259. Dr. Dan Pardi: How Creatine Supports Brain Function, Skin Health, and DNA Repair

Foreign.

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Beauty, where we break down the real science of aging. Well, from your skin to your cells,

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we're your hosts, Amitai and Anastasia, founders of Young Goose Skincare. And today, we're talking about a supplement most people still feel file under gym bro Creatine.

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Yay. Our guest is Dr. Dan Pardee, Chief health officer at Qualia Life Sciences, founder of HumanOS Me and host of Human OS Radio, the official podcast of Sleep Research Society.

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He's advised elite military units, Fortune 500 companies and startups. And he holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Leiden University and Stanford.

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In this episode, we unpack what creatine actually does in the body. How it supports cellular energy and ATP, why it matters for the brain, what happens to levels as we age, and whether supplementation can support healthspan.

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And we're also bringing it back to what we care about most, skin aging.

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Because when you support mitochondrial output recovery and energy availability system wide, your skin biology gets the benefits too. From collagen dynamics to resilience under stress,

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we'll hit the big questions. Bloating, liver function, 5 grams versus higher dosing, creatine loading, sleep debt, and even women's health.

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But before we start, let's read one listener review. Amita, I will do the honors today.

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Today it's my honor because it's a short review, so I'll do that. This came a few days ago from a Lovely person named Aspen333JH. Love this podcast. It's very informative and I love the Yungoos products I've tried. They have great guests and topics as well. I would love to try more. Hint, hint, hint, hint. And the hint because it's because.

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Because every listener review that we read on the show, we then reward the person who wrote the review with a free product on us.

2:10

Yeah. And the reason is because this really makes sure we reach more ears and educate the world about, you know, how to treat your skin correctly and how to plan for skin longevity in the most efficacious way. So it's a win, win. So now in the words of the office, it's a win, win, win. Okay, let's dive in.

2:18

Let's dive in.

2:43

Okay, Dan, first of all, thank you for coming. Thank you. Welcome to the Biohacking Beauty podcast.

2:49

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. I love your products. So pleasure to get a chance to chat with you.

2:55

Thank you very much. Whoever's holding the knife there, you can let it.

3:02

Good.

3:06

So, Dan, let's jump right in. What exactly? Maybe I'm sure most people know, but

3:08

let's really, I don't know, don't assume so. I don't know.

3:16

No one knows. So then let's start very, very big picture here. What exactly is creatine and what role does it play in body processes, in cellular processes, for that matter?

3:19

So creatine is a natural substance. It's made by the body. We also consume it when we eat meat. So you, if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you're not getting much dietary creatine, but if you eat enough meat, fish, you're actually consuming it. So you'll consume like one or two grams a day. Your body will also make about one or two grams a day. And it's doing, it's serving as something that is supporting particular types of energy creation in the body. So it is not a substrate like, you know, glucose or fats, but really it's an energy buffer. So the best way to think of it is really from like a practical and intuitive level. If let's say you're doing, you're working out, you're doing, you can do 10 reps of an exercise and you take creatine for a period of time, you could do 12 reps. You can actually do more physical work. And that's really where the story started, as an ergogenic aid. And actually this story is pretty interesting because in the mid-90s, or actually early-90s, a researcher had identified that it can improve ballistic sports performance by 1 or 3%. And if you're an Olympic athlete, that's the difference between barely making it into the final race and being on the podium for a gold medal. And so a researcher named Steve Jennings said, all right, how do we get this to our British athletes? The total global supply at that time was only about 50 grams or 1 kilo. Excuse me. So it was enough for an ATH1 athlete to train for maybe 50 days. So they had to figure out a way about how to manufacture it and get a reliable dose to their athletes. And after their successful Olympic performance, particularly Linford Christie, who won the gold medal in the a hundred meter dash, the story just blew up. So within a few years, the market for creatine as an ergogenic aid or sports performance aid went to about $30 million. A couple years later it was at $150 million. And then maybe 12 years after that, it settled at around $400 million a year in the United States. Now, I'd say the global market is close to, you know, over a billion Billion and a half dollars. So that was, it's, it's definitely an interesting story. Now, it was discovered in the 1800s, CREAS actually means from meat. So the reason why is about 95% of our creatine is stored in our muscles. And so you can see how the entire story was a lot more about your muscles and performance. But probably around 2010, the story changed. It started to widen. Researchers started to look at other areas where it might actually be useful. And now I would say we're not at the end of the story at all. We're really in some ways at the beginning. What else could this be useful for? We know with aging, energy is absolutely key. It's critical you know this. Right. You have great ingredients in your products that leverage that idea. And so creatine is a super cool subject. And I'm not only excited to know a good amount about it, but just continue to follow the research and see what else we can learn.

