Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays, and today we're going to talk about creating. Now, creating, you may know, is pretty famous as a sports supplement. In fact, it is probably the best studied and safest sports supplement that there is, kind of next to protein. But a recent research has shown that creating can actually be useful for the brain. And the reason age you need to be a little bit we need to get a little bit technical. Sorry, So if we think of our energy
systems in the body, we have three energy systems. You have your aerobic energy system, which basically runs off the breakdown of fat. Then you have what's called glycolysis, which is basically running off carbohydrate. And then we have ATP PC and the PC in that stands for posphol creating. So ATP is the the energy currency of the body. And some of you who are familiar with these energy
systems will know that sprinters use mostly ATPPC. And then if you think of four hundred meter runners, like they all use a little bit of eats, but four hundred meter runners that's dominant the lactic acid are glycolysis. And then if you think of a marathon runner. They're mostly the aerobic energy system until you know they're really pushing. Now posphol creating are atppiece. The PC part of it creating actually, it has been shown, provides energy for ourselves
and that also gets into the brain. And now I want to talk about a really interesting research paper which is a randomized control trial in adults with depression who were receiving cognitive behavior therapy and in daily supplementation with creating monohydrate our a placebo. And what they looked at was the efficacy of supplementing with creating on top of getting the therapy and seeing if that had an impact
on depressive symptoms. So depressive symptoms were measured using something called the Patient Health Question or nine, which is a standard depression inventory if you like. And they had one hundred adults. Average age was thirty and half of them were men and half of them were women, and they all had major depressive disorder, so not that kind of fleeting depression, but major depressive disorder, and their severity range
from mild to severe. And they had not taken any psychotropic medications in the eight weeks before the study, so they weren't on maids, but they were getting therapy, and they conducted an eight week randomized control trial and as I said, the participants in the intervention got their therapy, but they also took five grams of creating monohydrate and the control group had a placebo, right, so a proper randomized control trial with a placebo, and they all received
forty five minute cognitive behavioral therapy sessions during the study on numrous occasions and depressive symptoms improved in both groups. We know that CBT is useful for that, but there was a greater improvement in the creating group, and the difference between the groups met previously established thresholds for clinical significance. And this is really important because some medications actually don't reach that threshold for clinical significance, which suggests that most
participants would have felt noticeably better with creating. So the big picture on this is that that creating you know, we get it from food life red meat and fish, but it's also synthesized their mane in the body, particularly in the liver and the kidney as well as the brain,
and it plays a key role in energy production. As I talked about earlier on it basically stores these high energy phosphate groups in the form of creating phosphate as I talked about atppc, and those phosphate groups are donated to ADP to generate ATP or energy, the energy currency
of the body. And because our brain cells require a constant supply of ATP, which is in part provided through that phospho creating reliant energy system, creating is crucial for optimal brain function, and I have talked on the podcast before about how creating can minimize the drop in cognitive function whenever you're sleep deprived and also seems to be good for overall brain health. Now, this is further evidence by the fact that clinical symptoms of creating deficiency syndromes.
That's a group of conditions that are characterized by death aicits in the ability to either create, creating or transport it. And these deficiency syndromes include intellectual disability and epilepsy, amongst other neurological abnormalities and no sorry, brain creating content and abnormalities in energy within the brain or what we call brain bioenerg genetics. They're associated with severe neurological disorders like
Hunting's disease and also depression and supplementing with creating. As I said earlier on, it's been shown to improve brain health because it increases the creating content in the brain, so we know that it gets into the brain, and that gives us the plausible mechanism by which creating could
improve overall brain health. And in the case of this study now, other than affecting the brain bio energetics, pre clinical evidence of other studies suggest that supplementing with creatine could help with depression by modulating or affecting neurotransmitter receptors, for example, activating dopamine and serotonin receptors and inhibiting something called nmethyl d aspartate receptors, which are not good whenever
they're overactivated. And creatine might also improve depression by decreasing oxidative stress and increasing BDNF. And you've heard me talk about BDNF before, brain derived neurotropic factor, which is a really useful chemical in terms of overall brain health, protecting brain cells, creating new brain cells. So there's even more evidence for this effect. I mean, creating has been consistently shown to improve depression like behavior in female rudents and
in humans. Preliminary evidence from clinical trials other than this one suggests that taking creating alongside antidepressant medication isn't an effective intervention for improving depression symptoms. And a large study in participants with methanthettermine dependence reported that supplementing with creatine
that's without antidepressant use, improved depression symptoms in these people. Now, the problem with a couple of those studies that they didn't have a placebo control group, but this study actually did. And there's also evidence from other randomized control trials. For instance, a studying patients with bipolar depression who were taken antidepressants find some evidence that adjunct treatment with creating was better
than a placebo for improving depressive symptoms. And in another study, participants who had a major depressive disorder who were taking antidepressants went through an eight week study that included fifty two women, and they found that taking five grams of creatine a day was better than a placebo for improving
depressive symptoms, so pretty similar to antidepressants taken together. I think there's a pretty broad spectrum of evidence that makes a compelling case that supplement them with creatine could be
an effective intervention for improving depression. But also with other evidence, it is very very clear that creating is a supplement that should be very high on your list for overall brain health, and now it would appear mental health as well, and for sports performance and improving your recovery from exercise. So I actually think that creatine is the best supplement that's out there. Cheap, it's effective, there's not really any side effects unless you're taking large doses, and it has
lots of different benefits. So that's it for this week, folks, get on the creating. Catch you next time.