Creatine Myths: Hair Loss, Bloating, Dosing, and More
The Stronger By Science Podcast
Scaling to Muscle Mass
There was a really cool 2018 paper by Abe and colleagues. The title was skeletal muscle mass and human athletes. What is the upper limit? Where essentially they recruited 95 extremely muscular athletes, including 43 American football players, 18 powerlifters, 28 sumo wrestlers and six shot putters. And so out of these 95 extremely muscular, like super jacked guys, only seven of them had more than 50 kilograms of skeletal muscle tissue. So yeah, even for this guy, like five grams a day would be within that range of amounts that would probably maximize muscle creatine concentrations.
Does creatine cause hair loss? What about bloating? In this episode, Greg and Lyndsey bust myths and misconceptions about creatine, one of the most popular supplements on the market. Greg also explains how creatine actually works to increase muscle growth and discusses myths related to creatine dosing (is 5g per day enough?). Then, they play a few listener calls about creatine and answer questions about creatine's impact on individual genetic potential for muscularity, different forms of creatine, and the interaction between caffeine and creatine.
Want to get your question answered on the show? Send a voice memo to podcast@strongerbyscience.com
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TIME STAMPS, SOURCES, AND LINKS
Intro (0:00)
What’s on your mind/bright spots: Love Island (3:23)
Recommendations and plugs (8:30)
Creatine Introduction (10:49)
History of Creatine (17:56)
- 1912 study establishing that dietary creatine increases muscle concentrations
- 1926 frog study discovering phosphocreatine (origin of “phosphagen”)
- 1927 study specifically identifying phosphocreatine for what it was
Creatine and hair loss introduction (38:39)
Background information on DHT (40:48)
Discussion of the study everyone cites to support the idea that creatine causes hair loss (44:35)
The key thing everyone misses when discussing the creatine/DHT study: serum DHT is irrelevant to the physiology of androgenic alopecia (54:21)
- General review article – Androgens and androgen receptor action in skin and hair follicles
Potential physiological explanations for increased scalp DHT production and hair loss (1:04:09)
- Scalp blood flow with androgenic alopecia
- Interesting (but probably wrong) gravity-related hypothesis
- Different effects of DHT in different hair follicles (specially, see the section heading “Hormones and Androgenetic Alopecia”)
- Hypothesis related to scalp tension
- Botox as a treatment for androgenic alopecia
- Obesity/metabolic syndrome and androgenic alopecia: One, two, three
- Heritability of androgenic alopecia
Known effects of creatine on the actual causes of hair loss (1:29:40)
- Creatine/free testosterone studies linked here
- More reading on systemic vs. local DHT
- Supplemental DHT and lack of prostate growth
Why do so many people think that creatine causes hair loss in the first place? (1:38:00)
- Men’s Health article
- Women’s Health article
- Sports Illustrated article
- Hims article
- NYTimes article
- Jose Antonio article
- General info about creatine intake and effects
How creatine actually works to increase muscle growth (1:48:31)
The idea that creatine doesn’t actually cause bloating (and only causes fluid retention in the muscles) is probably incorrect (2:04:01)
Myth related to creatine dosing: the typical recommendation of 5g/day is not enough creatine for serious lifters (2:15:34)
Question 1: does creatine raise the limits of muscularity that you can achieve, or does it just lead to slightly faster progress toward the same limit? (2:38:01)
Question 2: is it worth experimenting with other forms of creatine? (2:40:28)
Question 3: do caffeine and creatine have inhibitory effects on each other? (2:46:51)
- There is a creatine and caffeine section in the SBS creatine guide.
- More recent MASS article on the topic (for MASS subscribers)
MORE FROM THE SBS TEAM
- Work with a Stronger By Science coach: Get personalized training and nutrition plans and ongoing support from one of our expert coaches.
- Join the Research Spotlight newsletter: Our newsletter is the easiest way to stay up to date with the latest exercise and nutrition science.
- Join the SBS Facebook group and Subreddit.
RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS
- Try MacroFactor for free: Use code SBS to get a 14-day free trial of our nutrition app MacroFactor. MacroFactor has the fastest food logger on the market and its smart nutrition coach adapts to your metabolism to keep you on track with your goals. Download it today on the App Store or Google Play.
- BulkSupplements: Next time you stock up on supplements, be sure to use the promo code “SBSPOD” (all caps) to get 5% off your entire order.
- MASS Research Review: Subscribe to the MASS Research Review to get concise and applicable breakdowns of the latest strength, physique, and nutrition research – delivered monthly.
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