Dr. Darren Kandow: A healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine. But what if you're stressed? What about sleep deprivation? Night shift workers, university students cramming for a midterm. Then all of a sudden, the healthy brain becomes a metabolically stressed brain. And most people fall into the stressed environment. And that's where creatine comes to the rescue. And we'll talk about how much, but the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come into play.

Steven Bartlett: And is there anyone that shouldn't take creatine?

Dr. Darren Kandow: Well, I've published over 120 papers just on creatine alone. And we've done at least 30 to 40 studies in our lab. And I can't find anybody that can't or shouldn't take creatine. So, for example, at recommended dosages, creatine can not only have potential anti-cancer properties, but really speed up rehabilitation. And there's a lot of hope, especially around Alzheimer's.

Steven Bartlett: And what about kids?

Dr. Darren Kandow: The current body of evidence suggests they want to get at least one gram per day because in children, they want to have optimization for bone health as well as muscle development. And so I'm fascinated that this nutrient discovered in 1832 like boring for the longest time as having these profound benefits we never even thought would happen. And so your viewers today will be surprised about some of the things I'm going to talk about including micro doing

Steven Bartlett: and we've got this thing here in front of us. This is the dosing dilemma. And I want to talk about how much I need to take for all these things. And I want to talk about nutrition, protein, weight training, etc. But before that, you've got five myths in front of you. Can you reveal one by one what they are?

Dr. Darren Kandow: So this is Oh, I can't believe you did this one to me. Creatine causes hair loss. I was going bald before I started taking creatine. Myth number two. Oh, so this is by far the biggest myth and that is this is super interesting to me.

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Steven Bartlett: Dr. Darren Kandow, what is the mission that you're on in your life?

Dr. Darren Kandow: I think right now it would be to promote health and make people live longer free of disease. It's fascinating how we've transcended our understanding of weight training and now weight training is seeming to have these profound effects that cardiovascular exercise has and it gives you a bit more. So really focusing now on the benefits of lifting things around the house and how exercise and then of course nutrition. We're going to talk about creatine but also how other macronutrients especially protein come into play. And then when you combine those two, are we doing enough to optimize longevity? And we hope that we are. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: And so what are the reference points you're drawing on? How do you know the things you know? Are you doing your own research?

Dr. Darren Kandow: Yeah. So I did my graduate school in Canada cell biology degree and then I moved into my masters and PhD looking in kinesiology. So it's interesting that I fell into creatine supplementation research by accident. I was doing my masters on an amino acid called glutamine. And at the time about 20 30 years ago, glutamine was the biggest rage. Everybody was taking this non-essential amino acid and hoping that it would have body composition improvements. and I sort of determined it was worthless in young healthy individuals from a body composition standpoint. And at the same time, a good colleague of mine was doing creatine and I started to know that these young biological males were getting bigger, stronger, faster. And then another study bigger, stronger, faster. And then when you go to the research on creatine, it was very stimulating in a sense that we're now improving things that we know with aging go down. So then I turned my focus completely to healthy aging and trying to get, you know, grandparents and great-grandparents and your parents to live longer, free of disease. But wait, let's start young. Start as early as you can and move forward. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: And so you got really compelled by creatine. I want to talk about all these things, nutrition, protein, weight training, etc. But on this subject of creatine, what was it that compelled you so much to start you you did started doing your own research on creatine?

Dr. Darren Kandow: I did and I started to take creatine. So, you know, it was this natural metabolite that we're synthesizing in the liver and it turns out that by supplementing it externally, we can elevate its levels to a completely new height. When we see those dramatic clinical results - not just muscle mass, but cognitive function, fatigue recovery - it's hard not to be fascinated by it. It's not only safe, but its potential is almost limitless.