How Creatine is Disrupting a 2 Billion Dollar Anxiety & Depression Market | Dr. Darren Candow

when people think brain when people think mood depression anxiety probably the last thing that comes to their mind is creatine but there seems to be some interesting new research happening in this area I've got uh Dr Darren kando who's one of the leading researchers in the world of creatine what is going on as far as mood disorders anxiety depression with creatine and what's potentially happening mechanistically there yeah it's exploded probably in the last decade so the theory here is that when individuals are clinically diagnosed with depression or anxiety or even PTS D there's evidence that those ailments or uh conditions decrease brain creatine Stores um the the brain is very bioenergetic and it seems to rely on or eat up a lot of of brain creatine stores so there's some evidence to suggest that individuals um that have depression anxiety or other uh similar ailments when they consume Creatine supplementation it may offset some of the negative effects or decrease some of the symptoms of depression and anxiety uh to put it a better perspective um however please note though that those individual studies those individuals were still on medications there hasn't looked been any studies to look at in humans uh creating by itself U decreasing depression anxiety um or PTSD but the theory and evidence is there and it's extremely promising um especially uh post where I think a lot of people uh develop some of those mental health issues by being locked in their homes or being scared of everything going on in the world so these are some of the areas that I think will you'll start to see a lot of new evidence with that coming out there's good evidence in Road models in those areas but with humans it's still in its syy and emerging but there's a lot of potential I put a link down below for Thrive Market I know this is a relevant pitch for them but at the same time it makes sense there's a 30% off discount link down below Thrive Market is an online membership based grocery store and it literally is their mission to make healthier food more available for people in areas that cannot get healthier food they really wanted to make sustainability a real thing and be able to get real good unprocessed and even healthier processed food options into people's hands so that link down below is a 30% off discount link for whatever you choose you can fill up your grocery cart using that link 30% off plus a free $60 gift so 30% off whether you choose some beet chips or whether you choose cete tortilla chips instead of regular corn chips or if you want jerky snacks or this or that and a lot of the times it's going to be much much cheaper than you would find at many grocery stores so that link is down below it's in the top line of the description underneath this video and again 30% off and a free $60 gift yeah now as far as uh brain energetics and actually cognition memory uh there's some pretty decent data there right there is so again uh the area that we see the best results are in older adults compared to younger adults uh and then the best overall results are when the brain is stressed so hypoxia sleep deprivation or if you give an individual a very very uh mentally fatiguing task uh creatine seems to improve memory or recall uh and that seems to have some of the the greater beneficial effects but we did a meta analysis and showed that memory was substantially improved uh in the combination of creatine in older adults more so than in younger individuals but primarily when the brain is taxed or stressed and I use sleep deprivation as a very common uh um example now I mean the brain we always say the brain is a glucose hog right the brain so so I there's probably very little beta oxidation really happening in the brain I would imagine right so is it like just strongly a heavy anerobic environment that when you like if I were to strain really hard mentally think am I tapping into the creatin phosphate system for that task I mean how do you see that do you look at fmri like what's yeah exactly as you point out so you still use the the creatin phosph phosphagen system there's some Anor robic metabolis but although it is aerobic primarily one of the interesting things with creatine is it shuttles uh to the mitochondria so the theory or the mechanism with brain bioenergetics is it decreases reacts to oxidative species or think of this as inflammation in the brain and it seems to improve mitochondrial Health as well so just like your muscle the brain is very similar and that's where some of the main mechanisms so it almost decreases stress or oxidative stress in the brain which could translate into more health or performance benefits have you actually seen that that measured in the brain that there's a decrease in reactive oxygen species in the brain it's been primarily in in the road model primarily in rats as well well as mice and then there's is some evidence potentially in humans looking at that as well very difficult to look at that in humans of course you can't just be like tapping into someone live human's brain while it's Happ that's right so I mean with that it's like okay you look at the road model data and then you probably look at sort of more um objective data in humans and kind of see like okay well we're actually having improvements in memory improvements in cognition you kind of interlace that with what you see in the rodent models to kind of come to a somewhat of a hypothesis yeah uh somewhat and then there's a couple labs in the world that have this magnet called uh magnetic resonance spectroscopy and a good colleague probably one of the world's leaders in this that can measure brain creatine content is in Norway and by giving uh humans uh creatine supplementation he's been shown that it elevates brain creatine stores and so the theory is with depression anxiety or any type of neurological condition that reduces natural brain creatine storage so if creatine can increase or sort of countermeasure that decrement that's maybe why uh these populations might have some beneficial effects um so there's a lot of PR and potential there um and again the dosage might play a role you probably have to take it for longer periods of time multiple weeks if not months and probably a dose around 10 grams a day from a whole body perspective but