What if I told you there was a simple amino acid derived compound that was very inexpensive, extremely safe, that could totally enhance your performance in the gym that could improve muscle strength, recovery, explosivity in the gym with a small dose every day, and could also potentially improve your sleep, your mental performance, your memory, and even your bone density. It's not steroids, it's creatine. Everybody's been talking about creatine recently. So, in this video, I'm going to break it down for you. I'm going to tell you about dosing, what dose you should be taking of creatine. It's probably more than you think. I'm going to talk to you about safety. Does it cause hair loss? Is it bad for your kidneys? Will it cause your heart to explode? I'm going to talk to you about where you can find it in food versus supplementation. I'm going to talk to you about absorption, when to take creatine. I'm going to break down some of the best sources of creatine in your food. I'm going to talk to you about creatine monohydrate versus creatine HCL. Who should take which when. And at the end of this video, you're going to learn a ton about very simple, easily available, cheap compound that you should definitely be taking more of. Let's get into it. First things first, what is creatine? Creatine is an organic acid. It's a nitrogenous organic acid. It is derived from primarily three amino acids: glycine, arginine, and methionine. It's found only in muscle meat. There's no creatine in your lentils. There's no creatine in your soy. It's only in muscle meat. It's in chicken. It's in beef. It's in pork. It's in fish. And most of us need at least five grams a day to have optimal performance. We're going to talk more about dosing later, but when you eat creatine, it's stored in your muscles as phosphocreatine. That phosphate group ends up being a donor to an ADP molecule, a denosine diphosphate. It's an energy intermediate. It's a storage form of fast energy for your muscles. When ATP becomes ADP, creatine quickly donates a phosphate for that ADP, making it ATP. That's how you get fast explosive movements. That's why creatine helps with energy production in the muscles for strength and recovery and explosivity. And ATP is also necessary to run everything. your testicles, your ovaries, your lungs, your heart, your brain. So energy currency is how your body runs. And having more energy available, having more ATP available with a quick phosphocreatine system and topped up creatine stores is essential for optimal performance. So creatine is like a no-brainer, guys. Super beneficial. Occurs in food. Most of us don't get enough of it. There's been a lot of studies on creatine. Like hundreds, hundreds and hundreds. It's been studied in depression, found to have improvements in mood. It's even been studied to improve some forms of cancer progression, which is wild, but makes sense when you think about it, because cancer is probably a metabolic disease. If your mitochondria aren't functioning well, and the mitochondria are where you make ATP, that could have implications for cancer progression. Creatine's also been studied to improve cognition and memory in older adults, especially older adults who have cognitive decline, dementia, this sort of thing. Not surprisingly, creatine supplementation also improves sarcopenia. That's when you're skinny fat. You don't want that. Creatine also has benefits from a cardiovascular perspective. So like the benefits of creatine are really overlapping with the benefits of energy production. If your body makes more energy, you are a healthier, more vital human. And that leads to more fun in life. And of course, it has benefits in terms of all of these different disease processes, everything essentially. But what about safety? We'll talk about that one in a second. I got to finish this farmer's carry. So creatine's pretty darn safe, guys. I mean, people think creatine is bad for your kidneys. There's no real evidence of that. Honestly, creatine does raise creatinine, which is a marker for kidney dysfunction, but creatinine itself is not harmful to your body. And if you look at studies, there was a large meta analysis from 2018 that looked at over 21 studies that showed no significant impairments in kidney function with long-term creatine supplementation at five grams per day. So, the idea that creatine is harmful for your kidneys is just a fallacy. It's a super safe supplement. It's been studied for years and years and years. It's probably the single best studied supplement out there and also has incredibly powerful effects in your body. So, super safe. But what about hair loss? I know you guys are worried about this and I was too. So, let me break this one down for you. This is a big myth. It all started with a 2009 study. It was a small study and it found small increases in DHT, dihydrotestosterone in the participants, but they did not directly measure hair follicle growth. And so in recent times, in 2025, a study was repeated with 45 males aged 