If you’re like me, Creatine as a therapeutic option for psychiatric & neurological disorders, has been stalking you for years. Lurking in the shadows, only showing its face occasionally to say, ‘Hey, I’m not all about body building and sports you know, you should check me out some time!’ But, haunted by the ghosts of yesteryear & all the wanna-be-muscle-men I served working in retail in my 20s, and scared off by the very mention of ‘sports’, I have kept running briskly walking, beyond Creatine’s clutches. Until now.
The evidence of the essentiality of Creatine for healthy brain function is undeniable and together with a wealth of pre-clinical data which likens the impact of oral Creatine to both fluoxetine, in terms of its ability to stimulate and support healthy neurogenesis, and ketamine, in relation to its fast acting glutamate inhibition, we need to at last all finally face our friendly stalker!
Thrilling as this amassed evidence is, to date the number of actual RCTs using Creatine in mental health patients, including treatment resistant depression, bipolar affective disorder, schizophrenia etc. is still too few and their sample sizes suffer from ‘smallness’ to boot, making it clear that we a long way away from a clinical consensus. Regardless, Creatine seems too important a therapeutic option to ignore while we await new larger studies and a trial of this supplement in many of our patients could be all the n=1 proof we need for its benefit to many. The skill we need to develop now is being able to identify those patients most likely affected by CNS creatine depletion. But if we follow the trail of crumbs… they clearly lead us to those at risk, due either to impaired production (amino acid and micronutrient shortfalls, most commonly) or those experiencing increased requirements (vegetarians, vegans, the elderly, high histamine??)…we are likely to recognise our patients likely to benefit the most.
While our CAM dispensary already offers us some great nutraceutical & herbal options for helping our depressed patients, I am always on the look out for more. Especially when these represent more upstream approaches…providing true building blocks for brain health, rather than just XXX the signals
Creatine and its colleagues (carnitine, choline and many micronutrients) fit this bill. Building blocks are beautiful things. Are a more ‘grassroots approach’ and accordingly, generally less expensive to boot. I’m doing more and more augmenting of my most reliable CAM antidepressants, with creatine and select aminos these days and being rewarded with great results. If you want to learn how to use Creatine supplements as part of a multi-pronged approach for your patients’ brains rather than their brawn…then there’s no better place to hear about it than here and, I guess, at last, there’s no time like now. 🙂
Creatine – The Brain Builder Part 2
Creatine for brain building over brawn, begs the question, ‘What is the ultimate supplement regime when trying to maximise uptake into our mind not our muscles?’ So much important groundwork has been done in the field of sports science to determine basic bioavailability and pharmacokinetics of this nutraceutical, we can certainly borrow much from this – but what do we do differently? This second instalment on ‘Creatine the Brain Builder’, does the complete number crunch for dosages and regimes, expected onset of action, necessary duration of use, cautions and contraindications and much much more!
The latest Update in Under 30 has landed!!!