What Can Women Do To Finally Conquer Fatigue And Brain Fog?, with Mark Faulkner

Hello and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo, your host Ed's not able to join us today and today we're going to talk about creatine with Mark Faulkner who is a science driven innovator. He has nine patents and otherwise as Boston speak, he's wicked smart and a mission to revolutionize global health through advanced nutraceutical and biochemistry solutions. He has a passion for athletes safety, performance and that led him to the founding of Vireo Systems and the development of Concrete, which is a patented form of creatine hydrochloride that delivers superior results without side effects. So we're going to dive into all of that today. But first off, Mark, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Wendy. I'm honored to be joining you on this show. Thank you.

Great to have you here. So, okay, right before we started you said, because I was like, we're going to talk about creatinine, having a brain fart. And then you're like, well, they're related. So before we go into the things about creatine, can you talk to me about what's the difference between creatine and creatinine for our listeners? And then let's talk more about creatine.

Certainly creatine is a molecule that is synthesized in the body that every cell needs for energy. So creatine helps fuel muscle energy, which athletes have known for a long time. It fuels brain energy, neuron energy. In fact, your brain uses probably 20% of the body's creatine just to think it fuels immune cel. So creatine is important for the optimal health, recovery, functioning of every cell in the body. Creatinine is the metabolic byproduct of creatine. After the body has used creatine, it's been expended. Then creatinine is the cyclized form of the molecule that ends up being excreted, filtered out through the kidneys and is measured oftentimes in the urine as a marker, an indirect marker of kidney function. But for people who take creatine or supplement with creatine because they have either very active lifestyles from a fitness standpoint or they want to feel better than they have been in terms of general functional energy or if they have some medical indications which we can talk about later, whether those be everything from cancer to neurodegeneration or immune compromise, taking more creatine will elevate the creatinine level. But it doesn't mean your kidneys aren't functioning in those Cases a physician can watch. Blood urea nitrogen, bun, albumin and gfr, glomerular filtration rate and things to see. That even though creatinine is elevated from the additional creatine consumption, that the kidneys are not in distress or they're not of concern. The body only makes when it makes creatine for the cells to use. It only makes half of what we're supposed to need and the other half is supposed to come from our diet. Unfortunately, many or most Americans do not have as much of a creatine rich diet as they should. And so creatine supplementation is needed by many folks and it will result in a little higher creatinine level.

So now I have to ask, what are the food sources of creatine? Because, you know, the soil's depleted, people have funky diets. What are the food sources? Now I'm curious, like, can I get it in my food?

You can, but you would have to eat quite a bit of the foods that I'm about to talk about. The number one source probably is red meat. Creatine is found in beef or red meat products also to a little lesser degree in pork or chicken or things. Some fish have creatine, but again lesser levels. You'd have to take in probably about 2 pounds of beef a day to get the level of creatine that most people need to supplement what's made endogenously in the body. And more chicken and fish and pork. If you're going to someone who's a vegan or vegetarian, they're typically chronically low in creatine. And the other thing is too is that if you overcook the meat then you destroy much of the creatine. And so you have to kind of eat the meat rare or raw in order to make sure that you're preserving the supply that otherwise would be dietarily served up to you in that form of food.

So raw carnivore can get the creatine they need, the rest of us need to supplement?

Most likely, yes, unless you have quite a varied diet, but your body uses on average 2 to 3 grams of creatine a day, and it makes about a gram, gram and a half or so. So you need about a gram or gram and a half a day in supplementation from diet and or a good nutritional source that's orally ingested if you're gonna have an optimal amount for all your cells to function the way that they're intended to and the way that they can most effectively.

So when I first heard about creatine, it was from JJ because I'm in her mastermind. And she was, I mean, she's a big bodybuilder and I'm not a big bodybuilder. I just don't want to be fat. So I was like, okay, that's for bodybuilders. Is creatine for people like me, the post menopausal women who want to maintain muscle? Who's the ideal user for creatine?

