If you’ve never tried creatine, watch this now

There is one supplement that has been studied for over 30 years. It has more peer-reviewed research behind it than almost any other compound in nutrition science. It's safe, inexpensive, and widely available. And if you are a woman over 40, there is a very good chance that no one, not your doctor, not your nutritionist, not anyone has ever once suggested you take it. Not because it doesn't work, It absolutely works. The research is overwhelming on that point. It was ignored for women because of where it got filed away back in the 1980s and the 1990s. It got stamped with the bodybuilding label. It got associated with teenage boys trying to get bigger in the gym. And once something gets that association, it becomes almost impossible for people to look past it, even when the science has moved on entirely. But here is what I know after more than a decade of clinical work and helping over 12,600 people at PhD Weight Loss collectively drop more than 480,000 pounds. When women over 40 finally discover this supplement and start using it correctly, almost every single one of them says the same thing. They say, why did nobody ever tell me about this? I want to tell you about it today. I'm Dr. Ashley Lucas. I'm a PhD-trained nutritionist. I'm a registered dietitian and the founder of PhD Weight Loss. My entire career has been built around helping people understand their metabolism at the level that actually creates lasting change, not just for a season, but for the rest of their lives. And today I want to walk you through what creatine actually is, what it does inside your body that has nothing to do with getting bigger, why it becomes especially important as we age, and how to use it in a way that supports your metabolism your muscles, and yes, even your brain. Because that brain piece is honestly the part that surprises people most. And it surprised me too when I started going deep into this research. So stay with me because we're going to cover all of it. Before we get into the science, I want to address the thing that might already be running through your head if you have any association with creatine at all. The image of someone loading up on powder. Getting puffy, building big mass. I understand that reaction completely. That's what we were shown for decades around this supplement. But I need you to set that image down entirely because it has nothing to do with what we're talking about today. Here is the reframe I want you to hold on to as we go through this. Creatine is not a bodybuilding supplement. Creatine is an energy compound. Your body actually already produces it on its own. Your liver makes somewhere between 1 to 3 grams of it every single day. Your brain produces its own supply of it too. And the primary dietary source of creatine in nature is animal protein, like from beef, poultry, fish. If you eat meat, you are already consuming creatine in small amounts through your food. So creatine is not something foreign you're introducing to your biology. It's actually something your biology already knows how to use. You're simply asking yourself, is my body getting enough of it? And for women over the age of 40, especially women who have been through any kind of chronic calorie restriction, uh, any period of dieting, any hormonal transition like perimenopause or menopause, the answer is almost certainly no. And here's why that matters. After about age 35, your natural creatine production begins to slowly decline. Your muscle tissue becomes less efficient at storing it. Your brain's demand for it doesn't go down. If anything, it actually goes up as the cognitive demands of life increase and as your hormonal changes really start to affect how your brain manages energy. But your supply is quietly shrinking. This is not a discipline issue, you guys. This is not a motivation issue. This is biology. It's your biology doing exactly what it was designed to do in response to the inputs it's receiving and the natural changes that come with aging. When I say that to women in our program at PhD Weight Loss, when I say to someone who has been fighting her body for 10 or 15 years, who has done every diet, tried every program, felt exhausted and frustrated and like she was just somehow fundamentally broken. When I tell her that what's happening has a physiological explanation and that there are specific things we can actually do to support her biology rather than just fight it, the relief on her face is something I never get tired of seeing. Your body is not broken. It has been undersupported. There is a really big difference, and that difference changes everything. All right, so let's get into the actual science. I'm going to keep this accessible because my goal here is never to overwhelm you, is to help you understand your own body in a way that makes the solution feel obvious. So what I want to do is start from the beginning. What does creatine actually do? Your body runs on a molecule called ATP, which is adenosine triphosphate. ATP is your cellular currency of energy. Every single thing your body does, from contracting a muscle to firing a neuron to digesting food, requires this ATP, and your body has to constantly regenerate it because you can't store large amounts of it at any one time. Creatine phosphate is the fastest way your body has to regenerate that ATP. When you need quick energy, when you go to pick something up, climb stairs, push through the last few minutes of a workout, or maybe just push through a mentally demanding afternoon, your body reaches for that creatine phosphate first. I want you to think of it like the rapid response energy system. When your creatine