Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast! In this episode, I chat with Dr. Eric Rawson about the fascinating world of creatine, not just for muscle growth and performance, but also for brain health. We review the latest research on how creatine supplementation may affect brain function, support concussion recovery, and more. Dr. Rawson shares insights from his extensive research, highlights the amazing safety profile of creatine monohydrate, and offers practical advice on supplementation for athletes and those at high risk of traumatic brain injuries. Tune in for an in-depth look at the science and practical applications of this powerful supplement! Don’t forget to subscribe and share with friends. Enjoy! Sponsors: Fitness Insider Newsletter: https://miketnelson.com/ Enroll in the Flex Diet Certification by midnight PST on Monday, Feb. 16. https://miket.me/fdc
Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast! In this episode, I chat with Dr. Eric Rawson about the fascinating world of creatine, not just for muscle growth and performance, but also for brain health. We review the latest research on how creatine supplementation may affect brain function, support concussion recovery, and more.
Dr. Rawson shares insights from his extensive research, highlights the amazing safety profile of creatine monohydrate, and offers practical advice on supplementation for athletes and those at high risk of traumatic brain injuries. Tune in for an in-depth look at the science and practical applications of this powerful supplement! Don’t forget to subscribe and share with friends. Enjoy!
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Speaker 3: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson, and on this podcast we talk about all things to increase muscle, increase performance, improve body composition, all within a flexible framework without destroying your health. Today on the podcast, we've got a special read broadcast from a researcher, Dr.
Eric Rawson. And the reason I wanted to do this is, um, a couple fold. Uh, one, we've got a ton of new listeners, which is amazing, and I know the cycle for listening to podcasts is getting shorter and shorter as is attention span and everything else. And there's a lot of older episodes that I think are really good and still provide a ton of relevant information.
That people just probably haven't listened to yet. [00:01:00] I think this is one of 'em. This is back from, uh, June of 2022, and this one was talking about creatine and the brain. I got to meet Dr. Rosin at a conference at a, let's see, it, was it a CSM Regional, um, conference that I was there, uh, helping out. Big thanks to Dr.
Sarah for that. And why I also wanted to run this is creatine now for the brain is is cool. It's kind of sexy and it's being used for everything beyond just muscle. So if you go back in the day, I've been using creatine monohydrates since was the first time I used it, was doing my undergrad at Michigan Tech.
So that was 1995, man, almost 30 years. If I can do math. And for many, many years it was all about muscle. And now over time I've been following the research on [00:02:00] creatine, and I started using it for potentially the reduction of risk for TBI and concussion probably about six or seven years ago. And at the time, that was based on animal and preclinical models.
Um, I presented this in some research reviews and different products that I've done for the Carig Institute for Clinical Neuroscience, where I'm an associate professor. And over time we've seen a huge explosion, um, in the research. So I think it's always good to go back to, you know, some of the original stuff and talk about a couple things.
Uh, two other key points. I think the sleep deprivation angle is probably the main way that we're increasing the cognition in a lot of people. And again, I'm using cognition as kind of a broad term here 'cause there's different sub secs to that. And that can be its own podcast in and of itself. But I think most people, if we talk about anecdotal reports, do feel that higher doses of creatine monohydrate, maybe 10, 15 or even maybe [00:03:00] 20 grams, uh, they do report that they do feel better cognitively overall.
And I think that's probably 'cause most people are also sleep deprived at the same time. My pet peeve though, is I think we're getting close to where the hype cycle is. Probably maybe over promising and that creatine monohydrate will air quote, cure everything for you and relieve you of all your symptoms and what everything you've got going on.
I don't think we're at that point yet. Um, but it's extremely interesting. And even in the sleep deprivation study, we've got some data from MRS, which Dr. Rolson talks about here. Uh, showing mechanistically how we think that's, uh, actually helping. So I think I really enjoy this, uh, podcast with Dr. Rawson.
He's one of the original guys who's done a lot of, uh, the creatine work and I got to ask him about, um, all the great stuff. Uh, he did his [00:04:00] PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We studied in the direction of Dr. Priscilla Clarkson, who's a really. Uh, I'll say big name in this, uh, field to say the least.
Uh, he is an associate editor for Applied Physiology, many other journals, uh, he is delivered and published more than a hundred different, uh, presentations for ISSN International Society Sports Nutrition, and the NSCA and many, many more. And just really enjoyed this, uh, conversation here. So if you like this and you want more information, uh, two things you can do right now.
Uh, number one, you can sign up to the free newsletter. So go to the link down below and I'll send you free stuff to your inbox daily. And I try to make these, uh, interesting and also research based and very practical. And then number two, the flex Diet cert. If you're listening to this, when this podcast comes out.
It is open now, so you can go to the link down below and that will take you to all of the [00:05:00] information. It is only open for a limited time, though it closes this coming Monday, uh, which is February 16th at midnight Pacific. Standard time won't open again until later, uh, this year, probably June or July or August.
I'm not a hundred percent sure on the date yet, so if you want information, I go down there and check that out. And without further ado, here's a rebroadcast all the way back from 2022. Dr. Eric Rawson. Enjoy.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Hey, welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson, and today I've got Dr. Eric Rawson. On the podcast, we're talking all about creatine and a little bit about muscle physiology, how it can help performance. But our main topic is the use of creatine as a supplement in brain health potentially for risks of concussion [00:06:00] and other matters.
So I'm actually recording this little intro here from Costa Rica, so maybe you'll hear some few other noises in the background. No, no holler monkeys yet that we've seen. But I'll be down here for a little while. So I was super excited to have Dr. Rossin on the podcast. As always, this is brought to you by the Flexa Diet Certification.
We were just opened last week, and it will open again looks like around June of this year, 2022. So you can get onto the wait list by going to flex diet.com, F-L-E-X-D-I-E t.com. That'll also put you on the daily newsletter where I send all sorts of stuff related to body composition, a performance, and increasing and improving those without destroying your health.
So go to flex diet.com, [00:07:00] F-L-E-X-D-I-E t.com. So very excited to have Dr. Rossen on the podcast here. As I mentioned, I was able to see him in this. Past November. Thanks to Dr. Sarah Campbell, who's been on the podcast a couple times. She invited me to be a guest speaker out at the Mid-Atlantic A CSM conference, and it so happened I ran into Dr.