3:36

Yeah. And then we. What you shared really explains how come creatine was always known like a bro supplement supplement and it kind of was like popular among gym bros. So that really paints a picture. And as you were kind of alluding to the fact that there's so much more to the benefits of creatine, I think what me as a female consumer, what my algorithm has been showing me for at least three years now is really the creatine and the brain. You know, I'm a mom of a toddler, two year old toddler, so I went through pregnancy and I remember being recommended to add it to my coffee for the pregnancy brain and then for my postpartum brain. Well, I don't think you can touch more on that. Probably adding creatine to your hot coffee, not gonna work, probably gonna degrade. But nonetheless, that the link between the creatine and the brain. Can you share a little bit more on that?

6:49

Yeah, there was a study that took place actually in the late 90s, and it kind of flew under the radar for a little while. But the way that creatine is typically dosed is you take five grams a day.

7:46

That's the kind of gold standard I heard about for sure.

7:59

Yeah, that's, that's been like the standard dose for a long time. But what is also common is when people start to take it, they'll do a loading protocol. And so you do five grams four times a day for like five to seven days. And this helps you peak out your muscle stores. So you'll typically increase your muscle stores of creatine by about 20, sometimes 40%. If you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you'll actually have a even bigger response. But even those who are eating meat, you'll top it up by 20%. And. But this person did that same loading protocol. The study, and they looked at brain creatine levels, and they showed that it didn't increase as much as in muscle, but it did increase by about 10%. So half of the muscle increase. And with that, you also saw some improvements in cognitive performance, especially memory and working memory. So holding information in your mind, multiple pieces of information, verbal fluency, being able to express your thoughts. And so that basically created a new line of research. And since that time, it's been studied multiple ways. So the story's been it can't get into the brain very easily. And that's true compared to muscle. But eventually you do increase your stores of creatine. What's also interesting about the brain is it can make its own creatine. So muscles don't make their own creatine. The way that creatine is made in the body is it starts in the kidneys, then the process moves to the liver, and. And then creatine is formed. It gets into your bloodstream, and then your muscles just soak it up. So they don't. It's. All the manufacturing is. Is off, is on an off site, but the brain can make it its own. And then. Yeah, and so, yeah, with consuming a higher dose, you do see increases in brain stores. And what we now know is that the brain becomes extra absorbent. It takes it in more readily. When you're under periods of higher stress, sleep loss, you might know something about that, having been, you know, being mom.

8:02

Yeah, we don't. We didn't do that. We just never found it.

10:13

I have three children. One of them is three years old. He's still sleeping in bed. I feel you.

10:19

You need to have creatine to the vein at that point.

10:27

So what was your wife's protocol? How much did you make her take?

10:30

Like she's just eating powder at this point. Yeah.

10:35

So what this is. You can tell me if this, if you think this is a good analogy, but I think it is apropos. So what I've envisioned when I was. When I'm thinking about the right dose for the brain, because we're now seeing people say, no, it's not 5 grams a day, it's 10. But imagine, imagine a sloping surface. Let's say it's concrete and there's holes in the surface. And you pour water from the top well. Every day you pour one cup of water and all that water goes into the first, the top holes, and none get to the bottom holes. Right. Because it's always, it's absorbed by the top ones. That's like your muscle. It's really hungry for creatine, and you're using it. And so if you're only taking in 5 grams, it all goes to the top holes. If you take more, you have a bigger cup of water, it rolls. It not only saturates the top holes, but it even can flow further down. And then the bottom holes get saturated too. And that's sort of how I, that image came to mind one day. I'm like, I think I like that. But that's why we're now hearing people taking larger doses on a regular basis. So 10 grams per day. And what's really interesting is studies that look specifically at creatine under conditions of sleep loss. So you get, you know, terrible, like three, three or five hours per night for a night. And what has been shown is that under those conditions, the brain is even more absorbent to creatine. And you'll take in somewhere between 20, maybe even 30, depending on your body size. And what happens is that creatine doesn't act like a stimulant like caffeine, but what it does is it buffers against the acidity and the energy loss. And so if you test people's cognitive performance, one study was done in rugby athletes where they looked at their skills, rugby specific skills. And with creatine on board under conditions of sleep deprivation, they had no decrement in their performance. They were performing as well as they did during baseline. That is remarkable. That is really remarkable. So I do take larger than, I take about five to 10 a day. And then I will take on days where I don't get great sleep, I'll take a larger dose. So 0.35 grams per kilogram. And you can figure out what that is for you based off of your body size.

10:38

I'm gonna say two things that come to mind. First is that one of the studies that you kind of referred to was in the elderly when they were taking almost, I think, 20 grams a day, right?

12:57

Yeah. Yes, that's right. So five grams, four times a day. Yes.

