Creatine Supplementation and Training Mindset

Welcome to Huberan Lav Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance I'm Andrew Hberan and I'm a professor neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with doror Lane Norton Norton, thank you so much for being here. This is a long time coming and I have to say as a fellow hD scientist. I feel a great kinship with you I know you have tremendous experience in fitness and nutrition in a number of areas. I'd like to start with something that's rather basic and yet can be pretty complex. and that's this issue of energy balance and energy utilization. What happens when we eat food of any kind And how is that actually converted into energy as a way of framing up the discussion around weight loss, weight maintenance, weight gain body composition It's a great question. And like you said, this is one of those things where you know, people use the term calories in calories out and they say, well That's way too simplistic. And I'm like, if you look at what actually makes up calories in calories out, It's actually very complicated. So a calorie just refers to a unit of energy of heat specifically Really what you're talking about is the potential chemical energy that is in the bonds of the macronutrients of food. And by digesting, assimilating, and metabolizing those nutrients We' able to create energy. The end product of that mostly is ATP, adenizen triphosphate, which is your body's energy currency So a lot of metabolism is simply creating ATP Protein's a little bit different because protein gets converted to amino acids, which can be used for muscle protein synthesis or protein synthesis and other tissues But it also can be converted through glcneogenesis to glucose And there also are some ketogenic amino acids as well Th then you have fatty acids, which are able to create Eergy through what's called beta oxidation where essentially, you're taking these fatty acids and you're loopping them off two carbons at a time to produce acetyl coA. which again can go into the Crep cyc produce those hydrog ions that can then power the production of ATP So that's kind of like at the cellular level of how this stuff works. Stepping back and taking it back out, like, well, what does that have to do with weight loss or weight gain, right? When you think about the balance of energy in versus energy out, sounds very simple But let's look at what actually makes up energy in versse energy out First of all you've got to realize that the energy inside of the equation is more difficult to track than people think. So one, food labels, which we like to think is being, you know, like from upon high can have up to a twenty percent error in them. really? Oh yeah. The second aspect is there's what's called your energy, but then there's also metabolizable energy. right? So if you have food stuff with, say, a lot of insoluble fiber Typically insoluble fiber is not really digestible. And so you could have, you know quite a bit of carbohydrate, but you can't extract the energy from it, and typically this is because insoluble fiber from like plant material The carbohydrate or and even some of the protein is bound up in the plant structure which makes it inaccessible to digestive enzymes. And so this is what like adds bulk to your stool and whatnot But again, reduces the metabolizable energy in there. And there's some evidence that based on people's individual gut microbiome that some people may actually be better at extracting ennergy out of fiber compared to other people. So just starting off right there, okay, there's quite a bit of play in the energy inside of things. Now, one of the things people will say is, well, see, that's why you shouldn't worry about tracking calories because you know if the food labels can be twenty percent off. And what I'll say is, okay, I understand where you're coming from, but typically if it's off, it's going to be consistently off And if you're consistent with how you track it eventually you'll be able to know kind of what you're taking in. So now let's look at the energy outside of the equation, which is actually way more complicated, right? And so your energy out is a few different The first one and the biggest one is your resting metabolic rate. So your armR. That for most people is anywhere from fiftycent to seventy percent of your total daily energy expenditure Sedentary people will be on the higher end of that. so it'll be a bigger proportion, whereereas people who are more active, it'll be a little bit lower Not because their metabolic rate is lower, but because they're expending a greater percentage of their calories from physical activity Then you have something called the thermic effect of food, which is a relatively small percentage of your total daily energy expenditure. It's about fivecent to ten percent. Very difficult to measure and usually what researchers do in they kind of looking at this stuff is they just kind of make an assumption about it. They use a constant. And that refers to the amount of energy it takes to extract the energy out of food. You can't just eat food and then you know, it just ears in your cells and you start doing stuff It has to