Another Reason to Take Creatine - It Works as an Effective Anti-Depressant

are sleep deprived. It turns out that taking creatine in the morning when you're sleep deprived can actually reduce the drop in your cognitive performance that happens with poor sleep. Now there's yet another reason to take creating. Now, Creatine has been consistently shown to improve depression like behavior in

female rodents, but we aren't rodents. Now, in humans, there is some preliminary evidence from clinical trials suggests that taking creating along with antidepressant medication is an effective intervention for improving symptoms depressive symptoms in people with major depressive disorder. So the addition of creating on top of antidepressants actually

had a better effect in taking antidepressants alone. Now, Also, there was a study in participants with methanphetamine dependence and that reported that taking creating with or without antidepressant use actually improves depressive symptoms in them. However, there's a serious limitation of these data both those studies that I've talked about in that none of them included a placebo control group. Now, there's also some evidence from randomized control trials about the

benefits of creating. So there was a study in participants with bipolar depression who were taking antidepressants, and that found limited evidence that adding creating in was better than a placebo for improving depressive symptoms. And in participants with major depressive disorder who were taking antidepressants, an eight week study and included fifty two women reported that taking five grams of creating daily was better than a placebo for improving

depressive symptoms. But there was another study, a four week study in eighteen participants, fourteen of which were women, and that found no benefit from supplementing five or ten grams of creating a day. But we should take these findings with cautions because of this small sample size and particularly

the short duration only four week study. Now I want to talk about a new study, which was a randomized control trial in adults with depression who were receaving cognitive behavior therapy, and they added daily supplementation with creating monohydrate to one of the groups. So this was a randomized control trial as it just it, and they found that it improved depressive symptoms more than the placebo. So in this study they used the PHQ nine the patient health

question are nine. That's nine questions on depression and it's a validated study. And there were one hundred adults in this study, so good sample size. The averages was thirty. Half of them were men and half of them were women, which again is a good study because a lot of studies they just select for men because women with their menstrual cycles tend to mess up a lot of the data. So often you'll hear results of studies and they actually

only applied to men when you look at it. But in this case, it was half man, it was half women,

and their depression severity range from mild to severe. And again this is another good thing about this study was it was the kind of spectrum of depression and they importantly had not taken psychiatric medication the eight weeks before the study, so they did an eight week randomized control trial, and again, good does that study design because eight weeks is shown to be enough to move the needle on depression with antidepressants or are any type of interventions, and

the participants in the intervention group they took five grams of creating monohydrate per day and the ones in the control group took a placebo and they thought they were getting the creating and all of the participants received forty

five minute cognitive behavioral therapy sessions during the study. Now, the results showed that depressive symptoms improved in both groups, but there was a greater improvement in the creating group, and the difference between the groups met the previously established thressholds for clinical significance. Now this is really important because often there are studies done on depression and they have a significant impact, but they don't reach c clinical significance.

Clinical significance is a point where most of the study participants would have felt noticeably better with creating, and often some of the studies with antidepressant medications actually don't reach clinical significance even though they reach statistical significance. So the big picture here is that that creating is a very

beneficial nutrient for the brain. It has been shown that it crosses the blood brain barrier and it plays a role in energy production, so it actually stores high energy phosphate groups in the form of creating phosphate and they're donated from ADP to generate ATP. And ATP is the energy currency now because brain cells require a constant supply of ATP because your brain is the most energy hungry part of the body. That is in part are provided

through creating phosphate. So that's one of our three energy systems. We have aerobic metabolism, anaerobic metabolism, and in atppc and

this makes creating crucial for optimal brain function. And this is further evidence by the fact that that clinical symptoms of creating deficiency syndromes that's a group of conditions that are characterized by deficits in creating synthesis are transport in some people, and those people have intellectual disability and epilepsy, amongst the whole heap of other neurological abnormalities and low brain creating content and abnormalities in brain bio energetics that's

about ATP production in the brain. They're also associated with several neurological disorders such as huntings AND's disease, and these finiinges extend to depression and supplementing with creating has actually been shown to increase brain creating content, so it crosses

the blood brain barrier. So there we have a plausible mechanism by which creating can improve depression, and now evidence that it actually does now other than affecting the energy in the brain, preclinical evidence in other studies shows that supplementing with creating could help with depression by actually modulating or affecting neurotransmitter receptors, by activating dopamine and serotonin receptors and inhibiting a receptor called N methyl d aspirt it

if you really want to know. And creating it also has been suggested could improve depression by decreasing oxidative stress. So inflammation and oxidative stress are are two of some of the leading theories about what actually does cause depression, because we know not it's not serotonin, and creating could potentially increased levels of BDNF brain deriving eurochopic factor, which I've talked about many times, is so good for the brain.

So I think here that given all of that, the evidence for creating being good for overall brein function and your mood is pretty damned compelling. And the other advantage of creating compared to antidepressant use is that there are no side effects unless you have kidney problems, So people who have normal kidneys. There's been so many studies going that, particularly at the dose in this study five grams per day, there are no side effects in people with normal kidney function.

It's probably the most tested sports supplement and it's very effective and as I said, very limited levels of side effects. And it's also bloody cheap. So jump yourself onto the web or go to a sports supplement store and get yourself some monohydrate and just don't buy anything with any

other shit in it. Just by pure creating monohydrate five grams a day, ideally in the morning, because there's a little bit of evidence that shows if you take it in the evening it can interfere with sleep because it gives your brain energy. And for me, creating then is a really critical component of a positive lifestyle intervention for mood. And I have talked a nauseam about antidepressants. They can be life saving for some people, but not good for

other people. And there's a whole heap of side effects and withdrawal symptoms that I've discussed previously, but I can tell you, and actually we are going to run a study on this, myself and Professor Grant sco Feed at

some stage. But I am am very confident that if you did a lifestyle intervention that included regular exercise and reducing your amount of ultra processed foods in the diet and eating real food, having good sleep hygiene, taking vitamin D supplementation which I talked about last week and its effect on depression, and now creating supplementation, it would be

an absolute blockbuster intervention for mood. But let's just watch this space because we are going to run a study on this at some stage, and just watch the space. But until then, get yourself on the creating train. And if you haven't already listened to last week's one on vitamin D and its impact on depression. That's it for this week, folks. Catch you next time.