18 to 40. It was a randomized control trial comparing five grams of creatine per day versus five grams of malttodextrin as a placebo per day. And what did they find? non-significant increases in DHT, no changes in the DHT to testosterone ratio, and no significant changes in hair follicle growth. So now that we have a solid study on creatine and hair loss, we can pretty confidently say creatine does not lead to hair loss. In some small studies, like I said, creatine may increase DHT slightly, but DHT is not the whole story when it comes to hair loss. Hair loss is also linked to nutrient deficiencies. So, there are definitely threads on Reddit. These are anecdotal, but there are some interesting threads on Reddit of people reversing what is likely an autoimmune hair loss with a carnivore type diet, either giving back nutrients that the body needs like zinc or creatine, and removing foods that might be triggering an autoimmune condition leading to hair loss. So, the idea that creatine causes hair loss is simply a myth. And we now have a pretty darn good RCT that was done over a significant amount of time. I'll put a link here on the screen. So, don't worry about creatine and hair loss. This is really just a myth. All right. So, now we know that creatine is not linked with hair loss. It's not linked with kidney damage. Although, it's pretty funny cuz we were filming the video at the barber shop and the barber, his Cuban, is talking to me in Spanish and tells me he used to lift weights and he wants to take creatine again, but he's like, "It's not bad for my heart. It's not bad for my reneion, my kidneys, right? And I said, "No, no, there's no evidence." Anyway, so this is the misconceptions that people have. So, if it's not bad for your hair, right? It's not bad for your kidneys, how much should you take a day? This is actually pretty interesting. Listen to this, guys. So, I'm going to show you how much you should consider taking a day. We're going to start with some uh spring water in glass. So, I do not like tap water, obviously. Don't mix your creatine with fluoride. Don't mix your creatine with pesticides. Don't mix your creatine with pharmaceuticals from the tap. Get a good spring water or get a good filter. So, most of us are used to taking five grams of creatine per day. Boom. Looks like that. Okay. Now, five grams of creatine is great. It's the amount of creatine you'll find in around 2.2 pounds of meat. You'd have to eat about a kilogram of meat per day to get five grams of creatine naturally. And incidentally, the form of creatine that occurs naturally in meat is creatine monohydrate. Most people will take creatine monohydrate, it's the most widely studied form of creatine, and it is the most common form of creatine on the market. The lineage creatine is a creatine monohydrate. If you have GI issues with creatine monohydrate, consider creatine HCL. I'll talk about that a little later in the video, but most of us creatine monohydrate is totally fine. And I'm a huge fan of our lineage creatine because it's highly tested. is the purest creatine on the market. Super super pure, no contaminants, and we add a little bit of sea salt to help with absorption of the creatine. Five grams is what most of us are used to taking. Within a few weeks, five grams will saturate your muscles. That'll improve muscle performance. It'll improve lifting strength. It'll improve explosivity, speed potentially, and recovery. That's a great benefit to creatine. But there's more. And there's very interesting research that even more than five grams of creatine can be beneficial for humans. Check this out. If you go to 10 grams of creatine per day, boom, two scoops. 10 grams of creatine per day appears to be helpful for bone loss. So, if you or someone you know has osteopenia or osteoporosis here, I'm thinking of my 70 something yearear-old mother and father who have osteopenia, 10 grams of creatine has been shown to improve bone loss, especially when combined with resistance exercise. So hopefully if you want better bone strength or bone density, adding 10 grams of creatine per day and doing some sort of resistance exercise could improve that. So I'm thinking about my mother again. I'm making sure she's eating enough protein overall, one gram of protein per pound of body weight from meat to help her with her osteopenia. And maybe she should consider 10 gram of creatine per day, plus some resistance exercise. Super, super important as we age. But wait, there's more. Even higher doses of creatine have further benefit. Check this out. This is going to sound like a lot of creatine, guys, but this is wild. 20 grams of creatine per day, so four scoops of creatine have been studied for mental performance. And a week of 20 grams of creatine per day improved memory and cognitive performance tasks and might even improve sleep. That study was done over the course of a week. So, most of us probably don't need to be taking 20 grams of creatine per day. And 20 grams of creatine per day has