 Our next caller is Chuck from Ohio Chuck. What's going on man? How can we help you? Hey, how's it going? First of all, I just will say thanks for the opportunity to talk to you guys I really appreciate it and I'm actually here at school right now. I'm an assistant principal of middle school So I'm hoping that things don't blow up here in the next 15 minutes You know, I enjoy the podcast I'm morning lifter 4 a.m. 5 a.m I listen to guys every morning and I've actually come to the point where I've listened up episodes I think I enjoy the you know the introduction more than I enjoy the fitness part now I'm a father of two kids both under four So I really have come to relate to a lot of the conversations guys have so I just appreciate you and and all that you guys do My my question is around creatine in general I know that I'm not a huge supplement guy I basically take pre-workout and I was taking creatine pretty pretty consistently And I'm just kind of wondered here lately, you know, I'm meal prep every day with with beef and then you know Usually a couple nights a week. We have beef for dinner. Is there a point where? My diet is enough and that I'm just wasting my money with creatine. Yeah, no good question Okay, so a couple things number one you you're fine without taking creatine So you're getting enough from your food to be healthy You're not gonna notice like when a vegan takes creatine for example studies will show they get an IQ boost probably because they're not getting enough From food that being said will you benefit from supplementing with creatine? Probably. Yeah, you probably will because And studies will show this that create that creatine additional creatine just tops. It just tops out your ATP stores Strength and you can experiment with this you could take creatine for a couple weeks See if you notice any increased strength or a better pump I do notice that in part of your question to you mentioned Creatine and hair loss. Would you like me to go into that a little bit? Yeah, I was just curious and I'll be honest. It's kind of slipped my mind You had an interview a while back It's probably been a couple weeks now when it when it published and it was like a brief moment in the episode He's the guy I mentioned to study And then I've seen Lane Norton talking about a little bit here lately, too Is there is there any correlation between you know creatine and hair loss or is that is that minuscule? What's the what's going on there? It's a it's a big stretch There's zero there is no evidence that creatine is connected to hair loss But here is where the evidence this is why people will say this or why some people will talk about this There is some some evidence that creatine may cause a increase in DHT So DHT is a form of testosterone that is more androgenic Okay, so androgenic meaning the the masculinizing effects that you may get from testosterone So DHT is great for libido Aggression in fact anabolic steroids that are derived from DHT Bodybuilders will take it because it makes their muscles look hard. It makes them feel aggressive They'll get a libido boost from it and DHT also can cause the the masculinizing effects of hair loss You know the male or excuse me female voice deepening So if women take DHT this will happen or if they increase their DHT maybe prostate enlargement But here's the thing the amount of DHT increase that has been observed in some studies either studies show There's no increase or some studies show there's a minor increase It's so overstated that it would cause any issues That's like a downstream thing that they're trying to connect as of right now all the studies on creatine are positive Improvements in health. It's got antioxidant properties good for your heart good for your muscles good for your organs Brain function nothing. There's no studies that show that it's connected to hair loss I think that's a big like like kind of fear mongering a little bit Could it pretend, you know, would it would a slight increase in DHT cause hair loss? Probably not maybe in the absolute most sensitive individuals in which case they'd say it doesn't matter because they're gonna cut their hairs going away anyway But yeah, that's not something I would worry about Doug. Would you Doug? Will you Google? How much creatine is in a pound of red meat? I don't remember what the number is right now But this is this will help Chuck kind of your question your point to you know How much red meat you're eating because you're right if you eat consume a good amount of red meat You are getting some creatine through food I want to say that the recommended dose for for optimizing that is what around five. Is it five? It's five five grams a day So here you go one one okay one pound of raw beef or salmon provides one to two grams of creatine So even if you had a pound in a day and the optimal place is about five That's still only getting you about a half halfway point to that So you would you would benefit from three to five grams a day Kind of what I do is if I had like a really heavy red meat day That might be the day I do skip taking my creatine if it was like a really heavy day and then all the rest of the Days I'm taking it or maybe I'm taking like a half scoop or something just so I can stretch out How long my creatine last that's a strategy that you can use You're definitely not you're definitely based off of how much red meat you're eating You're not deficient so it's not like you need it to be healthy But if you're looking to build muscle there there'd