The Ageless and Awesome Podcast

Sold Out Everywhere: The Supplement Flying Off Shelves for Good Reason

• Susie Garden • Episode 303

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Ever wondered why creatine suddenly became the supplement everyone's talking about? After attempting to order some last week, I discovered all my distributors were completely sold out – and for good reason. This once-athlete-focused supplement is transforming how women navigate perimenopause and menopause.

Creatine, an amino acid naturally found in protein-rich foods, does far more than build muscle. While 95% of it resides in your muscles, the 5% in your brain plays a crucial role in cognitive function. Research shows that creatine supplementation may significantly improve memory (especially after those menopause-related sleepless nights), enhance cognitive processing, combat age-related mental decline, and even boost mood faster than antidepressants. For women struggling with hormonal brain fog and mood swings, this represents a simple yet powerful intervention.

Beyond brain benefits, creatine works wonders for preserving muscle mass and bone density during hormonal transitions. Many women notice their muscle definition disappearing in perimenopause despite maintaining their exercise routines – I certainly did! Studies confirm that women combining resistance training with creatine supplementation experience improved bone density and muscle performance. This isn't just about looking toned; it's about maintaining metabolism, preventing falls, and ensuring you can continue hiking, traveling, and living actively for decades to come. Taking just 5 grams daily with food containing carbohydrates can help maximize your stores and provide these remarkable benefits. If you've been curious about this trending supplement, this episode explains exactly why it's worth considering as part of your menopause wellness toolkit.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Susie Garden and this is the Ageless and Awesome podcast. I'm an age-defying naturopath and clinical nutritionist and I'm here to bust myths around women's health and aging so that you can be ageless and awesome in your 40s, 50s and beyond. The Ageless and Awesome podcast is dedicated to helping women through perimenopause and menopause with great health, a positive mindset and outrageous confidence. Hit, subscribe or follow now and let's get started. Hello, gorgeous one, and welcome to this week's episode of the Ageless and Awesome podcast. Today's podcast is kind of a mix of some new information and I'm also going to rerun part of a podcast I did late last year on creatine.

Speaker 1:

Creatine has become one of the hottest supplements this year and I tried to do an order last week at all of my distributors. I use a number All of my distributors are out of stock of creatine and it is just everywhere in terms of people talking about it on social media. The benefits of it for women in peri and post-menopause are numerous in peri and post-menopause are numerous and a lot of women are taking it and finding that, yeah, they're feeling so much better on it. Their muscles are happier, their brains are happier. So I thought I've just listened to that episode I did last year and a lot of it is still very, very relevant. So I wanted to replay that for you because I get so many questions still every week from clients about it and clearly, with it just running off the shelves, it is really really topical at the moment. So I'm going to start that play of that episode and also just wanted to put a little disclaimer here. Obviously, this is not individualized advice, so if you're thinking about taking a supplement like creatine more long-term, you may want to speak to your healthcare practitioner about that and about what dose is right for you. So I just thought I'd put that out there. This is general information for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you are one of my clients listening to this and you're interested in creatine, please feel free to email me, message me, and we can have a conversation about it, perhaps at your next appointment. All right, I hope you enjoy this episode.

Speaker 1:

So creatine is an amino acid, so it's a building block of protein and you get it from food, mainly the higher protein foods such as meat, seafood, that kind of thing and when I was more of a general nutritionist, creatine really was something I used with athletes and people that wanted to improve their muscle mass, their sports performance, and it's taken in supplemental form for those people. So I was kind of used to using it in that context, not so much in our perimenopausal and menopausal women. But what I have found since exploring creatine a little bit more is that it might actually be quite valuable to take as a supplement daily, whether or not you're actually a bodybuilder or someone like that. But I know for me personally, when I entered into perimenopause, I really noticed my muscle dropping, my muscle mass dropping, and you know, even though the exercise I was doing was the same, it was really hard to actually grow muscle. And I remember a PT saying to me when I was in my early 40s that you know, once you get over 40, it's very, very difficult to build muscle. I've since learned that it's actually not 100% true. You can still absolutely build muscle. It is a little bit more challenging. You do have to work hard at it. You have to get the nutrition right as well as doing the lifting of the heavy things with resistance training, but it is possible. But creatine seems to be able to help. It's certainly in terms of muscle energy and therefore, you know, being able to lift heavy things in the gym. So if you're looking at creatine itself, where it is in the body, about 95% of it is in your muscles and about 5% of it is in your brain and that, even though it's only 5%, that's actually really important because when you're looking at the research around creatine, it seems to be some additional benefits in terms of brain health.

Speaker 1:

So let's get into it. Let's start with what it actually does in the body. So, as I've mentioned, it does help with your muscles and it serves as an energy reserve in the body, okay, and it gives you more energy in your muscles. It helps to create more. Let's take the simple route helps to create more ATP. So if you've done biology at school back in the day, you probably have heard of ATP before. That's our energy in our cells. That's what we use for energy in our cells. So taking creatine helps to create more ATP, which is our energy in our cells. And what creatine can be useful when we're looking in perimenopausal and menopausal women is that studies have shown that women who are doing a consistent resistance training program and then add in creatine supplementation, these studies have shown an increase in bone density, which is super important muscle mass and performance. When this creatine supplementation is added, you do have to get the diet right and you do have to get the resistance training happening as well.

Speaker 1:

This is not just a magic kind of potion that's going to suddenly have you looking like Popeye, but I reckon when we get to this sort of stage of life, any incremental benefit is going to be worth it, particularly when we're looking at bone health as well, and particularly I know from my own experience of losing muscle mass anything that I can take that's going to help get that back. I'm going to do it because it just it's so good. It's not just about what you look like in terms of getting some muscle definition, although that's really nice. The more muscle mass you have, the more energy you burn at rest, so it's very important when we're looking at healthy weight management. It's also fantastic for making sure that, as we get older, that our mobility stays at the level that we want it to stay.