stores are full and when they're well maintained, your body can produce energy faster. You recover between efforts more quickly. You can do more total work before fatigue sets in. And critically, your muscle tissue is better able to hold on to itself even when you're in a calorie deficit, when you're dropping weight, or when you're undergoing metabolic stress. Now, the last point is the one I want to stay on for a moment, because for anyone who is trying to drop fat and keep muscle, which is exactly what we focus on at PhD Weight Loss, This is not a small thing. This is one of the central challenges of fat loss done correctly. When we lose weight, we want to be losing fat, not muscle, not bone density, just fat. But almost every traditional approach to weight loss, like chronic calorie restriction, extreme cardio, even some of the GLP-1 meds that everybody is talking about right now, these approaches carry a significant risk of muscle loss alongside fat loss. And once muscle is lost, it is genuinely so difficult to rebuild. Your metabolism then, as a result, starts to slow. Your long-term ability to maintain healthy weight becomes even harder. The entire journey gets steeper. Creatine is one of the very few supplements that has solid evidence behind it for helping to protect lean muscle tissue during a fat loss phase. Not by adding mass artificially, but by giving your muscle cells that energy substrate they need to stay active, to stay functional and resistant to breakdown, even when your overall calorie intake is reduced. If you are working on your weight, if you are trying to drop fat and keep your metabolism strong as you age, creatine deserves to be a part of that conversation. Now, Let me talk about the brain because this is where the research is genuinely exploded in the last several years. And it's the piece that I think is most relevant and most underappreciated for the women I work with specifically. Your brain is one of the most energy hungry organs in your entire body. It makes up about 2% of your body weight, but it uses somewhere around 20% of your total daily energy. And your brain has its own creatine system. It produces creatine locally, and it uses creatine phosphate as a rapid energy reserve, just like your muscles do. The problem is this: for decades, nearly all creatine research was focused exclusively on muscle. Nobody was looking at the brain because the assumption was that creatine could not cross the blood-brain barrier in a meaningful way. But newer research has challenged that assumption significantly. Studies out of Germany show that when people take 10 grams of creatine per day rather than the standard 5, measurable increases in creatine concentration appear in specific regions of your brain. At 5 grams, your muscles absorb essentially all of it. At 10 grams, there is huge spillover to the central nervous system. And what happens in the brain when creatine levels go up? The research shows that creatine in the brain particularly shines under conditions of stress, psychological stress, sleep deprivation, neurological aging, cognitive decline. These are all conditions where the brain's energy supply is under pressure. And when the brain is under energy pressure, the first thing to suffer is higher cognitive function. Things like clarity, your focus, memory, decision-making, emotional regulation. All of it requires ATP. All of it gets degraded when energy production slows down. There is a study, and I want to be clear on this, this is one study and more research definitely needs to be done, but there is a study showing that people who were sleep deprived for 21 hours, but given 20 to 25 grams of creatine beforehand, actually performed better on cognitive tests than their own well-rested baseline. That's amazing. Not just better than the sleep-deprived control group, better than their own normal. I think that's super remarkable. And while we need more data to know exactly how replicable this is, the direction of the research is very consistent. Creatine supports brain energy, especially under stress. Now think about who experiences chronic mental stress, disrupted sleep, brain fog, cognitive heaviness. Think about women navigating perimenopause or menopause. Think about women who have been under chronic dietary stress, under eating, restricting, riding the blood sugar roller coaster for years. Think about anyone managing a heavy life, a demanding job, family responsibilities, the accumulated weight of decades. The research on creatine and cognitive function in aging is also growing. There are studies showing significant benefit in older adults with mild cognitive decline. There's a really interesting emerging, a bit of work on creatine and depression and mood regulation. This area of research is young, but the direction is clear, and it's one that I'm really watching closely. For women over 40 who are dealing with brain fog, with that sense of mental heaviness, with the feeling that their brain just doesn't fire the way it used to, creatine is not a magic solution, but it is a physiologically sound tool that directly addresses one of the root causes of that experience—your brain's energy supply. Now let me be practical with you about dosing, because this is where I think a lot of people get confused. The most studied form of creatine is creatine monohydrate. That's it. Not creatine HCL, not creatine ethyl ester, not any of the proprietary blends with fancy names. Creatine monohydrate is the foundation of 3+ decades of research, and it is what I would recommend at this point to anyone looking to take creatine for muscle saturation and for physical performance and preservation of benefits. 