Rossin there, which was great. He gave a great talk at I-S-S-N-A few years ago. I got to speak with him after. They're also talking about creatine and brain health. So, Dr. Rossin received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied under the direction of Dr. Priscilla Clarkson was a big name in this area.
So over the past two decades, Dr. Rossin's research has focused on the interaction between nutrition and skeletal muscle. In particular, he has studied the effects of the dietary supplement, creatine on muscle and brain function. [00:08:00] He is currently the associate editor for Applied Physiology, nutrition and Metabolism Amino Acids, and the journalist Strength and Conditioning research is delivered more than a hundred professional presentations.
He is a co-edit of the texts for nutrition for elite athletes and a co-author on the 11th edition of Nutrition for Health, fitness and Sport, in addition to many other publications. So it was super honored to have him here. He is a professor at Messiah University. So sit back and listen to this podcast from Dr.
Eric Rawson, all about the dietary supplement, creatine, and its effects on muscle, and especially on neurology and brain health.
Dr Eric Rawson: Okay. Well I guess we should start at the very beginning, which would be my interest in, in,
Dr Mike T Nelson : yeah. How'd
Dr Eric Rawson: you get interested
Dr Mike T Nelson : in creatine? [00:09:00]
Dr Eric Rawson: Well, my, my prior to creatine supplementation, my, my interest was in creatine metabolism.
And that comes from my interest in all types of high intensity exercise.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yes.
Dr Eric Rawson: So
Dr Mike T Nelson : I loved your talk on that at the ISSN in Vegas a couple years ago. I thought that was a really good synopsis of kinda the history of creatine, even just throwing in just the exercise history and everything involved.
And it was also entertaining. You had good little characters and stuff in it, so it was a good one. But
Dr Eric Rawson: the animated little Dr. Rossin's. Yes.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: Well, yeah. So, so, creatin certainly predates me, for those people who, keep clamoring for more research, we're talking about a nutrient that was discovered in 1,832.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: And there, there was justice Von, was selling a, an extract of meat supplement, basically a high creatine supplement in the 18 hundreds.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Oh, wow.
Dr Eric Rawson: And we have, [00:10:00] human creatine supplementation studies dating back to 1926. So we've been at this for a quite a long time.
And for me, a as an exerciser and as an athlete I was always interested in the strength in power sports and in high intensity exercise. And the more science I learned the more time I spent thinking about creatine and phosphocreatine and the energy production pathways for high intensity exercise.
Then in the early nineties, Roger Harris and Karen Soland and Eric Copeman published their seminal work. That showed and this is not common that when you orally ingest a supplement, it actually easily increases your muscle concentration. So their 92 paper, which was a very straightforward, very simple biopsy and blood study, they fed people creatine, their blood levels increased and their muscle levels increased about 20%.
And they also were [00:11:00] able to show in that paper that exercise in increases further muscle creatine uptake. So I was, headed to graduate school at the time and I was interested in the interactions of nutrition and exercise and anything and everything that could make you bigger. Stronger and faster if we're talking about 30 seconds or less.
Much as I appreciate the endurance athletes and how superhuman they are that's not my thing. I watched that from a distance. I'm all about strength and power and sprinting. So creatine was just a natural area for me to be drawn to. And my original line of research was a, along with everyone else studying the effects of creatine supplementation on muscle function how we can improve strength and power and enhance resistance to fatigue.
And we at the time were really thinking that, all of these compounds that we study and all of these training [00:12:00] techniques that we study things that increase muscle mass, things that increase mu, improve muscle function. Shouldn't we be studying all of these compounds and techniques in older adults?
Which wasn't really the philosophy at the time. If you had, yeah. If you were studying protein, you were studying protein in, in young, healthy, strength trained individuals. So we started a line of research on creat and supplementation in older adults which we thought was, a very valuable pursuit.
And along the way of improving the muscle function of older adults there was this strange paper that, a wonderful paper, a strange to us at the time from Dechen and colleagues published in 1998, where they fed people 20 grams of creatine per day for about a month. Which is definitely more than you need to improve muscle function.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Because typically they use the kind of just a loading phase for about a week. Five to seven [00:13:00] days at 20 grams is pretty common.
Dr Eric Rawson: That's plenty to if you're loading
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah. Plenty to saturate the muscle. So this was excessive, but they showed about a 10% increase in brain cre.
And we were scratching our heads thinking why would we want to improve brain creatine?
And we were confused because we were muscle physiologists and we were basically neck down muscle physiologists. Right. We, tried to ignore the brain and all of our thinking and research and were successful at that. Yeah. And this paper got us all thinking and the next step was to really think about the brain and nutrition and nutritional interventions.
And, I think a lot of people shy away from this research. One is because we're muscle people.
Dr Mike T Nelson : More biopsies that solves everything.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah. More biopsy, more
Dr Mike T Nelson : testing, more biopsies. You're good.
Dr Eric Rawson: That's, hand grip and biopsies and a pushup test, but it's hard to study the brain, right?
It's really hard to get at [00:14:00] what's happening in the brain. And the brain is certainly very protective. So you're not just going to, give someone, some random nutrient and the brain's going to happily absorb it. The reason creats and supplements are so successful and improving muscle function I is because creatine is synthesized outside of the muscle, right?
So you and I may eat about one gram of creatine per day, and then our bodies might produce about one gram of creatine per day, but it's 95% of it is stored in our skeletal muscle. None of it is manufactured there. So creatine is synthesized in the liver and pancreas and kidneys, and transported to a skeletal muscle where it's taken up, stored and used for energy production.
So skeletal muscle is designed to take up external creatine. It's designed to take up exogenous creatin, and that's why the supplements work, the brain is different. So, the brain [00:15:00] has this incredibly high metabolic demand, right? Like, like 20% of the body's energy.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: By
Dr Mike T Nelson : weight.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah, by weight.
And it, but its synthesizes its own creatine. So it appears to be at least a bit resistant to outside sources of creatine. And the brain's pretty resistant, that's what the blood brain barriers for GR brain is pretty resistant to a lot of things we could throw at it. And I think people shied away from this research.
But I think it, as of now, we have a very promising body of research. It's, a small body of literature compared to the muscle literature.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: But very promising.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And I think people forget how uncommon it is to take an oral supplement that actually, like, if we just look at Muscle First, that actually makes it to muscle.
Dr Eric Rawson: Sure.
