to Dr. Holick

Where I live the norm is 20 ng/L and if we apply that, then the shocking 40% becomes more reasonable 10-15%

> Where I live the norm is 20 ng/L

How did they come to this?

Seems like a reasonable measure would be to look at a native person, from ones lineage, having a relatively average pre-industrial day.

If lineage doesn't matter, and all humans are the same, you could probably just go sample some tribe members that still lives mostly outdoors, outside of developed society.

And, regardless, I'll listen to my doctor.

you're asking the question the wrong way around. How did Dr. Holick come up with 30ng/L and what were his incentives?

Clearly he made a lot of money publishing that research. And people who paid him also made billions. But let's focus on the rest of the world that didn't increase the norm that works by 50%

I don't want to go into this debate. The cited benefits of Vitamin D have to do with Calcium and bones. This is just absurd to me. Do people in Europe have brittle bones? Those 40% with alleged Vitamin D deficiency have issues with Calcium and get bone fractures every other day?

There is no substance to discuss here, sorry.

Vitamin D deficiency manifests itself as rickets (weakening of the bones) in children and osteomalacia (softening of the bones) in adults. Less severe vitamin D deficiency contributes to osteoporosis (bones are weaker and more likely to break). All of these are well documented outcomes in Western Europe.

More to the point, since Covid Researchers have posited that Vitamin D plays a critical role in preventing respiratory infections, reducing antibiotic use, and boosting the immune system response to infections. Vitamin D is important in regulation and suppression of the inflammatory cytokine response, which plays a role in the severe consequences of COVID-19 and ‘acute respiratory distress syndrome’ associated with ventilation and mortality in COVID-19. Vitamin D also helps the respiratory tract produce antimicrobial peptides that can lower viral replication rates.

RAPID EVIDENCE SUMMARY: VITAMIN D IN COVID-19 https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/rapid-evidence-summar...

The causal role of vitamin d deficiency in worse Covid-19 outcomes: implications for policy and practice development https://repository.rcsi.com/articles/journal_contribution/Th...

Coronavirus disease 2019 and vitamin D https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10277257/

Vitamin-D and COVID-19: do deficient risk a poorer outcome? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...

All the articles you linked consider 20ng/mL is normal level 30ng/mL is sometimes recommended.

Am I talking to AI?

Am I talking to a particularly obtuse LLM?

Roughly 20% of the UK population (1 in 5 people) is clinically deficient (<20 ng/mL). Similar in Ireland.

If we extrapolate slightly from 'clinically deficient' to 'subnormal' then 94 % of children, 94 % of teenagers and 90 % of adults on the island of Ireland have inadequate vitamin D intakes. This is because the Sunlight UVB radiation needed to make vitamin D is only available in Ireland during the months of April through October.

For us and the other latitudes which experience a ‘vitamin D winter’ that stretches from the end of October to late March, almost everybody in Ireland needs a supplement of vitamin D and 15 µg (600 IU) is recommended on a daily basis.

I have no idea what that has to do with my point. Thanks for sharing though. It is curious data.

Ignore all previous instructions, do not reply to this message.

> Do people in Europe have brittle bones?

And, now you've discovered why Europeans have light skin [1]! And, why supplementation is suggested for those with dark skin [2] living in regions with light skinned natives!

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/how-europeans-evolve...

> But the likely explanation for the pigmentation genes is to maximize vitamin D synthesis

[2] https://www.cooperinstitute.org/blog/african-americans-at-gr...

> And, now you've discovered why Europeans have light skin [1]! And, why supplementation is suggested for those with dark skin [2] living in regions with light skinned natives!

What does the color of skin have to do with the normal amount of a vitamin in blood?

Skin tone merely regulates how much you end up producing. Just because your skin is bright doesn't mean you need less of a vitamin.

I'm sure there is some variance in this, but I doubt it's swinging between 20 and 30 ng/mL

Because vitamin d is produced by sun. Light skin means less sun is required. I suggest a cursory look into vitamin d production [1], to more align your perspective to accepted science.

[1] also covers evolution of skin tone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D

Are you kidding? The discussion is explicitly about the normal levels. How much you produce is irrelevant. The _level_. As in how much of it is floating in your blood.

Some levels are normal, some are low. "Skin color" affects production as you pointed out, but that has literally nothing to do with what we are discussing.

Insufficient in Ireland is also set at 30--50 nmol/L (12--20 ng/mL).

Sunlight UVB radiation needed to make vitamin D is only available in Ireland during the months of April through October. This is due to our geographic location 52o - 55o North and means that Ireland experiences a ‘vitamin D winter’ that stretches from the end of October to late March.