5 grams per day is the established dose. It takes about 3 weeks of consistent daily supplementation to fully saturate your muscle tissue. You don't need to do a loading phase where you take 20 grams a day for a week. You can if you want to saturate faster, but it is not necessary, and some people do that the higher initial doses cause mild digestive discomfort. Now, for brain benefits, based on the research and what it is currently showing, 10 grams per day seems to be the threshold where you start to see meaningful changes in brain creatine levels. This is why I personally take 10 grams a day, and my father, who is dealing with some cognitive decline right now, is also taking 10 grams a day for this reason, and he is feeling a lot better. For me, I split it, and for him, we split it into 5 grams in the morning. Usually I will do it in my coffee or tea or just water on the side because it does have a little bit of a taste, and then 5 grams later in the day. Now you can mix it into water. This is my preference. You can put it into coffee, but I'm picky around how my coffee tastes and I don't want anything in it except for some heavy cream. Uh, you could put it in a protein shake, but creatine monohydrate is pretty flavorless. It's just a little bit chalky. Now one thing I want to address directly because it is the most common concern I hear is water retention. So yes, when you first start taking creatine, your muscles will pull in some additional water. This is exactly the mechanism working as intended, right? Your muscle cells are hydrating as they saturate with creatine. For some people, this will cause a small temporary increase on the scale of like a pound or two in the first couple of weeks. For most people, it levels out after that initial period. You guys, this is not fat gain. It is intracellular hydration, which is actually a marker of healthy muscle tissue. But if you are someone who tracks your weight closely, just know that it can cause a brief bump in the number, and I encourage you to not panic. This is brief and temporary. And one more thing on this— coffee does not negate the effects of creatine. I know that that was circulating as a concern, but the research does not support it at normal coffee consumption. Consumption levels. You can mix your creatine in your coffee if that makes it easy and consistent for you. Consistency is far more important than the vehicle you use to take it. Now, if you are listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I understand the creatine piece, but I still feel completely lost when it comes to putting it all together into a plan that actually works for my body, well, that is exactly the kind of support we provide at PhD Weight Loss. We don't give you a generic protocol. We actually learn about you and your body, your history, your metabolism, what you've tried that has worked and what you have tried that hasn't worked. And from that information, we build something very specific to your biology. Now, if that sounds like what you've been looking for, just go to myphdweightloss.com. If you are listening to this on a podcast platform, Now, if you are watching this on YouTube, just head into the description, click the link for my PhD weight loss to learn more. So let's talk about how to actually implement this in a way that makes sense and is sustainable. Creatine is one of the least expensive supplements on the market. You're not going to look at— you are not looking at something that requires a huge investment. A month's supply at 10 grams per day is going to cost you somewhere in the range of $20 to $30, depending on the brand. I like the brand Thorne. It's very clean, but basically what you're looking for is pure creatine monohydrate. You don't want any fillers or extra ingredients. I would avoid at this time proprietary blends. The more simple, the better. Micronized creatine monohydrate tends to dissolve a little bit more smoothly. It's not as chalky, but the standard version works just as well. You take it every day. That's really the key. Creatine is not something that works acutely like caffeine, where you feel a sharp effect in an hour after you take it. It is a cumulative supplement. The benefit comes from sustained, consistent saturation of your muscle tissue and your brain over time. If you miss a day here and there, it's okay. Your levels don't drop off a cliff overnight, but the people who get the most benefit out of it are the ones who just make it a daily habit the same way you would any other part of your important routine. Now, here is what I want you to understand about where creatine fits into the bigger picture, because I think this is where the real power of it shows up. At PhD Weight Loss, the foundation of everything we do is metabolic repair. Our entire philosophy is that most people who struggle with their weight are not failing because of a lack of willpower or discipline. They are failing because their metabolism has been disrupted by years of restriction, by blood sugar dysregulation, by hormonal imbalances, by Chronic stress and no amount of trying harder is going to fix a disrupted metabolism. You have to actually repair it. And the way we repair it is by giving the body what it needs. That's adequate protein, stable blood sugar, hormonal support when you need it, good gut health, and yes, the energy substrates that allow your cells, your muscles, and your brain to function the way they are actually designed to function. Creatine fits directly into that framework. It's not a shortcut. It's not a magic fix, but it is a foundational tool for supporting the lean muscle mass that keeps your metabolism strong and for supporting the brain