Comment by iamacyborg
3 hours ago
I take creatine daily, have done for well over a year. I also run 5-6 days a week and lift twice a week.
I’ve previously stopped taking it for a couple months and noticed no real difference in physical or mental ability.
You may not have taken enough. You need 15-20g/day for mental benefits. And long term, at least 2+ weeks.
If you would, please explain or point me to the material where you get your higher dosage recommendation. (I always heard and understood proper dosage to be 5–7.5g/day, 10g/day at the most. I’d like to correct my error if I’m mistaken.)
<10g is the correct dosage for the non-mental benefits
But inversely, unless you actually go above 10, eg 15... The blood saturation isn't enough for your brain to take advantage of it.
But there is very little studied about sustained use of such a dosage. (Only short term - eg 1 week - which isn't long enough for the benefits again)
It's safe enough for anecdotes of people doing it for years and not having issues - but despite others claiming that it's well studied, it's really not - at least not with dosages above 5g in humans.
Personally I've been doing so for a year now and can unquestionably confirm a strong effect, which goes away if I reduce the dosage below the threshold. So at least my body responds to it.
But you're not getting a proper study unless you get thousands of people to take it for years... Which is basically impossible as there are too many confounding factors to get meaningful results.
And organizing such a study is gonna be too expensive too, with no sponsors willing to take up the tab
I've already written and edited this comment a lot, but as a final remark I'd like to point out that the benefits I'm referencing is having an easier time concentrating. This can also be a demerit, as you can easily be caught thinking about something for pretty long before you realize.
Huberman podcast has some coverage
Yeah I definitely don’t take that much.
The only difference I notice is a small increase in muscle strength after taking it for a month or so.