Creatine and Hair Loss

Our next caller is Chuck from Ohio. Uh, Chuck, what's going on, man? How can we help you? Hey, how's it going? First of all, I just want to say thanks for the opportunity to talk to you guys. Um, I really appreciate it. And, uh, I'm actually here at school right now. I'm an assistant principal in middle school, so I'm hoping that things don't, uh, blow up here in the next 15 minutes. But, uh, you know, I, I enjoy the podcast. I'm, I'm a morning lifter, 4 AM, 5 AM. Um, I listen to you guys every morning and I've actually come to the point where I've listened enough episodes that I think I enjoy the, you know, the introduction more than I enjoy the fitness part now, uh, I'm a father of two kids, both under four. Uh, so I really have, uh, come to relate to a lot of the conversations you guys have. So I just appreciate you and all that you guys do. My, uh, my question is around creatine in general. Um, I know that I'm not a huge supplement guy. I basically take pre-workout and I was taking creatine pretty, uh, pretty consistently. Um, and I'm just kind of wondering here lately, you know, I meal prep every day, uh, with, with beef and then, you know, usually a couple of nights a week we have beef for dinner. Um, is there a point where my diet is enough and that I'm just wasting my money with creatine? Yeah, no, good question. Um, okay. So a couple of things, number one, you, you're, you're fine without taking creatine, so you're getting enough from your food to be healthy. You're not going to notice like when a vegan takes creatine, for example, studies will show they get an IQ boost probably because they're not getting enough from food. That being said, will you benefit from supplementing with creatine? Probably. Yeah, you probably will. Because, uh, and studies will show this, that create that creatine additional creatine just tops. It just tops out your ATP stores strength and you can experiment with this. You could take creatine for a couple of weeks, see if you notice any increased strength or a better pump. I do notice that in part of your question too, you mentioned, uh, creatine and hair loss. Would you like me to go into that a little bit? Yeah, I was just curious. I, and I'll be honest. I, it's kind of slipped my mind. You had an interview, um, a while back. It's probably been a couple of weeks now when it, when it published and it was like a brief moment in the episode, he, the guy mentioned a study, uh, and then I've seen, uh, Lane Norton talking about a little bit here lately too. Is there, is there any correlation between, you know, creatine and hair loss or is that, is that minuscule? What's the, what's going on there? It's a, it's a big stretch. There's zero, there is no evidence that creatine is connected to hair loss, but here's where the evidence, this is why people will say this or why some people will talk about this. There is some, some evidence that creatine may cause a increase in DHT. So DHT is a form of testosterone that is more androgenic. Okay. So androgenic meaning the, the masculinizing effects that you may get from testosterone. So DHT is great for libido, uh, aggression. In fact, anabolic steroids that are derived from T DHT bodybuilders will take it because it makes their muscles look hard and makes them feel aggressive. They'll get a libido boost from it. And DHT also can cause the, the masculinizing effects of hair loss. Uh, you know, the male or excuse me, female voice deepening. So if women take DHT, this will happen, or if they increase their DHT, maybe prostate enlargement. But here's the thing. The amount of DHT increase that has been observed in some studies, either studies show there's no increase or some studies show there's a minor increase. It's so overstated that it would cause, uh, any issues. That's like a downstream thing that they're trying to connect. As of right now, all the studies on creatine are positive. Uh, improvements in health. It's got antioxidant properties. Good for your heart. Good for your muscles. Good for your organs. Uh, brain function, nothing. There's no studies that show that it's connected to hair loss. I think that's a big, like, like kind of fear mongering a little bit. Could it potent, you know, would it, would a slight increase in DHT cause hair loss? Probably not maybe in the absolute most sensitive individuals, in which case they'd say it doesn't matter because they're going to cut their hairs going away anyway. Um, but yeah, that's not something I would worry about. Doug, would you, um, Doug, will you Google, uh, how much creatine is in a pound of red meat? I don't remember what the number is right now, but this is, this will help Chuck kind of your question, your point to, you know, how much red meat you're eating. Cause you're, you're right. Yeah. If you eat, consume a good amount of red meat, you are getting some creatine through food. I want to say that the recommended dose for, for optimizing that is what around five, is it five? It's five, five grams a day. Um, so here you go. One, one, okay. One pound of raw beef or salmon provides one to two grams of creatine. So even if you had a pound in a day and the optimal place is about five, that's still only getting you about a halfway point to that. So you would, you would benefit from three to five grams a day. Kind of what I do is, uh, if I had like a really heavy red meat date, that might be the day I do skip taking my creatine. If it was like a really heavy day and then all the rest of the days I'm, I'm taking it, or maybe I'm taking like a half scoop or something. So just so I can stretch out how long my creatine lasts. That's a strategy that you can use. Um, you're definitely not, you're definitely based off of how much red meat you're eating. You're not deficient. So it's not like you need it, uh, to be healthy, but if you're looking to build muscle, uh, there, there'd be an advantage to you still utilizing some creatine. The only thing I would say, like, I know some people have had issues like with their gut in terms of creatine and it not really, uh, you know, uh, uh, being something that was, you know, agreeable with them. But other than that, uh, you know, there's really little downside to supplementing with, with creatine. So that's, that's just one of those things though. If it doesn't agree with you, you know, I, I wouldn't keep going with it. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry too much about the, the hair loss fears or whatever. Um, a slight, a little increase in DHT not going to affect you, except maybe you might notice a little increase in libido and strength, but even then it's, it's, you know, anytime we affect our hormones naturally, the boost, even though you may read studies, Oh, 30% increase, like you do the math and you look at that, it's not that big of a, of a difference, like you would get an increase in DHT if you naturally raise your testosterone too, right? So if somebody, let's say is walking around with a measurement of 600 testosterone and then they optimize their, their life and their sleep and their diet, their, they may get their number up to 800 and there's typically a corresponding rise in DHT also associated with that because DHT is where we get that from testosterone. But nonetheless, I wouldn't worry about it. And I think we're going to see in the next five to 10 years, creatine is going to get recommended to, they're already starting to recommend it to the elderly. It's like a wellness supplement. It's a wellness supplement. And now some people don't really get any, derive any benefit from it. They're called non-responders, but you'll know within two to three weeks, like start supplementing with it. And if you don't notice a difference, then it's probably not a big deal. But if you notice a little bit of boost in strength, better pump, that kind of stuff, then, then go for it. Okay, great. Thank you guys. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for calling in. Yeah, that's the one. It's, it's so crazy, right? Like of all of the promises of the supplement industry, of all the supplements, that's the one golden goose. In fact, creatine is what saved the supplement industry. It really is. Because of creatine, the supplement industry exploded. You can actually connect the growth of the supplement industry. Is that true? Absolutely. Really? Absolutely. If you look at when creatine hit the market, when EAS, I think was the first supplement, the first company to really, really market it and bring it out. And it's what crushed for EAS, right? They brought it out. People took it. Oh my God. It actually works. Right. And you can see how the supplement market really took off as a result. And it's backed by like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of really well-made studies. It's been studied now for 20 something years. And it's, again, it's probably going to be recommended as a health supplement, general health supplement. It was interesting when it first came out, like, you know, the football team, we started to take it and it, it, there was all this fear behind it because it actually worked. Yeah. So like we got people coming in and warning us about, you know, all these different things that potentially like could happen. And it's like, you know, none of that was true, but it was lots of fear going into it. Like it was some kind of hidden steroid. We didn't know about it. It's one of those few supplements that I can not take for a while and then reintroduce it back into my routine. And I see a nice, even increase in all my, my weight, like strength-wise just to, and, and I also look fuller. Right. So like, I noticed that like my muscles look fuller, I look bigger because I'm probably hanging on to a little bit of extra water in there too. So I think that those two things are like guaranteed. And it's not one of those things that if I do for a long period, I know you've like never stopped. So I've been taking creatine relatively consistently since I was 16. Right. That's for a long time. And you probably only really noticed when you'd come off and then go back on. I mean, I've, I've come off a few times, but I'm pretty damn consistent with taking it. And you know, it's funny, you look at the wellness space that talks all about mitochondrial health. You, I'm sure you've heard that right from all the hackers and the biohackers and all that. Right. One of the best things you could do powerhouse of the cell. Yeah. One of the best things you can do for the mitochondria of your cell is help them produce more ATP, which is one of their main sources of energy. That's what creatine does. And that's why studies are all now showing, Oh my God, it helps with heart function. It helps with, you know, liver function. It's your cognitive function improves. So it's just one of those. And it's like a, again, it's like a miracle supplement in the sense that there is no other supplement that comes close and it's really the only one that's ever lived up to the hype. Really? No other supplement has lived up to the hype. Uh, not even close to what creatine has. Now, to your point, to the mitochondria health, I have always wanted to do this and test and be consistent with it. I've played with it, but I haven't been consistent with it to really tease anything out. And that's the stacking it with the red light therapy. Since the red light at doing it post workout, doing red light therapy, and then also taking your creatine, it'd be interesting to see if we, if you noticed like an added boost. It makes sense because they both do that, right? Through different ways. Right. Yeah.