I'm going to answer that in about two or three different ways. First, I'll take the last part first. Who's the ideal person for taking creatine? The CDC right now is looking at research to establish norms or suggestions for creatine supplementation for all age groups because they see that that's important for brain formation with youth or toddlers, even certainly for muscle and skeletal muscle development in adolescence. It's extremely important for adults to maintain muscle mass throughout their life and also to support the immune system. Very important for the elderly to avoid or to stave off sarcopenia or muscle wasting which if they lose muscle, the elderly become fall risks. And that is a really negative quality of life. Turning point and then as you just said, menopausal perimenopausal, postmenopausal women, that's an extraordinarily important time for creatine ingestion or creatine supplementation. In fact, later this month, or maybe at the latest next month, there will be a new study that is coming out published by the primary investigator, Dr. Sergei Ostajik, who's an MD, PhD out of Norway, who has demonstrated that low level creatine supplementation has dramatic benefits for women in that stage of life or in those stages of life in terms of brain fog, brain metabolism and neuron energy downregulation of many of the symptoms and mood and hot flashes and fatigue and such things. And unlike other forms of creatine, the one that you mentioned at the start of this podcast, creatine hydrochloride is able to be dosed in low levels that do not cause women like you to have the side effects that many women fear with creatine, which is bloat, puffiness, water retention, GI distress, et cetera, Creatine monohydrate is a fine form of creatine. It usually builds strength and bulk, most women who take it. In fact, there's a study coming out from Princeton research that demonstrates that women taking the recommended 5 gram dose of creatine, I think it was over 76% of them experienced some measure of bloat, puffiness, water retention. So it is for women. It's just that certain conjugations, certain forms of creatine probably aren't as desirable or advisable for women. But really when it comes to who should be taking it, I think for an optimal level of health, and the CDC agrees now that really almost everyone should be taking it, the CDC and the World Health Organization believe that the increase in chronic diseases worldwide is at least in part due to low levels of creatine and the poor consumption of creatine in the diet by folks all over the world. So that's why they are looking at discussing recommended levels of creatine. It hasn't gotten much attention in the medical community or the nutrition community in the past, but I think that people will come to realize it's the most important supplement people can take. And that's a bold statement. But when you think about protein, magnesium, fish oil, ashwagandha, zinc, the vitamins and things, those are all very important, but none of them really matter much if the cells don't have enough energy to use those nutrients. And the rate limiting molecule on cellular energy is creatine.

So, okay, I have a million questions. Let me go back to. Is there anyone who shouldn't take creatine? Because it sounds like kind of a broad brushstroke that most people could benefit from it. So who shouldn't take it?

I'm going to give what sounds like probably a biased answer, but I'm not aware of anybody who shouldn't take creatine because the body needs creatine every day. As I said, the body makes creatine, but it needs an exogenous source of creatine in order to have all of the cells supported nutritionally at a level that they're supposed to be. So there's no one who really can do without creatine. In fact, people who, especially early in life are missing creatine, there can be retardation or mental compromise, mental prowess, compromise in the youth or the children if they don't get enough creatine. It's very important for brain, brain development. I'm really not aware of anybody who can successfully live or optimally live without creatine.

Okay, and then you mentioned that when you take the monohydrate form of creatine that people can experience water retention and bloat and some GI distress. Does the hcl, the hydrochloride form of the creatine, have that side effect also?

No, that's really one of its hallmark characteristics. The molecule is highly bioavailable, which means you can take much smaller doses. It doesn't stress the body at all in terms of trying to flush and excrete the unused portion. Good study out of the Journal of Pharmaceutics back in 2018 demonstrated that in a normal recommended dose of creatine monohydrate, only about 15% of that gets into the bloodstream and the rest is just excreted. And the body does struggle, oftentimes causing those side effects as it tries to get rid of what it can't use. The hydrochloride much more efficient in terms of its uptake. The plasma uptake is markedly improved over the older conjugation of creatine. When we discovered creatine hydrochloride and put it through some early research, those were some of the characteristics that we were most impressed with. Its solubility, bioavailability, stability and its characteristic of not causing side effects.

Yeah, I tried the monohydrate version and was not a fan, shall we say? I was like, oh, I can't work if I'm going to take this. This is not cool. So I took it twice maybe, and I think it was once because I was like, this doesn't. This side effect did not work for me. So yeah, that was okay. So you mention, I may have missed it, you mentioned that the uptake of the monohydrate is about 15% in the plasma. Did I miss what's the uptake of the hydrochloride version?

Yeah, much closer to 80%.

Holy smokes. Okay, that's a lot more efficient. And then what's the dosing for the monohydrate versus the hydrochloride?