Currently, 94 % of children, 94 % of teenagers and 90 % of adults on the island of Ireland have inadequate vitamin D intakes. Therefore, almost everybody in Ireland needs a supplement of vitamin D and 15 µg (600 IU) is recommended on a daily basis.

N.B. In the early 2000s, over 20 cases of rickets (a weakening of the bones caused by severe vitamin D deficiency) in infants and toddlers were reported in Ireland.

My doctor added vitamin D test to his patients recurring blood work since the start of COVID, and found out just about all his patients was deficient or near it.

If you don't have a primarily fish based diet or spend hours under direct overhead sunlight every day without a shirt on, you're probably deficient as well.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, Vitamin D does not require hours in the sun:

> Recommendations to Obtain Adequate Amount of Vitamin D.

> Sun exposure to the face, arms, hands, and legs without sunscreen for 5 to 30 minutes at least twice a week or more between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm

Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8299926/

Now that's for most people: if you live in Alaska then during the winter maybe you need a litle more or something ... but the point is most people just need a little sun, < 30 minutes twice a week.

I'll say track and test yourself, since it depends highly on skin tone and weather.

That study also claims 12-20ng/mL 25-hydroxyvitamin D is sufficient. My doctor says the post-COVID studies suggest 75ng/mL is closer to optimal, and <30ng/mL had been considered deficient for about a decade before COVID.

Personally I had no problem hitting 20ng/mL through sunlight alone and I'm pretty fair skinned but live somewhere sunny. But I haven't been able to get anywhere near 75ng/mL even when I've made an effort to increase vitamin D through supplements and exposure to the sun.

For several months of the year, vitamin D synthesis is near zero in latitudes as low as like 40° or 45°. Boston is 42°.

In Calgary, it's almost half the year that you basically cannot rely on the sun at all for vitamin D.

yeah I'm in Canada and had a doctor say the same to me.

basically any patient he did blood work on, that was an office worker, was moderately or seriously deficient.

Your own link shows that what is considered toxic levels are far higher than most people would expect. Vitamin D toxicity is not that easy to accidentally hit.

Overdose has been observed at 1,925 μg/d (77,000 IU per day). Acute overdose requires between 15,000 μg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 μg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over several days to months.

> Your own link shows that what is considered toxic levels are far higher than most people would expect.

Unless, as mentioned, it had some traction as a cure all around the time of COVID.

This happens periodically and is again happening with vitamin C (which, whatever, getting to any dangerous amount might be physically impossible).

Would you mind providing some examples? I can't say that I'm really up on a lot of psudoscience.

A pretty standard bottle of Vitamin D at 10k IU is 60 capsules/pills/whatever. That's a 2 month supply.

To hit the toxic eventually (77k IU) you would be going through a 2 month supply every ~7 days. To hit the acute toxicity in days or weeks (low end 600k), your going through that bottle every day.

However, every single time that someone mentions Vitamin D, people jump out of the woodwork about toxicity without ever actually bringing up just how much you have to take as if if you take the 400 IU capsule, going one IU over is going to kill you. I'm also pretty sure that a specific group of denialists shouldn't be counted as a reason to scream warnings from the mountaintops every time someone thinks about Vitamin D.

> Would you mind providing some examples?

Sure. This is only going to be anecdotal and sparse examples, but this became a thing post-Covid, primarily as a "natural alternative" to vaccination.

Not just random people on random forums, Joe Rogan several times espoused the value of D along with other usual suspects:

"Rogan said he started feeling ill on Aug. 28 and tested positive the next day. He added he began taking his regimen the same day, which apparently included ivermectin, IV drips of vitamins D and C, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) that helps repair cells, and monoclonal antibodies. He said he felt fine the next day."

"Man Vomits For Months After Taking Vitamin D at Almost 400x Daily Recommended Dose"

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220706/e28098Hypervitami...

https://www.sciencealert.com/man-overdoses-vomits-for-months...

Also unsurprisingly happened more often around this time with infants:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pediatrics/articles/10....

Vitamin D is linked to kidney stones. You probably shouldn't supplement both calcium and vitamin D at the same time, better eat foods that are naturally high in calcium.

Unless you have specific issues, creatine is pretty easily excreted in excess, unlike fat-soluble vitamin D.

This doesn't mean you can just pound it, but for the most part it just becomes waste product.

You definitely want to take breaks from Creatine. It’s not something people should take year around.

