What Needs to Shift?

In medical school, I treated supplements like contraband. Powder? Pill? Either glossy placebos or a fast lane to side effects. Supplements felt like crutches for people trying to rent discipline instead of grow it.

My classmates rolled their eyes at my stance.

At a medical school party, with booze-loosened tongues, the weightlifters bawled at me over the music.

“Still dodging creatine?” Another laughed, “Idiot! No wonder your bench press is stuck at 165-lbs.”

These weren’t supplement-shilling gym ‘bros’. They were future physicians capable of deadlifting 450 lbs and parsing forest plots on research papers. And they couldn’t believe that someone steeped in evidence-based medicine would shrug off the supplement with the fattest stack of trials behind it.

Truth? I hadn’t read a single paper. I made a judgment on vibes and bias and dressed it up as prudence. I wouldn't have bothered to reconsider if the knife-edge minds I trusted hadn't all stacked up on the same side, leaving me the foolish outlier.

A week with the literature and I ate crow. 

Creatine has been vetted in 500+ studies over decades, and the evidence for its safety and real-world results has outlived a few prescription drugs.

Years later, after returning to the research repeatedly—more out of paranoia than curiosity—I still haven't found a reason to stop using it. If anything, the evidence has only become more lopsided.

More Than A Synthetic Lab Creation

Creatinine isn’t some lab-only concoction. Your body naturally creates about 1-2g of creatine daily in the kidneys and liver.^{† ^}

Once synthesized, or taken in through food (mostly red meat and fish)— about ~1g of external source— creatine slips into the bloodstream and gets hoarded by the body’s most power-hungry tissues: ^† ‡ 

🍖 Skeletal Muscle (the vault for ~95% of the body's creatine).

🧠 Brain (tucks away the remaining ~5%).

The problem? Even if you eat meat and fish, your body’s natural production and dietary intake dwarfs what your muscles and brain chew through, especially when operating at full throttle. 

How Creatine Buys You Seconds

Your muscles and brain run on ATP (adenosine triphosphate)—the basic unit of cellular energy.

🔴 The Constraint: Your cells only store enough ATP (energy) for a few seconds of maximum effort. After that, they have to pause and recharge to mint more ATP. That lag is what you feel as fatigue at the end of a lift or a sprint. Subsequently, you fail the rep or slow down.

🟡 The Fix: Think of creatine like a portable charger. When ATP dies out under all-out effort, and the tank runs dry, you're forced to wait for the slow recharge cycle. Creatine molecules swoop in like backup battery packs, carrying a spare charge and transferring it to your dead battery instantly.^† ‡

🟢 The Upshot: You recharge the used-up ATP faster and buy yourself a few extra seconds of runway. Instead of hitting the wall at rep 8, you fail at rep 10. Instead of needing 3 minutes of rest, you recover in ~2 minutes.

More Work, More Muscle

If you read this newsletter then you know what we’re playing for.

Muscle mass, strength, and power are the most potent levers for healthspan and lifespan; grip strength, metabolic health, resistance to frailty, falls, odds of death—they all trace back to muscle. Therefore, anything that measurably grows it deserves a seat at your table.

⇥ Muscle growth follows a fundamental law: Total Load = Sets × Reps × Weight.

⇥ Creatine doesn’t flip a switch and hand you new strength. It delays the fatigue, letting you squeeze in more sets and reps before your tank runs empty.^†

• If creatine lets you squeeze 2 extra reps per set...

• Across 5 exercises...

• That’s an extra 30–50 reps per training session…

• Over a year, that’s thousands of extra reps, compounding into more strength and muscle.

⇥ A meta-analysis of 22 studies show that training alone improved 1‑rep max by ~12%. Add creatine, and strength rose ~20%, an ~8% extra gain.^† 

⇥ For muscular endurance (repetitions to failure), the placebo training group improved by 12%, while the training group taking creatine improved by 26%, a 14% net gain.^†

Cut to the studies that matter most in Appendix A.

Everyone Gains. These Two Gain The Most.

Two groups face specific biological gaps where creatine supplementation offers even greater leverage.

