By 
Creatine for women is a hot topic.
Creatine monohydrate is an incredibly well-researched supplement. While there is ample evidence to support creatine supplementation in males, what about benefits for females.
Creatine isn’t just for gym bros; it has a lot of benefits if you know how to use it properly.
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Key Takeaways
If You’re Interested in Using Creatine:
Educate yourself about the benefits surrounding creatine and female athletes
Remember to always consult your doctor before taking any sort of supplementation
Experiment with taking creatine by calculating the right amount of dosing for your body
What is Creatine?
Creatine helps your body recharge and regenerate ADP to ATP. While the human body does make creatine naturally through amino acids, it’s difficult to maximize your stores through diet alone. This especially true if you don’t eat animal protein.
There are many athletic and non-athletic benefits to creatine supplementation.
There’s evidence to support the idea that mental focus, mood, and sleep be improved by creatine supplementation.
Science Supported Supplementation
Benefits from creatine supplementation are increased if you combine it with resistance training. This is one of the reasons it’s such a powerhouse supplement for female athletes.
Creatine appears to be beneficial for women across the lifespan, though there are topics that need more female-specific research.
If you’re interested in the training and non-training benefits from supplementation, creatine is something to ask your medical team about.
Have you ever tried creatine? What were your biggest concerns, questions, and results? Share your story with me in the comments below.
In This Episode
Why female only cohorts when it comes to scientific studies are still lacking representation (3:31)
Discover what creatine is and how it works in your body (5:10)
Understanding the benefits of creatine, especially for female athletes (10:38)
Training benefits that you can expect to see from creatine supplementation (21:10)
What you need to know about recommended dosing when it comes to creatine (29:56)
Quotes
“Creatine supplementation is something that is additive to a well-rounded dietary intake.” (9:39)
“There is accurate data to show that creatine supplementation has benefits for athletic performance, including things like strength, lean mass, and in some cases even endurance type training.” (10:51)
“There is substantial evidence that creatine can help increase strength and power in trained and untrained women, without large effects to body weight.” (21:22)
“It appears that creatine has some promise throughout the menstrual cycle to help offset some of the adverse effects that can happen to cognition and sleep.” (29:30)
“Creatine shows a lot of promise for women. There is still a long way to go in terms of the research, but what we have so far shows that creatine has a lot of benefits for females.” (38:28)
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Creatine Supplementation in Women’s Health: A Lifespan Perspective
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Related Episodes
FYS 365: Creatine for Strength Training with Dr. Scott Forbes
FYS 395: How to Calculate Your Daily Protein Needs
FYS 396: Should Protein Be Spread Throughout the Day?
FYS 397: What is High-Quality Protein?
FYS 398: Protein Around Workouts
Creatine for Women transcript
When I was first coming up in the strength and conditioning world, I remember hearing about creatine for the first time and thinking, that’s for the gym bros. Well, if I could go back and tell myself what I know now, I probably would have had a much different opinion on the matter. Every single week, I get questions from other women who are in strength training, particularly women over 40. Who wants to know, does creatine have benefits for them? In other words, is creatine just a supplement for gym bros? What does the research say about this? We’re going to be taking a look at that in this podcast episode.
If you’re an athletic 40, something woman who loves lifting weights, challenging yourself, and doing hard shit, the Fuel Your Strength podcast is for you. You’ll learn how to eat, train and recover smarter, so you build strength and muscle, have more energy, and perform better in and out of the gym. I’m strength nutrition strategist and weightlifting coach Steph Gaudreau. The Fuel Your Strength podcast dives into evidence-based strategies for nutrition training and recovery. And why once you’re approaching your 40s and beyond, you need to do things a little differently than you did in your 20s. We’re here to challenge the limiting industry narratives about what women can and should do in training and beyond. If that sounds good, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app. And let’s go.
Thanks so much for being with me today on the podcast. We’re going to be diving into this topic. It is a super meaty one. And it’s not just about creatine in general. But what is the research and the current evidence that we have to say about creatine supplementation? For women? I get this question constantly. And if there is one supplement that creates a lot of questions, a lot of controversy even or just misunderstanding, it is creatine. So on this podcast episode, we’re going to be diving into what creatine is, what are its benefits, but specifically, what do women need to know?