focusing on the brain seems to be very viable do you tend to see and don't want to put them on the spot or anything but people that eat maybe a low meat diet or vegan or vegetarian that might have lower creatine stores do you tend to see that manifest in the brain as well like lower creatin in the brain through that technology yeah that's an excellent question and the theory was old must be different you know how can it not uh so regarding muscle yes vegans and vegetarians have a lot less creatine in the in the muscle compared to someone on a carnivore diet or an omnivore diet and therefore vegans and vegetarians respond very favorably from a muscle perspective with creatine but the ironic thing is the brain is different there's been a good study of a few years ago from Brazil where they actually looked at that exact question um females as well as males young and old vegans compared to omnivore diets and yes there's huge differences from a muscle perspective but when they looked at the brain dietary creatine intake had no effect or relevance so therefore vegans had the same level of brain creating Source compared to uh um non-vegans or individuals on an omnivore diet so the brain is very unique it likes to protect itself more than muscle uh so therefore uh it's a totally different tissue and that's why we think there's maybe the reason why different tissues require different dosages interesting and you said the brain can actually create its own creatine that's correct yeah so perhaps it's requiring less from a supplement or since it's requiring or making it more you may require higher dosage as longer periods of time to overcome its natural barrier or production interesting or and the way that I think of it is like okay if you have taxation on the body that's requiring a certain level of demand from your body then the brain might be taking a backseat to that or right or maybe even vice versa where it's I would imagine that the brain probably takes a high precedence in terms of uh priority for the body taking care of it right that's correct and and when we consume Creatine 95% is stored in our muscle so that means less than 5% will go to other areas of the body and one of those areas is the brain so that's probably why uh brain accumulation will take a lot longer maybe higher dosages because the muscle likes to take up the vast majority of dietary creating or what we're creating in the body are you seeing anything in uh younger adults as far as maybe cognitive performance versus maybe stabing off cognitive decline the only we in healthy children and adolesence we actually see some beneficial effects from a performance perspective and there's no adverse effects as well so children adolescence teenage years and young adults can benefit uh but the interesting thing is in the two studies that have looked at uh concussion they were in young children and it actually seemed to uh decrease the risk or incidence of uh poster cussion syndrome in those children as well so um again across the age Spectrum creatine seems to have some potential therapeutic effects across the the wide ranges this may seem like a very newbie type question but you know you have neuroinflammation and you have different kinds of inflammation obviously in the body since creatine seems to post some potential anti-inflammatory effects in the body the inflammation that is potentially reducing in the body could that cross over and potentially reduce neuroinflammation or is neuroinflammation really happening in isolation no it's it's they're linked so that's uh one of the theories and that's how we think it can have a muscle bone and brain interacting effect inflammation from all three of those areas seems to play a role and creatine seems to have promise in all those areas and from decreasing neural inflammation oxidative stress that's some of the the the most potent theories or mechanisms why we think it can have an improvement in brain bioenergetics or function wow so well it makes me really change my school of thought from an ergogenic aid to more of a recovery aid ergogenic aid recovery and overall health aspect as well it's sort of blossomed into this triactor of things to look for you okay then we there's some interesting evidence on on sleep uh and you can talk about that data and obviously how that can have an indirect effect on cognition um but are the benefits potentially mechanistically are you thinking that they're coming from the inflammation side of things or because right now I mean you can look at some pretty decent data that suggests that it's going to help with uh you know if you're sleep deprived yes and we know that when you're sleep deprived there's usually an increase in neuroinflammation as well as a number of other things so is that the potential mechanism there % correct so when you look at a group that's had proper sleep the night before and you give them creatine or or uh measure them we don't see any uh greater effect from creatine versus placeo because the brain is probably not stressed but when you measure them in a a sleep deprived State and you measure a tasa of memory and cognition and then you look at the mechanisms it seems to always come back to decreasing the inflammatory environment somehow or oxidative stress interesting and and just to Pivot for one second I know we're talking about brain but you know I've seen some some older literature that suggests that you know short-term sleep deprivation uh doesn't necessarily affect the physical body as much as people may think but it definitely affects that mental motor um have you seen any literature on Creatine helping sort of the the body versus the brain in times of stress and sleep deprivation like can someone perform equally good if they're sleep deprived but they're on Creatine versus you know versus not yeah there were some uh there is some data that suggests it has some small muscle uh performance benefits by being able to engage in more exercise even when you're sleep deprise but as we talked about the vast majority seems to come from the neck up more of a cognitive memory perspective that's so wild so at the end of the day I mean is there a dosing strategy for the brain given that you know you might need more to get into the brain so there's only about a handful of studies that have looked at this directly and when you look at all the the studies and if