13:09

And the second thing is that us, the gym bros, we're used to think of creatine as something that you need to kind of top off the bank, if you would, before you see the benefits. And it seems that there is even Acute benefits or immediate benefits? If you would. As far as the brain is concerned, when you supplement with creatine, right. If you had a bad night of sleep, you could, as you said, take more that following morning and get benefits. It's not like you had to foresee it and preload for X amount of time.

13:13

Yeah, that's exactly right. Now we don't have this exact resolution here. What if you were taking 10 grams a day? Would you need to take as much on a day where you're sleep deprived? I would say go for it because there doesn't seem to be an upper tolerable limit. You're not gonna get any more benefit. But there doesn't seem to be risk in taking a higher dose.

13:49

That was my question. You made my mind. I was like, you overdo.

14:10

I cannot take. I definitely have a limit. Like I will take creatine in the morning and then if I try, if I take, If I took 10 grams and then I kind of forget, which isn't good, it's not good testament for the creatine's ability anyway. But I forget that I took 10

14:14

grams before you were creatine. No, it was before you invented your fair.

14:35

Yes, fair, fair warning. This is not Qualia creatine plus anyway, and then I'll take another 5 grams as a part of a complex before I train noon, there might be a visit to the restroom, you know, so

14:38

about that, that's so common to hear that there's like creatine is associated with bloating. Can you touch on that?

14:54

One second. It's not the bloating the problem there.

15:03

Okay. I just was trying to make it more neutral.

15:06

The inflation is the problem.

15:10

Anyway, I think everyone gets the pict.

15:13

By the way, those two questions we get a lot.

15:18

Yeah.

15:20

And amity to answer yours. Yeah. It's a hydrophilic, water loving substance. So for every gram of creatine that gets pulled into the body, it's pulling with it 50 grams of water. So it loves water. And that's actually one of the benefits that you get because. So the problem is if your body's not used to it, you take too large of a dose, it can move right through you.

15:21

Yeah.

15:46

And we won't have to go into specifics. You know what I mean? So what people, what you typically do is take 5 grams, have some water, then you wait a half an hour and then you do another five grams. And what I would say is, for anybody who hasn't taken creatine, start conservatively. See how you do the body also typically will acclimate. So if you had, you know, even with five grams, if you felt it was moving through you pretty fast, I wouldn't do it before your first race. Right. Figure, figure it out if you're doing any sort of sports performance or is

15:48

going to be your second race.

16:20

Yeah, yeah. You will be running. Not to the finish line.

16:23

No, that's another direction.

16:27

But a lot of those are. It's, it's usually a mistake that people make with those and they just try to take too much at once. It's not something that is automatically going to happen to you if you take it. So I would start by taking one or two grams just to start. Just, just go light the first day, see how you do. And then always, you know, if you, if I, I know I can take 10 grams at once and I'm fine. And so I do that and then I'll wait an hour and I'll do. If on the days where I'm taking more than that, I'll wait an hour and I'll do it again. Regarding the question about bloating, that was definitely a concern. But if you think about it, the bloating is like the water outside of your cells that squishiness that you feel. So, you know, nobody likes how that looks. But creatine doesn't reside outside of your cells. It's actually inside of your cell. So it's kind of having an opposite effect. So people will gain a couple of pounds of water when they take creatine water weight, but it's not bloating weight, it's intercellular muscle weight. So think about the feeling when you do a workout and your muscles are sort of taut. That's more of the effect. Not feeling like you just had a huge bowl of ramen and you're, you know, swollen. Yeah. Going back, very different effect.

16:31

Going back to bro science and you know, part of the way that us, the gym bros looked at it, there is definitely the aspect of more ATP, which is the cellular energy that you are, you know, that you're interacting with, you're consuming, you're expanding when you're talking about creatine and its ability to improve that. But there is literally also the ability of your muscles to actually weigh more, to have more mass. Going back to physics, this is one of the pillars of exerting more force is having more mass and moving it at X speed. Right?

17:47

That's absolutely right. So I mentioned this first study that I ever took part in was trying to. It was mid-90s we still didn't know everything on how this works. So what we were looking at in this study that I took part in as both a research assistant and also a participant was is this ergogenic or sports enhancing effect simply due to weight or is it also. Does it have to do with energetics or something else? Maybe. And the conclusion was that it, while you do gain some limb weight, which we controlled for, it was more likely due to an energetic benefit. Yeah. And yeah, so the, the way that it works, right. ATP is like the main currency of energy in the body. And so if you, what that means is it's eight, it's adenosine plus three phosphates and it gives one of those phosphates away. That's that is what energy donation in a way looks like. And what the way creatine is stored in our cells as phosphocreatine. So it, creatine just gives this phosphate back to adp. Resynthesize ATP, you've got more energy to do work and it does it really, really fast. Faster than any other process in the body. And that's why it can buffer against energy loss.

