HOTB 291: Are Creatine supplements worth the money?

Healing Outside The Box

When I learned that up to 70% of college athletes are now taking creatine supplements, I decided to look into studies that examined its effectiveness.

Before I got into creatine supplements, I went over a few points from the previous episodes on the benefits of berries and other antioxidants. There is a five minute video by Dr. Michael Greger on the power of berries to fight inflation as well as cancer cell growth. That video can be found here.

I then discussed some studies comparing two groups of people and the incidence and mortality of Covid-19. The groups were separated based on whether they ate a plant strong Mediterranean diet or a more traditional meat and potatoes American diet. This NIH study showed that the group eating more plants and no red meat had better outcomes, both in terms of incidence of severe symptoms and mortality. Interestingly, they ran the same study after the 1918 flu pandemic with a Seventh-day Adventist seminary and found similar results. Seventh-day Adventists, as a group, don't eat meat or chicken.

There was a recent article originally published in the British medical Journal and re-published by NIH, which basically said the same thing with almost 600 patients. People who regularly ate a diet high in legumes and whole grains had significantly lower odds of getting severe Covid 19.

I eventually got around to talking about the necessity and effectiveness of creatine for athletes. A good overall article on this subject can be found here.

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