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Creatine found to improve cognitive performance during sleep deprivation
- pitched 3y agoI’ve been taking 5mg daily of Creatine for about 6 months now. It gives me a surprising amount of energy that is still very noticeable if I miss a day, even with a full 8 hours of sleep. A big surprise I got early on was that my previous coffee habit of 5+ cups per day just kind of disappeared. No longer needed to keep going, I think.
- blacksmith_tb 3y ago5mg? That seems like a very small dose... the linked study says they administered 0.35g per kg - for me that'd be about 24g, which seems like a lot, though I guess people who are lifting weights might do that much daily for a week or two and then switch down to 5g/day.
- xenospn 3y agoThe recommended dose is 5g per day. You can front-load creatine if you are deficient, but taking over 5g daily won’t do much. Edit: it’s 5g, not mg.
- nanomonkey 3y agoEverything I've ever come across suggests 3-5g per day, with some folks doing a 20-25g loading protocol to saturate your muscles in the first week.
- vrc 3y agoAnd possibly saturate your toilet too!
- subsaharancoder 3y agoMitchell Hooper, world strongman champion, takes 10g a day..but he's built different :-)
- ratg13 3y agoToo many people in this thread are conflating taking creatine for cognitive effects with taking it for weight lifting and strength performance. If you are taking weight lifting doses for cognitive effects, you are effectively 'doing it wrong' and will notice a significant weight gain from the extra water retention.
- swatcoder 3y agoRecommended dose by whom? It's most popular in sports training and adjacent aesthetics, and the norm among that community is in grams. While most products are available as powders that you could perhaps measure out in milligrams, their reference dosage for advertising is usually 5g.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TeaBrain 3y agoThey have to mean 5g, as does the guy who responded to you who seems to have made the same mistake. The recommended dose on most creatine containers is around 5 grams. 5mg is so little that it would be impossible to measure without a mg scale.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoThe last sentence there is an impressively neat tautology. I love it
- zahma 3y agoI always wondered why I couldn’t measure mg with my gram scale! I just kept asking myself where are the sig figs?
- TeaBrain 3y agoTo your snark, I was meaning to convey that a standard kitchen scale wouldn't be accurate enough to measure 5mg, necessitating what is typically referred to as a precision or mg scale. https://awscales.com/gemini-20-precision-milligram-scale/ https://awscales.com/gemini-20-precision-milligram-scale/
- TeaBrain 3y agoIs it really a tautology though?
- Knufen 3y ago5 mg? We get about 1 gram of creatine through a varied diet and the body synthesize the rest. I would guess it to be purely placebo for you? All lifter recommend 3-5 g of supplementation daily.
- wtk 3y agoIs it just creatine? I've had some good results - improved mental clarity, just to discover it has taurine added.
- pitched 3y agoIt is pure Creatine. This is definitely an above average result from the supplement, from what I understand. Probably from some sort of deficiency in the long chain of reactions that make it. My bet is that the sleep deficiency measured in this study is also impacting when of the reactions too. I wish it was easier to measure these things to actually know for sure.
- tylerflick 3y agoBe careful with it, as too much Creatine can put extra stress on your kidneys.
- pitched 3y agoI did mean 5g, not 5mg. Thanks to everyone who pointed out the error.
- felsokning 3y agohttps://archive.is/TvpRr https://archive.is/TvpRr Although, I could see this being beneficial in fields where labour is scarce (e.g.: the medical field), I fear it could lend towards a "sleep deprivation is okay, just take creatine" rationale in other fields.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 3y agoWhy does medical get an exception for poor treatment
- kadoban 3y agoIt shouldn't in general, but there are restricted cases where it's literally life and death and difficult/impossible to plan around.
- bennyhill 3y agoI don't see how a work around for an intentional shortage can be acceptable if you are saying the AMA kills people and I think that you are.
- kadoban 3y ago> for an intentional shortage I would not say it's only acceptable for unintended shortages, or maybe very brief and rare shortages since those tend to be the kind you can't reasonably plan around. As for saying the AMA kills people, not sure I'd go that far without doing more research. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if the effect of some of their policies is more deaths than there otherwise would be.
- kadoban 3y agoUgh, I meant to say it's only acceptaple for unintended shortages. An extra "not" snuck in there.
- austhrow743 3y ago
- spr-alex 3y agoOther consumables from meat with notable effects here are carnosine and taurine. Carnosine in particular helps with janitorial processes that happen during sleep.