18:26

Got it. Okay. This, I would want to tie it a little bit to skin because. And you want to go more deeply into healthspan, but just to tie the skin. We talked about a few things that, that are really cool. First of all, you know, you mentioned most studies were done around the 2000 and tens. However, it's interesting that there was a little bit of a spike around 2005, 2004, 2005, where at least more people kind of picked up the idea of studying it for different areas. Like you mentioned you working on it in the 90s, there were a couple of interesting studies on topical creatine looking at, you know, prevention of or dealing with UV radiation, things that stimulate, you know, that, that cause damage to cells and then how the cells react to it. And when you were talking about the, you know, its ability to indeed cross the blood brain barrier, it's actually a very small molecule. Right. Like it's a molecule that is, I believe, 130 Daltons more or less, which means it's a, you know, a third of the size of human pore, if you would. So it's actually, it really is a matter of priority and absorption rather than rather the matter of ability. Right.

19:41

So creatine is, it's really just, it's just three amino acids, arginine, glycine and methylamine. And it's much, much smaller than, let's say Collagen. Yeah, so collagen would have a very hard time affecting anything other than the epidermis, if at all. Or creatine does appear that it could get into, you know, pass into the dermal layer. And so what's important to know is that a lot of these, the cells that we care about in the dermal layer, so whether they're keratinocytes or fibroblasts, they actually use the creatine kinase system. And by the way, kinase, creatine kinase is the enzyme that is doing two different things. It is both binding creatine to the phosphate. And so think of that as like an. It's like your energy debt card. It can just quickly make, give cash to the energy system and then it can also break it apart. So it's this bidirectional enzyme. And so what you see is when you do put on topical creatine, and you're right, Amity, there's about, probably 10 different studies that have looked at this. Overall, a lot of it has been transdermal or topical. And unfortunately there's less work looking at oral creatine and its effects on. But it, But I think that we don't know the answer there. And I wouldn't be surprised if oral creatine also increased dermal cell creatine levels, but at least the topical.

20:59

All I'm saying is, first of all, you know, part of our foray to create like part of this discussion is because Koalia and us have this synergy where, you know, you can name the product and I can tell you how there is very compatible way of thinking and Yangoos is on its way to create the first skin specific delivery method of creatine and. Whoa. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

22:30

Super exciting.

22:57

And the cool thing is that we always are trying to make it easy on people, but technically speaking, one could argue that you could just take a little bit of Qualia's creatine, plus a little bit, mix it into a cream and you would get some of the benefits, one would argue. Right, yeah. And the other thing is to finish the point of kind of going back and relating to the skin, what you said before is that the real, you know, I'm joking, jokingly calling different ingredients like ectoin, for example, like what hyaluronic acid wished it was. But that's another example of an ingredient that is what hyaluronic acid wished it was. Where we want that type of like osmosis. Yeah, osmosis of water into the cell. Right. We want more water into the Cell, especially in the skin. This is real cellular hydration rather than, you know, some. Some nice feeling of hydration.

22:58

Yeah, that's right. There's so much synergy for sure for the skin cells, you know, be it more efficient energy use and energy production and recycling and hydration. But now bringing it back to healthspan, if you're okay with that, healthspan it out. So am I correct to assume that as we grow older, the levels of creatine decline with age and, you know, can supplemental supplementation with creatine improve our health span and lifespan also because no

23:52

one starts as a vegan. Yeah, go. You go downhill.

24:24

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

24:30

I mean, some toddlers can hard to make, to make them eat meat. So it can start very early, I hear now in the mom's world. But either way. Yeah, please educate us a little bit on the health and connection and creatine.

24:32

Yeah. So it's an area that, you know, earlier we were talking about all the different ways that the different lines of research that have, that we now should be looking into. So this is decades of work, you know, immune system, skin healthspan, longevity. So there is very good biological plausibility for why you would want to look into this further. We do see that there are. There's a decline in the amount of creatine and it could have to do with reductions in internal synthesis. It also has to do with dietary practices. Eating less meat, worse absorption. So you're going to be for the 1 or 2 grams. If you do have an omnivore diet, you might be absorbing less. Another argument for supplementing. But, gosh, there's so many things that you could imagine this to be good for, because we know muscle is a lot more than just functional. It is also a tissue that is an exocrine gland. When you use your muscles, you release myokines into the circulation. They help with stem cells, they help with brain health, but you have to use them. And one thing that's nice about creatine is it makes you feel stronger and it makes exercise feel less. You know, it reduces the burn. So exercise itself is more pleasant. And probably there's no better, you know, lifestyle modality than doing resistance training as you're getting old. It keeps your bones healthy, it keeps your muscles healthy. So anything that's going to support that, even if it's indirect, I think would be a really good idea. You couple that with the brain benefits, the immune benefits. I think we're just scratching the surface there.