Dr Mike T Nelson : You can think of like how many, like, I remember when I was in my master's, was it a [00:16:00] TP as a supplement, was being tried and touted and you're like, oh, from marketing standpoint, this makes great sense, right? It's the, energy that your body is using for muscle contractions. So let's just take it as a supplement and you could get it as a supplement, but didn't pan out.
You go down the list between all the other intermediates, pyruvate, citrate, maybe, like most of 'em other than maybe beta alanine, which was Roger Harris's work again. Most other intermediates just haven't really panned out.
Dr Eric Rawson: Right? And this has been, the entirety of my career.
So I, as a young man, I, as an athlete I started seeing these advertisements and these products appear, and over again, it just turned out that nothing survived digestion,
Dr Mike T Nelson : right?
Dr Eric Rawson: On the rare case that it survived digestion, it didn't get where it was supposed to go. It didn't get to the tissue.
If it, if we were trying to improve, mitochondrial levels of a compound, it didn't get into the mitochondria. [00:17:00] If we were trying to improve muscle levels, it didn't get into the muscle. And this was over and over again, which I think is why creatine research exploded the way it did.
People were so excited thanks to Roger's original work that showed, yes, it, if you eat this stuff, your muscle levels will increase and significantly enough to improve performance on certain tasks.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And in the early study, like how did they measure brain creatine? Because we've talked about this in the past too, that I think that's a major limiter of the research.
Like muscle, we can do biopsies. It's a pain. You gotta get different approval, but most labs can do it. It's something that I wanna say is relatively easy to do. Now you're not going in and doing a biopsy of your brain to try to look at creatine levels. So what are your options there?
Dr Eric Rawson: The options are very few. Yeah. And you are right. Biopsies are, quite standard in the exercise science and in the nutrition and metabolism worlds, muscle biopsies. And the great thing about that is that if [00:18:00] I read biopsy papers from two different labs, right? I can look at a paper from Mark Polsky's lab or from Paul Greenhouse's lab.
We're talking about. Different countries. Yeah. And I can compare those data.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yes.
Dr Eric Rawson: And I can compare the creatine values and the phosphocreatine values, and I can have some faith in, how these values re relate to one another. When it comes to brain creatine, all bets are off, right?
So the first issue is we're not gonna do biopsies, right? So we're going to do this with an MRI, with, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Some people just call it magnetic resonance spectroscopy. We're gonna use spectroscopy, which means you need an MRI, right? So you say, okay, well, well my, my hospital has an MRI.
You are competing against [00:19:00] diagnostic radiology. So, so you for lab, for magnet time. So you walk in and you say, well. I've got this preheat and supplementation study and I, I wanna improve, reaction time in football players and they say, this is diagnostic radiology. We're saving people's lives here.
This magnet runs 24 hours a day and
Dr Mike T Nelson : Right.
Dr Eric Rawson: You have, we could give you 30 minutes, a month from now. In the middle of the night.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: 3:00 AM So it's not just you. You have to have a magnet. You have to have access to a facility that has a research dedicated magnet. So now that, that's even smaller.
And then you have to have people there who are experts in measuring brain creatine and are interested in that research. So it's a very small group. And right now I think we have let me think. There's a dozen studies that have measured creat brain creatine in response to creatine supplementation.
Right. And nine of those studies have shown a significant increase. I think that's important. Certainly [00:20:00] that doesn't rival the muscle biopsy body of literature. Yeah. Which but nine of 12 studies is quite significant to me they were different countries, different populations. It is, it's very difficult to compare these data.
Some labs only have the ability to measure total creatine. So a proton and Mr. And some only have the ability to measure phospho creatine. So phosphorus, so again, with the biopsies, you always get total creatine, phospho creatine, and free creatin. But with the magnet, not only are there very few labs who can and will do this, but some of them only measure phospho creatin, which gives us half the story.
And some of them only measure total creatin, which gives us the other half of the story. So, and it's, you can compare percent change. In the level of brain creatine. But when it comes to, like what we do with biopsies millimoles per kilogram of dry [00:21:00] muscle, we measure an we have percent change and we have a concentration, we have an absolute value.
We don't really do that with the brain measurements or we do it, but the values can be wildly different. So even though I can compare the percent change from lab to lab, what I can't do is say your research volunteers have lower creatine to start with than mine.
Dr Mike T Nelson : So you can't compare baselines from one lab to the other.
It's
Dr Eric Rawson: exactly. It's percent
Dr Mike T Nelson : change from
Dr Eric Rawson: that
Dr Mike T Nelson : lab. That's,
Dr Eric Rawson: that's important because what we're trying to do is figure out if some of the differences in the increase. Or the fact that there is a lot of variability and some people even appear to show a small decrease with supplementation. Is this because they're of their starting levels of this, because of their brain baseline levels of creatin?
Or is it some other factor [00:22:00] of which wasn't measured? Typically with the brain research, they measure chronological age, maybe body weight but not much more. In the exercise science community, we're big phenotype people, so we measure cardio, respiratory, fitness, must, muscular fitness.
We have really elaborate body composition tests and we try to describe people as well as possible in terms of a biological age, a chronological age, but that's missing. From this brain creates a supplementation body of literature and it makes it even harder to compare the groups.
So I don't know if your people were different from mine, and that doesn't explain why three of the studies didn't show an effect. I don't know if, your volunteers were different from mine and that's why you found a 3% increase and I found a 10% increase.
So I think overall we can say that it's possible to increase brain creatine with oral supplementation, [00:23:00] but we really don't have a good understanding of the optimal supplement dose.
And that's because we simply don't have dose response studies yet.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Is it possible you can have non-responders like we see with muscle? So if we back up a little bit for people listening. How would you classify someone as a creatine non-responder from a muscle standpoint, and do you think what you're alluding to there with brain levels that may be going on in the brain also?
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah, so that's a great question. And I don't so much care for the expression non-responder because I think it's more, I don't like it either. It's
Dr Mike T Nelson : just the common term.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah. Isn't it more a matter of low moderate or high responders? Right. I think in skeletal muscle it's difficult to find someone who has a 0% increase in muscle creatine in response to supplementation.
So you have people with a small gain of 5% and other people with a 10 to 15% and [00:24:00] increase, and then still other people with 20 25, 30 or more percent increase in muscle creatin, these incredibly high responders, but with skeletal muscle because it's designed to take up exogenous creatin. Everybody who takes choat supplements has some sort of an increase.