not been studied long term for safety. Most of those studies are with five grams a day. But in the short term, if you're sleepd deprived, if you are feeling foggy, if you have metabolic stress, if you are overly stressed in your life, 20 grams of creatine per day may be beneficial for memory and cognitive tasks. This is wild, guys. That is a dose of creatine that very few of us have ever experimented with in the last few years. It used to be invogue to do 20 grams a day for loading, but now maybe 20 grams of creatine could be beneficial on days when you are particularly stressed, sleepd deprived, or want that mental edge. So that is wild, guys. 20 grams of creatine per day could be beneficial way beyond what we think of as five. And again, nobody studied 20 grams of creatine long term, but what we know about five for long amounts of time, super safe in terms of kidneys and hair loss and all these things. And last but not least, 20 grams of creatine per day has also been studied in neurodeenerative disease, things like Alzheimer's, dementia or cognitive deficiency, memory issues in general. 20 grams of creatine may be helpful for that. The deal here is that it takes large doses of creatine to get across the bloodb brain barrier. The brain is generally kind of insulated from creatine, but when you give yourself 20 grams a day, you might actually be able to increase brain creatine stores and that makes a huge difference there. So 20 g of creatine a day, big doses of creatine might be beneficial for us guys. What do you do with the creatine after you put 20 grams in your glass? You use your handy dandy lineage frother. Froth it up. And then you put that in a smoothie or add some juice to it because 20 grams of creatine in a glass of water is going to be pretty darn strong. Yeah, that's that's a that's a stout one. So, I'm going to mix that into my next smoothie and and not waste that 20 grams of creatine in there. So, some of you might say, "Paul, if an animal-based diet is so good for humans, why do you need to supplement creatine?" Well, consider this. Number one, creatine is so valuable that even vegans take creatine, and vegans probably need more creatine than me or you? Because vegans don't have any meat. I eat around a pound to a pound and a quarter of meat per day. But check this out. There's a beautiful ribeye steak. It's grass-fed. Believe it or not, that's going to be delicious. You need to eat about a kilogram, so 2.2 pounds of meat per day to get 5 gram of creatine monohydrate per day. So very few of us actually eat 2.2 lbs or 1 kilogram of meat per day. I ate that much when I was pure carnivore, but as many of you know, I feel much better now that I have fruit and honey and carbohydrates in my diet, squash, things like that. So I don't get 2.2 pounds of meat per day. And supplementing with creatine on top that is beneficial. And remember, like I just told you, doses of 10 or even 20 grams of creatine per day have been found to be beneficial in certain situations. We live in a stressful world. I know you, like me, don't always sleep perfectly. You're traveling, you have children. Bigger doses of creatine as we age, especially might also be helpful for us. So, yes, you can get lots of creatine from good grass-fed meat, but also consider the fact that cooking will degrade some of the creatine, and you lose creatine when you cook the meat. This is one of the reasons that I like to eat medium rare steaks and occasionally I've been known to just eat a steak rare. But generally I'm cooking my meat and so I'm losing creatine in the meat when I'm cooking it. So I think there are benefits to creatine supplementation in our daily life in 2025 even beyond what you might be getting in red meat. Now there's also creatine in chicken. There's creatine in pork. And there's creatine in fish. There's a little less creatine in chicken and a little less creatine in fish. But pork is about the same as red meat. So, if you're combining all the meats in a day, if you're eating a little fish, a little red meat, a little chicken, you might be getting a couple of grams of creatine, but extra creatine can also be helpful for you because your life is stressful. So, an animal-based diet is something I'm a huge fan of. That's essentially meat plus fruit and raw dairy and some organs, either fresh or desiccated, like we make at hardened soil. But, a lot of us benefit from a little supplementation. So, steaks are awesome, but putting some creatine in your smoothie probably doubly awesome. Where do you get creatine? So, let me show you this. You get creatine from meat. It doesn't occur in plant foods, guys. Vegans don't get creatine. Some vegans supplement with creatine. In fact, there are probably vegans out there who supplement with our lineage creatine. Shout out to those guys. But you could eat this whole bowl of lentils and all of these black beans and fart like crazy and get zero creatine. Creatine does naturally occur in meat. You'd have to eat around two plus pounds of meat