be systematically broken down and put into forms that can actually produce energy A lot of times people will say something like, well, not all calories are created equal That's not true because calories is just a unit of measurement, right? That would be like saying not all seconds on a clock are created equal. Yes, they are All sources of calories may have differential effects on energy expenditure and appetite. So if we look at something like fat, for example The TF of fat is about zero to three percent, meaning, if you eat one hundred calories from fat, your net will be about ninety seven to one hundred So the process of breaking down that fat essentially subtacts some of the calories away because you used it in creating energyrect byy breaking those chemical bonds to create ATP. Correct. Okay. correct. That is actually the easiest thing to convert into energy Then you have carbohydrate, which has a TF of like F to ten percent, so you eat one hundred calories from carbohydrate. And obviously like the fiber content makes a big difference on this. But if you eat one hundred calories, you'll net ninety to ninety five Protein is about a twenty percent to thirty percent TEF So if you eat a hundred calories from protin, you're only netting seventy to eighty. Now you're still net, know, people say, well, you can't eat too much protein You know, people will ask, well could protein be stored as fat The carbons from protein, it's unlikely it's going wind up in adipost tissue. but if you're eating a lot of protin overall is part of a lot of calories, it has to be oxidized and it can provide a calorie cushion for other things to be stored in fat Protein itself does provide you know a net positive for calories, but less so than carbohydrated fat and tend to be more satiating. So again, when people talk about, you know, are all calories created equal? Yes, but all sources of calories may have differential effects on energy expenditure and appetite So that's the TF bucket in the BMR bucket. Then we go to physical activity And physical activity is essentially two parts. There's exercise, which is kind of your purposeful movements like you are for a walk, you do a training session whatever, any purposeful activity. And then you have what's called neat, which is non exercise activity thermogenesis. So for example, when I'm talking, if I'm waving around my hands, if I'm tapping my feet, if I'm whatever That's neat The calorie burn from meat is actually pretty significant. We're not talking about one hundred calories or two hundred calories per day. We're talking about in some cases hundredundreds of thousands excuse me, hundreds. to maybe even close to a thousand calories per day. And what's very interesting about Nat is that seems to be the most modifiable of you know BMR, TEF, and neat. Neat seems to be far more modifiable. The next thing is a lot of people weigh varies sporadically. and I'll tell people like, if you're gonna to make an intentional weight loss a goal And again, this can be different for different people, but typically I tell people way in First thing in the morning, where I have to go to the bathroom, do it every day and take the average of that for the week and then compare that to the next week's average as somebody who weighs themselves pretty regularly I mean, my weight will fluctuate, you know, five, six pounds and not seemingly changing much, you know, And that's just, you know, those short term changes are fluid So if you're somebody who just randomly is weighing in and you're eating in a calorie deficit And you just weigh in one day where you just whatever reason holding some more fluid Anden you oh see, this isn't working. When in reality, your average might be dropping. Weight fluctuations are actually identified as a major reason why people get discouraged from weight loss. It kind of stops the buy in, you know, when they have a fluctuation up. So that's one of the reasons ear One of the reasons early on that low carb diets tend to work really well is because people lose a lot of water weeight really quickly and they get that buy in. Its, oh, this is working. People think about I'm going to do a diet and I'm going to lose this weight and they do not give any thought to what happens afterwards. Think about if you have some kind of chronic disease, a diabetic You can't just take insulin once and that's it You got to Continuously, otherwise, you're going to have problems. You can't create a new version of yourself while dragging your old habits and behaviors behind you So what I'll tell people is because people say, well, I'm doing carnivore diet or I'm doing this diet or that diet. And I'll say that's fine Do you see yourself doing that for the rest of your life And if the answer is no, You probably need to rethink what your approach is going to be. Hey everyone. All right, my book is finally ready for release protocols, and an operating manual for the human body is coming out in three months. It's my first book, and I've been working on it for many years now And it's really a reflection of decades of research and experience that came even prior to starting the book My goal for this book is that it serves as an easy to use manual for dealing with any number of different pain points or performance goals that you might have in terms of mental health, physical health and performance It covers the science and most effective protocols for sleep, nutrition, exercise focus learning in neuroplasticity, stress management, and much more I'm super excited to share it with all of you. 