And what does the research say about women taking creatine, we’re also going to talk about dosing and some of the other things you need to know before you start taking creatine, if indeed you decide is something for you. And of course, if you’re an athletic woman over 40, and you’re looking for a strategy, coaching and support around you’re fueling your training, and your recovery, putting it all together in a cohesive package that works with your physiology instead of against it, then check out strength nutrition unlocked, we would love to have a chat with you. So make sure you head over to StephGaudreau.com/apply. Fill out the application and we would love to chat with you more about potential next steps. Alright, so let’s go ahead and dive into this today.
You know, creatine monohydrate is an extremely well-researched supplement, it is one of the most researched performance-enhancing supplements in the world of all time, and is very popular among athletic individuals, fitness enthusiasts, and the like. There are well over 500 studies done on creatine at this point. And the number I’ve seen can range up to even 1000 studies. And we’re still continuing to add to this body of literature all the time. When we take a look though, at how many of these studies have been done specifically in female-only cohorts. That number does shrink down.
And of course, we’ve talked numerous times on this podcast about how women are, are still underrepresented in the research with Sports Science and Exercise Science, and performance nutrition and there’s definitely a long way to go. Although things seem to slowly be shifting, we absolutely need more representation in literature. So there was a 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis that was done. And it was looking at what are some of the adverse outcomes potentially of women specifically taking creatine, and they looked at 650 Total studies are kind of their pool.
And from there, they were able to narrow down about 58 studies that were done on female-only cohorts, which represents less than 10% of the data, or sorry, less than 10% of the studies that were kind of pulled together in this systematic review and meta-analysis. So there’s just a lot of continued misinformation, mythology, and confusion in women about creatine, is it even useful for women? Is it something we might want to consider taking like what are some of the benefits and some of the ways in which our bodies might respond differently? So that’s what we’re going to be tackling in this podcast today. So in this episode, we’re going to look at what is creatine.
What are some of the benefits specifically benefits for women? And what do you need to know about things like dosing? So first and foremost, what is creatine and how does it work in your body? So creatine helps to improve strength and power output during high-intensity activities and exercises like lifting, heavy weights, sprinting, jumping, and so on. So anything that requires you to move quickly and powerfully, you can think about creatine as having some role in that. The reason is, is that creatine is going to combine with something in the cell called phosphate. And we’re really thinking about muscle cells here, although creatine is going to be showing up in other tissues, such as your brain. So what we tend to think about creatine as being associated with though is the muscle.
So we have creatine and then when we do these explosive types of activities, which require ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, they become essentially depowered, and we lose that phosphate group. And so it becomes adenosine diphosphate or a DP. So essentially, it’s a molecule that’s missing some of it, its power some of its energy potential. So what creatine does is in the cell creatine helps to bond to phosphate groups, and be ready to donate those back to ADP and make ATP. We’ve talked about on this podcast, for example, in the past, about why we rest in between our more power and strength-based exercises, we rest between sets, it’s to help regenerate. ATP is that cellular energy molecule, the energy molecule that’s really associated with moving very quickly, explosively, and powerfully.
Now, of course, there are multiple energy systems, in our bodies in our cells that are going to help us through exercise depending on the type of exercise and they do overlap. But we’re really thinking about kind of the short end here of the energy and sort of exercise spectrum, as where creatine and its role comes in. So it really helps us to recharge or regenerate ADP into ATP, which we can then use to do these explosive movements. So the majority of the creatine in your body is stored in skeletal muscle, and it’s estimated about 95% of your creatine is found in skeletal muscle, which is the muscle that we use to do all of our exercises and move around. Of course, we also can see that creatine is in tissues like the brain, the kidneys, and so on. So it’s in smaller quantities in those other tissues and may help to support neural function to the adaptations that we get from exercise. So that’s an interesting finding.
And that comes out of the study I’m going to talk about here in a couple of minutes. Before we go any further and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve heard all these different kinds of creatine, we’re really talking about creatine monohydrate here, and this is the one that is the most well-studied. So if you’re out looking for a creatine supplement to buy, you really want to look for creatine monohydrate. Okay, it is the most well-studied version of creatine. So there’s the most evidence to back up its use. So how is creatine produced in the body and can we get it through diet? The answer is, yes, we can get it through food.
