This solo episode breaks down the science behind creatine supplementation, explaining why Dr. Anthony Chaffee personally skips it despite acknowledging its legitimate benefits. Listeners will learn how creatine can marginally improve strength, support neuroprotection (including concussion recovery at doses up to 60 grams per day), and aid memory and cognition in adults over 60, while also understanding the critical caveat that it causes water retention rather than true muscle hypertrophy.
The deeper argument is about dietary source over supplementation. Since no plant contains creatine and red meat provides roughly 4-5 grams per 2 lbs, someone eating a meat-heavy diet may already meet or exceed the 5 grams per day shown to be beneficial in studies. Dr. Anthony Chaffee also flags supplement quality concerns, including third-party lab testing for heavy metals, and explains that creatine functions like a threshold nutrient: having enough drives ATP production, but excess simply adds water weight without further energy benefits.
Key Takeaways
- Red meat (beef, lamb, pork) contains approximately 4-5 grams of creatine per 2 lbs, meaning eating 2-4 lbs of meat daily can deliver 8-10 grams of creatine naturally, matching or exceeding the 5 g/day dosage used in most beneficial studies.
- Creatine supplementation causes water retention inside muscle cells, which can inflate lean mass readings on body composition scans and add water weight that reduces speed and agility, making it counterproductive for field athletes who rely on strength-to-weight ratio.
- Preliminary research suggests doses as high as 60 grams of creatine per day for several days may help recover from concussion syndrome, likely because the injured brain has a sharply increased demand for creatine as an energy substrate.
- If choosing a creatine supplement, verify it has been tested by a third-party laboratory, as numerous products have been found contaminated with heavy metals and other harmful substances.
- Creatine Benefits: Strength, Memory, and Brain Protection
- Creatine for Concussions and Cognitive Decline in the Elderly
- Why Creatine Only Exists in Meat, Not Plants
- The Western Diet is Hypervegetarian: Why We're Deficient in Creatine and Meat Nutrients
- Why Dr. Chaffee Doesn't Supplement Creatine on a Carnivore Diet
- Creatine Supplement Contamination and Heavy Metals: What to Watch Out For
This is an auto-generated transcript from YouTube and may contain errors or inaccuracies.
So, I'm a doctor and here's why I don't take creatine. So, there are a lot of studies that show that you can get an increase in strength from taking creatine and certainly in older populations, especially the over 60s, it has been shown to increase memory, cognition, and other sort of neurological conditions, which is great. It seems to also have neuroprotective capabilities as well, especially for things like concussions and traumatic brain injuries. So, while there are studies that show that this can improve your strength by a marginal degree, other studies show that it doesn't necessarily increase hypertrophy. So, if your your goal is to get big muscles, that's not necessarily the best way to do it because creatine also makes your muscles retain water and so you put on water weight. And when you're doing these sorts of body composition scans, when you fill the muscle ti tissue and the and the cells with water, that can actually mistakenly be counted as actual lean muscle mass or in fact when you lose that water, you come off the creatine and you lose that excess water that disappears. So we haven't really seen any statistically significant increases in muscle hypertrophy, although there is a small degree of strength improvement. So, this is generally for about the five grams per day level. Well, there's other people that take higher amounts of this and they think that this gets better results and it very well may be, but we don't really have any studies on higher amounts of 10 g, 15 g, 20 g a day showing one way or the other if this is a safe and a good idea or b increases muscle hypertrophy or strength beyond what the normal 5 g per day would do. Then there are also new preliminary studies coming out on things like concussions where it can show a protective mechanism where when you're suffering from a concussion or some sort of head injury, more creatine than you would normally get in the 5 g supplementation has been shown at least preliminarily to improve how people recover from concussions. And in one study even showed that as much as 60 grams of creatine, so 60 grams of creatine a day for a few days, actually showed improvement in people that had concussion syndrome where they had these symptoms of a concussion long after their actual head injury. This is likely due to the fact that the brain has a high demand for creatine. And so when it's in a stressed state or an injured state, it's going to have an increased demand for things like creatine. So taking this in those conditions might be beneficial. And then there are other studies looking at creatine benefits in the elderly, especially over the ages of 60. And that this can help with neurocognition and other sorts of memory issues as we age. as nerve degeneration and memory issues and cognition issues are far too prevalent now where they were extremely rare historically. So, but you have to ask yourself why is it that this can be beneficial in the elderly or even for athletes? And the answer to that is likely because we're not eating nearly enough foods that contain creatine. You see, no plant contains creatine. You can really only get it from a dietary source if you eat a lot of meat. So things like red meat, beef, lamb, uh even pork have anywhere from four to five grams for every 2 lb or so of that meat. So it could very well be that this exact number, 5 g a day, which studies show this can be beneficial. It could very well be that this is just supplementing the lack of that four or five grams of creatine that we actually need and would normally get from our standard meat heavy diet. But because we're eating far less meat than we have historically, we're actually eating far less meat than we were in the early 1800s when we didn't have all these neurodeenerative sorts of diseases and chronic diseases that plague us now. But before I get to that, I just want to let you guys know about