044: Creatine in MENOPAUSE: What You Need To Know

Welcome back to The Strong Bones Coach Podcast with Carly! 

In this episode, we dive into the benefits and considerations of creatine supplementation, especially during menopause. 

If you’ve seen your teens and grown up kids taking creatine and wondered what this is, or if you’re curious about how it might support your health, this episode is for you.

Join Carly as she dispels myths about creatine, explains how it works in the body, and explores how it can support muscle preservation, bone health, and cognitive function during menopause. 

Learn practical tips on how to take creatine and important considerations before starting supplementation.

Key Questions Covered:

• What is creatine and how does it work in the body?
• Why might women consider creatine supplementation during menopause?
• What are the benefits of creatine for muscle mass, bone health, and cognitive function?
• How should you take creatine, and what should you consider before starting?

Reference: Creatine Supplementation in Women's Health: A Lifespan Perspective. Nutrients. LINK

Thanks for listening to the Strong Bones Coach Podcast

If you'd like to get in touch to ask a question about today's episode or to find out how you can get support from my coaching, reach out on the following links:

hello@carlykillencoaching.com

https://www.instagram.com/thestrongbonescoach

Thanks for listening to The Strong Bones Coach Podcast!

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: hello@carlykillencoaching.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

Ready to take your strength to the next level? Start building a stronger body and healthier bones with my Strong Bones Starter Kit—your step-by-step guide to safe and effective strength training at home.
👉 Click here to learn more and access today

🌟 Stay connected and inspired with daily wellness tips on Instagram @thestrongbonescoach.
🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at hello@carlykillencoaching.com.