per day. But I only eat about a pound and a quarter of meat per day now. So, if you're not eating two pounds of meat per day, you're not getting enough creatine. Your body can benefit from more. So, it occurs only in meat and it's in red meat, it's in chicken, it's in fish, it's in pork, it's in no plant foods. Plant foods are great occasionally. That's a separate video. But if you're not getting enough meat, supplementing with some creatine is hugely important. But wait, you say, Paul, doesn't your body make creatine? Yes, creatine is so important that your body makes it. But your body only makes a couple of grams a day. And research clearly shows that if you give it more either with a whole bunch of meat because you killed an animal and you're feasting with your tribe or some supplementation, you are going to do better. Not this. What about brain benefits of creatine? You know that it's good for your muscles, but it's also good for your brain. Check it out. Your brain, your brain on creatine. It basically lights up your brain because creatine is all about energy production. phosphocreatine can get stored in your brain when you take a high enough dose of creatine at higher levels and that leads to better ATP production in your brain. Better ATP production in your brain means this versus this. Let me tell you guys about a couple of crazy studies with creatine for brain performance because I can't do a video about creatine and gloss over this. In 2008, there was a study looking at 20 gram of creatine for 5 days in vegetarians. And as you can imagine, vegetarians or vegans are going to have lower creatine stores in their brain because they're not eating meat, which is the only place the creatine actually lives. So what did they find? 20 grams of creatine for 5 days in 45 vegetarians led to significant improvements in memory, attention, focus, and cognitive tasks. Basically, from this to this. You get it now. But what about if you're already eating meat and you're not a vegetarian? good choice for eating meat. I'm proud of you. A 2003 study also on 45 adults who are not vegetarians showed that five grams of creatine four times a day, so 20 grams a day for six weeks led to improvements in cognitive performance. That's wild. Even people who are eating meat, more creatine, boom. Specifically in that study, they looked at working memory, number recall, and reaction time and found that these were especially better during cognitive stress. So 20 grams of creatine pretty powerful for your brain. And lastly, a 2021 review found that 10 to 20 grams of creatine can protect against cognitive stress and cognitive decline. So up to 20 grams of creatine may be beneficial for those at risk of neurocognitive issues, potentially dementias and other memory issues. But it's pretty clear across the data that 10 to up to 20 grams of creatine per day improves brain creatine stores and then brain ATP stores, which leads to better working memory, better attention, better focus, better number recall, especially during times of cognitive stress. So, more than five grams of creatine might just be beneficial for your brain. All right, guys. Creatine clearly, it's going to kill you and you don't ever want to take it. No, it's a joke. Obviously, super affordable. Check out our Lineage creatine monohydrate, purest creatine on the market. We put a little salt in there for increased absorption. Combine it with a little bit of Lineage glyphosate free organic raw honey because 20 grams of creatine and water doesn't taste very good. You guys will figure it out. But look, creatine affordable, super wellstied benefits for mood, benefits for muscle performance, recovery, explosivity, mental performance, sleep performance, potentially hormonal performance improvements. So many benefits to creatine. super safe, doesn't hurt your kidneys, as far as we can tell. 5 grams plus for long amounts of time. 10 grams might have benefits over five, 20 grams might have benefits over 10 in certain situations. I don't see a reason not to be taking it. If you have stomach issues with creatine, try creatine HCL versus creatine monohydrate. And I think that all of us can do better if we include some creatine in our in our diets, men, women, even probably some kids. Although creatine hasn't been studied in kids, but the physiology remains the same. I think it makes a lot of sense. So, look, if you want to eat two plus pounds of meat every day, great. I can't do that. Most of us aren't doing that every day. I used to do it, like I said, on carnivore. I don't do it right now. But I think that the benefits of creatine are unmatched, super safe, super affordable. Hopefully, this video is beneficial for you guys. I'll put a link in the description. I have a free newsletter every single Sunday where I talk about things like this, where I tell you my latest hacks, what I'm experimenting with. Subscribe over there. Put a lot of work into that newsletter. And check us out at Lineage Revisions. I'll see you guys in the next