24:47

Is there a. You know, I am Very cautious. I'm sure you are. And I'm sure it irks you to see companies manipulating their data and saying, I see it with your lithium a. Where you see a product being propagated as a workout. Right. Saying, oh, this is a workout replacement. Some companies try to do it with, with. Even with methylene blue.

26:35

Yeah.

26:59

But what I think is really cool to kind of communicate around creatine is the added benefits of working out. Right. Like that kind of smarter, not harder type scenario where you can yield more from the same amount of effort. Right.

26:59

Yeah.

27:17

I love this subject. And yeah, there are some products that are thought to be exercised mimetics mimicking the effects of exercise. And yeah, there are some mechanisms that support that, but the effects are very modest compared to real exercise. You're 100% right. The right way to think about this is how do we make exercise feel better, more efficient, maybe at generating your gains? And whenever you're thinking about what you're taking for exercise, you want to be very cautious that it's not squashing the exercise adaptation effect. Like, you know, if you do, if you take some, you go work out really hard, you generate a lot of these stress molecules. Those molecules are needed in order to promote the adaptation. And so creatine is not something that is interfering with the training effect. That's good. It's just making training. It's just making training easier and more effective.

27:18

Yeah. Like to your point, you know, they're saying, don't do cold plunge or things like Omega 3. Is that directly after or anything that's going to like, squash the type of communication through inflammation that exercise kind of creates. Right. And by the way, the same would go as far as stimulatory skin procedures. Whether it's stuff you do at home, like facial massage or retinoids or, you know, professional microneedling at home microneedling, all of those things. What you're doing is you're creating controlled inflammation. And if you're shutting off that inflammation, that. That's not necessarily a good thing.

28:14

Yeah.

28:59

Yeah, that's right. We tend to think about topics in biology like inflammation or cholesterol as good or bad binary. And really the. When we. The problem with some of these categories is when they're out of balance. And so when you have chronic inflammation, that's a problem. But it's not like we want no inflammation at all. We just want that communication system. That's what inflammation is to be in balance, not to be eliminated.

28:59

Yeah.

29:26

So just like with skin, the health of our cells Require a certain amount of stress in order to stay healthy. And so, you know, thinking about, even with skin, you can add vitamin C there. There's sort of a dual. I don't know, you could almost look like an argument. Like you have vitamin C, which is an antioxidant, but you could also have mild pro oxidant formulations. And which one's good or bad? Well, the pro. The light amount of pro oxidation can actually stimulate your own body to make antioxidants and be healthy. It's kind of like how exercise works.

29:27

Yeah.

29:59

But during the day, if you have some vitamin C on board, then you're actually helping to prevent against the solar radiation induced oxidative stress. So you could have antioxidants in the morning, a little pro oxidants in the evening, and you've got a really nice balance there.

30:00

Yeah, sure. Yeah, agreed. We're really into hormetics. And funny story is that before we named our company Yungoos, it was named hormesis. So we're definitely.

30:15

Oh, I love it. I looked at your ingredients. I was like, these people know what they're doing. You know, they really, really do. Before we met.

30:26

Thank you.

30:35

Like what you.

30:37

Yeah, I feel like we talked a lot. We did the really good coverage of like, what people think about creatine and kind of, you know, what's talked about. Is there maybe a studied benefit about creatine that you think is not getting enough attention besides what we covered so far?

30:37

Yeah. Gosh, that's an interesting question.

30:56

Ear health. I don't know.

30:57

Maybe we covered it all and then, you know, it's. We're giving it enough attention. You know. There is no wrong answer.

31:01

Oh, yeah.

31:08

So hair.

31:10

Hair growth actually is a really interesting subject. So there was a. A rumor for a while that creatine would cause hair loss really bad.

31:10

Oh, wow.

31:19

Yeah. And this is all the bro sciences.

31:20

That's because people, the bros were also on a little bit of roids. Just.

31:24

Thank you.

31:29

It wasn't the creatine. It was because they were claiming all the gains were from creatine.

31:31

Oh, my gosh. You just took the words out of my mouth. That's exactly right.

31:37

Yeah.

31:41

Poor creatine.

31:41

Apparently, creatine make it digestible for the ladies, the ones that are not okay.

31:43

But apparently also creatine gives you back acne and makes you very irritable. No, but basically, I mean, yeah. Dan, I'll let you take the serious note here.