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

0:37

Hello and welcome back to the Strong Bones Coach podcast with me your host Carly Killen and today we are diving into a topic that comes up a lot and it is a hot topic again in my world anyway, so we have many ladies asking me questions about creatine, what it is, is it a supplement, is it steroid? And many of these questions have been in relation to menopause. Now, if you have a son or a daughter, although the questions I've had have come mostly from women with sons, but if you have perhaps a teenage to grown up child, and you've noticed they're taking a powder, they've started going to the gym, they're putting something in their drinks, and wondered, what is this stuff they're adding to their drinks? and starting to wonder, oh, is it steroids? What are they getting into? Now, don't worry. I'm here to reassure you that if this powder they are adding to the drinks is creatine, you have nothing to worry about. In fact, you may benefit from perhaps dipping into their supply as well. So if you are curious about what creatine is, how it might support you and your health, then this episode is for you. I'm here to dispel some myths and help you understand how creatine can be a beneficial supplement for many women. Especially during menopause. So let's dive in. So what is creatine? Let me help you understand if you've never heard of it, or perhaps it's a word you've heard in some distant conversation, but never really had the time to look into it. So creatine is very much growing in conversation. I've seen A few posts in the past, it's something I've shared on my social media, and possibly about a year ago, so it's definitely time to revisit. But it's coming up in conversations as well, like I said. So let's firstly clear up this common misconception. Creatine is not a steroid. It is actually a naturally occurring compound that is made in the body, mostly in the liver, kidneys, pancreas, and it's made out of something called amino acids, which, if you remember back to biology days, or perhaps you're a little bit more into the science, Amino acids are the smallest version of proteins, very much the building blocks that make proteins up. So the ones mostly responsible for creatine are arginine, glycine, methionine, if you like to know the names. And creatine itself plays a crucial role in energy metabolism, particularly in supplying rapid energy for muscles. during high intensity activities, especially when our muscles are contracting, doing activities such as lifting weights, for example. So if you're wondering whether we really do need to supplement with creatine, let me shed some light here. So yes, there are natural sources of creatine that we can access through our diet, through food. And my approach usually is to take the food first approach. So you can get creatine through dietary sources like red meat, fish, poultry, however, to fully saturate your muscles and your body with as much creatine as it can hold to get the maximum benefits. We would have to go through quite a lot of these foods, several kilograms every day, in fact. So even if you could eat that, that gets pretty costly, doesn't it? Perhaps not even the most environmentally friendly. So it can be challenging to truly get enough creatine to really reap the benefits. Especially if you do prefer to follow more of a plant based diet as well, as much of the creatine is from animal sources. So as a result of this, many people do opt to supplement creatine, specifically with creatine monohydrate being the best tolerated and absorbed version. And this is so that we can achieve our desired benefits in a convenient and tolerable way of doing so. So you can get creatine supplements in different forms. They can be creatine monohydrate in tablet form. It can be in powders, which are quite convenient to take and They're used to top up the creatine stores that are already in the body. So we're not really adding anything that isn't already there. We're simply maximizing it to reap as much benefit as possible. So what are these benefits to creatine that I'm talking about? Let's dive into the specific benefits of creatine, especially in relation to menopause. Now the first thing we want to focus on, as is very much the focus of this podcast, is muscle strength and keeping hold of our muscle as we age as well. So creatine is very helpful in maintaining and increasing muscle mass, which can decline with age as we notice those decreases in oestrogen and testosterone. And the study I'm using to support this today shows that Creatine supplementation, particularly combined with resistance training, which is your strength training, can significantly improve our muscle strength and performance. And this can work by helping our body to recycle the energy that we use when we do things like lift weights that bit faster. So if we can recover a little bit faster, we need a little less rest. It means we can do a little bit more, which helps us to keep hold of that muscle. So for those of you that do like to read these studies, the study I'm talking about this week is called Creatin Supplementation in Women's Health, A Lifespan Perspective. So I will link that into the show notes so you can have a good read of that. Of course, I'm breaking this down for you in the podcast for those of you that prefer to listen. So let's dive into. The second reason why creatine may support you. So although we need to see more research in creatine and in women around bone health, there is a suggestion that creatine has that secondary benefit of helping to prevent osteoporosis, perhaps with the increased energy that leads to increased movements, or perhaps, as I mentioned before, that increased ability to Lift those extra weights, and of course, if we're conserving energy a little bit, we're able to recover better, there'll be less stress and impact on the body. potentially secondary benefits there, but because that benefit is there to bone health, it has to have a mention on here, doesn't it? Now this next one got me taking creatine. Before I was strength training as much as I do now. So I'd heard about the ability to lift weights a little bit better. I'd heard about preservation of muscle and I thought, yeah, that sounds okay. But this next benefit was the absolute clincher for me. After I heard this, I was taking it. And that is the benefit of cognitive support and energy levels. So I'm someone that really highly values my mental energy and my ability to have clarity of mind. So as soon as I heard that there's a potential to increase brain power through creatine, I was going to take it. So although the majority of creatine is stored in muscle tissue, about 95 percent or so, the brain also contains a small amount. And because creatine plays a role in brain energy metabolism, with certain cognitive functions, then this may also support you if you are experiencing changes in your cognitive function, you know, that brain fog during menopause and perimenopause. And of course, that crucial role of Creatine an energy production might help to alleviate that fatigue and give you that natural energy boost. Because after all, this is just something we're topping up that is naturally occurring within our body. Because as we know, as estrogen drops. It also drops in the brain, which causes our brain to need more glucose. It's using up energy that bit faster. So anything that can support at this stage is going to be beneficial. So all these benefits might sound quite promising. So how does it work? Well, as I mentioned, creatine is stored in the muscles as phosphocreatine, which helps us to produce ATP. So that is adenosine triphosphate for those of you that need a recap from school biology. And that is a primary energy carrier within our cells, a bit like Energy currency, if you want. So during high intensity exercises or any activities that require a quick burst of energy, this phosphocreatine is broken down to produce ADP, which means it loses the phosphate, to provide your muscles with the energy they need to perform. What creatine does is it gives it this extra PBAP, extra bit of power, which means it can create a whole energy cell again. That's my best