I'll speak to monohydrate first. And there's a few different levels of dosing that are recommended on a day to day basis. Kind of the standard dose that most people hear about taking is 5 grams or 5,000 milligrams. They pause there for a second and say, okay, if you remember what I said earlier, that the body needs about a gram or a gram and a half a day. Well, if you need a gram or a gram and a half, why would you take 5 grams? Well, that's because not much of that 5 grams gets into the system. A 5 gram dose, probably 6 or 700 milligrams actually gets in. So 5,000 milligrams is kind of the standard dose of creatine monohydrate. However, they're saying for women and menopausal stages or people who want cognitive benefits, creatine feeding the brain more, then you're in the 10 to 20 gram dose range. If you're of the monohydrate of the monohydrate, that's correct. So 10,000 to 20,000 milligrams. The NIH did a study on Huntington's disease, which is like Alzheimer's on steroids, and those doses were in the 20 to 40 gram range to try to get some positive clinical outcomes. That study failed because the patients couldn't tolerate the dosing. They couldn't take that much in a sustainable way. You got kind of 5 grams standard recommended 10 to 20 for cognitive benefits being touted with a monohydrate. Conversely, or in comparative comparison, the creatine hydrochloride is a standard dose of about 750 milligrams a day just for optimal health. So 0.75 grams versus 5 grams. Then if you're doing some pretty significant strenuous exercise, it's 750 milligrams per 100 pounds of body weight about 30 to 60 minutes before you have that strenuous exercise. So 750 milligrams usually after meals or after a meal just once a day for general health, 750 per hundred pounds of body weight for extraordinary fitness or strenuous exercise. And then if you are trying to get the cognitive benefits, especially in a neurodegenerative case, then you can take somewhere in the the 750 times two. So a couple of those two to three times a day to support optimal brain health. Dr. Ostajic's study that's coming out showed pretty significant neuron energy increases just with the 750 milligrams a day. But when the brain is under duress from neurodegeneration, early onset dementia, any of those things, then the higher doses, a couple of doses, two to three times a day, are what's recommended in order to have some positive clinical outcomes. And I'll speak to that specifically. In comparison to that NIH study on Huntington's that failed. We have doctors, specifically Dr. Chris Tuckfield out of Australia, who is dosing his Huntington's patients under the regimen that I just spoke of. Basically two 750 milligram capsules or doses three times a day. And he has Huntington's patients that are validated allele pair, you know, genetically confirmed Huntington's patients who have not had any disease manifestation or symptom progression or anything for over 10 years. Which is amazing because Huntington's from diagnosis usually kills in three to five years. And so the positive therapeutic outcomes that some of these physicians are finding in these neurodegenerative cases, with the higher doses of creatine monohydrate still well below the 20 to 40 grams that Monohydrate has previously suggested, much more tolerable, still avoiding the side effects. It's a more sustainable medical intervention for those sorts of situations. But.

So the HCL doesn't have the side effect of the GI disturbance or distress?

No. Yeah, none.

Okay. And then so basically what you're saying is the HCL form, you don't even get to 5 grams because 750 times 2 is 1500, times 3 is 4500. So you're not even. You're not anywhere near the dosing, but you're at 80% more effectiveness. Yeah, the dose is so much lower.

Yeah. With a lower dose, you can deliver more creatine to the cells for muscles, for strength, endurance, and recovery, for the brain, for clarity, for staving off any brain fog. Brain fog associated with menopause, brain fog associated with jet lag or a bad night's sleep. Usually people, if they know they're going to take, say, an international flight, you can keep your head pretty clear by taking two to three doses of creatine before the flight, after the flight, and you will greatly reduce or eliminate the jet lag experiences just because you're feeding the brain better energy and it has the opportunity to recover even if you haven't slept as much as you should.

Okay, so let's talk about peri and menopausal women, because that's the. We have a lot of people we've kind of like from 25 to 65 and 75 is who listens. And the women, look, men, I know they care, but women really care. We are judged on how we look. So if a woman is taking creatine versus not taking creatine, what can she expect to see in her response to exercise? Because that's what women care about. I exercise five days a week, and I don't look like I exercise at all.

That's the.

That's the thing that I get from my patients. So what can they expect to see if they don't change anything but layering on creatine?

Yeah, I'll answer that in two parts, both in what can they see? But then first, what can they feel? And what I oftentimes suggest, male or female. When they want to know, how quickly will I recognize the effects of this? I let them Know you should recognize the effects after one dose and that is okay, 30 to 60 minutes before you do strenuous exercise or you engage in that, take an exercise dose, which as I said was 750 milligrams per hundred pounds of body weight. Take that dosing, do a workout that you know will make you hurt, you know, that delayed onset muscle soreness, doms, and then see how you feel the next day or two. You either won't hurt or you'll hurt a lot less. That's how quickly an effective, efficient dose of creatine, creatine hydrochloride can help and affect and support the system. Yes. Let's call upon the young lady in pink.

