5 ms·

Creatine supplementation improves brain performance in vegetarians [pdf]

33 points by ulvund 17y ago

ulvund 17y ago
From the abstract: " .. In this work, we tested the hypothesis that oral creatine supplementation (5 g/day for six weeks) would enhance intelligence test scores and working memory performance in 45 young adult, vegetarian subjects in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design. Creatine supplementation had a significant positive effect (p , 0.0001) on both working memory (backward digit span) and intelligence (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices), both tasks that require speed of processing. These findings underline a dynamic and significant role of brain energy capacity in influencing brain performance."
- imurray 17y ago
  Statistically significant (subject to the usual caveats of being careful about the results from a single study). Little is said about how worthwhile the change is.
  - yungchin 17y ago
    See figure 1. From what I gather in the paper, this RAPM is a speed measure. If I'm interpreting this stuff correctly at all (never read anything in this field before) performing 40% more tasks per unit time is quite worthwhile!
    - imurray 17y ago
      It's a score on some variant of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices
    - gwern 17y ago
      Actually, Raven's isn't supposed to be speeded if you care about measuring IQ rather than, say, processing speed or WM control. This is one reason why the Jaeggi 2008 study (showing that Dual N-back boosts IQ) is somewhat untrustworthy.
  - ulvund 17y ago
    Yes, the significance test shows whether it is likely that the changes happened due to pure coincidence. p < 0.0001 means the changes are very unlikely to be coincidental. Which measure do you propose to test how worthwhile the results are :) ?
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      Define a threshold of "worthwhileness" and measure whether the results are statistically significantly larger than that.
ilkhd2 17y ago
After I switched to vegetarian diet I have not noticed _any_ difference in brain/personality/iq, I ve just lost extra weight. And have less allergies. Aside from that - nothing.
- corruption 17y ago
  Case solved. Who needs research when you can just proclaim truth to the world based on personal experience! :)
- berntb 17y ago
  It is hard to add anything to corruption's comment, but a practical tip: I've seen claims that it is hard to notice how/when your intelligence changes over time. A friend who had some health issues for a while (sorry, I'm not giving more details) played (simple) computer games quite a lot, because the results showed functionality trends. ymmv, of course, but if I were you I'd play a few games like that over time while trying creatine supplements. If they help, I'd continue.
  - darkxanthos 17y ago
    Games like what? Tetris? Bejeweled? Text Twist?
    - berntb 17y ago
      I think there were simple games like that; not reaction stuff, though. I'll ask and hopefully get back to you in less than 24 hours.
      - darkxanthos 17y ago
        Awesome! Thanks!
        berntb 17y ago
        Not so awesome. There were mostly FB-games. Things like "Who Has the Biggest Brain", word games (speed reactions), like Word Drop and Word Challenge in FB. (I don't know anything about these games; I just have their names and a datapoint that they were good to verify daily shape and trace mind effects for medicines, etc. For some specific problems I'm not going to discuss.)
chaosmachine 17y ago
The graphs seem to show ~50% increase on Raven's Progressive Matrices tests, and ~30% on backwards digit span tests. http://i.imgur.com/7jZT4.png http://i.imgur.com/7jZT4.png Those are pretty large gains, I'm tempted to try supplementing this.
duncanj 17y ago
Why do the graphs change the name of the line between point 2 and point 4?
- ulvund 17y ago
  Because they switch the placebo and creatine groups :) Week (-∞)-0: Noone has taken any supplements Test 1. Week 0-6 : Group 1 gets creatine, group 2 gets placebo Test 2. Week 6-12 : Noone takes any supplements Test 3. Week 12-18 : Group 1 gets placebo, group 2 gets creatine Test 4.
  - duncanj 17y ago
    Thanks. I guess I have a problem reading closely.
jey 17y ago
This study is from 2003 and makes extravagant claims. Have there been any followup studies that corroborate it or qualify it? Were these vegetarians seriously deficient?
lurkerperpetual 17y ago
A very interesting topic for a study would be similarly testing groups of omnivores, vegetarians and vegans, to see if there are any detectable mental capacity differences. It should be less controversial than comparing the same between races and genders. The 'we developed bigger and better brains from eating meat' is an often used rationale for the omnivore diet.
- araneae 17y ago
  Actually, I think that would be a terrible study. It's too hard to control for other factors that may differ between the groups. For instance, vegetarians and vegans in the U.S. are on average more educated. You can add that into a model, but this kind of study- where you test people before, during, and after creatine addition- is really much better science.