Now with the brain, it appears that there are increases in some individuals, decreases in other individuals, and no change in other individuals.
Now this is very much complicated by the range of values, right? So on average you might get a 20% increase in muscle. So if muscle biopsies are plus or minus 3% in their accuracy, if on average we're getting a 20% increase, we're going to be able statistically to find that increase.
But in the brain, if it's more like a 5% increase and the accuracy or the, the [00:25:00] repeatability of magnetic resonance spectroscopy is plus or minus three or 4%. And finding 5% is really cutting it close. And in some cases if you just have one very high responder or very low responder, it could really pull the data in a different direction.
So it's a nice body of literature, but it's small and there are some limitations right now for us to really comment confidently on low responders, medium responders, and high responders, especially with our inability to, combine data sets from different labs and compare baseline data.
Again we've measured in the same individuals simultaneous changes in muscle and brain, total creatine with supplementation. And we found the standard increase in muscle levels, and statistically we found no change in brain levels. Because the variability was so high, some people increased, some people decreased, some people had [00:26:00] no change.
The only other data set I'm aware of that has done that is from our colleagues in Brazil and with Hamilton, Rochelle and Bruno Ano and that fantastic lab, but they measure phosphocreatine
So I com I would have no ability to compare our data directly to their data. And those are really the only two data sets that I know of that have done simultaneous changes in muscle and brain.
I, I think we can safely say the brain increases are much less than skeletal muscle increases. And that makes sense to me physiologically.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Is there any animal data we can look at? Because you could obviously do more. We'll say invasive things to animals, and you can generally do to humans, but then you're left with the problem of, well, it's a mouse wrapped whatever, and not a human.
Dr Eric Rawson: Well, I've been very vocal a about how animal data can confuse the literature. [00:27:00] And I, I think creatine supplementation is one of the best examples of the confusion that can come from relying on, on animal models. So if we look at skeletal muscle humans on average might have a 20% increase in muscle creatine in response to a standard supplementation protocol.
Racehorses have no increase
Dr Mike T Nelson : really.
Dr Eric Rawson: And that's where some of the original research came from.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Right. And that puts a little bit of a kink in my I look at a lot of racehorse literature because. They're drug tested, they don't care how much they spend, and they're all tested for time. Mm-hmm.
Right. So you, if there is an effect, they're probably gonna find it now. Okay. And you're left with the effect of, well, does that matter in humans? But you see 'em try all sorts of crazy stuff.
Dr Eric Rawson: Sure. I think that is the comparative physiology work is fantastic and [00:28:00] certainly race horses are amazing athletes.
Mm-hmm. As are the jockeys. But you can't compare those two species. Right. Well, what if we look at a more traditional rat model? We have data going back to the early 19 hundreds that shows strongly that when you try to create them load of rat, it doesn't ever get into the muscle.
It might accumulate in the liver but not in the muscle very successfully. And those data were reproduced in the early 19 hundreds in mice too. So there's a lot of people using animal models for creatine work. And the skeletal muscle work, I don't think can be directly compared to human work.
Thankfully, we have a lot of people who can do muscle biopsies to replicate the animal data or augment the animal data. And then that takes us to the brain, right? N not only it's not just humans have a very tiny increase in brain creatine [00:29:00] supplementation and animals have a large increase.
It's, there are species differences as well. So if you compare, rats and mice and hamsters and humans, you get completely different increases in brain creatine. So you have to be very careful interpreting the animal data, whereas. The human data seemed to land in the five to 10% increase range for brain creatine.
Some of the animal studies well, most of the animal studies you're looking at a 30 to 50% increase in brain creatine.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Because I remember reading the early mouse studies on creatine years ago, and I think it was a, was it a TBI study where they, I think they supplemented one of the groups and the other group they did not, and they thwacked 'em all in the head and looked at incidence of TBI and stuff and I was like, holy crap, this is amazing.
And then you poke and look around the research a little earlier and later, and. It's like just a dearth of [00:30:00] like human data, so you're left with, well this is interesting, but where is it going and does it transfer?
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah. I think that's a very important discussion to, to have with your listeners.
I try to have these discussions with my students and with athletes, when you look at the animal models mice and rats you have about a 30 to 50% increase in brain creatine. And then if you use a traumatic brain injury model or a hypoxic mm-hmm. Brain injury model you get somewhere between a 36 and a 50% reduction in damage
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: From brain injury.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: That's so impressive. So how do we translate that to humans who. On average might have a 5% increase, but some people don't appear to have an increase at all. Right. Are we, are we prepared to speak beyond the [00:31:00] data? My perspective here is probably different from some people.
I think we have a number of good studies to say to suggest that creatine supplements improve cognitive processing. We have a number of good studies showing that creatine supplements increase brain creatine, so improving brain energetics and brain energetics are very disrupted with traumatic brain injury.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Your glucose metabolism just gets thrown offline. So anything that can pinch it and help that process appears to help and at least has backing of mechanistic data too.
Dr Eric Rawson: Sure. And it's not just glucose metabolism it's brain creatine decreases with traumatic brain injury and there's problems with membrane.
Depolarization there, there's a real energy crisis going on.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: And if we have a dietary supplement that's been well studied for efficacy and muscle, there's promising data on improving brain energetics and brain function. And we have decades of [00:32:00] safety data, both clinical trials and post-marketing.
'cause we're talking about millions of exposures. Oh,
Dr Mike T Nelson : it's gotta be hundreds of millions by now. Sure.
Dr Eric Rawson: So is it really the right thing to say we have to wait for more data? Or is the prudent response that if you're a high risk individual, if you're a high risk athlete and you might receive muscular benefits from creatine supplements, then you should be considering about the potential benefits on traumatic brain injury.
And that would be either a reduction in the severity of the injury or an an enhancement in the recovery from the injury. So I think that's actually the prudent reply, right, right now. And the conservative reply is to not avoid creatin and say we, we all, the animal models don't translate well to human models.
It's really hard to study concussion in in, in humans, right. We don't know who's going to get a concussion. Certainly. And the [00:33:00] pathology, at least the symptoms appear to vary wildly from individual to individual.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And you're left with what is the mechanism of injury? How did you get hit?
Like what part of the brain could be affected? You could, I mean there's, broadly three different types, but you talk to, like, I work for the Kerig Institute, so
Dr Eric Rawson: Yes.