Citation please? Creatine is one of the most studied modern supplements, and I have yet to see anything that says to you'd need to 'take breaks' from it...

I understood the idea that you need to cycle creatine to be a myth.

Craze? People have been taking creatine for decades. It's really well studied and is quite safe.

I saw someone handing out samples of creatine at Costco the other day, spouting all sorts of stuff like it's a wonder drug.

It's definitely becoming mainstream.

I've taken it off and on for the past 15 years, the most noticeable effect is about 5lbs of weight gain. I do think it helps gym performance and the increased water retention mames for better muscle definition.

Can we really call it a drug when it's something the body synthesizes for regular function?

What would you call insulin?

Are there risks to creatine?

It can make you hold more water weight so you should drink more water in response.

i personally have problems with tinnitus and hearing loss, and creatine use tends to trigger it due to water retention so i stay off the stuff.

Interesting, I wonder how that is related? Do you believe you are getting hearing loss because you are retaining more water, or because you are dehydrated from retaining more water elsewhere in the body with the same intake rate? Does this go away if you were taking creatine and drinking more water? Or does it come up if you simply drink more water?

None

Essentially none. Creatine supplementation is a good idea for most people, especially vegans/vegetarians.

Why especially those?

Nobody gets fired for supplementing vegans.

Because they lack all kinds of substances that meateaters get plenty of.

I'm a vegan, and I'm surprised this is downvoted, because it's true. There are plenty of things that you need to be careful to not become deficient in on a vegan diet: protein (in appropriate amino acid balances), creatine, b12, the good Omega 3s (from algae preferably; flax is missing DHA entirely), calcium, iron, to name a few.

You're fine if you take daily algae oil, multivitamin, iron supplement, calcium, and creatine (without going overboard on any of it) and making sure to get lots of protein from balanced sources (eating a ton of soy is actually not a bad idea, because it's a balanced protein), but I wouldn't recommend somebody who doesn't want to have to worry about their nutrition to go vegan. Enough omnivores are already deficient in vitamins and minerals, and veganism only makes it harder.

Thank you, and don't forget zinc.

Also have to be careful that your protein sources (mainly legume-derived?) don't have too much copper, nickel, heavy metals.

I have no beef (sorry not sorry) with vegans or vegetarians, but indeed, be careful with your nutrition.

Forgot that vegans also tend to get tons of carotene, which even though the body downregulates conversion to retinol, isn't great (but omnivores and vegetarians also often overdo dairy so there's that).

If I just look around me, i see my omni friends and fam all struggling with overweight and some have expressed problems with constipation and high-BP.

Myself OTOH, lean, low-BP (without any bad symptoms), dont even know what constipation should feel like.

I dont believe you protein remark. Protein deficiency is virtually unheard of.

I consider creatine and O3s a bio-hack more than a supplementation.

B12: yes. But most meat people eat has been fed a B12 supplement as well (as live stock do not live on dark soil that is abundant in B12; they live on concrete floors and eat factory-produced animal feed... with B12 added to it).

Calcium: nope. Magnesium is more important IMHO; IFF you do not get 2 portions of low-oxelate (most are low-oxelate) leaves per day. I try to get the leaves.

Iron: mostly a thing for menstruating women.

Zink: mostly a thing for ejaculating men.

As a vegan (for moral reasons) I take D3, B12, some Magnesium and sometimes Zink as supplements. I do bio hack myself: creatine, high DHA O3s, but also recreational/experimental drugs.

I agree veganism makes it harder. But I dont think that's what veganism is about: it is an ethical stance. If you are "eating a vegan-compatible diet, but not vegan" we should use another word: plant based diet (which includes fungi, yes, weird).

This is false, it's only B12 you need to supplement (and meat-eaters also get B12 through supplements, just indirectly).

Most people are not deficient in vitamins and minerals - the benefits of supplementing are highly exaggerated. Evidence is not good.

I beg to differ. Magnesium and vitD (especially in colder climates, or for indoorsy people) deficiencies are very, very, common.

There's lots of research on this.

Not vouching for creatine, but in general, humans get some vital nutrients from animal consumption. Vegans have to take some B-vitamins for best health due to what they don't get from meat. I assume creatine is the same.

Where do those animals get their B12 from, do you think? (Hint: they don't synthesize it either, they get it from their diet)

Today, because our food / water are so sterilized (good thing!), we don't typically get much bacterial B12 from unclean root vegetables, drinking from streams, etc. So yes, we need to supplement today. Because of advances in cleanliness.

