JJ Virgin and a guest discuss why creatine monohydrate isn't as absorbed as claimed. A radioisotope study found only 15% of a standard dose reaches the bloodstream, and 76% of women in a Princeton Clinical study reported bloating and GI distress. They developed a new creatine molecule to deliver more to muscle cells at lower doses without the water weight.
there are some big influencers out there saying that creatine monohydrate is 100% absorbed.
Yeah, the, um, first of all, I'll state that that is not an accurate fact, um, or, or statement. It is, um, uh, it's unfortunate that that, um, mindset has been promulgated, and it's based on some very early creatine research that was done on what I would call tracer levels of creatine, where tiny little amounts were absorbed and they thought, well, then probably all dosing levels of creatine are similarly absorbed. That's not the case for any compound, really. There are oftentimes with, with substances, a diminishing return. It just so happens that the diminishing return for creatine is for creatine monohydrate actually gets— you hit that level pretty quickly. There was a great study done, peer-reviewed, published in the Department— the Journal of Pharmaceutics, where this doctoral individual, Dr. Al-Raddadi, showed with radioisotope-tagged monohydrate that on a standard dose, only about 15% is making it into your bloodstream. So when we first were doing our research, the number one objective was to find a compound that provided more strength, endurance, and recovery than creatine monohydrate for the athletes. Secondarily, many of the athletes were wanting to be not just stronger, but faster and quicker. And the monohydrate stories that we got were that it doesn't provide as much strength as we need and want, and it slows us down because of the excess water weight. So first, we were focused on strength. Second, we were focused on trying to avoid the side effects. And so we developed this, this molecule that would deliver more creatine to the cells so that they could have more muscular energy, be able to train harder, longer, build natural muscle strength, and that you could do it on small enough doses that there would be none of the excretion dynamics associated with monohydrate where the body struggles and has what's called extracellular fluid redistribution to try to flush out the amount that the body can't use.
Extracellular fluid redistribution is bloating. That is exactly right.
Bloating.
That's right. That was a very scientific term for that, that all the things the women were coming back to me going, I feel puffy, I feel bloated, I'm getting off of it. I'm like, no, just, just stick with it.
No. There was a study that was completed recently. I don't think it's been published yet, but I saw an early look at some of the data. Came out of Princeton Clinical in, in New Jersey. And 76% of the women in the study taking creatine monohydrate experienced and reported mild to severe bloating, puffiness, GI distress, etc. So it's— it is a 76%, 76%.
I mean, that's significant. Well, and it's completely in alignment with what I saw.
Yeah, it's so the monohydrate, its absorption, as I said, on a, on a standard dose is about 15%, not 100%. Now, I think there could be some splitting hairs going on with some of this commentary because of the 15% that gets into your bloodstream, 100% of that is taken up into the muscles. Once creatine gets into your blood compartment, the body is very good at taking what you give it or get into its, its plasma and, and then using the creatine transport system or the creatine receptors, it, it absorbs it into the cells as it's needed. And so 100% that gets into your bloodstream, I would say, is absorbed, but not 100% of creatine is absorbed into the body.