Dr Mike T Nelson : A lot of clinical neurologists. So they're dealing with my buddy Dr. Jeremy Shimo here in the Twin Cities deals with TBI like day in and day out.
And. They've come upon just doing customized testing for everyone because it's hard to quantify what type of injury that particular person had, which then makes a broad research of that even harder. 'cause how do you scan a whole bunch of people? Do you run 'em through tests and then you try to subdivide 'em into groups or what do you do?
You can't do the standardized, Ooh, let's take a bunch of people and humans and let's whack half 'em on the head and give 'em a TBI. And
Dr Eric Rawson: yes, you could propose those studies, but they never seem to. Yeah. Good
Dr Mike T Nelson : luck with [00:34:00] IRB. Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: I think you've struck upon something there and that's you and I, if we compared our skeletal muscles, they would not be I identical, but there would be enough similarity that we, you and I would have confidence if we both did resistance training and then we wanted to study the effects.
Or if we both took creatine supplements and wanted to use biopsies to study the effects. Or if we wanted to induce muscle damage and we wanted to study the effects and follow recovery and regeneration we have this perspective that skeletal muscle is similar enough across individuals, similar individuals, not necessarily old versus young, trained versus trained, similar individuals.
But with the brain we're in a different place, right? So where the brain injury was matters in terms of the etiology here. But also, and this is something that, that a lot of us have struggled with this particular body of literature, is how do we measure [00:35:00] brain function?
So again, using skeletal muscle as a model, if I measure strength with, a knee extension and you measure strength with elbow flexion. We still understand each other's data, and they're still quite comparable arm versus leg or grip strength versus, elbow flexion.
But if you look at those creat and supplementation cognition studies, the way people assess brain function is remarkably different. And they're clearly taxing if you will, different systems or different areas, right? So, it's hard enough to take a healthy resting individual, give them creatine supplements, measure some sort of cognitive processing outcomes, and compare it to another study.
If you put concussion on top of that, oof it becomes, mind numbing with, how large the study would have to be and how many different variables we'd have to control for, you [00:36:00] obviously need like a nationwide or sport wide intervention or. A particular network of colleges and I think some of these projects are underway, but they are certainly very difficult.
And I have to say that there's a political aspect to concussions because there's return to play issues
Dr Mike T Nelson : mm-hmm.
Dr Eric Rawson: And there's money involved and things like that where at least at some levels of sport, well, at all levels of sport, I'll be more honest, at all levels of sport, there isn't always accurate reporting.
Right. So if we enter people into a research study, the accuracy of the data is paramount and the data has to be pristine. But if you are a youth athlete and you've just had your third head injury are you going to report that If it means you're, you've lost the season. And the same in college and certainly the same in certain [00:37:00] professional sports.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. As you mentioned, even just standardized testing for it too. Right. Because that was the argument I made a while ago that the data is gonna be, as you mentioned, far from clean and a massive undertaking. But because you're talking about concussions and you're talking about humans, you could in theory, set something up where it's a self-report of these athletes used X amount of creatine.
These did not, yes, we followed 'em for three to five years rate of concussion. But again, like you said, they're all sorts of messy issues with reporting, under reporting. Who did the eval? Right? What tests did they do? How did they say they had a concussion? Who, that gets messy real fast.
Dr Eric Rawson: I agree.
And, but I have to say that what I've learned from, the, my transition from doing, nutrition and muscle work to nutrition and brain work. Is that there's a time and place for open-label trials and there's a time and place for self-report.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Mm-hmm.
Dr Eric Rawson: And survey type data.
If you can get better [00:38:00] reporting within an anonymous online survey and you can increase your sample size from a dozen to hundreds there's value in that. And I think there's two very interesting studies that are worth reading. And I think you're familiar with them.
They're on children with traumatic brain injury in a hospital setting.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Mm-hmm.
Dr Eric Rawson: And these were very severely injured children. And no, it wasn't a double blind placebo controlled investigation with all of these wonderful controls that we use in our research. This was an open label trial.
These were patients who needed help and they showed rather remarkable improvements in the recovery from brain injury. From memory to headaches to, a lot of the outcomes of interest when we're talking about concussion. And I think those two studies are well worth a read.
And they really speak volumes about how important some of these open label trials can be in, in [00:39:00] informing our decisions. So it, again, I come back to what's the prudent decision to tell an athlete to stay away from a nutrient with an excellent safety profile? Real muscular benefits that, that have been studied and published hundreds of times.
And possible protective effects on the brain. What's the prudent recommendation there to stay away or if you're a high risk person to consider, creatine supplements. But I think the open label trials have opened my eyes to the possibilities of that type of research as well as what you mentioned, an anonymous type of self-report survey research, which we're all taught is weak.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: That's weak research. You can't control anything. Well, there, there might be some real value there combined with the human studies and the brain imaging studies and everything else. I'll tell you I think one of the most fascinating studies that, that I've come [00:40:00] across is on retired NFL of professional football players.
And many years into retirement the athletes who are reporting symptoms that they have, they're reporting basically concussion related symptoms many years into retirement that's related to brain creatine levels.
So it, it speaks to almost a permanent disruption in energy metabolism. Certainly I think that group that would be worthy of, in investigation of the effects of supplementation on brain energetics and cognitive processing.
So there, there could be a, not just an acute suppression of brain creatine levels here. It could be very long lasting.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. I've gotten lots of. We'll say interesting emails from people because I've been relatively vocal of like if you're an athlete and you may take, [00:41:00] you're knowingly and you volunteered to play, mm-hmm. Let's say in the UFC or American football or whatever, where you know the chance of getting hit in the head, that's just part of what you signed up to do that. I'm like, yeah, you should probably look at Reine as a supplement. And people are like, oh, but there's very little data on it. And I'm like, but you have to make an educated decision for each athlete and each coach and whoever.
Like what is the risk profile and what is the risk and what is the reward? Right? And in this case, we've got a, like you said, we have a really good idea. What is the potential downside? We've got hundreds upon hundreds of studies. We've got long-term data on creatine. We've got more data on, creatine was the Tom Cleon thing.
Like there's more data on creatine than there is like the, tomato soup in my cupboard. There's more data on that than almost any other nutrient. And we haven't really seen many downsides per se, other than maybe a little bit of weight gain. We know it increases performance. So I [00:42:00] think it's up to each athlete to make their own decision.