31:49

Yeah. So one area that I'm really interested in is in Women. I think that the future in the next couple of years will include an explosion of research on women specific issues. So we were just talking about health span and aging. Well, we know that women, of course, experience increased bone mineral loss. And so there's a very indirect benefit of if this helps you do more resistance training, you're going to preserve more of your, your bone mass that way. There also appears to be a direct evidence of creatine supporting osteoblasts and osteoclasts in a positive way.

32:03

Wow.

32:42

But really cool work also is just in the energy fluctuations that naturally occur during menstruation, perimenopause, and then of course, during menopause. And so a lot of the mood disturbance, hormonal issues that occur, they can be stabilized. There's evidence now that those energy fluctuations can be stabilized if you have enough creatine on board. So better sleep, less anxiety. And so there's more work to be done. But I think that's a, you know, like the 2020s is the, is the decade of creatine in women.

32:42

Nice.

33:15

Yeah, I'm all for it.

33:17

Yeah. But then just to drive home the point, for many, many, many years, creatine was only used as a really performance enhancer. But among like Weekend Warrior or Jim Bros. Right, it was the performance enhancer around muscle growth and hypertrophy. And many of those people were also doing steroids. And steroids make you lose your hair, in other words, increases the prevalence of dht, which would lose your hair. And then. But a lot of those people, no offense to anyone, would also not own up to the fact that they use steroids. But everyone would be okay with saying that they're using creatine.

33:19

No, I got it.

34:04

Okay.

34:05

I got it. I think our listeners got it too. But thank you, thank you for really digesting it.

34:05

I appreciate it. But not more than 5 grams. It was digesting it

34:11

the opposite.

34:18

Me, Me. I have a question.

34:18

Go ahead.

34:23

Yeah, yeah, okay. I am. We've seen, you know, in the field of creatine right now, there is a lot of thoughts around, first of all, quality of creatine in general. Yeah, Number one. And then forms of creatine. So I would love for you to kind of maybe give us the lay of the land as far as, are there different qualities? Should we even care about that? Should we care about some kind of like transparency and conversations around that. And then should we care about what form of creatine we're taking? Right. Because you see people like Huberman, like, two years Ago saying there's no difference. Now they're saying there's a lot of difference. The question is, when did the money start pouring in that this voice, these voices change, or vice versa, or the

34:23

science, maybe more science came to me.

35:12

Orbital.

35:14

So that's what you did and you cut me.

35:14

Yeah, that's a great question. And really the majority of research is on a form of creatine called creatine monohydrate. That's where pretty much all of the research is. You also then started to see forms like creatine ethyl ester, there some other forms as well. The main idea there is that you have a few studies that show good results. Very few of them are head to head. So you don't see a comparison between creatine monohydrate. The conservative approach right now is that you, you don't need to be spending more money for creatine ethyl ester or creatine hydrochloride, anything like that. Now, I'm always open to seeing more research. In fact, I'm, I'm pulling for more types of creatine to show a real benefit. And so the couple of studies that we do see, yes, they're interesting. Is it differentiated? I don't know. Nobody does. But maybe we'll find that a type of form actually gets into the brain at a lower dose. Like it can increase the concentration up by 10%, but with a lower dose, that would be great. Or it has, there's a form that might be improved for some other part of your tissue or transdermal. That's right now we don't really know that what we do.

35:16

There's no reason. Right. Like if you want to take a

36:36

certain form, you could try. Yeah, you can try it. You're probably just spending more money than you need to. And I should also say that it might not even be as good as the less expensive form. Like, what we know about creatine comes from research on creatine monohydrate. And that's why we, like at Qualia, we use that form. We just use a micronized version called opticreatine. Because it sounds like you have experience taking it. It's gritty. Yeah, it's, it's really gritty. So you put 5 grams in your glass and you drink it down and some amount, you know, one or two grams is stuck to the edge of your glass and it, you know, it has, it's not as, not as appealing to drink, so it doesn't dissolve as well and it tastes really gritty. Which is going to. Honestly, it's going to turn some people off from taking it consistently. So we thought that there was a very practical benefit of using this other form. And then we use another form of creatine called creatine magna power, which is a chelate. Chelate is when you have a mineral that is bound to another molecule, in this case creatine. And the reason why is because most of your ATP, your energy, is bound to magnesium when it's in your cells. So we wanted to provide, if we're trying to support our energy systems, we want to then help to provide enough magnesium. And as you know, about 50% of the United States isn't even getting enough magnesium. So that was another angle that we took.

36:38

Yeah.