I love it. When I was in Barcelona and someone was like, miss, I'm like, oh, I love you. I'll buy whatever you want. You know, we were shopping and someone said, miss, I'm like, I'm a ma', am, technically. But anyway, okay, so you just called me young lady. Thanks, Mark. We're going to air this on repeat. So wouldn't you as a user think to yourself, oh, I just really probably didn't have that hard of a workout. If I don't hurt, I go to this trainer on weekend. I call him Evil Chris because I hurt. Three, four days later, I'm still like, oh, I'm sore. So you're saying that when I work out with Evil Chris, that I may not have the same level of dysfunction and pain and discomfort as when I don't use the. If I didn't use the creatine.

That's right. You will start referring to him as Angel Chris.

Oh, no, I like Evil Chris. I like that nickname for him. I call him Evil Chris. That's what I call him.

I would say that most people know what types of workouts make them hurt. You should take a dose, 750 per 100 pounds of body weight, and tell Evil Chris, all right, I'm ready, bring it on. And then see how you feel two, three days later, whatever.

So you should notice a difference after one use in your recovery. What about, does it have impact on muscle size, muscle definition, muscle strength? Anything in that realm that people could go, oh, I was able to add two and a half to five pounds to my workout and not have pain. Is there anything like that?

That's part B or the second part of my answer. The first was how you feel. The next is what you see. And typically when people are engaged in strenuous exercise using creatine hydrochloride, and particularly what we've seen in the data that we've amassed is on our concrete, which is concentrated creatine. Concrete. That concrete creatine HCl version is that they have the decreased soreness which allows them to to work out more frequently. So if you're hurting, it's rare that you get back into the gym until you don't hurt. So if you can go back into the gym a day, two days, whatever, later, then you end up developing more strength, you're burning more calories from those workouts that you're able to do because you'll have endurance during a shift and you'll have recovery between the shifts of working or the reps or the sets. And that improved intra workout recovery and that improved intra workout endurance does burn more calories and build more strength. And so what you'll typically see after two to three weeks is demonstrable increase in strength, being able to add weights and being able to lift or do more or do more reps. And you will see more definition come about because with that increased strenuous exercise and burning more calories, as long as you're not eating more, if you keep your diet the same, then you're able to typically see some pounds drop. Now, if you're building muscle, muscle weighs more than fat. So your weight may not change a whole lot, but you should within. If you notice increased strength in two to three weeks, you should notice increased definition in certainly three to four weeks. We've had female powerlifters who were lifting. And normally in that world, if you want to lift more weights, you have to gain more weight. You go up in a weight class to be able to lift more. And we have had women powerlifters who have cut weight and lifted more, which both the US Powerlifting Federation and the International Powerlifting Federation said that's a sign of steroid use. You're juicing. And so they would start testing them because they didn't believe that they were clean. And in fact, no, they just simply were using copious amounts of concrete, creatine, hydrochloride, having better workouts, building more strength, but losing weight and able to drop a weight class so you feel better in terms of the recovery. And you should see in two to four weeks increased strength and then increased definition.

That's very cool. Now, I have a weird question for you, Marc, because most women don't fall closely into the clear weight definitions that you've set, right? Like most women are not £100 and they're not £200. They're somewhere in between. 100 and 200 for a lot of them. So if you're trying to dose for muscle growth and strength, are you under. Should you go to 1500? Because it's way over. If, say, you're 130 pounds, that's overdosing technically, right? Is there a problem with overdosing?

There isn't, because you'll simply. Your body will use that other creatine, the excess creatine, or it will store it or it will excrete it. And the body does a great job regulating that. So you may have, say you have a little bit excreted and you've wasted a little, but you're confident that you have saturated your muscles, your neurons, your T cells, everything with the creatine that is necessary for you to not only perform and exercise well, but also to be as healthy as you can. We haven't talked about it much yet, but at some point, I'll talk a little bit about the immune system and how important creatine is for that, because it's foundationally key for keeping us healthy from a T cell and an offending cell standpoint.

Let's talk about that. So what does it do for the immune system?