you take the the studies that looked at depressive population or anxiety on medication it seems to be that on average 10 to 20 gram a day for multiple weeks is required to get an increase in brain content which could lead to some of these beneficial effects so on average it's maybe 10 grams a day for at least four weeks before they start to get some beneficial effects over time you may get an acute effect on brain creatine content but to lead that into performance or uh health effects it takes multiple weeks so we propose longer higher dosages is needed for brain overall health I've seen a lot of things floating around Instagram that'll you know talk about even like one two gram Doses and I've always kind of been questionable about those especially because theyve specifically talked about for the brain but I haven't and I know there is some benefit to you know just two three four grams per day low dose it sounds like for the brain I mean you really need to be getting it up there a little bit more yeah and and we think because geez if the majority is going to your muscle and maybe now bone uh maybe there's hardly anything left for the brain so that's why you need to take a lot more um and again the blood brain barrier really restricts what's coming in so if the blood brain barrier stops uptake um there's not a lot of Transporters in the brain and of course the brain makes its own you may need a lot more to get in those little areas or to accumulate to have some beneficial effects so overall 10 grams or more seems to be a viable dose for bone brain and and muscle perspectives so if someone is like super deficient in creatine then I would imagine that at least as far as the body's concerned even a low dose might make an impact for them because they're super low but sounds like the brain is still kind of operating a little bit in isolation creating its own that's 100% correct so the lower they they have in the amount if they have some inborn illnesses or errors in Creative metabolism vegans vegetarians or most people are adopting a plant-based diet they're going to have a lot less coming into the diet so now they need to rely on what's being produced in the liver as well as the brain and again the brain is a little bit different than the the muscle it sort of is not um ryant so much on the diet it sort of makes its own um so that could have some implications as well the other argument is someone on a carnivore diet people say I'm not going to respond to creatine I'm like well we know that from a muscle perspective but we have no idea about a carnivore diet or a pure meat diet uh with a lot of dietary creatine on bone or brain and that needs to be uh looked at from a research perspective yeah well and additionally I mean a carnivore diet that's maybe eating a lot of chicken and fish might not get as much as if they were say you know eating tremendous amount of red meat that's 100% correct so it's very difficult play and how much you're you're training right I mean like a lot of people that are into that kind of diet are also training pretty hard too so there's a lot of different kind of questions there coming back kind of just you know directly to you know how the brain would function I mean first of all how is creatine actually made in the brain I know this might be a little bit nerdy and it might you know be something that goes over my head but I mean how is it I mean okay I know we can manufacture in the liver I know we can get it from our food but how is it being made in the brain yeah it's identical to what's uh the processes that in the kidney and made in the the liver so basically you have two amino acids Arginine and glycine they sort of come together and hold hands through an enzymatic reaction and they form a compound called guanido acetate um and then guanidoacetate actually will leave the kidney travel to the liver and combines with another amino acid methionine and they combine to form creatine so it's not an elaborate process it takes two enzymes and three amino acids to form together and that actually is identical to what's happening in the brain um so the interesting thing is uh from a muscle perspective it's the kidney and liver that sort of do the work but the brain has its own unique ability to do that as well and how much does the body produced per day say in the liver versus the brain right so excellent question on average about 1 to three grams is produced naturally in the average 70 kilogram a human uh per day the brain we think is a little bit less that's produced or a little bit more depending on the individual so that there's more variability in the brain compared to what we think is happening in the kidneys and liver wow it's so at the end of the day when you look at you know creatine for the brain so what I'm hearing is there's no real way to say okay I'm going to have a high cognitive demand today so I'm going to take more creatine that's not going to NE so using it as sort of a neut Tropic in an acute setting is kind of misleading it is unfortunately it doesn't give you that uh instantaneous boost that we would all hope um especially if you know a day that you're you know jet lagged or sleep deprived so it is an accumulating effect and again it accumulates a lot slower in the brain than it does the muscle so if this is something that the person is considering they need to just sort of take it and be patient get a whole body perspective it's going to take a lot longer time to probably produce significant results in the brain compared to what we might think in the muscle perfect well as always keep it locked in here on my channel and uh Dr Kar where can everyone find you uh probably these is at Instagram at Dr Darren candle

Channel: Thomas DeLauer

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Keywords: creatine, creatine benefits, creatine monohydrate, creatine before and after, creatine loading phase, creatine transformation, creatine side effects, creatine hair loss, creatine hcl vs monohydrate, creatine gummies, creatine before or after workout, creatine for weight loss, creatine for beginners, creatine for runners, creatine for muscle growth, creatine for 30 days, creatine brain health, creatine for the brain, creatine cognition, darren candow, thomas delauer

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Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2024