Speaker 1:

I don't know about you, but certainly, as I'm getting into my 50s and, I'm sure, my 60s, 70s and beyond, I still want to do fun things. I want to go hiking, I want to go traveling, I want to be able to lift my luggage. I want to be able to do my reformer and do my yoga and all the things I really enjoy in life, and if I lose my muscle mass it's going to make it increasingly difficult. Also, as we know, as we get older, with that mobility kind of reduction, reduction in muscle mass makes us more inclined for injury and falling that kind of thing. I don't want to be falling over and breaking a hip. As a nurse when I worked in a hospital, I saw so many older women doing that falling over, breaking a hip, ending up in hospital and then complications happen. It's really not. It's kind of it can be a very slippery slope if that happens. So keeping that muscle mass and our bones healthy super important.

Speaker 1:

And then, with creatine, if we have this extra benefit of an increase in brain function because, remember I said, 5% of creatine is actually in the brain and there have been some studies that have shown that taking creatine may actually improve brain function in older women, especially if you're not getting enough sleep, which for many of us in peri and postmenopause sleep is a massive issue and what these studies showed? That there was an improvement in memory, particularly after sleep deprivation. So often we have something that we call brain fog, and often one of the signs of brain fog is an inability to remember people's names, inability to remember words. You get kind of a little bit lost in a sentence and can't kind of remember how to finish the sentence. It can also enhance cognition and processing, so it helps you think more clearly, helps you think more quickly and also the studies have shown it can combat age-related cognitive decline, so it can help you, as you get older, maintain your mental kind of acuity or sharpness. Another study showed that if you're taking creatine supplements it can help with tasks that require quick thinking, and it didn't even have to be older people. One of the studies was young adults either on creatine or a placebo for six weeks, and people that were on the creatine scored higher on tests of intelligence and working memory. So I don't know about you, but if I can do stuff that's going to make me a little bit smarter, I'm going to do that, and particularly because creatine is just a really easy supplement to take.

Speaker 1:

Another benefit of taking it is improved mood. We know, obviously, that as our estrogen and our progesterone drops, we have lots of estrogen and progesterone receptors in our brains, our progesterone drops, we have lots of estrogen and progesterone receptors in our brains and when those hormones drop then that can really impact our mood, our ability to handle stress. There's perimenopausal anxiety, perimenopausal depression, and studies have shown that taking creatine might help actually improve mood, might reduce depression symptoms, which is pretty cool and also it could. Some research has shown that the creatine could even treat mood issues faster than antidepressants. So you know, we know with antidepressants they take around four to five weeks to work. So often with many medications actually it can take time to work. With creatine potentially feel better much quickly. So that might be something to think about, particularly if you do have mood issues it's not just all about muscles. If you do have issues with your mood, particularly low mood, then just taking some creatine might be something really easy and effective to help you.

Speaker 1:

Now, how do you take creatine, how much to take? Because generally when you buy creatine it's just in a bag and you may not know how much to take. In the studies, generally speaking, they're using five grams and usually that's I know. For me I'm taking just a bit of a teaspoon, maybe just a little bit more than a teaspoon. I'm putting it in. You can put it in yogurt. You can put it in. I put it in my smoothies, that kind of thing. Just put it in some fluid and have it.

Speaker 1:

Some of the sources that I read about creatine says that you can actually load it. So what that means is you take a higher dose for a short period of time to really bring up the stores in your muscles and in your brain. So the recommended loading dose is 20 to 25 grams of creatine every day for just like five to seven days, and that can really rapidly increase your stores and then you drop it back down to five grams a day for maintenance. Now I didn't bother doing a loading dose because, again, research has shown that you can just take the five grams a day and you will maximize your stores of creatine. Might take a little bit longer, but I didn't feel like doing the loading of it. So you definitely don't have to. But I think that's probably about all I want to say about creatine.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, this is general advice. It's not taking into account any of your personal circumstances. So if you're not sure whether you know if you have medical conditions, if you're on medications, you may want to chat with a healthcare practitioner about whether or not creatine creatine is something that's suitable for you. Yeah, I just always like to kind of put that out there. Just don't go and smash the creatine, just in case it's not right for you. But, as I said, you're getting it in your diet anyway, but it is good if you are in that perimenopausal or menopausal stage that you might want to just increase it a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Actually, there is one more thing I did want to say in terms of your timing. It used to be that we thought that you needed to take creatine pre kind of workout or immediately post workout, and you can do that. But in this context that we're talking about in peri and post-menopause, you can just take it as a daily supplement. You just need to take it in the presence of carbs, so like, that's why putting it in some yogurt, putting it in some like a smoothie, that kind of thing, any kind of food really, um, is going to be helpful for its absorption. But yeah, I that's something that I'm doing that you may want to consider. So I hope that's been helpful.

Speaker 1:

Uh, if you have any questions, please let me know. Otherwise I will see you next week on the pod. Thanks so much for joining me on the ageless and awesome podcast. If you liked this episode, please make sure you click the little plus button if you're on Apple Podcasts, or the follow button if you're on Spotify, so that you get each new episode delivered to you every single week. If you feel like writing me a five-star review, you would absolutely make my day. If you found this episode resonated with you, head over to my Instagram and DM me at theperimenopausepath. I would love to connect with you. Head over to my Instagram and DM me at theperimenopausepath. I would love to connect with you.

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Susie Garden

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