dejb 17y ago
Edit : it should be noted that this is from 2003. I'm sure newer research has been done. (Re-Edit. Not much by the looks of it) One question this raises is why isn't there a know correlation between high red meat diets and higher brain performance? All things being equal the the study suggests a significant advantage for higher intake. Here are my best guesses in order of likelyhood - The benefit is temporary and relates more to the raising of levels rather the absolute level. - The amounts of creatine involved (equivalent of 2 pounds red meat per day) are too much for anyone to ingest naturally for long, but this level is required to see significant benefits. - The benefits of creatine are being counteracted by some other substances in red meat therefore masking it's effect on heavy meat eaters. - The reported high average IQ of those who chose to become vegetarians masks the fact that the lack of creatine in their diet does actually make them dumber. Anyway it looks interesting especially for those without much natural creatine intake.
hackermom 17y ago
Just thought I'd add this... Creatine is naturally produced in the human body by amino acids. Just because you're a vegetarian, it doesn't mean you suffer a shortage of the particular amino acids required for producing creatine. Most vegetarians fall under the "ovo-lacto" umbrella, meaning they will eat egg and milk, and pretty much anything else made by animals, just not the animals themselves - being a vegetarian myself, I often say: "I'll eat food made by animals, just not food made OF animals" - and many vegetarians also use various "fullworthy" protein supplements containing all the essential amino acids, guaranteeing them all the components needed to produce creatine while being a vegetarian. I myself use protein supplements to ensure, together with food, that I get a bit more than 1 gram of fullworthy protein per kilo body weight a day, and that is an amount that actually even meat-eaters, without supplements, can have a hard time reaching on a daily basis. Addendum: Digging a little bit on Wikipedia, I found the three amino acids (of which only one is essential) that Creatine is produced from in the body: Arginine (non-essential) - vegetabilic sources: "wheat germ and flour, buckwheat, granola, oatmeal, peanuts, nuts (coconut, pecans, cashews, walnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, pinenuts), seeds (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower), chick peas, cooked soybeans." Glycine (non-essential) - synthesized in the human body from Serine, also a non-essential amino acid. Methionine (essential) - vegetabilic (and animalic) sources: "High levels of methionine can be found in sesame seeds, Brazil nuts, fish, meats and some other plant seeds; methionine is also found in cereal grains." Judging from this, it seems that a vegetarian has to maintain a really lousy and unhealthy diet in order to suffer a Creatine shortage. Maybe the test subjects were university students on a Ramen diet.
- araneae 17y ago
  Just because your body CAN produce creatine doesn't mean that all it needs to produce enough is its building blocks. People here seem to be acting like our bodies have perfect feedback loops for every nutrient, but if in our recent evolutionary history we always got enough, that might not be the case. You have to remember that were one of only three mammals species that has completely lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C. If we lost synthesis of one necessary nutrient, don't you think it might be possible that we also lost some mechanisms for regulating the amount of another?
tokenadult 17y ago
It's time to link to Peter Norvig's article about reading research studies again: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
gwern 17y ago
Relevant link: http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training/browse_thread/thread/fe4ee2f0c994e40e/d24bcf30c083ec3e http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training/browse_thread/... tl;dr: Rawson 2008 is a broad null result for healthy young omnivores who aren't idiots. Vegetarians, idiots, the sleep-deprived, and old people may benefit.
- elblanco 17y ago
  So what the study is saying is that eating a diet we are evolutionary adapted to, then sleeping well makes us smart?
  - gwern 17y ago
    I think I'd put it in negative terms; not that sleeping makes you smarter (because that makes it sound like sleeping is a sufficient condition), but that not sleeping prevents you from being smarter (which says sleeping is necessary but not sufficient - as it is). Ditto for vegetarian diet - not that eating meat makes you smart, but that not eating meat and not replacing the meat appropriately will prevent you from being (a little) smarter. (There are other examples, like the B vitamins that vegetarians need to watch out for, I've heard.)