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That seems to be a thing now, directed hypertrophy, if you will. how much they should focus on protein as a core component of creating this diet and are animal sources of protein indeed more bioavvailable that's ricky word for sake of muscle building, but also for sake of somebody who just would like to lose body fat. They don't w want to lose muscle and they'd like to bring their weight down a few pounds Of the macronutrients, protein is definitely the biggest lever that you can pull, because even if You know, it doesn't take a ton of protein to get a lot of the muscle building benefits. I mean, I think The benefits really start to plateau out around one point six grams per kilogram of body weight. There's some evidence that maybe even up to like two point four or two point eight grams per kilo may give like a little bit more benefit. I think it probably looks something like an asymptope in terms of the curve where As you put more into the system, you always get a little bit more, but it just gets to the point where it's so infitesimly small benefit that it's for all intents and purposes no benefit. There doesn't seem to be really downsides to it. Even like up to very high levels of protein, Jose Antonio did a study There was a year long randomized control trial. And again, it's just one year, but they were looking at all sorts of different biomarkers Basically, even up to like four grams per kilogram of protein, they couldn't really find any negative health outcomes from it other than people were just so satiated, they ended up eating less calories. So protein is a big lever because one has a higher thermic effect of food, so you're getting a little bit more calorie burn per day, even though it's not a ton because TEF is a pretty small percentage of your overall energy expenditure But' still a benefit You're getting the effects on lean body mass. It's going if you're in a diet,'s going to help preserve lean body mass. If you're at maintenance, it's going to help build or preserve lean body mass, and if you're in a surplus it's going to help build or preserving body mass. If I'm going to eat, let's say, two grams per kilogram of body weight protein And I'm not eating multiple meals per Maybe I'm eating two or three meals per day I'm certainly going to be eating more than the thirty gram threshold that was thrown around for a long time that we can only assimilate thirty grams of protein per meal Should I just not worry about that? Some of it is going to go towards the thermic effect of food Some of that might be converted into glucose of all things through gluconeogenesis. So should I worry about this thirty gram cutoff Because I think balancing the one point six gram per kilogram body weight threshold with number of meals, with the need to exercise and work and live my life and sleep, et cetera, pretty soon you run into bottlencks where you just can't do it all. orr you're spending so much time trying to focus on it. You can't optimize all the things at the same time. You lose your mind and your body. Most Americans get about sixty fivecent to seventy percent of their protein at dinner Breakfast tends to be pretty minimal protein. So to answer your question, I do think that timing and frequency matters a little not so much frequency, but distribution more so. But it's a much smaller lever than just getting enough total protein in And then as far as like animal versus plant, I used to be in the camp of there's no way somebody can build as much muscle on a plant based diet And now I think I've come back to You can, it just requires a little bit more planning. And I don't want to say always, but it's very difficult to do without an isolated source of protein. So unless you're going to supplement it with an isolated plant source of protein, it's very difficult to get enough without going over on total calories because you can figure that, especially like take somebody who may be calorically restricted trying to get enough protein from whole intact plant sources. You've got a few different things working against you. One The sources of protein you're consuming also have carbohydrate and or fat, toow, it's a less bioavailable form of protein And three, it's a lower quality of protein in terms of it has typically less leucine, less branched amino acids and less essential amino acids you answer the question that I almost interrupted you to ask, which was does it boil down to the loosing content And it sounds like that is one of the components and that A lot of the vegan and vegetarian sources of excellent protein, that excellent protein vegetarian or vegan source is co packaged with calories from carbohydrates into our fat that make it hard to stay stay under the clor threshold. Whereas a steak is I'm not and obviously people