But in this case, I think you can make a pretty good argument that. There might be more benefit than there is downside, especially since, we don't have finished trials to show if there is a benefit and if there is, what is the benefit? So you're also running full speed into another human being.
Right. So of all the things of those athletes I'm worried about,
Dr Eric Rawson: right?
Dr Mike T Nelson : I get, parents of kids that are, like, oh, I just found out my son went to college, he's 19 and he's taking creatine. And I'm like, well, is he in a sport? Well, he is playing football there. I'm like, okay. And so how long has he been playing football?
Oh, he is been playing since fifth grade. Like, okay. So you've let him run full speed into another human being. Sure. And now you're worried about the thing that we actually have a lot of data on, which I understand it, I get it. But at the same point, it just seems a little weird,
Dr Eric Rawson: right?
Our role as educators does [00:43:00] not end at any point.
Dr Mike T Nelson : No.
Dr Eric Rawson: And and I'm okay with that. One thing that, that I, is, I found helpful, but it really, it makes some people feel like they themselves walked into an another person or a brick wall. Is when I remind them that we're not talking about a drug,
Dr Mike T Nelson : right?
Dr Eric Rawson: We're talking about a nutrient.
Dr Mike T Nelson : It's not a
Dr Eric Rawson: steroid. And in many cases, the dose we're talking about, a maintenance dose, three to five grams per day. In a large athlete, they might be consuming that. With their high protein, high creatine foods. So if we're talking about, creatine supplementation, maintenance phase, we might really be talking about an extra hamburger a day.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: If we're talking about large athletes, which a lot of the times we are so are you really afraid of the creatine content of an extra burger a day? Then where does the anxiety come from with, this dietary supplement that, that's [00:44:00] just the ways it feels to some people that they need to be more cautious with a dietary supplement because it may, have some sort, sort of effects.
But, I'm, I ask people, are you that worried about vitamin C.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: Are you that worried about a calcium supplement? Okay, so why are you so worried about this? If it comes down to, an extra hamburger a day, would you be worried about that? And then I can, that, that usually gives me a little bit of a breakthrough and I can start showing them the, all of the studies on the lack of a negative effect on muscle function.
No effect on muscle injury, muscle damage, muscle inflammation no effect on, on, renal function and on. And once I share with people the amount of safety data that are available they're usually quite surprised. One, once again, I think, the internet is doing a great job at misinforming people and giving them confidence in their misinformation.[00:45:00]
Dr Mike T Nelson : And there's also just something weird, which is a whole nother topic about. Supplements that enhance performance. They're just, and I think it's because of a lot of the misinformation on the internet itself. Like, like you mentioned talking about vitamin C, no one gets too worried about that calcium, but you start talking about something that is touted, like creatine as performance enhancing, then people start getting all weird.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah. It's I agree. It's been my experience that there's, different reactions for different types of substances.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: I know many people who they would take a weight loss supplement without hesitation, but a muscle building supplement, it gives them pause.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: As if that somehow automatically comes with, a higher risk.
When I think most of us would agree that the. History of dietary supplements. It's the weight loss supplements that [00:46:00] pose a greater risk, particularly with stimulants. And then if you're introducing a stimulant to an overweight person with, hypertension and other comorbidities that's problematic.
But it's the muscle building supplements that are often the ones that give people a bit of a fright. And I do also meet people who without hesitation, they'll they'll develop an interest and a good feeling about a medication but be quite fearful of a dietary supplement.
So, but weight loss medications, weight loss drugs are a good example of many of those drugs have failed.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yes.
Dr Eric Rawson: To be approved because of adverse effects. Many of them have been removed from the market, thank goodness for post-marketing surveillance because of adverse effects. But that's not a history that we often talk about.
I talk about it in my courses and then the students are often in, in, in shock that they've not heard any of this information. If they went home and told their [00:47:00] parents, I'm gonna start taking protein powder, there would be some real concern there. Yeah, there's some biases in there that, that are very deep and very old, I think.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah, if you were to speculate if someone is, say an athlete or like myself, like I do kite boarding, and so one of the things I think about is if I am 20 plus feet up in the air and I get dropped on my head, I wear a helmet, have some protective gear, there's a potential for stuff to just go wrong, so before a trip I'll usually use like 20 grams of creatine per day.
Dr Eric Rawson: Mm-hmm.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Figuring maybe if I bump my creatine levels up in my brain a little bit, I'm hedging my bets in that direction. Like if you were to guess any idea on loading dose, you had mentioned the four week study, I think at 20 grams per day, if we're trying to get better levels of creatine in the brain.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah. It's a, this is the, it's a
Dr Mike T Nelson : crap shoot. I know.
Dr Eric Rawson: It's the million dollar question. It really is because we [00:48:00] have so few labs who can do this work and we just don't have the dose response studies. So that paper from 98 and from Chenin colleagues that showed 20 grams per day for about a month, increased brain creatine levels and they have different regions of the brain measured it.
It was a very well done study. Whereas we also have some Huntington's data with the very high dose of creatine. When you look at, a normal, physically active, healthy individual we really don't we're really not close to optimizing that, the dose. I wish we were closer.
I think the starting point should be what we know to improve muscle function and muscular health. So 20 grams per day for five days. And that's because we have excellent safety data Yes. On that set dose. So I think that's a good place to start. I think the issue is here that we're still looking at the brain, like it is very similar [00:49:00] to skeletal muscle.
And I think the differences in creats and transporters on the blood brain barrier compared to in skeletal muscle is and the fact that creatine is synthesized in the brain is gonna make the answer to this question very difficult to find. And what I mean by that is, if you look at the biopsy work with muscles, you just feed people creatine.
And every time you take a biopsy, their muscle creatine's increasing right day, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. With the brain, it's possible that you ate 20 grams of creatine per day, and at some point in the day, there was a temporary increase in brain creatine. Your brain reacted to that by perhaps decreasing endogenous production or reducing brain creat then uptake.
So it's possible if you are a young, healthy, physically fit individual and you have [00:50:00] the appropriate or normal levels of brain creatine, that no matter how much of the supplement you take, it will only budge a little. And the brain will shut it down. Now, if you are stressed, sleep deprivation intense exercise acutely stressed, temporarily stressed it could be that little bit of extra creatine you got into the brain is really going to attenuate any loss and function that you could have from that stressful situation.