🥬 The Plant-Based Eater: Vegetarians and vegans get almost no creatine from food, leaving their muscle stores largely deficient. Supplementation often produces standout improvements in strength, lean mass, sprint performance, and cognitive measures.^†

👵🏽 The Aging Adult: After 40, muscle loss (sarcopenia) speeds up, nudging the body toward weaker legs, slower reflexes, and a higher chance of falls and glucose dysregulation. One meta-analysis found that pairing creatine with resistance training added about 1.4 kg (~3 lb) more lean mass than training alone^†. At 60, that extra muscle can be the difference between carrying your own suitcase and needing a hand, between steady steps and a stumble.^‡

Your Next Move

The supplement aisle is a carnival of posturing circus clowns. You’ll see "advanced absorption," "liquid serums," and proprietary blends that charge you $50 for $5 worth of ingredients. Cut through the neon.

💹 The Cost of Entry

Only two seals matter:

• The Creapure® Seal: This isn't a brand. In short, it's proof of origin. It guarantees the creatine was manufactured with the highest purity standards with nothing else hitchhiking along.

• The NSF Certified for Sport Seal: This is a finished product test that guarantees that your exact batch has been tested for banned substances. Think of it as a safety promise.

  • Some marquee brands skip the Creapure licensing fee, betting that their in-house testing and NSF certification are the sturdier proof. Flip the tub and look for either of the two seals. You don’t need both.

• Cost: For 500 g, expect ~$30–50 CAD ($25–35 USD). NSF often costs more, but I’m happy to pay for the purity.

• My Choice: Thorne Creatine (not sponsored).

💤 Buy Boring

Creatine comes in a few different formulations. Start with creatine monohydrate. It’s the most studied, most effective, and easiest on your wallet.^‡ 

• The Trap: Skip "Hydrochloride," "Ethyl Ester," or liquid forms. They are more expensive and the studies don’t show any measurable edge.^‡

• The Exception: A tiny sliver of people get bloating or cramps from monohydrate.

• The Fix: Only if monohydrate bothers your stomach, switch to creatine hydrochloride. It’s gentler on your gut, but you’ll pay double.

🥣 Staying Afloat

Creatine tastes like nothing and feels gritty, like fine sand on your tongue. Try these tricks to make it go down easy:

• Toss a scoop into your protein shake or smoothie.

• Stir it into hot tea, or warm water for better dissolution.

• Mix it in a small glass of water, swirl it into a whirlpool, and knock it back before the powder sinks.

• Don’t fuss about timing. Pre-workout, post-workout, or with breakfast; just get it down the hatch.

💊 Dial In Your Daily Dose

The "5 grams for everyone" rule is a blunt heuristic. It suits a 150‑pound runner, but under-doses a 220 lb lifter. You don't fill a go‑kart and a truck with the same amount of fuel.

• Research sets the minimum dose at ~0.03 g per kg^‡. But we’re not here to scrape the bottom. For a 120-lb (55 kg) person, that works out to ~2 grams. Round up!

• For most active adults (140–180 lbs), 3-5 g is the bulls eye.^‡ 

• If you weigh more than 200 lbs (90 kg) or carry a lot of muscle, aim for 8–10 g per day.^‡

• Do the math, then round up generously (aiming closer to ~5g for most). Up to 30g has been proven safe in clinical trials.^‡

🔄 Skip The Loading Phase

The old guard says to "load up" with 20 grams a day for the first week, then reduce to your maintenance dose you calculated above.

• The problem is that it can trigger bloating, which makes some people prematurely quit before they see results.

• Unless you’re desperate to fast-track it, start with your daily maintenance dose each day. Your muscles will top in about 3–4 weeks. No need to “load up”. 

• Here’s what the next 12 weeks will feel like (so the scale doesn’t spook you):

Your Shift In Review

• Creatine isn’t synthetic. Your body already makes it, and your muscles and brain are built to use far more than diet alone can supply.

• It works by refilling your energy stores faster, letting you push harder, recover quicker, and delay fatigue during exercise.

• More total load = ↑ muscle = ↑ strength, metabolism, and longevity.

• Muscle is the currency of longevity: protection against frailty, metabolic decline, falls, and early death.

• Creatine only works if you do the work (i.e. lifting, sprinting). It doesn’t benefit couch potatoes.

• Plant-based eaters and adults over 40 stand to gain the most because they start with the least margin.

One Last Pulse Check

📁Missed an issue? The archive is where the threads connect.

🔍 Next Issue: you got the “what” today. Next issue is the “why it works” breakdown, the parts people hand-wave because they only half understand them.

🏋🏽 Once a month I share my training logbook, what I’m testing, what I’m never doing again and the lessons that keep haunting me. Read last month’s sweat equity post.

📤 If you enjoyed this read, the best compliment I could receive would be if you shared it with one person who thinks creatine is just for gym rats.