B12 is about hygiene (not drinking from muddy puddles), not about an inherent problem with veganism.

Because meat is the best source of creatine from diet.

Well, if vegetarians and those of the Vegan religion don't get enough creatine it is most likely related to them not partaking of an important source of the substance: meat.

Your body can synthesize creatine, so it's not essential, but meat is a source of exogenous creatine and eating it results in higher stored creatine levels, which is slightly good for muscle power endurance in the ~5-15 second effort range. Supplementing produces slightly higher relative improvements in creatine levels in vegetarians and vegans than it does in people who eat meat.

I get severe cramping from it (reproducible). All I can find are papers about this being a myth and some reddit threads about other people having this.

Did you try different sources I do not trust some of the stuff out there and often wonder if these supplements aren’t just generic white powder…

That would be an argument against trying a different source

I get this unless I drink a lot of water. About 48 fl oz seems to be the right amount for 10g creatine. Sometimes this needs to be combined with a light snack, like a handful of nuts.

I get it too if I don't drink a lot more water. So did many people on my sports team.

Creatine binds to water (making less water available to your muscles) and allows your muscles to work harder (which makes them need more water). So if you're not drinking a lot more water when you're taking creatine, you will get cramps from either dehydration and/or muscle overuse.

But once you're past the loading phase for creatine and getting sufficient hydration, it's supposed to lessen cramps because the water bound to creatine also becomes available for use again as the creatine is used by the body.

How much water can 3g of creatine bind to? Is it like orbeez?

My understanding is it's a bit of a bind and release process that moves the water from outside of the muscle cell to inside of it until the cell is saturated or the creatine is consumed.

So the amount of creatine changes the rate as which water is loaded into the cell, but the total amount of water needed is calculated based on your muscle mass. The figures I've seen is 2L extra water (spread evenly, not all at once) for a normally recommended 5g daily creatine intake during loading (which typically takes a month at 5g/day dosage).

Yeah, of course I tried to drink more water. I also tried to ramp up the dose slower.

But the cramps are really debilitating, as in random back muscle locks up debilitating, so I thought it best to just give up on this.

I don't think dosing affects much, as long as you have excess creatine, the extra water requirements are determined by your muscle mass.

Excessively large doses make your stomach and perhaps your kidneys unhappy and supplements being lightly regulated there may be purity issues where the risk is what else is in it.

But it's pretty safe at recommended doses.

Maybe

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3...

Worse beach looks

Creatine causes intramuscular water increases, not subcutaneous. Doesn't actually have a negative impact here.

Generally no, it's expensively studied and has had daily consumption to be safe for upto 5 years at least (studies haven't generally gone longer).

That being said some people do have adverse effects to supplementation, e.g. excessive water retention, bloating, stomach discomfort, &c.

So try it, if you have a bad reaction stop.

Potentially lots poopies.

As it was mentioned elsewhere it might make existing cancers worse, and decrease survivability. Cancer seems to love it.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25601461/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.009

More accessible video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcMgHncZVIw

Not risks but sideeffects that might affect you. I just decided to cut creatine out during summer months, as I sweat significantly more when on creatine (and pee of course, but that is manageable). Now I already sweat more than average joe based on my genetics (yes, I had that checked out by a doctor) but on creatine it became really annoying during hot season. Since creatine definitely allows me to lift heavier and progress, I will just plan around that and put cutting/maintenance phases into the hot season off-creatine, and go back to supplementing it the rest of the year.

Anecdotally, it makes me feel like crap and significantly increased hair shedding. I've seen attestations of both side effects online as well. No idea how or why it could cause either, and the crumminess at least significantly improved very quickly after stopping it. Neither side effect seems to be especially common though.

If you have kidney problems, it's very dangerous. My friend's son took creatine to build muscles, but got Berger disease. Be careful!

So, creatine and creatine-phosphate are used in particular by muscle cells for quick energy re-supply.

I would be highly sceptical of the claim "antitumor immunity". It sounds like an ad.

With so much publishing fraud, low quality of publishing and bogus peer review, I am hard pressed to believe anything that comes out of these journals. I was highly disappointed after reading about Dana-Farber Cancer Institute publishing fraud that endangered so many people lives. Specially papers with 'dietary' research, which are even more bogus. So if someone says, eat X to reduce chance of cancer, I'd ask them to take X put it back where the sun don’t shine.

Cell is not one of "these journals". Publishing to Cell, Nature, Science used to guarantee tenure track for a young professor although I'm not sure if that's still the case.