health that keeps you clear, regulated, and able to make the choices that move you towards your goals. I want to tell you about a type of client I see often. She comes to PhD Weight Loss after doing everything, quote unquote, right. She's eating less. She's exercising more. She's been following the conventional advice faithfully. And her metabolism has essentially adapted to that chronic restriction by slowing down to match her intake. She's tired, her brain feels foggy, her workouts feel harder, and her recovery is worse, even though she hasn't changed anything. She's losing muscle even though she's doing cardio 5 days a week, and the scale will barely move. When we repair her metabolism, When we give her body adequate protein, stabilize her blood sugar, reduce the cortisol load, and start to support her muscle tissue with tools like creatine, the shift that happens is not gradual. It's often really fast. I mean, it blows my mind, and I've seen it done thousands of times. Her energy comes back first, then her hunger and cravings start to quiet down, then her body starts actually releasing fat instead of hoarding it because her body finally feels safe enough to let it go. This is the work, not restriction. Repair. Now, I want to mention a couple of my own products here because they are directly relevant to what we've been talking about. My GlucoCup Plus is a supplement I developed specifically for people who are working on metabolic repair. It supports blood sugar stability. It targets natural GLP-1 activity, which is your body's own fullness hormone. And it is specifically formulated to help preserve lean muscle tissue during a fat loss phase. That is a direct complement to what creatine is doing. They are working on related but different mechanisms, and together they support the kind of metabolic environment where your body can actually let go of fat without sacrificing the muscle that you really, really need. And My Electrolyte Plus is important because when you're taking creatine and your muscles are pulling in more water, proper hydration and electrolyte balance really, really matters. This isn't just about drinking more water. It's about making sure your cells have the mineral support they need to function well. The Electrolyte+ was formulated specifically for people in a fat loss or active wellness phase, and it has chromium picolinate for blood sugar support. It has zinc and vitamin C in the most highly absorbable formats for adrenal and immune function on top of the core electrolytes. You can find both of these at DrAshleyLucas.com. If you are listening to this on a podcast platform, head over to DrAshleyLucas.com. If you are watching this on YouTube, go into the description and click the link. Use code ASHLEY10 at checkout to get a special discount. Now, I want to leave you with something before I let you go, because I think this matters a lot. So much of the conversation around women's health and aging and weight loss is framed around loss. You're losing estrogen, you're losing muscle, you're losing your metabolism. You are losing the body you used to have. Everything is framed as a decline that you're supposed to just accept or fight against with more effort. And I want to offer you a completely different frame. Your body at 40 or 50 or 60+ is not a broken version of your body at 30. It is a body with different needs. And when you understand those needs, when you stop fighting your biology and start working with it, you discover that your body is extraordinarily capable of change at any age. I have watched people in their 60s and 70s transform their metabolic health in ways that surprise even me. Specifically, I remember not too long ago chatting with a client. Her name is Seal. 72 years old, dropped 35 pounds, reversed her severe sleep apnea. She had no idea that could even be an outcome of her weight loss and no longer uses a CPAP machine at 72. Another client, Eileen, had multiple sclerosis, 74 years old, dropped 60 pounds. Amazing, you guys. The body wants to heal. It is always moving in the direction of health when we give it what it needs. Creatine is just one piece of that puzzle. It's not a magic piece. It might not work perfectly for you, but it is a real piece that I do encourage you to check out. It supports the energy systems that power your muscles and your brain. It is backed by a lot of research, more research than almost any other supplement in existence. And for too long, nobody thought to tell women that it was theirs to use. Now you know, and you know, you get to decide what to do with that. My encouragement to you is simple. Try it for 30 days, 10 grams a day, every day. Pay attention to how your workouts feel. Pay attention to your recovery. Pay attention to your mental clarity in the afternoons. Give your body time to saturate and adjust and then just notice what you notice. If you want support beyond what a single supplement can provide, if you want a real plan that addresses your metabolism at the root level, that is built specifically around your body and your history and your goals, that is what we do every day at PhD Weight Loss. We would love to support you. I would love to support you. Your body is not working against you. It has been waiting for the right inputs. Let's just give it what it needs. If you're watching this on YouTube, please subscribe so you don't miss another video. If you're on a podcast platform, leaving a review means more than you know. It helps this information reach more people who really need it. Now remember, you've got to step up to make the change. Lead with your heart, train your mind, and do not negotiate with your body. I'll see you next time.