Creatine is also made in the body from amino acids, mostly in the liver, but also made in the pancreas and in the kidneys in smaller quantities. So we do make creatine endogenously. That means we are capable of making it ourselves. The problem though, is that without supplementation, we don’t maximize our creatine stores. And it’s very hard to maximize our creatine stores through dietary intake alone. Creatine is found in meat and fish in more abundance. So if you consume these foods regularly, you may have slightly higher levels of creatine than someone who does not eat these foods. Even if you do eat meat and fish, it’s likely that your creatine stores are not fully topped up. So that’s why creatine supplementation is something that is additive to, of course, a well-rounded dietary intake of things like animal protein.
If you are a vegetarian or vegan or you don’t eat a lot of meat, then it stands to reason that you are a person who might benefit even more from creatine supplementation, because the amount that you’re getting through dietary intake alone is going to be significant. Currently lower than somebody who is regularly eating animal-based protein as part of a mixed macronutrient diet. So for example, if you’re like, Well, how does this work out in terms of quantities, a pound of uncooked beef, or salmon provides about one to two grams of creatine and that is not going to fully top up our creatine stores. So even if you eat a pound of these proteins in your day, you’re still not going to adequately or maximally top up those creatine stores.
Okay, so now let’s move into talking about some of the benefits of creatine since this is probably why you’re listening to this podcast episode. There is adequate data to show that creatine supplementation has benefits for athletic performance, including things like strength, lean mass, and in some cases, even endurance type of training, right? The main benefits shown throughout the research and again, this is collectively looking at the body of research that we have so far, is increased strength and power output during strength training, like I said, jumping sprinting, these explosive types of activities were we had to move really fast and move with a lot of power, or maximally kind of be moving weight, there also appears to be a benefit to lean mass and there may be some benefits to your anaerobic working capacity, and even aerobic working capacity.
So if we’re talking more about the endurance element of your training, there is some evidence to indicate that creatine is beneficial for that. And then there are also non-athletic benefits. And this is some of the more interesting, I guess, or promising area of research that continues to develop, which is looking at improvements in cognitive performance, reducing mental fatigue, benefits to mood, and so on and so forth. So just know that even if you currently aren’t training, there may be a benefit to you taking creatine or exploring that for yourself in some of these other kinds of mental cognitive capacities. Alright, let’s move into the section of the podcast where we’re going to talk about, what the research and body of evidence currently say about creatine for women.
Now, before I go into that, I just want to say when I say creatine for women, I don’t mean a proprietary blend of ingredients along with creatine that’s specifically targeted to women. I mean, like, what does the research say about does this have benefit for women? And if you see products on the market that are creatine for women, that’s just marketing. Okay? Don’t fall for that stuff. Again, you want to look for creatine monohydrate. And, and I will say this probably 100 times in this podcast. But before you take any supplement creatine included, even though it’s generally considered safe and healthy individuals, you always want to run things by your medical team, based on your own unique situation. But there is no specific women’s creatine. So we don’t want to fall for any products that have been included in the pink it and shrink it category.
Right? Where it says For women, and so we’re like, oh, that’s for me, and we buy it. So let’s get into some of these women’s specific concerns or benefits of taking creatine. What I’m mainly going to be talking about here comes from a 2021 paper that was published in the journal Nutrients. The lead paper author was Abby Smith Ryan, and I’m going to link this up in the show notes in case you want to take a look at it yourself. But the paper is called creatine supplementation in Women’s Health, a lifespan perspective. Now, I’m not going to go through the whole study, I just want to point out some of the really interesting points or some of the points that women asked me about a lot. So a few things.
First and foremost is that females have lower endogenous creatine stores compared to males. So we have about 70 to 80% of the creatine stores without supplementation that men tend to have. So we have a lower pool, I guess, if you want to call it of creatine stores unless we supplement we may also tend to consume less dietary creatine. And I will add a personal note here and just say that there are so many women that I talk to who are curious about performance, like you want to increase muscle you’re working out, you’re training, you’re lifting weights, you’re like lifting the heavy shit, and you’re just really not down with protein, or you’re just not eating a lot of animal protein. And I’ve talked about that in the protein series that I did on this podcast. So go back and check out those episodes.