might want to avoid that for ethical reasons. Sure, but that's a different matter entirely. But a steak or a piece of chicken or an egg is well an egg you know, has a yoke, which is there's fat there, but is almost a pure protein fat source there's no carbohydrate along for the ride. You know, you can do it. It takes a little more planning and you're almost always if you're a vegan, especially, you're going to be better off like suppling with some isolated form of protein or vegan form of protein. Now This where it gets into people say, well, what about the limiting amino acids and those sorts of things? It's a consideration. Some of the better forms of vegan protein in terms of amino acid content are like soy. now, I can hear everybody screaming online about their testosterone levels In terms of actual outcomes and looking at testosterone, There was a recent met analysis looking at soy and I think if it's your only source of protein then maybe the dosage is high enough to cause some weird effects. But if you're just using it like once or twice a day, it doesn't seem to have an effect on testosterone or estrogen. So that can be a decent source of protein because it is a complete protein source. It does have a PedDCuse of one, which PediCuse is basically a a measure of Protein quality based on does it provide enough of all the amino acids so that none are limiting? And so soy is one of the only vegan sources that does that. Interestingly, potato protein isolate actually has a similar essential amino acid content to whe. So isolated potato protein it's just really hard to find. Another reason using an isolated protein can be helpful is because it's more biileavailable as well, when it's been isolated out When it's the protein bound up in the actual plant material It tends to be less bioavailable. Now cooking can help increase the bioavailability because it breaks some of those bonds and whatnot. The other thing to consider with the vegan sources of protein is the looucing content. One of the studies we did was we looked at soy, egg and whey. isoitrogenous, meaning we equated protein between the groups. Isochaloric, we equated calories And we looked at muscle protein synthesis And I think this was the meals were fifteen percent of total energy from protein. So like your food guide pyramid level of protein. And we saw that in the wheat and soy group They did not increase muscle protein synthesis, but the Agg and W group increased muscle protein synthesis. Now, what's really interesting is we went back And we took wheat and added free looucine to it to match the looucine content of whey and the protein synthetic response was identical So again, I don't like to simplify things too much, but Lucine appears to really be driving this ship few different options for the vegan folks out there. you can use an isolated source of protein. And again, like there's going to be good options coming because this plant based whey is going to be a great option for folks. You can add free looucine to it to whatever your source of protein is. Just buy supplemented Lucine hin. Now, it tastes horrible. It's completely non polar, does not disolve in anything. C put in capsule.ross. It can be put in into capsules. Yeah. So you could take a capsule, like for example If you're eating your normal meal, you could just take a capsule of like one gram of leucine, It's probably gonna to bump you off bump you up enough that you're going to be good to go There's options like blends, especially with corn. corn is actually very high in lucine as a percentage of its protein. Now you gott to remember like you go eat corn on a cob and you're getting like two grams of total protein. so it's not much lucine But if you isolate out the protein, put it into a powder, Well, now, you know, when you're getting like eighty per, ninety percent of the weight is now protein Corn is actually about twelve percent loosing in terms of the protein So a great source of leucine, it is like almost frank deficient, some other amino acids. But you can blend it with a few other sources of protein, like you could blend it with a soy, a pea, and you can create these complelimentary blends that would actually have quite a bit of leucine, but also some of the other essential amino acids. So there are options out there for plant based folks and I mean, we have seen people who are plant based build impressive amounts of muscle. There's quite a few bodybuilders that are plant based. 