38:07

Whenever we do any products, we say, okay, how would we optimize this? It's not like, how do we complicate it? How do we, what would we do to optimize this? Sometimes it means there's lots of ingredients and sometimes it's pretty simple. So we have optic creatine, magna creatine, and then a little bit of sea salt. And the reason we've included sea salt is because sea salt includes sodium and chloride and both of those are important in the transport of creatine both across the GI tract. So you're gonna absorb more and into cells, particularly in the brain. So those are the reasons that we formulated it the way that we do. So we formulated taste really good to dissolve well and then hopefully support transport and energy production and stabilization. So that, that was. Yeah.

38:07

I have a small question which I think I know the answer, but maybe listeners would have the same question. So it's worth asking. Many of our listeners would be already taking magnesium. So the amount of magnesium that is in the creatine powder, your powder is not enough to stop taking magnesium. Right. Like other magnesium supplements. For example, quality makes amazing one that I really like.

38:52

I take both. Yeah, yeah. So the, the RDA for daily magnesium is 320 for adult women, 410 for men. But if you look at hunter gatherer intake levels, they were somewhere between 6 and 900 up to 1200 in certain studies. We have a pretty good range that we could take more creatine. I'm sorry, more magnesium and do fine. There's. So in this, in a single dose of our product, there's 40 milligrams of magnesium. So you're, you're fine, you're getting enough to support our purposes. It's, you're not going to be in a state It's a great question, right? Because I do believe most things are on a U shaped curve. I just think that what our daily recommendations are from the RDA are really at the minimum to prevent early conditions like immediate deficiency issues. But what you see too is that 10 year studies there, people are taking closer to like 600, 550, 600 a day as a part of their diet or with supplements, better brain health, lower like dementia appearance. So lots of good stuff. I think when you take closer to what's an optimal amount, I'd say got it.

39:18

Got it. And women, I heard generally make less creatine than men. But now you also said that suggested dose for men is higher than for women, which I would be like, oh, we make less creatine than men, should we up the dose? But I guess now we just make

40:32

it, women make it just as efficiently. It usually comes down to diet and having less meat in the diet. So it's not like women are less efficient at making it.

40:50

Got it.

41:01

Yeah, it's usually around diet. But there's another aspect of creatine that's really cool that I do want to mention because you'll appreciate it given that you're in this field. But the idea of methylation. So methylation is this intensive process in the body where you add methyl groups to different processes and those processes include the buildup and breakdown of neurotransmitters, detoxifying processes. So what you'll do is you have some sort of chemical that the body wants to get rid of. It adds a methyl group that tags it to go through elimination, even the DNA repair. So you have a limited resource of methyl groups, but about 40 to 70% of your methylation in your body is going towards making creatine.

41:02

Wow.

41:48

It's a very methylation intensive process. So if you take it supplementally, what you're doing is you're giving, you're, you're not exhausting those methyl groups. So you can handle processes like detoxification, neurotransmitter production and DNA repair a lot better. And that's a whole other reason why you might want to be taking creatine just for that purpose.

41:48

That's super interesting.

42:12

Isn't that interesting?

42:13

Yeah, it's very interesting. Since we are such a heavy promoter of NAD or nad, NAD precursor supplementation and in a large segment of the population, I mean it's not substantiated science, but there is a fear of exhaustion of methyl groups. Right. Normally, normally it's recommended to add methyl groups to your Supplementation if you're heavily supplementing in NAD precursors. So it's very interesting that these two can be actually kind of supplemental to each other in other ways than the energy production is interaction with ATP, since you're also dealing with methylation.

42:14

Yeah, you know your stuff.

42:53

It's all in the notes. No kidding.

42:57

And we want to. Well, speaking of nos, I did jot down a question specifically about Qualia's creatine. We know like Qualia is known for conducting studies on every product you release, which is very honorable and makes us trust you guys even more. What kinds of result did you see with Qualia Creatine plus in particular?

42:59

Yeah, so I'll just talk about the, like the general approach of the company. So we won a award last year from the Nutrition Business Journal for Science and Innovation because we always try to put our product to the test and those will range from, you know, not highly like surveys where we just test in people. What did you think about the product? Would you buy it again? What did you feel? Really valuable stuff, but not controlled. You might have less confidence in those results. But we always start there and then we'll move into maybe a single arm blinded trial and then eventually to like a double blind trial. And so if you go to our website, you'll see that all of our products have not just one or two, but multiple different studies. And so this is early, we're early here in this. And the thing is, I wouldn't expect too much different results because what we're doing is we're kind of optimizing a product that already exists where some of our formulations are just so unique. There's nothing else out there that's like them. Like our Qualia Mind or even our stem cell formulation, which we heard you're

43:23

having a hard time keeping it in stock. It's just flying off the shelves. The stem cell one.

44:36

Yeah, I've been doing a lot of lot of speaking and webinars on our stem cell product and you know, I think the future is not a single problem.

44:41

You guys are selling too much of it. Relax a little bit.