33 points by ulvund 17y ago

From the abstract: " .. In this work, we tested the hypothesis that oral creatine supplementation (5 g/day for six weeks) would enhance intelligence test scores and working memory performance in 45 young adult, vegetarian subjects in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design. Creatine supplementation had a significant positive effect (p , 0.0001) on both working memory (backward digit span) and intelligence (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices), both tasks that require speed of processing. These findings underline a dynamic and significant role of brain energy capacity in influencing brain performance."

imurray 17y ago
Statistically significant (subject to the usual caveats of being careful about the results from a single study). Little is said about how worthwhile the change is.
- yungchin 17y ago
  See figure 1. From what I gather in the paper, this RAPM is a speed measure. If I'm interpreting this stuff correctly at all (never read anything in this field before) performing 40% more tasks per unit time is quite worthwhile!
  - imurray 17y ago
    It's a score on some variant of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices
  - gwern 17y ago
    Actually, Raven's isn't supposed to be speeded if you care about measuring IQ rather than, say, processing speed or WM control. This is one reason why the Jaeggi 2008 study (showing that Dual N-back boosts IQ) is somewhat untrustworthy.
- ulvund 17y ago
  Yes, the significance test shows whether it is likely that the changes happened due to pure coincidence. p < 0.0001 means the changes are very unlikely to be coincidental. Which measure do you propose to test how worthwhile the results are :) ?
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    Define a threshold of "worthwhileness" and measure whether the results are statistically significantly larger than that.

ilkhd2 17y ago

After I switched to vegetarian diet I have not noticed _any_ difference in brain/personality/iq, I ve just lost extra weight. And have less allergies. Aside from that - nothing.

corruption 17y ago
Case solved. Who needs research when you can just proclaim truth to the world based on personal experience! :)
berntb 17y ago
It is hard to add anything to corruption's comment, but a practical tip: I've seen claims that it is hard to notice how/when your intelligence changes over time. A friend who had some health issues for a while (sorry, I'm not giving more details) played (simple) computer games quite a lot, because the results showed functionality trends. ymmv, of course, but if I were you I'd play a few games like that over time while trying creatine supplements. If they help, I'd continue.
- darkxanthos 17y ago
  Games like what? Tetris? Bejeweled? Text Twist?
  - berntb 17y ago
    I think there were simple games like that; not reaction stuff, though. I'll ask and hopefully get back to you in less than 24 hours.
    - darkxanthos 17y ago
      Awesome! Thanks!
      - berntb 17y ago
        Not so awesome. There were mostly FB-games. Things like "Who Has the Biggest Brain", word games (speed reactions), like Word Drop and Word Challenge in FB. (I don't know anything about these games; I just have their names and a datapoint that they were good to verify daily shape and trace mind effects for medicines, etc. For some specific problems I'm not going to discuss.)

chaosmachine 17y ago

The graphs seem to show ~50% increase on Raven's Progressive Matrices tests, and ~30% on backwards digit span tests. http://i.imgur.com/7jZT4.png http://i.imgur.com/7jZT4.png Those are pretty large gains, I'm tempted to try supplementing this.

duncanj 17y ago

Why do the graphs change the name of the line between point 2 and point 4?

ulvund 17y ago
Because they switch the placebo and creatine groups :) Week (-∞)-0: Noone has taken any supplements Test 1. Week 0-6 : Group 1 gets creatine, group 2 gets placebo Test 2. Week 6-12 : Noone takes any supplements Test 3. Week 12-18 : Group 1 gets placebo, group 2 gets creatine Test 4.
- duncanj 17y ago
  Thanks. I guess I have a problem reading closely.

jey 17y ago

This study is from 2003 and makes extravagant claims. Have there been any followup studies that corroborate it or qualify it? Were these vegetarians seriously deficient?

lurkerperpetual 17y ago

A very interesting topic for a study would be similarly testing groups of omnivores, vegetarians and vegans, to see if there are any detectable mental capacity differences. It should be less controversial than comparing the same between races and genders. The 'we developed bigger and better brains from eating meat' is an often used rationale for the omnivore diet.

