Wisdom Wednesdays: Yet Another Benefit of Creatine - Combatting Depression

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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

(00:31):
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

(00:51):
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.

(01:12):
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.

(01:36):
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

(01:58):
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

(02:19):
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

(02:41):
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

(03:03):
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.

(03:28):
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

(03:50):
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

(04:11):
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

(04:34):
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

(04:55):
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

(05:19):
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

(05:42):
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

(06:05):
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

(06:28):
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

(06:51):
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

(07:15):
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

(07:35):
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,

(07:59):
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

(08:22):
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

(08:45):
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

(09:07):
lots of different benefits. So that's it for this week, folks,
get on the creating. Catch you next time.