What a great segue. It's interesting. There was a researcher at UCLA. I shouldn't say was. Is a researcher at UCLA, Dr. Lily Yang, who put forth a report about creatine and T cells. And when I read it, I was like, yes, that's exactly what I have thought and proposed for about 30 years. And that is that cancer is not a disease that you catch. It's a disease of the immune system. We all have aberrant cells in our body every day. Blast cells, carcinoma cells, things that, you know, you're creating billions of cells a day, and some of them are a little wonky, and the body is used to that. And our T cells just go and whack, eliminate, neutralize the cells that aren't quite what they should be. It does the same thing if it recognizes a virus or a bacteria or whatever. And what Dr. Yang showed was that the first thing that a T cell does when it sees one of these bad cells is it armors up with more creatine receptors because the T cells are driven. Their energy is driven by creatine. And what she demonstrated was that if a T cell goes up against a cancer cell, Other research has shown the same thing for virus cells like Covid, sars, mers, et cetera. And if you give it enough creatine, if it has enough creatine, to fill all those creatine receptors and go in fully loaded for battle. The T cells win every time, but they'll still go into battle even if you starve them of creatine or they don't have enough and they'll still fight as much as they can. However, they become fatigued and sometimes the invading cells or the bad cells are able to overwhelm the T cell and those cells then get the opportunity to promulgate, procreate, form into a tumor, do whatever the case is. But a T cell when given enough creatine is designed to beautifully just with incredible biochemistry choreography keep us healthy in any circumstance. I was exposed just case study of one. I was exposed countless times to people with raging COVID 19 sickness. I had high antibody levels. I used to donate convalescent plasma for the Red Cross to for people that were sick and when they would give them antibody positive blood, they would get better right away. I was exposed all the time. I took significant levels of creatine, basically a double dose a day all through Covid and never got sick. Never once had any of the symptoms, even though I had the high antibodies which proved that I had been exposed. And I had them for over a year which showed that I had been repeatedly exposed. So the exhaustion of T cells is real. But if you give them energy, they will keep us healthy.

All right, I want to spend a moment recapping to make sure I got it all. Because if I didn't get it, the listeners didn't get it. The HCl hydrochloride form is more easily absorbed significantly, you know, to a. What is that, 5x or 6x? Yeah, almost 6, 5 and a half x compared to the monohydrate form. You can take less of it. If you're building, you can take a baseline of 750mg per day of the hydrochloride form. Unless you're for just baseline health. And then if you're trying to build and grow, you want to take 750 per 100 pounds of body weight an hour before your workout in addition to your maintenance dosing. Am I okay so far?

Absolutely.

There's everybody who can take it. It doesn't sound like there's any contraindications. There's no side effects that are unpleasant, but you can notice a side effect in improved cognitive function, immune. Immune support and anti aging as well as muscle function and recovery.

Yeah, that's correct.

Did I miss anything?

No. Great summary.

Okay, is there anything I didn't ask you that I should Ask you.

Let's see some of the myths about creatine. I'll just quickly run down and say that as you've observed, it's not just for guys. It used to be just gym bros, bodybuilders, elite athletes. Nowadays it's being recognized as ubiquitous. It's for everyone because everyone needs doesn't cause hair loss. There are some people who think that it causes hair loss. It doesn't hurt the kidneys. Creatinine, as we talked about, is a marker, but creatine itself does not hurt the kidneys. The kidneys need creatine to function optimally. You've already stated it a couple times. Yes. The HCL version doesn't cause bloat or water retention or puffiness and things. And just that it's great for women. I think probably that's covering most of the main interest levels or interest points of people with creatine these days. It's interesting that you talk about the show being listened to or watched a lot by women. We used to have probably an 80, 20 population of consumers, male versus female. Now it's much closer, moving much closer to 50, 50, because seven out of every 10 new consumers by our data are women. So they're understanding that it's really helpful for them, not just if they're fitness enthusiasts, but also if they're looking for, you know, clear mindedness, strong immune systems, strong heart, everything associated with that.

This is great. Where can people find out more about you? And we'll put this all in the show notes by the way.

Sure, absolutely. Probably the easiest is to go to the website con-crete.com and it's C O n C R E T no E on the end of concrete because it's concentrated creatine.

It's not the island, it's the island.

That's right. That's right. Just cret c o n-c r e t.com and there's a lot of information there. There's links to studies and really everything that we've talked about with regard to health indications or medical circumstances. There are really good studies that have been emerging about creatine and its positive support for, for longevity, for disease intervention and other support for our overall well being.

This is great. Mark, thanks for being here.

Really absolutely honored. Appreciate it. Thank you.

My pleasure. And to listeners, thanks for joining us for another episode of the Feel Freakin Amazing podcast. Talk to you soon. Sam.