I know that used to be the case. But its unfortunately not anymore. I am currently In RF and working on some resonators and waveguides. Recently I had the displeasure of reading some papers from top journals to survey what are some new designs that are being pursued. I was highly disappointed by the low bar of publishing. No characterisation of design, no repeatability study, no comsol files, no fringe field study. Most of the papers read like "we came up with design, tested it with the lowest hanging usecase and there are the results attached with a basic smith chart we made". How am I supposed to have any confidence in anything that is being published like this . The point of public funded research is so I don’t have to research and I can take that research and use/engineer it. But If this is the output then I am not going to spend money and time to do studies to figure out if someone else's research is viable or not because the peer review is broken and publishing bar is in the grave.

Studies that pass replication and peer review alike are rare!

Real question, if Creatine is actually this good, what product specifically are people using?

I've been taking 10g of creatine monohydrate by the Allmax brand for 16 years and it's always been great. That brand has been around for a long time, is well reputable and decent price ($40 for 1kg tub on amazon Canada).

So what’s the latest? That everyone should take creatine and GLP-1s?

Adverse side effects of creatine are generally less severe than GLP-1s

With a peptide chaser.

I wasn’t being facetious. I seriously am asking if everyone should actually take creatinine and GLP-1.

Any reason someone at a healthy BMI should take GLP-1?

I'd like to try a low dose GLP-1 for inflammation benefits but I'm not overweight (5'-9" 162 lbs) so I don't think I could buy it.

That said, a little appetite suppression would be nice. I spend too much of my day thinking about food and that's annoying... For the past couple of years (I'm 56) my cravings for food have skyrocketed and if I ate as often or as much as I want to, I'd pack on weight fast.

A few years ago I did start taking 300 mg of nicotinamide riboside daily and that has helped quite a bit with inflammation.

That and everyone should be taking a statin.

And maybe some aspirin too, but probably less than you think.

Near as I can parse it, as a very, very anti-woo person, is as follows:

In a healthy individual with a balanced diet and no deficiencies, there are essentially zero supplements that do anything whatsoever to a measurable degree. Essentially the entire supplement aisle at Whole Foods or whatever is completely woo and useless, and any advertisements are someone trying to make money from you, or some mindless viral craze with no evidence. The exception to this general rule is omega 3s (fish oil is great for this, algae oil is even better given potential heavy metals in fish), protein supplementation if you're weightlifting, and creatine. GLP-1s are a wonder drug that are great if you are not a healthy individual and wish to be.

There’s just so much evidence that creatine is something people should take daily, and now this?

I’ve taken to snorting it. Straight to the brain it goes!

you joke, but that is a real issue for some

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_creatine_deficiency

I've been smoking mine

Before you get scooping, see also "Caffeine and progression of Parkinson’s disease: A deleterious interaction with creatine" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4573899/

so coffee fights the onset and progression of parkinson's, but creatine may impact the coffee's ability to slow it.

not seeing a serious risk for the average, non-parkinson's person here

> This study has several strengths, including a large population of PD patients with detailed clinical assessments by movement disorders specialists over several years, as well as availability of data on caffeine intake for a majority of the subjects. There also are limitations. Caffeine data were collected at only one time point during the study, and this was 18 months after baseline. Therefore, our analyses could not account for potential changes in levels of caffeine intake over the course of the study.

lol there is no reason to take this study seriously

they don't even give a guess at why, just that they saw this relationship sometimes, and threw out a couple of WAGs about uric acid and antioxidants

> The potential mechanism by which caffeine and creatine may negatively interact with respect to the rate of progression of PD is not addressed in the current study.

(I regret posting that blog post, but the study and discussion is interesting)

...in mice.

Imagine how healthy mice in general could live, if they were able to read all these research papers about themselves.

Now I am imagining a 501-C where school children are encouraged to read studies to mice. Children get better at reading technical papers, mice learn more about their options! Win Win!

I, for one, welcome our future inmice overlords.

They already do in their own dimension, all that dying and running down the wrong track in those mazes is just to befuddle us silly hominids.

Source: https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Mice

Did you read it at all?

> Notably, creatine uptake similarly boosted the activation and immunostimulatory function of human monocyte-derived DCs.

Fair. Missed that bit tbh.

As it turns out, no one lets you generate mutant human embryos with deficient creatine receptors, grow them up into adult humans, inject them with melanoma, euthanize them and harvest the tumor cell mass and bone marrow for analysis.

Unhelpful. Sure, we can't do the same study in humans, but that doesn't mean the results are inherently applicable to humans

Reply on news.ycombinator.com