explanation I can give you today. Perhaps I think my creatine needs a little bit of a top up. I need to go out and get some more. So of course, beyond its role in energy production, we have those benefits on the body. That increased muscle mass, I'm going to help you improve your workout performance, which over time is going to increase muscle mass. of course, this is also helped along by enhanced muscle recovery. So because creatine can also help to reduce the muscle cell damage and inflammation following exercise, there's less to recover from too. And as I've mentioned with the cognitive function, those Creatine levels that can increase in the brain give us the extra opportunity to improve our cognitive performance and support our mental health, which includes, um, support to our mood as well. Some of our mood changes during menopause and perimenopause don't just come from our neurotransmitters, although that is part of it, it's also down to the energy available to the brain. So if the energy is not available to the brain, that can leave us in a poor mood as well. So I'm often asked how to take creatine, that does it matter when we take it, how we take it. So there are generally two strategies which I'll talk you through, but ultimately what's important is what works for you. This is more of a long term supplement, it isn't just something you take for a day and it instantly works, it's all about the build up within your body. Different people have different tolerance levels, so there can be some stomach wiping, a little bit of water retention for some people, so it really is how you respond to it, which is why I work closely with my clients to help them understand how their body functions at baseline, so they can tell if they have a change, is it a positive change, is it an unwanted change, so we know that when we make an intervention, It's like starting something like Creatine, we can tell if there's a genuine benefit or if there are some little teething problems that can be sorted out through some troubleshooting. So please don't take these as word. I always help my clients tailor things to really suit what they need. So there are two ways that you can decide to start taking creatine. Now most people benefit from a dose of three to five grams of creatine per day, so we can take that as a daily consistent dose and it doesn't matter what time of day you take it because again it's that long term. It takes two to four weeks to truly get into your system with this method. So it does take a bit longer to saturate in the muscles, but if we're going to take this over time, then it doesn't really matter. Main thing that matters is remembering to take it. Because the impact is more of a long term one, not just a quick take a dose and you get the benefits straight away. For those of you concerned with perhaps getting creatine on board a little bit faster, you can try a loading phase, which is a dose of 20 grams of creatine divided into four doses over the day, over about five to seven days. And then you would go down to your maintenance dose of three to five grams per day, just like with the consistent daily dose. So there's a couple of ways you can go about it. The main thing is just creating a consistent habit. So if you want to reap the benefits of creatine, it's all about just making it part of your routine and taking a dose that is easy for you to tolerate. You may find you tolerate a little bit extra. And the There is some limited evidence that suggests some higher doses are needed for women versus men. But again, most people do well with the three to five grams. Of course, if you'd like me to have a closer look at how you do this, or how it can support you, just get in touch and hello at carlykillandcoaching. com and I will help you to figure out what's going to be best for you. And as I mentioned with that slightly higher dose for the brain benefits as cognitive supports, we may start with those 15 to 20 grams per day for three to seven days as a bit of a loading dose, and we may choose to maintain ourselves on a higher dose in the long term of creatine. So this would be a five to 10 grams each day to really get the brain benefits. Again, we want to make sure this is something you can tolerate and that you understand what those considerations might be. So before you do consider starting Creatine supplementation, there are a few things to consider. You might want to discuss with your doctor if you are starting a new supplement, especially if you have any underlying health conditions, perhaps any gastrointestinal issues, anything that you're under investigation for currently. You may wish to just let them know that you're considering taking creatine in case it has any impact on any current treatments or tests that you are having. Even though creatine is very widely used. research and has known to be one of the safest supplements available. I can't account for everything since this is just a podcast so please do take your own cares and do your own due diligence around this. So something else to consider assuming you're safe to take creatine, just to know that's because creatine encourages your muscles to retain water. It's important to stay hydrated because what happens in the first few days or weeks of taking creatine, it draws the water out of your blood into your muscles. So you can feel a bit dry. You can feel a bit dehydrated in those first few days. You may wish to choose to drink some extra water. Of course, creatine is not a magical solution. It's not going to encourage you to sprout muscles overnight. The differences are very subtle. It's really a long term thing. So you will want to combine creatine with a balanced diet and regular resistance training to really maximize these benefits. And I'm going to also cover off scale weight changes. I get asked this question very frequently. So does creatine cause you to gain weight? The answer is yes and no. It depends what you mean by weight. Now creatine, because it encourages extra retention of water, may bring about an increase in the weight on the scales. But this does not mean it is body fat storage. So in the answer to the question, does creatine cause body fat storage? That is an absolute no. But you may see your scale weights go up by perhaps one to two pounds. Now, if this does happen, please do not worry. I do a lot of work for my clients to try to move away from that attachment to scale weights through using that scale weight as a marker of self worth. But if you're not there yet. Do be gentle with yourself and don't worry. But if you notice that is the case for you, just know that this is not body fat gain. It may just need to be treated as a new baseline. So you may have one or two pounds additional to your scale weight. Just treat this as a new baseline. It's basically just your muscles holding some extra water. I promise. And of course, if you want extra support with this, if you want me to help hold you in this and support you as you navigate this, if you are someone that struggles to move away from the scales as that measure of your only progress, please do get in touch. I would love to help you move past this into a much more strong, vibrant and fulfilling life. So if you are interested in learning more about how to incorporate creatine into your routine and how this can benefit you, how to set up. Nutrition and lifestyle in a way that supports you and allows you to take the full benefit to creatine, then please do reach out to me at hello at CarlyKillenCoaching. com. And remember, creatine is not a miracle cure. It's so important to get those foundations in place, your nourishments, your movements, and your connection to self and others, before we start to look at those 1% ers. Creatine can be a fantastic addition to your routine, but It won't fix anything that is wrong with the foundations. So on that note, I invite you to have a look at what your foundations look like. How are you moving? How are you supporting yourself with your connection? How are you nourishing your body? And what do you need help with to enhance that? So i'll leave you with that for this week. i'll be back next week with another episode. So until then stay strong and take care