But suffice it to say, if you’re like, Oh, I just get really busy and I tend to skip meals or my protein intake is kind of low. That’s going to have an even greater effect on your creatine source, especially if you’re not eating much animal protein as I said at the top of the show. Women may also have differences in how creatine affects things like protein to break down after exercise, there may be some impact in terms of hormonal fluctuations from the menstrual cycle. So there are a lot of interesting areas and I guess, curiosity about how creatine potentially differs or creatine-like homeostasis or metabolism differs in females compared to males.
Now, again, there are lots of areas where more research is needed. But I’m going to be kind of pointing out what some of the main points of this review paper were. So the first thing I want to mention is body composition. Oh, okay. So many women are like, I don’t want to take creatine and creatine is going to make me gain weight. And I understand that concern. Now, if you are an athlete who’s competing in a weight class sport, and you have a competition coming up very soon, you need to kind of be a little bit cautious about doing things like loading creatine, super close to when you’re going to compete and have to weigh in.
Now, that is not I would say, a majority of people listening to this podcast, like if you’re a fellow jujitsu player, if you were an Olympic weightlifter or powerlifter, for example, those are two common sports where you know, weight class is is a concern making weight, for example. So suffice it to say that could be contextually important to you. But I would say that most of the people listening to this podcast are not competing in those sports. So what does the research say on changes in body weight in women? So they looked back at this 2020 meta-analysis that I referred to earlier about adverse outcomes in women, like are there any in terms of taking creatine monohydrate. And what this 2020 meta-analysis showed, at least in terms of weight gain is that there were no significant differences in weight gain, when they compared pre-supplementation weight, and post supplementation, wait.
Okay, so the author stated, quote, the reluctance among females to use creatine may be due to fear of weight gain, or other adverse side effects, which are largely unfounded, particularly in women. So if you’re worried that this scale is gonna go up by like 10 pounds, and you’re not going to take creatine for that reason, again, based on the current research that we have, it doesn’t appear that women are actually affected by weight changes. As much as even men are right, there was no significant difference there. So retaining water appears to be more prevalent in men, and is more likely to happen when you’re loading when you’re taking large dosages for short periods of time.
Even so, people will tell me, Oh, I started taking creatine and the scale went up by a couple of pounds. If the scale goes up, it means that your tissues are better hydrated. That is a benefit. So those of you who are you know, like, again, like let’s take the weight class competitors out of this conversation for now. You’re like, oh, I watched the scale. And I started taking creatine and oh my gosh, I freaked out because it went up by a couple of pounds or something like that, it’s likely a temporary effect.
And it’s also likely that if you switch to a slow maintenance dose, you will see less of this effect. And even if the scale does go up slightly, you’re seeing that your tissues are better hydrated, like I don’t know how else to say this, then like hashtag muscle water, which is a good thing, right? It’s a good thing to have your muscles better hydrated, your cells better hydrated. Okay, so one of the other weight concerns that we hear in women is that just like they started taking creatine along with extra carbohydrate, or potentially extra carbohydrate mixed with extra protein because that is indicative and some of the literature is being beneficial. And what this review study pointed out is that in women, this might not be necessary for you to take on extra carbohydrates, for example, just to take your creatine.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you can just like cut your carbs. That is not what I’m saying here. But women because we tend to have smaller body sizes, we tend to have lower basal metabolic rates compared to men we tend to use less energy compared to men. And if you are concerned about things like energy balance, and you’re all already fueling Well, you may not require extra calories by taking extra protein on top of like already in adequate protein are taking extra carbohydrate on top of being, you know, at adequately fueled.
So, again, I see a lot of athletic women who are not fueling well. So this may not be as much of a concern. But again, if somebody is, for example, competing in a weight class sport, and they were like really kind of tightly regulating their energy intake, then like solely just trying to take creatine with extra carbs to get like extra benefit doesn’t seem to be as necessary in women. So just on that point, in terms of body weight,
those are some of the salient points that the review pointed out. Alright, so now let’s take a look at some of the sort of training benefits that you might see. And it’s worth noting that in this section right here, I’m going to be talking about research done in pre-menopausal women. Now, there are not a ton of studies in terms of highly trained, highly physically active females in terms of short and long-term creatine supplementation, and results in terms of strength and power. But in general, what the review was able to conclude is that there’s substantial evidence that creatine can help increase strength and power in trained and untrained women without large effects on bodyweight again, one of the main rebuttals that I hear is but I heard that creatine is going to make me gain a bunch of weight.
