 I'm sure most of you are familiar with creatine, a supplement that has massive performance benefits specifically for strength training, powerlifting, and bodybuilding. It is actually the most widely used supplement across all sports, essentially an extra battery pack for your muscles increasing strength around 10%. Creatine is found naturally in red meat and fish, but not in a significant enough amount for our bodies to utilize maximum muscle storage. We make creatine naturally from certain amino acids, but I was consuming 2-3 pounds of red meat per day while training for a physique competition in 2015 and I still noticed significant performance benefits from taking a creatine supplement. Back in around 2010, when I was bodybuilding consistently, creatine was the driving factor behind most of my later strength gains as a natural, it's certainly effective and allows people to achieve strength beyond what is naturally possible. You would think by eating 2-3 pounds of red meat that the amount of creatine in the meat as well as the amino acids from that meat would allow me to maximize my muscle stores of creatine naturally, but that's not the case. A strong argument can be made that the process of making creatine is fairly stressful on the liver and is limited, therefore supplementing with it may actually be a good idea. However, the waste product of creatine metabolism, creatinine, needs to be filtered by the kidneys which leads to our main concern. So creatinine is used by doctors as an indicator of kidney function. If it's too high out of range, that means kidney failure in most cases. But here is a study showing that creatinine levels were raised in a normal individual taking creatine but there was no underlying kidney dysfunction. Good luck explaining that to a doctor. There are several case studies however showing that creatine can be dangerous. Here is an 18 year old who developed kidney failure after following a typical creatine protocol, loading on 20 grams per day for 5 days, then maintenance 1 gram per day for 6 weeks, 25 days after stopping usage of creatine, the patient recovered fully. Here is another case report of acute kidney failure in a 20 year old man who took 20 grams of creatine per day for 4 weeks and this is not an uncommon dosage. We do have case studies showing the opposite. 12 weeks on a creatine supplementation protocol did not affect kidney function in resistance trained healthy individuals consuming a high protein diet. This reinforcing the safety of the dietary supplement. Most studies show no risk of creatine usage even long term and the average fitness personality on YouTube will tell you that it is perfectly safe, usually referencing similar studies. I personally believe that any additional stress on an organ is not warranted even if it's just a slight amount on the kidneys unless you're a professional athlete trying to compete at the highest level then arguably health is not your priority. There is no point for an average person to risk using a substance that is relatively new. One major thing to keep in mind is that people using creatine tend to be consuming large amounts of protein and possibly using other drugs and supplements all of which will likely stress the kidneys more than the creatine itself. Creatine on top of this might just be adding fuel to the fire. This is where genetic tolerance comes in, how well your liver and kidneys are able to handle the added stress of these drugs. It's why some bodybuilders die relatively young even in their 20s and others live into their 70s and 80s but if you look around there aren't any bodybuilders making it past the 80s into the 90s and 100s and there is likely a reason for that. If it is not healthy to use all of these drugs and supplements they take 10, 20, 30 years off of your life in the long term. The other major concern of creatine usage is hair loss. Creatine increases DHT levels substantially after just several days of usage. As most of you are likely familiar DHT is linked to causing hair follicles to miniaturize in those prone to male patterned baldness which are people that are sensitive to DHT. So for many increasing DHT by taking creatine would hypothetically accelerate hair loss. Now DHT is made in the liver. So perhaps taking the stress off the liver of producing creatine it is now efficiently converting testosterone to DHT, I don't know. I haven't heard anyone else talk about this and it's not important to me because I'm not going to ever take creatine again and I also believe hair loss can be prevented by taking certain precautions and if anything creatine is on the bottom of the list for things that would cause hair loss in the big picture. Something else I haven't heard spoken about is how these supplements are made in laboratories as well as the negative additives. Chemicals are combined inside reactors under pressure to form creatine then passed through centrifuges to purify them then milled into a finer powder to make it able to pass through the stomach and intestines. Basically most artificial supplements are made by processing some type of chemical into something resembling a nutrient in this case creatine being that nutrient then purifying it to a point that it's fit for human consumption without too many adverse side effects. I spoke about whey protein a couple of weeks ago if you want to get more of an idea about how negative these processes can be but this doesn't include those additives, fillers and chemicals that are used to flavor or add performance enhancing elements to supplements you know such as pre-workouts and protein powders where creatine is added. So thank you guys for joining me today hopefully this gives you guys an idea of you know whether you want to take creatine or not you know as I said if you're not a high performance athlete if you're not competing at a very high level there's no point I mean are there physical appearance benefits to creatine you know you'll look bigger your muscles will look more full but there's also other things you can do in regards to carbohydrates and food intake that can manipulate that as well it's really up to you if you guys would like to support me please like the video subscribe hit that bell icon share the video if you can definitely check out my book the ancestral indigenous diet down in the description below thanks again for joining me guys you enjoy the rest of your day. If you guys haven't signed up on frankdestophile.com learn the top five carnivore diet mistakes