be an advantage to you still utilizing some creatine The only thing I would say like I know some people have had issues like with their gut in terms of creatine and it not really You know Being something that was you know agreeable with them But other than that, you know, there's really little downside to supplementing with with creatine So that's that's just one of those things though if it doesn't agree with you, you know, I wouldn't keep going with it Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't worry too much about the the hair loss fears or whatever a slight a little increase in DHT Not gonna affect you except maybe you might notice a little increase in libido and strength But even then it's it's you know anytime we affect our hormones naturally The boost even though you may read studies all 30% increase like you do the math and you look at that It's not that big of a difference like you would get an increase in DHT if you naturally raise your testosterone too, right? So if somebody let's say is walking around with a measurement of 600 testosterone and then they optimize their their life and their sleep and their diet there they may get their number up to 800 and there's typically a corresponding rise in DHT also associated with that because DHT is where we get that from Just testosterone, but nonetheless I wouldn't worry about it and I think we're gonna see in the next five to ten years Creatine is gonna get recommended to they're already starting to recommend it to the elderly It's like a wellness. It's a wellness supplement and now some people don't really get any drive any benefit from it They're called non-responders, but you'll know within two to three weeks like start supplementing with it And if you don't notice a difference then it's probably not a big deal But if you notice a little bit of boost and strength better pump that kind of stuff and then go for it Okay, great. Thank you. Yes. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for calling in nice Chuck Yeah, that's the one it's it's so crazy right like of all of the promises of the supplement industry of all the Supplements, that's the one golden goose that in fact creatine is what saved the supplement industry It really is because of creatine The supplement industry Exploded you can actually connect the growth of the supplement industry. Is that true? Absolutely really? Absolutely. If you look at when creatine hit the market when EAS I think was the first supplement the first company to really really market and bring it out and it's what crushed for EAS, right? They brought it out people took it. Oh my god. It actually works, right? Yeah and You can see how the supplement market really took off as a result and it's backed by like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of really well-made studies. It's been studied now for 20-something years and it's again It's probably gonna be recommended as a health supplement general health supplement It was interesting when it first came out like, you know football team we started to take it and it There was all this fear behind it because it actually worked So like we got people coming in and warning us about you know all these different things that Potentially like could happen and it's like, you know, none of that was true But there's lots of fear going into it like it was some kind of hidden steroid We didn't know about yeah, it's one of those few supplements that I cannot take for a while And then reintroduce it back into my routine and I see a nice even increase in all my my weight Mm-hmm like strength wise just do and and I also look fuller, right? So like I noticed that like my muscles look fuller I look bigger because I'm probably hanging on to a little bit of extra water in there, too So I think that those two things are like guaranteed or and it's not one of those things that if I do for long I know you've like never stopped so I've been taking creatine Ret relatively consistently since I was 16 right for a long time And you probably only really notice when you come off and then go back. I mean I've come off a few times But I'm pretty damn consistent. Yeah with taking it and you know, it's funny You look at the wellness space that talks all about mitochondrial health You sure you've heard that right from all the hackers and the bio hackers and all that right One of the best things you could do powerhouse of the cell Yeah, one of the best things you do for the mitochondria of your cell is help them produce more ATP Which is one of their main sources of energy. That's what creatine does and that's why studies are all now showing. Oh my god It helps with heart function. It helps with you know liver function. It's your cognitive function improves So it's just one of those and it's like again It's like a miracle supplement in the sense that there is no other supplement that comes close And it's really the only one that's ever lived up to the hype really no other supplement has lived up to the hype Not even close to what creatine has now to your point to the mitochondria health I have always wanted to do this and test and be consistent with I've played with it But I haven't been consistent with it to really tease anything out and that's the stacking it with the red light therapy Since the red light at doing it post-workout doing red light therapy and then also taking your creatine It'd be interesting to see if we if you noticed like an added boost It makes sense because they both do that right different ways, right?