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To learn more, visit functionhealth dot com slash hubberman and use the code Hubberman for a fifty dollar credit towards your members Again, that's functionhealth dot com slash Hubberan canan we come up with a relatively short summary of the following. tellell me if this is or not that most of us should be focused on ingesting non processed and minimally processed foods I would one hundred percent agree with what you said that trying to focus on minimally processed foods is very important. The one caveat I would say is I think it's important to understand why processed food just gets people to spontaneously eat more. Kevin Hoall showed this in his study that was very I mean, he designed some of the most elegant studies in nutrition. They basically took people from a minimally processed diet and then gave them access to ultra processed foods very few instructions, just eat u till you feel satisfied, and they spontaneously increase their calorie intake by five hundred calories a day. That's massive. Now that being said, it depends on the individual and their goals If your goal is to, for example, build muscle or maintain a high body weight for a sport, for example, like an NFL offensive lineman or something of that nature, your protein, your fiber, your micronutrients, these are your responsibilities. But those become much easier to hit when you have higher calories. If you're eating four thousand calories a day for whatever goal you have, you're probably gonna have some left over And like good luck eating four thousand calories from minimally processed foods, quite frankly, you'll be miserable because you're going to have such gut fill You're going to feel like you can't even move. And so that's why I'm so pedantic and a stickler about saying, okay, yes, it's a good idea Tle minentally processed food and try to avoid processed foods But not because processed foods are bad per se But what The outcome tends to be from a lot of processed food consumption, which is over consuming calories and then therefore, you know energy toxicity negatively contributing to your health This, I think is a perfect seway for something that first brought us together. Which was you know, which was this thing about artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners are many things. so I'd like to talk about their effects on blood sugar in the acute sense and then The gut microbiome da I think are interesting enough to discuss I have changed my view on artificial sweeteners based on what you've taught me. So this is a case where I've completely changed my view which is that I don't have any problem with them whatsoever based on the current data, which is not to say that I'm, you know, gulping down a couup ffuls of superlose. But I feel okay ingesting some Stevia and some aspartame And I'm not too worried about it We have to think about, again, the hierarchy of importance, right? And what are you replacing with? There is no situation where it is not a net positive to take somebody who drinks sugar sweetened beverages and have them drink an artificially sweetened beverage. in the met analysis, there was actually a recent network meta analysis lookingooking at like markers of adiposity U you know, HBA one C, a bunch of different health markers. and when you substitute You know We'll call it non nutritive sweeteners since Stevia is not artificial. But so when you substitute N and S For The sugar sweetened beverages you see improvements in a lot of different things. And whenever I post about non nutritive sweeteners in the comments Always One or two or three people who say All I did was cut out soda And I drank diet soda instead and I lost fifty pounds. orr I lost seventy five pounds. I even had one per. I lost one hundred pounds. That's the only thing I did I mean, that's a pretty massive lever to pull. If you consider somebody who might be having like, I mean five or six cokes a day, we're talking a serious amount of calories. Is that obese person who lost one hundred pounds by doing that? Do I really care about maybe a small alteration to their gut microbiome No, because their gut microbiome is actually much more healthy now by them having lost all that excess adipose tissue. So I think it's one of those things that Again, it depends on the situation, right? Like if somebody's obese and they said, well, this is going to help me, you know, eliminate sugar sweet and beverage Why would you want to take that tool away from them? Like that's a great lever to pull. I mean, if somebody can lose literally a hundred pounds just one change in lifestyle that's not even really that inconvenient of a change powerowerful But again, is it the most healthy thing they could do? And I think that's kind of like what tends to get asked? We don't know. Is it healthier than water Probably not maybe as healthy as it, who knows, But I really make all those caveats because you don't want to have people who could use this as a tool, think, well,, I can't do this because it's actually bad for me If it helps you lose fifty pounds or seventy five pounds or whatever it is, trust me, it's not bad for you seed oils. There are a number of folks out there who are arguing that seed oils are the source of you know, the obesity epidemic, everything everything. And then there are those that would argue just the opposite that you know meat is the source of all problems, et cetera. And I think we've appropriately framed things that it's never that black and white. It's simply not. Are there any data on seed oils? The first thing I'll say is Seed oils have negatively contributed to our overall health because people In the last, you know, twenty, thirty years, what they have tend to add into their diet that has increased the overall calorie load is oil, mostly from seed oils When we look at like one to one replacement with other fats. And so I If