So. Maybe, perhaps the brain is smarter than us and the brain doesn't want you to have this 20% increase, but the three, four, 5% increase is more than adequate. When you stress the system to make sure you don't go below some critical threshold, that's a different population than someone who's chronically stressed.
Right? Old, frail elders [00:51:00] people with certain types of diseases, schizophrenia certain types of de depression in certain individuals can have chronically suppressed brain creatine levels. That's a different situation. They, the exogenous creatine is serving a different purpose and it's to get them back up to a sufficient level where, whereas you and I are maybe are getting a little bit of an extra reserve, above the sufficient level to function normal.
It, it's difficult to know that's all theoretical at this point. But I think 20 grams per day for five days, and then the five gram loading dose. Because that's where all the safety data are, and that's where all the muscular improvement data are. I think that's where we start with, but what we really need is we need you to lie in an MRI and I feed you creatin and measure, what happens to your brain, creatine levels o over time.
And I need you to keep coming back to the clinic so that one [00:52:00] day I give you a five gram dose and one day I give you a 20 gram dose. And we look at these small changes over time instead of just muscle biopsy, day zero and muscle biopsy day five.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah,
Dr Eric Rawson: because I think we're missing a lot with the brain and we're ignoring the fact that brain and skeletal muscle are not as similar as we would like.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Oh, I'm down for MRIs anytime. But, and like you said, it may be a completely just different kinetics too.
Dr Eric Rawson: Mm-hmm.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Right. You may give someone a bolus dose of let's say five or 10 grams of creatine and you see a little spike and then it tails off, and then maybe it goes up a little bit and then goes down.
It maybe chronically that line is going up. But you might be missing those peaks depending upon when you put 'em in the MRI scanner and, all sorts of stuff. We just have no idea.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah. It's much more difficult research to do. And I hate to see us immediately jump to the animal models because I think in this case, [00:53:00] humans with a 5% improvement, 10% at the high end and animals with a 30 to 50% improvement I don't know that we wanna make those comparisons rather than, come up with more novel ways to examine humans.
And, oddly enough I think the way we're gonna get this done is with some really well done case studies.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: I know most of us are taught that case studies are a weaker form of science, especially retrospective case studies. But they do have value and I think what might enlighten us a little bit is to have one person in the magnet using different doses and even, we, we need to even challenge the assumption that brain creates and is stable.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah I've often wondered it that it's not, and that just throws a monkey wrench into everything.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yes, it does.
Dr Mike T Nelson : It's like unstable, nonlinear,
Dr Eric Rawson: So with muscle creatine, we have this safe assumption that if I'm at rest on Monday, [00:54:00] my muscle creatine is the same as it is if I'm at rest on Wednesday or Friday.
I'm not sure that's the case here with brain creatine levels.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And just think of how intermittent muscle is too, from blood flow to force output to use to, yes. Temperature. It goes from like zero to like, just ridiculously high levels, but it doesn't stay there long. Right. It goes back down like exercise to non-exercise where.
Your brain, you can do things to concentrate more or not. But you know the old studies where they put 'em in the FMRI and they found the default mode network? 'cause people are lying there and you're like, okay, now don't do anything. This is a control part of the experiment. And they're like, wait a minute, what's going on here?
And they give them like psilocybin and they see like massive changes in default mode network and they're like, whoa what's going on? Right? So a lot of times stuff that we think is just neutral and not doing anything, we tend to find that there's more going on than what we imagined initially too.
Dr Eric Rawson: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Dr Mike T Nelson : [00:55:00] Yeah. It makes you think of animal data like the CLA data, like from, I remember reading that early on and looking at all the rat studies and I'm like, holy crap, this stuff's amazing. Like, the rats get leaner, they get stronger, and the safety data in humans was okay. And then time after time, you look at all the human studies and it just.
Doesn't really pan out at all. And the handful of studies it did, in my opinion, were pretty shoddy and not really the best studies. But if you were a mouse or a rat, it was amazing.
Dr Eric Rawson: Right. That's the truth. And I would also say that I, I've been encouraging people in recent years to evaluate the safety of a supplement or a nutrient first.
Yes. And I think CLA is an interesting example because some of those animals became insulin resistant. Correct. They basically drifted towards diabetes. And this is ultimately going to be marketed as a weight loss supplement in a population that's probably at least [00:56:00] pre-diabetic if not diabetic.
Yeah. And if you had evaluated the safety before the efficacy, you would've said, I don't wanna make people more diabetic. You wouldn't, you would not have, you wouldn't have gotten to the part about, nutrient partitioning or, reducing body fat. And I think one of the great things about creatine is we have so much safety data, right?
So if we start with the safety data and we look at muscle and kidney and thermal regulation and liver and heart, and we have confidence going forward that this has a very good safety profile. Then we have all of the muscular data, w which are, showing a effect in terms of improving muscle function, enhancing fatigue resistance, increasing strength resistance, training, adaptations and then I think we can go into the brain, the interpretation of the brain data with more confidence because we already know about the safety profile and we already know about the other [00:57:00] benefits and unfortunately, I think a lot of supplements are evaluated in reverse.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yes.
Dr Eric Rawson: We want the answer to the question, does it work?
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. I remember talking to Roger Harris a couple years ago about creatine ethyl ester, right? Mm-hmm. So for listeners, like, they tried to make all these new forms of creatine that were better than creatine, monohydrate, and pretty much all of 'em have failed.
But he was saying that his understanding was that they did almost no toxicology or testing on it at all. They just put it in water and saw that it dissolved. And so that was their whole marketing scheme of like, oh, look, you put it in water and it dissolved, so it's gotta be more bioavailable and just, ran it out to the marketplace.
And I guess it turned out later that it didn't appear to have much toxicology effect, but he was saying that initially they had no idea and they just released it and go, there you go. I'm like, oh man.
Dr Eric Rawson: Yeah it's interesting. It's, it's a very interesting industry. I, I think what I try to, relay to [00:58:00] my students and athletes and parents and anyone I'm working with is if someone is offering you a supplement that has better absorption
Dr Mike T Nelson : right?
Dr Eric Rawson: Then I think you should slow yourself down and say, well, what's wrong with the absorption?
Dr Mike T Nelson : Right.
Dr Eric Rawson: What's the
Dr Mike T Nelson : problem?
Dr Eric Rawson: Original. So creatine monohydrate is absorbed about 99%.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: Okay. I improve on that.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: So once you get to that point, well, it's already, absorbed about 99%. Then why do you need any of these other products? And then that's always been my contention is that this is well absorbed. And the, that's where the safety data are. So 99% of the safety and efficacy data are on creat and monohydrate.