44:51

Yeah, I know. I gotta tell my boss. That way I can spend more time with my children. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But yeah, we're committed to the science. I'll say something else too. We're also committed to upgrading our formulas. So if you have. It's almost like we're a SaaS company in a way where we're always. We have our products are us having a goal for in like a therapeutic area. Let's say. And so in the year that comes out or in the year like let's say after it is released, we're also looking at ways that we can improve it. And so now the formulation has changed and then we would test it again just like yeah, like you guys.

44:55

And so better high five protocol.

45:36

You could see companies that do like a lot of research on their products might not want to change it because then they have a harder time making their claims.

45:40

A lot of research, a lot of

45:48

marketing, a lot of research which is designed to, this is almost like if you hammer everything, it looks like a nail. A lot of research that is specifically funded and designed in order to prove your original thesis instead of looking how to match current evolving science to the, to the end goal that you're trying to achieve.

45:50

Right. And once you have that validation through your work, you don't want to change things up, but that's not advantageous for your customers. And so it's an interesting space to be in because obviously we don't have multi billion dollar budgets to secure monopoly profits like a pharmaceutical drug. It's a whole different epistemic world of we're also using natural biological levers, not synthetic compounds to say okay, you know, let's how do we support this process like staying healthier when we're getting older or something more specific like clearing out stem cells and we're using flavonoids and you know, things that you find in nature and in your diet. So I'm glad that we're doing the work that we do on it. It's all of our ingredients are based off of science that shows an efficacy towards a particular outcome. And then we also test our formulations but then we also upgrade them. So that's like the general approach that we have overall that I think that

46:13

is really what consumers need to know. And sometimes without hearing this in the conversation, like today, they won't know because when they Google creatine and so many options pop up, you know, oftentimes they wouldn't know which one tests which one improve their formulas, you know, how much thought and effort goes behind it. So I, you know, I'm glad we had this conversation and was so nice to learn from you.

47:14

Yeah. And I'm, I'm very excited to have a side by side with our products. Once it's product when it's, once it's out, as you mentioned, Dan, you mentioned upgrading the formulas. That's going to be our, our moisturizer care, which is kind of our spoiler alert first product, we're going to introduce

47:42

everyone listening, creating to it.

48:02

Yeah, spoiler alert. And I'm really looking forward to seeing customers like, with a side by side image of creating on the inside, creatine on the outside. Yeah. But Dan, that was super cool, super cool discussion and we're really excited and really appreciative that you came on.

48:03

Yeah, thanks so much. Like I said, I'm so impressed with your formulas. I'll say this too. Whether you're taking it orally or having it in a skincare product, the combination of NAD and creatine are supporting energy systems in unique and possibly synergistic, at least additive ways. And so I'm really motivated to follow the products and the work that you're doing too. And so hopefully we can do some more collaboration and just get the word out about whatever form you're interested in. You know, creatine is awesome. NAD is awesome.

48:22

To your point, then the last thing I'm going to say, you know, I feel like there's a lot of discussion and we partially maybe are to blame around clearance of malfunctioning cells or their parts, AKA autophagy, mitophagy, et cetera. But around the mitochondria, a lot of it studies show that a lot of it is not a natural degradation of material. Rather it's the starving off of like functional building blocks that causes mitochondrial dysfunction or divergence or specialization, which is not a positive thing in the mitochondria. And I think that combination of NAD and creatine, especially when you're not only talking about the skin, when you're talking about the whole body and an older body where it has a harder time a little bit deciphering where molecules and nutrients should go. I think it's a real fundamental approach to mitochondrial health that goes way beyond, oh, I need to clear my defective mitochondria again. No, you have a big part of your mass, of your body mass as mitochondria. You have to make sure that you feed it correctly.

48:57

Mitochondria, by the way, is one of my favorite subjects. There's like, the more you learn, the more interesting they are. I'll send you guys like a podcast I did on NAD where I go into the whole history of how they appeared on Earth. It's so fun. I'm super nerdy on that topic. But yeah, it's amazing when you supply, if you give the body ability to make energy, it can keep doing, it can maintain its balance, it can maintain homeostasis, and then when it doesn't have enough energy, then you start to see it make trade offs. So it's going to try to support parts of the process, but other parts it has to put off to the side because it doesn't have the energy to support them.

50:08

Anyway. Dan, that was fantastic. We super appreciate you. We're going to have show notes where linking to Qualia creatine. I think we even have like, I know we worked with Qualia on a promo code. Do you know it? I think it's like Young Goose or something like that. It's going to be in the show notes for sure.

50:47

Great.

51:05

Guys, check your show notes. And thank you so much. Dan was a pleasure.

51:06

Thanks you guys. Sam.

51:11