How do you know something is good for you?
Personal experience?
Doctor's orders?
Your favorite flavor?
Creatine is awesome, but don't just take my word for it. Listen to the massive body of research that supports it.
What is it?
Creatine is a naturally occurring compound made up of amino acids.
It is simply a supplement that can be easily found in powder, capsule, gummy, or other forms.
Because it is naturally occurring, you can find it in many foods as well, mainly animal products.
What does it do?
In short, it helps your body access energy faster.
It has been heavily researched and is known to help increase muscle mass and improve physical performance, but I thought I would provide an exhaustive list of all the other things it may help with below:
What should you do?
If you are a human, you will likely benefit from supplementing creatine.
Creatine monohydrate is all you need.
There are fancier options, but it is just marketing with no additional health benefits.
You don't need a loading phase.
You can take it whenever you want; timing does not matter.
Start with 5 grams per day, and see how your body does.
For the cognitive recovery benefits, you can supplement 4x that amount.
Got a weird injury or a burning question you want answered? Drop it in the comments below and I will talk through it on next week's "What's that Wednesday". And I promise I will get this blog thing figured out eventually :)
-Dr. Jon Bailey, PT, DPT, OCS