So the answer here is, there are some really awesome benefits in terms of if you are strength training, for example, why you might want to consider creatine supplementation in terms of aerobic and anaerobic performance. There is a small effect here. So studies suggest that there may be improvements in both aerobic and anaerobic exercise performance with both short and long-term creatine supplementation. So if you do a lot of hits, for example, this could definitely be beneficial for you. So you could think about adding that in. Alright, what about pregnancy? I hear this question a lot, or I see it more I guess, on social media, because my population of community tends to be past the age where you’re childbearing.
But this does come up with a lot of questions, which is, what the research say about creatine and pregnancy, and there to date have been no human studies on creatine supplementation during pregnancy. But there do appear to be data that suggest that creatine homeostasis or creatine metabolism may dramatically shift during pregnancy. So for example, when the fetus is growing, and there is an increased demand for nutrients to go that direction across the placenta, is that creating homeostasis in the pregnant person may shift.
So what I would say here is if you’re curious about this, definitely talk to your doctor if you’re pregnant or postpartum. It appears that creatine supplementation as I said, could be useful but I just want to let you know, out of an abundance of caution hearsay, as with all supplements, definitely check with your medical team. Okay, so let’s talk about post menopause and then we’ll go into some of the stuff on creatine loading. Okay, so there’s some interesting research that’s done on sort of strength and training with postmenopausal women and also creatine intake on its own without the training aspect.
So research supports that creatine is effective for improving and increasing muscle mass strength and performance and post-menopause. most effective when combined with resistance training. So you know me, you know, this podcast, we’re all about, you’ve got to strength train, especially if you’re 40 and up and if you’re postmenopausal, now’s the time, like, it’s not too late to include strength training in your routine and again, lifting heavy enough weights. So it appears that the benefit that you get potentially from creatine, at least in the postmenopausal crowd, is not as strong if you’re just taking it on its own, rather than if you combine creatine supplementation with resistance training.
So just to kind of throw in some of the points from the study here, collectively, this is a quote. Collectively these findings suggest that postmenopausal females may experience increases in muscle mass and function when consuming high-dosage creatine. And that was point three grams per kilogram of body weight per day for at least seven consecutive days. Then it says however, when combined with resistance training, the vast majority of research supports the efficacy of creatine monohydrate supplementation for improving measures of muscle accretion, accumulating muscle strength, and tasks of physical performance in postmenopausal females. So it appears that like high dosage, shorter-term creatine intake may have an effect on things like muscle mass and function in postmenopausal women who are not strength training.
But when you combine the intake with strength training is really where you get the most benefit. Okay, and then a lot of people will ask, but what about bone health? This is one of the areas where again, according to this review, and kind of like looking at the body of literature, now things could have changed since then. I’m not super aware of any changes that have come up. But I could be wrong, that creatine supplementation does not appear to provide benefits to bone physiology and post-menopausal women. Does that mean you shouldn’t lift weights?
Of course not. Lift weights, we have benefited from strength training, in terms of bone health, right in terms of bone density, it just appears that according to the current, like a breath of literature on this, that creatine doesn’t appear to have a meaningful effect on bone health, with or without resistance training. So I would still say that creatine for postmenopausal women even in perimenopause, and that transition has so many benefits. It’s something that I would recommend you look into taking and talking to your medical team about, but there are lots of benefits besides just bone health. Okay, so that’s what I would say on that one.
Okay, let’s take a look at some non-training benefits potentially here for women. And what does the research say on this? So the first one is mood. And this is really, really interesting because depression rates are higher among females compared to males. And that prevalence seems to also coincide with hormonal shift, hormonal shifting that occurs whether it’s the actual menstrual cycle itself or it across the lifespan. So puberty and adolescence with the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle with of course postpartum, and in perimenopause, specifically. So the postulate here is that during these shifts, is that yes, estrogen and progesterone shifting, may be playing a role here, but also how sensitive your brain becomes to these hormones may also play a role.
