Dr Ran Crooke says in a world of health hype we should believe the buzz around creatine, how it’s particularly powerful to people who’ve suffered brain trauma and why lifting weights is pivotal to living a long and healthy life.
Watch the full chat with Dr Ran Crooke below:
If you grew up in the 1990s you were alive at a sensational time. And if you worked out a lot in gyms back then you might associate creatine with giving your biceps extra bulge. It was the wonder supplement of meat heads looking to eek out that extra rep, set to improve bulk and definition.
The research has certainly bore out the findings of the bro science. Creatine coupled with working out will help you fill out your t-shirt in a good way, but Cheltenham’s Dr Ran Crooke says the supplement’s effect on the brain may be even more powerful than on the body.
“What we’re seeing in the research is this growing evidence base that the benefits aren’t just getting stronger – putting on muscle mass. We’re seeing it in terms of our brain health, our bone health and all sorts of knock-on benefits.
“In long term brain health, in memory, in attention, how quickly we can process information. We’ve got studies now demonstrating that creatine has benefits if you’re under stress, if you’re sleep deprived. It looks like creatine is quite a good buffer to reduce the impact of those sorts of things.”
Preventative insurance
Dr Crooke spent a decade working as a GP in Cheltenham before co-founding Well-Founded – ‘a global, concierge team of elite physicians and scientists, dedicated to exceptional, life-long health and peak performance for our patients and members.’ And he says he would recommend creatine to his patients not only for performance in their daily chores, but also as preventative insurance against brain injury.
“There’s a good evidence base around brain trauma. And if you’ve been taking it, if you have it on board before you have a knock to the head, a brain trauma, concussion… then you have better outcomes if you’ve been taking creatine.
“So, it’s a very well-studied supplement, very safe…it’s a very low bar to safety if we fall off our bikes, or have a car accident or you’re skiing and have a knock to the head.”
A psychological boost
Creatine then might help you think in the hurly burly of daily life. But it might also help you feel better about your life. Crooke says there is a psychological boost involved too:
“Even mood, we’re now seeing some studies showing that for people who haven’t responded to an antidepressant even, having on creatine on board seems to improve those markers of depressive symptoms. It’s why I’m so interested in it as a core supplement and we quite often start most people in our practice on it.”
So if you’re keen to give creatine a whirl, you might be wondering how much you should be taking? It turns out you’ll need more to fire up your brain circuits than you will to enlarge your pecs.
“So historically we’ve talked about five grams on a daily basis. And that’s good for the muscle side of things. But the evidence we’re seeing with the brain health and bone health is suggesting that we need to up that to eight or 10 grams to get into the bones and across the blood-brain barrier.”
Keep moving!
Now if you’re thinking this wonder supplement will leave you with strong bones and an electric brain that will bedazzle work colleagues and family members alike, you might be tempted to think ‘why bother exercising?’
Well, Crooke definitely isn’t giving you a creatine-laced pass to stop moving. He’s particularly keen on getting his patents to lift weights as they age and fight the body’s tendency to lose muscle.
“If you’re in your 30s, you will lose about 25% of your muscle mass by the time you’re 70. And when we’re talking about muscle mass, just like cardiorespiratory fitness we know it’s really strongly predictive of how long people are going to live.
“People who do resistance training, we see improvements not just in how long people are living, but their memory, their cognitive health their mood and all sorts of downstream effects of their resistance training.”
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