- HuShifang 3y agoI'd just add, these three can be obtained from veg-friendly supplements too.
- paulddraper 3y agoYes, AFAIK all three are reasonable simple molecules with synthetic formulations.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoI think Choline belongs in that list also. The difficulty of getting these on a vegan diet is the reason I started consuming bivalves
- adrian_b 3y agoAfter switching to a vegan diet and after some experimentation with other variants, I have eventually settled on adding to the food small amounts of creatine monohydrate, taurine and choline bitartrate in pure powder form, exactly like you would add table salt. For me it has worked fine. However, among the nutritional supplements for a vegan diet I make a temporary exception for cod liver oil (or other fish oil). Even if there is an adequate vegan substitute (Schizochytrium oil, which is produced by a cultivated fungus-like organism, despite being marketed as "algae" oil), for now it is still too expensive. Its price has been slowly decreasing, so I expect that in a few years its price will become no greater than double in comparison with fish oil, when I would consider switching to it as acceptable.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoI'm assuming the cod liver oil is for the Omega content? I'm fortunate to have access to some decent Omega supplements, but bivalves are also excellent sources of Omegas (in addition to Taurine, Choline, and Creatine). If your vegan diet is motivated by vegan or environmental ethics, I'm curious why you've landed on fish oil rather than bivalves (since fish have brains and I believe oyster farming specifically is supposed to also have a positive impact on the habitats it's performed in)?
- teyc 3y agoThere was another small study looking at similar dosages of creatine for traumatic brain injury. Time spent in ICU was halved.
- fluffyfe 3y agoI am wary of Creatine, it is bad for kidneys if you take it regularly. No long term study exists yet.
- AliceWong 2y agoDo you have a source for this? I haven't heard of any evidence for kidney damage long term from regular creatine intake in a healthy adult.
- user3939382 3y agoI was hyped on it until I read there was some controversy about it making your hair fall out. Nope.
- ehnto 3y agoThere's been no studies that verify that claim as far as I know.
- ulrikrasmussen 3y agoFound this review which backs up what you said: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7871530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7871530/
- unaindz 3y agoIt also disproves several other myths surrounding creatine, like kidney damage.
- achillesheels 3y agoI love creatine for the amplified neural oscillations produced by the greater efficiencies in the ATP metabolism. I experience more "deep work", or the ability for me to focus for longer periods/stretches of time.
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoSo instead of that shallow caffeine buzz, and relying on a stress hormone for extra energy, why haven't I thought of this before..
- burjui 3y agoTaking creatine cured my lightheadedness that occurs when standing up after squatting for a few minutes, which happens a lot at my job (plumbing). It also reduced other negative effects of sleep deprivation, such as impaired cognition, but to a lesser degree.
- edgineer 3y agoOrthostatic hypotension
- mckirk 3y agoI don't know if you know this yet, but what greatly helps me when I've stood up too fast and am on the verge of 'seeing stars' is tensing up my abdominal muscles, which essentially helps push back the blood towards the brain. I figured, if it's good enough for fighter pilots pulling 8g maneuvers, it should be good enough for me accidentally getting out of bed too quickly. And turns out it works!
- az226 3y agoHow much do you take? How often?
- burjui 2y ago5g once a day, standard gym goer protocol.
- verticalscaler 3y ago1.5g-3g a day is fine. Powder form comes with little dosing spoon.. just do a little reading its very accessible.
- bijant 3y agoSame though I'm sadly not qualified for plumbing and had spent a lot of money for plumbing issues. Is that how you got into the business ? Your Profile states that you are "just another programmer". This is BTW what I love about HN, intelligent people from all walks of life, South American Neuroscientists, Pakistani Particle Physicists, Australian Professors of European Philosophy, Chinese Poets, NY Musicians designing their own Guitar pedals, Radical GNU/OS Evangelists from Kazakhstan commingling with Italian Plumbers and Nevada Hippies that worship the Sun Gods by running their website on the power that the heavens giveth.
- unaindz 3y agoOther studies already proved those effects with creatine with a normal dose schedule, what they were testing is if a single high dose would have a beneficial effect too, which it did. A normal schedule is 3-5g per day with an optional loading phase of 10-20g per day during 7 days. In the study they used a single dose of 0.35g/kg which means 20-40g per dose. How do they not get diarrhea? The loading phase is usually split into several doses to avoid diarrhea and I can personally attest to that being a good idea.