As we talked about earlier, creatine has neurological benefits. So the review paper here sort of was talking about that there’s strong evidence to support the impacts of creatine supplementation and increasing animal protein consumption. And that is a direct quote from the study, right? Increased animal protein consumption and creatine supplementation, there’s evidence that can support mood and depression, particularly in women. So this is very interesting, for those of you who are going through the perimenopause transition, perhaps if you’re experiencing that change in mood, is to potentially take a look at creatine supplementation for support in that way.
But also, again, I would just say like, there can be so many reasons why these issues come up. And this is not, I’m not saying this is a band-aid solution to all of that, but it could be something worth looking into for yourself. And then lastly, in terms of benefits, cognitive performance, and sleep. Creatine has been shown to improve cognitive performance and reduce mental fatigue. And then specifically, if we think about women and the interplay of these things, right, there can be some disruptions to sleep quality across the menstrual cycle, for example, or potentially right in that perimenopause transition, where there’s a disruption to sleep for several different reasons.
So, it appears that creatine has some promise throughout the menstrual cycle to help sort of offset some of the adverse effects that can happen to cognition, and sleep. And this may be really helpful during periods of high stress and sleep deprivation. So again, could be an area to look into in terms of creatine supplementation. Alright, let’s take a look now, at kind of the last big part here. So we’ve gone through a lot we’ve talked about what is creatine. What are some of the benefits, what are specifically some of the benefits for women? And now let’s take a look at just some general stuff in terms of dosing. So again, creatine monohydrate, supplementation is considered safe and healthy for individuals.
But you always want to run this by your medical team before you take any supplement, it’s very important that you run it by your medical team who knows your full history, and can look for Contra indications, for example, that you take a particular supplement. When we’re talking about dosing, this comes up a lot. And a lot of the time, it’s like people who are experiencing gastrointestinal upset, or they just are not sure how to take creatine itself. And there are a couple of different ways that you can do this. And I’ll tell you, the one I typically recommend and I see work better for people.
So they’re sort of a traditional way of taking creatine which is called loading, loading means we’re going to take a higher dose for a shorter period of time. And it works out to be about point three grams per kilogram of body weight. So figure out your body weight in kilograms, and multiply by point three. And that would be how much you would take for the whole day. But the thing is, you want to divide up that dose into about four, four equal doses, okay, so think about dividing that number by four. And you would do that for about five to seven days, I tend to see that does not work as well for people, it does bump up your cellular stores of creatine much faster.
And after five to seven days, you would go to a maintenance dose to maintain your cellular stores from there. Now typically, when I hear from people who are like, Oh, this hurts my stomach, or gave me diarrhea or something like that are taking like 20 grams all at one time. And so again, we want to make sure you’re taking your creatine with enough water. That’s one of the reasons why I hear a lot of people say oh, it causes like upset in my stomach, well, you need to make sure you mix it with enough water, and follow the dosing instructions on the bottle. That’s all I can say there. And then also, you may split it up into smaller doses, right, like I said, for over the day, rather than taking a huge dose all at one time, is a better idea.
Now for most people who are not in a rush to get their creatine stores up really high, I tend to recommend the other way of doing it, which is a routine daily dose. So this is usually about three to five grams per day, you just start, you just start taking three to five grams per day.
And you continue that, and in approximately three to four weeks, your cellular stores of creatine should be relatively maximized, okay? And the research on this also agrees that for females, these dosing strategies are also appropriate. So you can just kind of go with what is traditionally recommended. So you’ve got loading, which I tend to see not work as well for people. But if you’re in a rush, for some reason could be your best option, or that routine daily dose, which is again, about three to five grams, or point 03 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
So again, take your body weight and multiply it by point 03. Or you can just settle for that like three to five-gram dose, and you just start and you just keep taking it. And in about a month, your cellular source of creatine will be relatively maximized. So there’s that a lot of times people ask, when should I take it does it matter? Research is kind of mixed on this. It seems to be that taking it around the time of your workout is the best idea. But when I had Dr. Scott Forbes on the show on Episode 365, and we talked about creatine myths, which by the way, you should go listen to that podcast as well. And we’ll link it in the show notes.