you look at the epidemiology, yeah, you can find some epidemiology showing people who consume more seed oil, have more negative health outcomes problem is, again, tied up with a multitude of other behaviors And then you can find mechanisms and the idea is, well, they're polyunsaturated, which means In the fatty acid chain, there's multiple double bonds which those double bonds can be oxidized when they're exposed to heat and some other things And so the idea is, well, when you cook with these things and they make get oxidized, and that's going to cause inflammation in your body That's plausible mechanism. So As always, I defer to the human randomized control trials. What you tend to find, when you substitute saturated fats for polyunsaturated fats, inflammation is basically neutral. There's some studies that show a positive effect of doing polyunsaturated fats, but it probably depends on the individual polyunsaturated fats And that's the other thing, I don't really s difficult because you're categorizing like everything in this one bucket and there are some differences between individual fatty acids. Even with saturated fat, like for example, stteric acid doesn't tend to raise LDL cholesterol, whereas you know saturated fat as a whole tends to raise LDL cholesterol, but there are some saturated fats that don't. So again, it's like we're putting things in buckets and it's a little more nuanced than that Then if you look at the effects of polyunsaturated fats on markers of cardiovascular disease againgain tends to either be a neutral or positive effect when you substitute saturated fat for poly unsaturated fat Now if you want to get into like mono unsaturated versus polyunsaturated, there's quite a bit of disagreement between the studies. What I would say based on the human randomized control trials is that probablybably better off consuming monounsaturated and polyunsaturated in place of saturated fat But again, if the idea is, well That means polys unsaturated are good for me, so I'm just going to dump a bunch of oil on everything and now you're upping your calories. Well, that's a negative now, right? Because you have to deal with the bigger problem of overall energy toxicity. So I'm not somebody who likes to demonize individual nutrients. I just haven't seen really compelling evidence that seed oils are the root cause of the problems that are being suggested And I think this is a good example of kind of like Whenever there's something that pops up in the fitness industry, there's always like the opposite thing that pops up and it's like the reactionary, you, extreme reaction to whatever this thing was over here. And I think that's what we're seeing with some of the seed oil stuff. It's mostly people who are trying to kind of expose the virtues of saturated fat. I think it's fine to consume some saturated fat I think limiting it to sevencent to ten percent of your daily calorie intake is Probably was, again, based on the consensus of the evidence I've seen. And so once again, like we're struggling with this, okay, we've got this epidemiology and these mechanisms Sound good But then what actually happens when we do some human randomized control trials and so far, I just haven't seen the evidence to suggest that seed oils independently bad for you independent the calories they contain We all have this idea that there's this one iconic diet out there. that is going to be the best diet for building muscle and burning fat and preventing cancer and heart disease. And the reality is like There's overall healthy dietary patterns that we see that are good for those things But when we get down into the weeds There's probably some push and pull here as well I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG Wan. AG one is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens I discovered AG one way back in twenty twelve long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. The reason I started taking AG one and the reason I still take it every day is because AG one is to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the AG one is designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy And it does so by helping to fill any gaps that you might have in your daily nutrition I get asked pretty much all the time If I could only take one supplement, what should that supplement be? And my answer is always AG one. It has just been so helpful for supporting all aspects of physical health, mental health, and performance. If you would like to try AG one, you can go to drinkagG one d. com slash Hubberman to get a special offer. For a limited time, AG onene is giving away a free bottle of their new omega three coenzme Q ten product Omega three and Coenzyme Q ten are known to support cardiovascular health Cellular health and energy generally brain health and much more I personally take them both every day Again, go to drinkagG one d. com slash Hubberman to get a free bottle of the new Omega three cooenzyme Q ten with your first AG one subscription. I like to ask you about supplements for a moment. A one that I'm very familiar with, which is creatine monohydrate, not just for muscle building, but maybe any other purposes for it. It