Creatine Myths: Hair Loss, Bloating, Dosing, and More (Episode 117)

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Time Stamps, Sources, and Links

Intro (0:00)

What’s on your mind/bright spots: Love Island (3:23)

Recommendations and plugs (8:30)

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Creatine Introduction (10:49)

• Recent research spotlight on creatine and muscle growth

History of Creatine (17:56)

• 1912 study establishing that dietary creatine increases muscle concentrations
• 1926 frog study discovering phosphocreatine (origin of “phosphagen”)
• 1927 study specifically identifying phosphocreatine for what it was

Creatine and hair loss introduction (38:39)

Background information on DHT (40:48)

• DHT basics

Discussion of the study everyone cites to support the idea that creatine causes hair loss (44:35)

• The creatine/DHT study
• DHT reference range
• Intraindividual variability in DHT levels

 The key thing everyone misses when discussing the creatine/DHT study: serum DHT is irrelevant to the physiology of androgenic alopecia (54:21)

• General review article –  Androgens and androgen receptor action in skin and hair follicles

Potential physiological explanations for increased scalp DHT production and hair loss (1:04:09)

• Scalp blood flow with androgenic alopecia
• Interesting (but probably wrong) gravity-related hypothesis
• Different effects of DHT in different hair follicles (specially, see the section heading “Hormones and Androgenetic Alopecia”)
• Hypothesis related to scalp tension
• Botox as a treatment for androgenic alopecia
• Obesity/metabolic syndrome and androgenic alopecia: One, two, three
• Heritability of androgenic alopecia

Known effects of creatine on the actual causes of hair loss (1:29:40)

• Creatine/free testosterone studies linked here
• More reading on systemic vs. local DHT
• Supplemental DHT and lack of prostate growth

 Why do so many people think that creatine causes hair loss in the first place? (1:38:00)

• Men’s Health article
• Women’s Health article
• Sports Illustrated article
• Hims article
• NYTimes article
• Jose Antonio article
• General info about creatine intake and effects

 How creatine actually works to increase muscle growth (1:48:31)

• Chilibeck review

The idea that creatine doesn’t actually cause bloating (and only causes fluid retention in the muscles) is probably incorrect (2:04:01)

• Typical creatine concentrations

Myth related to creatine dosing: the typical recommendation of 5g/day is not enough creatine for serious lifters (2:15:34)

• Hultman study on creatine dosing
• Creatinine excretion ranges
• Study on super jacked people

Question 1: does creatine raise the limits of muscularity that you can achieve, or does it just lead to slightly faster progress toward the same limit? (2:38:01)

Question 2: is it worth experimenting with other forms of creatine? (2:40:28)

Question 3: do caffeine and creatine have inhibitory effects on each other? (2:46:51)

• There is a creatine and caffeine section in the SBS creatine guide. 
• More recent MASS article on the topic (for MASS subscribers) 

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