It has an especially noticeable effect if you're a vegetarian. I'm a lifelong vegetarian, and high doses of it for me are a crazy cognitive enhancer.

▲

mpalczewski a day ago | parent | next [-]

That's because creatine is missing in vegetarian diets. It is found in beef. Something to consider if you are thinking about going vegetarian.

▲

AlexErrant a day ago | parent [-]

There's 0.5 g of creatine per 4 ounces of red meat.

That's pretty insignificant. Does anyone really wanna eat 2.5lbs of beef every day for the usual dose of 5g?

▲

djmips 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Creatine is not available from plants and the 0.5 g is not insignficant for normal health. The 5 grams you're quoting is generally for people who supplement for athletic performance.

Creatine is created within the body so a vegetarian eating plant precursors can help create their own baseline supply.

▲

AlexErrant 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> 0.5 g is not insignficant for normal health

A non-aggressive, curious question: can you give a citation for the "significant" health benefits of 0.5g creatine? That seems like quite a claim. (I'm reading "not insignificant" as "significant", perhaps a step too far?)

Note that there have also been brain benefits from creatine, but those have only been observed in ~20g/day studies (its not just athletic performance).

▲

djmips 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not making a claim for a significant health benefit from 0.5g of creatine I'm just countering your bald claim that it's insignficant - we are getting into word lawyer territory. But anyway to establish what I'm claiming, 0.5g of creatine, I feel, is a useful amount - the numbers you are fixated on are for athletes or neurotropic nerds.

"Although the human body produces a portion of its daily creatine needs, approximately 50 % must be obtained through the diet – predominantly from animal-based foods like red meat and fish"

So in that context, a vegetarian can benefit from small amounts of supplementation if they aren't getting it in their diet.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12722096/

▲

AlexErrant 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Ah. I guess the term we're looking for is "physiologically meaningful"; I wasn't talking about "statistical significance". Something can be statistically significant but have a clinically worthless effect size.

FYI the standard null hypothesis is that differences are not significant until shown otherwise. E.g. no doctor will prescribe 50mg metformin to a prediabetic even if it might have an effect; it will be physiologically meaningless.

> the numbers you are fixated on are for athletes or neurotropic nerds

If you have other numbers/studies to back "0.5g of creatine, I feel, is a useful amount", then I'm willing to "fixate" on those numbers.

	▲	djmips 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ok.

▲

anon48293 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, but I probably shouldn’t.

▲

nsbk a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh I’ve been mostly plant based for years, maybe that helps explaining the difference