is the most Tested safe and effective sport supplement we have. I mean, it's just There are thousands of studies on creatine monohydrate now I would say very clearly too If you're using any other form of creatine, I think you're wasting your money. Creatine hydrochloride has some hype around it. It'pparently it's a little bit more soluble The claim is that you need less, but there's only a couple studies on it and it's more expensive So I tell people just take creatin monohydrate. It is tried and true. It's been shown to saturate the muscle cells one hundred percent with phosphoccrereatin, and that's what you want So Citton works through few different methodologies One through increasing phosphation content, which helps improve exercise performance, It appears to improve recovery and it Creases lean mass A lot of which is through bringing water into the muscle cells, but that is, I mean, muscle cells are mostly water. So when people say, well, it's just water That's what muscle cells mostly are. and it also increases strength and some other metrics. Now It also has been shown in studies that people tend to get a decrease in body fat percentage. Now that's probably because they're getting an increase in lean mass and so the relative is a decrease in body fat percentage. But there are a few studies that to show a decrease in fat mass as well I don't think that Creaton's a fat burner. I think that people are able to train harder buildu more lean tissue, and so that's probably having an effect on fat mass Then they've actually shown more recently some cognitive benefits to creatin, which I find really interesting as well But the only knock on Creatin that anybody's been able to come up with because they've debunked the kidney stuff, they've debunked the liver stuff. There's no evidence that it harms healthy kidney or liver is hair loss. So what about hair loss BeCcause there was one study in two thousand nine that showed that creatreatin increased DHT, but they didn't really show an effect on any other sex hormone Kind of strange. like you would think if there was an increase in DHT, there would be like something else that changes as well And it's only one study and again, didn't directly measure hair loss, measured DHT, which we know is involved in the loss ofle the follicle So what I would say is that I am not convinced it's only one study, never been replicated to my knowledge, and it was looking at a mechanism rather than an outcome Do you emphasize the classic loading of creatine taking it a bunch of times per day and then backing off or just taking it consistently at the Five grams per day is kind of the typical dose that people take. So Again, no solutions, only trade offs. You can load it and you will saturate your phosphocrein stores faster, like usually within a week U If you just take five graams per day, it'll take two, three, four weeks but you will get to the same place And you're probably going have a much lower risk of GI issues. Some people Creatin can be a gut irritant. If it is for some folks, I would recommend splitting it into multiple doses. So maybe like multiple two, one or two gram doses per day and definitely don't load it if you're somebody who has GI issues from it The more into the weeds people tend to get and again, this is just my own anecdote and observation, the more into the weeds they tend to get, the less hard I see them train And so one of the things I really liked that Mike Israitel said, who's got a PhD and is a bodybuilder himself He said, you can't out science training. If you're looking to build muscle and you're looking to improve your body composition, the main thing is just doing the work over time And I think a lot of that is getting the confidence of doing something hard that there's a payoff at the end I get asked a lot in my Q and A's, how do I get more confident? How do I become more confident I'll tell people, you have to do There's no hack. You can't read about it. You you got to get in the arena. And I don't mean like compete in sports necessarily doing a PhD or Do something, just something hard where you're putting yourself out there and you're saying, this is my goal and I'm going to go for it You just learn so much by doing that about yourself. I must say this conversation for me has been tremendously rewarding. The amount of knowledge you contain inside you is astonishing. And there's a lot of stuff rattle around a. Well and we all benefit because your ability to pull from the mechanistic side, again, I think . not limited to, but related to your background in biochemistry all the way through to the impact in humans, animal studies, being able to understand where those sit relative to one another. And then you're obviously a practitioner of you practice what you preach and what you Tal about pertains to men to women Younger people, older people. people who are vegan Ko Carnivore, you really are able to net a tremendous number of ideas while staying really nuanced data driven. And so I just want to say for myself and on behalf of the listeners, really appreciate you coming in here today and sharing with us your knowledge. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.