He was like, let’s just get let’s just take it take it every day. And so that’s kind of the rule that I tend to follow is like I tried to take it around my training, but if I forget or I’m not training that day, I just Just take it. Okay, so it’s not as important, like the exact timing as it is that you just take it regularly to keep those cellular stores topped up. And if it’s your rest day, still take your creatine, okay, so sometimes I’ll see people were like, well, I trained twice that week.
And so I’ll like when I’m lifting, I’ll take it but then on the other days, I’m not taking it which means your, again, your cellular stores are not being maximized on those days. So take it as consistently as you can as best as you can, don’t sweat the exact details on timing quite as much, and just go from there. And of course, with creatine supplementation just to throw this in there, there is some individual variability some people tend to respond really well.
In terms of, you know, seeing a benefit some people, not so much and some people are kind of non-responders to creatine, and that’s been shown in the general literature, this review study made a point or a review paper made a point of saying, you know, this has not yet been explored in women. But we’re kind of assuming that all individuals, you know, kind of across the board in terms of females may respond a little bit differently. So maybe you are somebody who’s a creatine, non-responder, those people do exist in the population, just to say that there is some variability here. So, if you feel like you’ve taken it before, and like it gave you absolutely no benefit, you know, I don’t know, it’s up to you whether you continue taking it.
But to me, in my opinion, it’s worth a shot. It’s worth a shot taking. As I said, Always talk to your medical team first and clear it. Because you want to make sure that there are no contraindications for taking your particular supplement. I will also throw out there that my favorite way to take my daily creatine is with Legion. So Legion has an amazing recharge product. It’s marketed as opposed to workout but again, I just tried to take some time around my training, if I can, you know, remember. And so I love that product because it has five grams of creatine monohydrate per serving. And it also tastes really, really great.
So check that out, you can look into Legion, they have third-party testing, and they have transparency and labeling, which is really, really important. And I have seen some pretty shady creatine-containing supplements that don’t actually list how much creatine is in a scoop. And so you have no idea how much you’re actually getting there. So transparency and labeling are very important. And that’s why I really appreciate what Legion is doing. I’ve been working with them now for gosh, 18 months, almost two years, and really appreciate what they’re doing as a company I personally use their products as well. So I’ve been using creatine ever since I’ve been working with them and have seen a really great benefit in terms of my own training.
So you can check out my code, I have a code for 20% off your first Legion order and that code is Steph. S.t.e.p.h. And if you are just reordering you get like double points. So go check that out. I also really liked that they have an unflavored one where you can mix it into whatever else you’re drinking, so it doesn’t affect the flavor. But in terms of the flavored ones, I really like grapes personally. And I also like fruit punch. Sometimes I’ll combine fruit punch recharge that has creatine monohydrate in it with my elements. So that’s electrolytes. And that tastes really good, like raspberry elements with fruit punch. I don’t know it tastes really great. So you can check that out.
There are lots of different options. You can also just find regular creatine monohydrate powder, like at your local, you know, Vitamin Shoppe or something like that. So, go check out your options there. But if you’re curious about you know the quality of what you’re looking at, you can always run supplements through lab door.com. And check that out. Alright, so we’ve been to a lot of places on this podcast today, and we’ve reviewed, what is creatine. What are some of its benefits? What does it do in the body?
Specifically, what does the literature say about women? And if I could sum it all up, I’d say creatine shows a lot of promise for women, there’s still a long way to go in terms of research but what we have so far shows that creatine has a lot of benefits for females. So it is something to consider taking have that conversation with your medical team. Make sure you clear any supplementation you’re considering doing with that team first. And yeah, there you go.
Creatine is beneficial for women in so many different ways. And I then also talked a little bit about the different ways that you can start taking creatine and some of the common questions that come up along the way. Alright, I hope this was useful for you. As always send us a comment here on YouTube down below this video, or send me a DM on Instagram. Let me know what you think. Are there other questions that you have that I didn’t answer that potentially we can talk about in a future episode? Remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform here on YouTube as well and ring the bell for more notifications. And I will see you in the next episode. Until then, stay strong.
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