Exactly. What is your rationale for trying, one of these alternative types of products?
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Which brings me to my last question, which I'm sure you get a lot of. If you were to predict for both, either brain or [00:59:00] muscle, what do you think is the next creatine monohydrate that the supplement industry has been desperately trying to come up with for decades?
Dr Eric Rawson: I don't think we're going to see something that's as well absorbed well tolerated as creates, and I don't think we're gonna see something that improves muscular performance across such a broad range of populations as creatine even beta-alanine, the muscle buffer is effective.
It's safe. There's a lot of research to support it's effectiveness. It's only gonna be effective for people doing a particular type of exercise for a particular length of time. Whereas creatine has more broad effects on muscular dystrophy patients sarcopenia, older adults different types of athletes.
I, I don't think there's anything there that could match creatine in terms of its broad effects [01:00:00] and excellent safety profile. I think there are some there's some tweaking to do with some compounds. There are some there's very old research on creatin precursors.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. It keeps popping up every now and then.
Dr Eric Rawson: There's simply no reason to take them because you can just take creatin and that's what all the safety and efficacy data are. But there, there are, there's at least one compound that's there's only a few studies, but it. It's very interesting in terms of just the brain and increasing brain creatine levels essentially trying to get into the brain without the brain, resisting the exogenous creatine.
And I think that's interesting, but I just don't see a product, that's going to match all of the things that, that we've learned about creatine these past few decades. I have the, I had the great opportunity to be part of a writing [01:01:00] group. Somewhat surprisingly, the International Olympic Committee put together a writing group to come up with a consensus statement on dietary supplements and athletic performance.
And we all had to write these massive review articles. And then we get into a room and I'm in this room with these amazing scientists. Everybody's 10 times smarter than me and. I have to defend what I wrote, and then we argued for like a week straight and rolled that into a consensus document which has been published a few years now.
But the number of dietary supplements that we can actually confidently say improves athletic performance is incredibly small. And creatine is certainly one of those compounds. Over the past several decades, of research, we're still down to, a number of compounds. We can count essentially on one hand.
And I, I don't see another, I don't, I'm not aware of anything coming that's gonna blow me away like creatine [01:02:00] did.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Do you think lactate may be, oops. Do you think lactate may be useful as a supplement?
Dr Eric Rawson: It could be. A lot of the metabolic, lots
Dr Mike T Nelson : of unknowns,
Dr Eric Rawson: a lot of the metabolic intermediates are interesting.
But I think context is going to be extremely, IM important. And that's what I mean about the broad appeal of creatine across patient. So many areas, age groups. I don't see that coming. It's possible, as I said, with some of the buffers, like beta aine and sodium bicarbonate I'm not gonna take sodium bicarbonate.
Oof.
Dr Mike T Nelson : I've tried like the dose where you see a performance effect compared to the dose where you wanna, like crap, your pants is really close.
Dr Eric Rawson: The adverse effects are well known. And also I think the data on beta-alanine and sodium bicarbonate indicate that for me to have a beneficial effect, I would have to be exercising the longer.
It's longer than after the
Dr Mike T Nelson : 32nd guy. Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: Right. Longer than a set of squats. Longer than a set of deadlifts.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: So I, I think with lactate and some of [01:03:00] these other intermediates and compounds where going to see maybe they work on in very unique circumstances I think nitrate is very interesting.
And I think that has more broad appeal closer to something like, like creatine, that it can be used clinically. Obviously there's positive effects on blood pressure, resting blood pressure beneficial effects on different types of exercise performance. But briton instill a very unique compound to, to study.
And I think hopefully the next few years brings us a lot more of the answers we seek on brain work. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all your time and sharing all your knowledge today. We really appreciate it. If people wanna find out more about you, where would they go? I don't know if your lab is taking any graduate students or if people are interested or what do you got going on?
Dr Eric Rawson: You can find me on Twitter where a lot of nutrition and exercise scientists [01:04:00] gather. You can find me on Twitter, you can email me at Messiah University. I'm a professor at Messiah University in Pennsylvania. My email's online you can find me at different types of conferences.
Feel free to come up to me and let's have a chat. This is the stuff we all love talking about nutrition and muscle and dietary supplements. So, happy to be of service and I appreciate the opportunity to be a guest on your show.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Oh, thank you so much. And are you gonna the neuro sports conference in Florida and then ISSN again, or,
Dr Eric Rawson: I'm hoping to make it to ISSN in the summer.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Okay. I think it's June. I think
Dr Eric Rawson: June. Okay. There's probably two summer meetings on my calendar. And I'm hoping we're all back at meetings.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yes. Yeah.
Dr Eric Rawson: This year. I know it's been a little
Dr Mike T Nelson : weird.
Dr Eric Rawson: We saw each other in the fall. I'm not gonna be able to do too much travel and the first part of the winter I have too much going on in the lab and with the department.
[01:05:00] But hopefully we're all back conferencing this summer.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it.
Dr Eric Rawson: Thank you.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Huge thanks to everybody for listening to the podcast. Big thanks Dr. Eric Rossin for taking time out of his very busy schedule to share. All his research here.
We've got some of the publications listed below that you can check out and really appreciate all his time and his dedication to research and science in this area. If you're listening to this and you enjoyed it feel free to pass it on to some of your friends or if you're interested in doing more research on the effects of creatine and other supplements for brain health and even TBI and concussion spread the word 'cause.
I would love to see more human research on this very important topic. As we mentioned the podcast, we've got great information showing that creatine monohydrate in general has shown to be very safe as a supplement. However, it'd be great to have more [01:06:00] data. To see what are the effects on brain health.
Thanks to Dr. Eric Rawson. If you enjoyed this make sure to sign up to the flex diet.com site where you can get on the wait list for the next version of the Flex Diet certification. It'll open, most likely around June of this year is what I'm thinking. Go to flex diet.com, F-L-E-X-D-I-E t.com.
And when you get on the wait list, you will automatically be on the newsletter, which has lots of great free information for you to improve body composition improve your performance at the gym, add some more muscle, and do all that without destroying your health in the process. So thank you so much.
Again, if you've enjoyed this feel free to subscribe and share around to other people. That really helps us out to. Spread the word in these areas. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you all very [01:07:00] soon.
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