araneae 17y ago
Actually, I think that would be a terrible study. It's too hard to control for other factors that may differ between the groups. For instance, vegetarians and vegans in the U.S. are on average more educated. You can add that into a model, but this kind of study- where you test people before, during, and after creatine addition- is really much better science.

dejb 17y ago

Edit : it should be noted that this is from 2003. I'm sure newer research has been done. (Re-Edit. Not much by the looks of it) One question this raises is why isn't there a know correlation between high red meat diets and higher brain performance? All things being equal the the study suggests a significant advantage for higher intake. Here are my best guesses in order of likelyhood - The benefit is temporary and relates more to the raising of levels rather the absolute level. - The amounts of creatine involved (equivalent of 2 pounds red meat per day) are too much for anyone to ingest naturally for long, but this level is required to see significant benefits. - The benefits of creatine are being counteracted by some other substances in red meat therefore masking it's effect on heavy meat eaters. - The reported high average IQ of those who chose to become vegetarians masks the fact that the lack of creatine in their diet does actually make them dumber. Anyway it looks interesting especially for those without much natural creatine intake.

hackermom 17y ago

Just thought I'd add this... Creatine is naturally produced in the human body by amino acids. Just because you're a vegetarian, it doesn't mean you suffer a shortage of the particular amino acids required for producing creatine. Most vegetarians fall under the "ovo-lacto" umbrella, meaning they will eat egg and milk, and pretty much anything else made by animals, just not the animals themselves - being a vegetarian myself, I often say: "I'll eat food made by animals, just not food made OF animals" - and many vegetarians also use various "fullworthy" protein supplements containing all the essential amino acids, guaranteeing them all the components needed to produce creatine while being a vegetarian. I myself use protein supplements to ensure, together with food, that I get a bit more than 1 gram of fullworthy protein per kilo body weight a day, and that is an amount that actually even meat-eaters, without supplements, can have a hard time reaching on a daily basis. Addendum: Digging a little bit on Wikipedia, I found the three amino acids (of which only one is essential) that Creatine is produced from in the body: Arginine (non-essential) - vegetabilic sources: "wheat germ and flour, buckwheat, granola, oatmeal, peanuts, nuts (coconut, pecans, cashews, walnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, pinenuts), seeds (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower), chick peas, cooked soybeans." Glycine (non-essential) - synthesized in the human body from Serine, also a non-essential amino acid. Methionine (essential) - vegetabilic (and animalic) sources: "High levels of methionine can be found in sesame seeds, Brazil nuts, fish, meats and some other plant seeds; methionine is also found in cereal grains." Judging from this, it seems that a vegetarian has to maintain a really lousy and unhealthy diet in order to suffer a Creatine shortage. Maybe the test subjects were university students on a Ramen diet.

araneae 17y ago
Just because your body CAN produce creatine doesn't mean that all it needs to produce enough is its building blocks. People here seem to be acting like our bodies have perfect feedback loops for every nutrient, but if in our recent evolutionary history we always got enough, that might not be the case. You have to remember that were one of only three mammals species that has completely lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C. If we lost synthesis of one necessary nutrient, don't you think it might be possible that we also lost some mechanisms for regulating the amount of another?

tokenadult 17y ago

It's time to link to Peter Norvig's article about reading research studies again: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

gwern 17y ago

Relevant link: http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training/browse_thread/thread/fe4ee2f0c994e40e/d24bcf30c083ec3e http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training/browse_thread/... tl;dr: Rawson 2008 is a broad null result for healthy young omnivores who aren't idiots. Vegetarians, idiots, the sleep-deprived, and old people may benefit.

elblanco 17y ago
So what the study is saying is that eating a diet we are evolutionary adapted to, then sleeping well makes us smart?
- gwern 17y ago
  I think I'd put it in negative terms; not that sleeping makes you smarter (because that makes it sound like sleeping is a sufficient condition), but that not sleeping prevents you from being smarter (which says sleeping is necessary but not sufficient - as it is). Ditto for vegetarian diet - not that eating meat makes you smart, but that not eating meat and not replacing the meat appropriately will prevent you from being (a little) smarter. (There are other examples, like the B vitamins that vegetarians need to watch out for, I've heard.)