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✦ New Frontier Of Your Mind ✦
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A tub in the gym bag.
Creatine sells as a powder for muscle.
Your brain burns the same fuel, and keeps a store of its own.
Top that store up… and see what the tests say.
One lab in Germany went at it hard.
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// Quick Check
First reaction?
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// NightFuel
Ali Gordji-Nejad’s team at Jülich kept 15 people awake for close to 21 hours.
Each did the night twice. Creatine came one night and a dummy the other, just before half past eight.
Word memory came back 10.3% better than on the dummy. Speed rose 16 to 29% on language, logic and number tasks.
Scanners caught the phosphocreatine ratio and the pH holding their line. Without the dose both slid, and the tissue turned acid. One ATP reading fell on creatine, and the authors call that a change rather than a save.
The gain showed three and a half hours in, and peaked at four. It was still going when measuring stopped at nine.
That dose was 0.35 g per kilo of body weight, about 25 g for a man of 70 kg. Gordji-Nejad said high doses put a heavy strain on the kidneys. He told people to leave that amount alone at home. Fifteen young adults, one sleepless night, and no test of a normal week.
↗ Source: Gordji-Nejad, Scientific Reports, 2024
↗ Source: Jülich release, 2024
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One night of no sleep is a stress test, not a life.
So what does a small daily dose do to an ordinary head?
Two teams have pooled the trials on that.
One of those pools has already been walked back by its own authors…
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// The Facts
| 225 |
people across eight trials on memory. |
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| 0.80 |
the effect size left in adults of 66 to 76 once the maths was redone. Nothing in the young. |
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| 492 |
people in a later pool of 16 trials, though the same objection lands on it. |
A letter to the same journal said the 2023 pool counted the same people twice over. Several memory tests each, treated as separate. Its authors reran it and agreed. Overall memory fell to 0.19 and lost significance, leaving only the older adult gain. The later pool of 16 trials has drawn the same objection. Read its 492 as observations rather than heads. It split by age the other way, favouring 18 to 60 on attention. Doses ran from 2 to 20 g a day, on mostly small trials.
↗ Source: Prokopidis, Nutrition Reviews, 2023
↗ Source: the letter, Eckert and Pascher, Nutrition Reviews, 2023
↗ Source: the authors’ reply, Nutrition Reviews, 2023
↗ Source: Xu, Frontiers in Nutrition, 2024
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// The Catch
The biggest single trial sits at 123 adults.
Five grams a day for six weeks, and every person crossed onto the dummy.
Backward digit span came close to a result, at p 0.064.
Eight further tests turned up nothing at all. Average age in that room was 31.
Even so, the authors call the pattern a small benefit on Bayesian grounds. They want a larger trial.
↗ Source: Sandkühler, BMC Medicine, 2023
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Small, and it holds up only in older heads.
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Most creatine copy quotes the sleepless night and stops there.
I spend more than $20,000 a year on private research… the sort hedge funds pay for. Walled off from the public.
Then I read the letter that came after the pool.
Mine goes in the morning coffee, five grams. Six weeks in, and that is one man’s report.
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// The Fuel
Five grams, plain and cheap
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// The Steps
Creatine For The Head
A bag of powder and a glass of water.
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Buy creatine monohydrate, the form the trials used. |
| 02 |
Stir 3 to 5 g into water, coffee or porridge. |
| 03 |
Take it at the hour that suits you. No trial pins that down. |
| 04 |
Meat and fish already give you a gram or two a day. |
| 05 |
Give it a month, and drink more water with it. |
The best dose for a brain is unsettled. Five grams is the muscle standard, and the cheapest bet.
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// Quick Wins
Monohydrate is the cheap form, and the only one with memory trials behind it. Fancier versions prove less.
Expect the scales up a pound or two in week one. That is water in muscle, not fat.
The memory trials that worked ran in people of 66 to 76. Nobody has tested a head of 45 properly.
Kidney trouble, or a prescription in the cupboard? Ask your doctor first.
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// Your Pick
Where does creatine sit with you?
Pick one and hit send.
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Stay primal,
Dex
Primal Code
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