an event I'll be at in Bosezeman, Montana for July 4th with Bella Steak and Buttergal that if you can make it will be a great time. So, there's going to be fireworks, a panel, and other sorts of events that you can take part in. And of course, we're all going to be there interacting and hanging out with people. And obviously, there's going to be a lot of meat uh specifically from Macafferty Ranch right there in Montana. From what I've heard, it's absolutely fantastic. So, I'm really looking forward to that as well. There will be people such as myself, obviously, Bella, Dr. Baker, and my fiance L, and many others. So, if you're able to make it down, it would be great to see you there. And you can get your tickets at spg.events and hopefully see you there. And so, because the brain and body does need creatine, it could very well be that supplementing with creatine is necessary for people undereating meat. If you think about it, the standard western diet, the American diet, the Australian diet, the European diet is largely plant-based. Why do I say that? Everyone says it's it's really a heavy meat diet. It's really not. Over 70% of the calories in the standard American diet or just across America comes from plants. Most of this from carbohydrates. And if you think about the fact that the definition of a hyper carnivore such as a polar bear or a shark is any animal that consumes over 70% calories from meat, then the standard western diet, the American diet is actually hypervearian. Not vegetarian, it's hypervearian. If you think about like a fast food meal, like a Big Mac meal, you have these tiny little slivers of a meat patty with three buns, sugary sauces, bunch of seed oils, lettuce and tomatoes, then night shades deep fried in seed oils, and a sugary drink. Over 90% of those calories are likely from plants, very little from meat. So that's practically vegan. If you take out that little sliver of meat, now it is vegan. So if we think about this, we're not getting enough meat. We are hypervearian population right now. And that is not our biological design. Biologically, we are hyper carnivores. And we should be eating over 70% of our calories from meat, if not 100% like I do. And if you do that and you eat more meat, you will get more creatine. You'll get all these other nutrients that come along with creatine that are going to massively improve your health and your performance as an athlete. and protect against neurodeeneration as we age because things like B12, D3, vitamin A, choline, creatine, carnitine, and DHA, EPA, saturated fats, and even cholesterol are all protective and beneficial and necessary for the brain as we age. And so, if you skimp on those, just like you're skimping on the creatine, you're going to cause problems and you may develop neurodeeneration as a result of that. So taking some creatine is all well and good, but what about all those other things that you're not getting because you're not eating enough meat that has a creatine and everything else because I predominantly eat meat. I'm getting a ton of creatine. So I'm getting that 5 g of creatine a day already just because of the amount of meat that I eat and possibly sometimes more. When I'm working out, when I'm being active, I will often eat more than 2 lbs. I might eat 3 lbs or even four pounds of meat in a day. So I might be getting eight or even 10 grams of creatine every day. So adding more creatine into that is probably not necessary. You know, if we find out that, you know, 20 gram, 30 gram of creatine every single day is not only beneficial but safe, then maybe as an athlete, you could look into that. But because I'm already getting more creatine than most athletes are who are supplementing, I don't I don't have a problem with that. And so I don't feel that I need to take creatine. And in fact, every time that I've taken creatine as an athlete, I've never found any performance benefits. I've maybe felt like I retained a bit of water. And when you're an athlete, you don't want to be slowed down with water weight. You want your strength to weight ratio to be favorable so that you can move your body fast and hit someone hard as hell, like when you're playing a a contact sport like rugby. So being bogged down with extra water weight is is not beneficial because if you're getting an increase in strength but you're getting slowed down with your water weight, is that really providing a benefit as a field athlete who's trying to run, jump, sprint, and go into contact? If you're just going for powerlifting and strength based sort of sports, creatine probably going to benefit you if you're not getting enough from meat. But taking excess creatine, it's like a bottleneck. You need enough creatine to make ATP to make cellular energy. But once you have enough, that doesn't actually drive more energy production. You just need enough. It's like having gas in your car. If you have enough gas in your car, your car runs. Your car doesn't run any better if you have a full tank versus half a tank or a quarter a tank. You just need enough gas to get the engine turning over. And if you have that, everything's fine. Same thing with creatine. Just having enough creatine is going to get you where you want to go. Having excessive amounts of creatine doesn't drive that energy chain faster. All it does is retain water and slow you down. So depending on the type of athlete you are, that could be a double-edged sword. So just consider that as well. And as a rugby player who relied on both strength and speed, that wasn't in the equation for me. And lastly, another reason why I don't take creatine is because it's hard to trust the source. There have been a numerous reports that come out recently that many creatine supplements have had had contaminations with various things, even heavy metals, and that you have to be careful. You have to get you have to make sure that the creatine is certified safe and has actually been tested by a third-party lab to make sure that it doesn't have any of these harmful contaminants that you don't want. So, if you aren't eating enough meat and you're not getting enough creatine, or maybe you've had a concussion and you want to help your body recover, you need to do some research and find the best sources of creatine that are not contaminated. All right, guys. Hope that's helpful. See you on the next one.