Valuetainment - February 18, 2026


“The New Brain Hack” - Longevity Doctor PRAISES Creatine's Brain Performance BOOSTER Benefits

Topics
creatineneurobenefits
Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Creatine Bill Phillips Darren Gander Tuscaneiro Placebo Jump
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Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

191.5

Word count

2,284

Sentence count

194


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. John Wojtowicz to talk about creatine and why it's so important to have it in your life. John is a former competitive jump roper, ice skater, and bodybuilder. He has been a long time member of the International Jump Rope Skating Association and has been involved in a variety of other sports. He has also been a member of a number of other elite jump ropers and ice skaters and has had a long history in the jump roping and ice skating world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You also speak a lot about creatine.
00:00:01.460 I remember back in the days when I was 14 years old, 15 years old,
00:00:04.860 we're all bodybuilding, lifting weights, and EAS came up with creatine.
00:00:09.500 Everybody was using creatine back in the days.
00:00:12.280 And then it kind of went away for 15 years.
00:00:14.340 It looks like creatine is making a comeback.
00:00:15.940 Tell me why you're so pro-creatine.
00:00:17.480 Well, I started taking creatine.
00:00:19.040 I got really serious about resistance training a couple of years ago
00:00:22.280 after having a lot of experts on my podcast that really was compelling to me
00:00:26.600 that muscle mass is very important to maintain as you age, right?
00:00:30.160 And being someone that was so cardio-focused, it was like,
00:00:33.680 okay, I got to start really focusing also on resistance training.
00:00:37.440 And so creatine came-
00:00:38.460 Were you an athlete back in the day?
00:00:39.600 Like, did you compete?
00:00:41.160 I did.
00:00:42.120 I was, like, interesting athlete.
00:00:44.060 So I was a competitive jump roper and ice skater.
00:00:47.800 I know, not, like, the most common thing.
00:00:49.540 Jump roper.
00:00:50.120 Yeah, I started a jump routine with my best friend when I was in second grade.
00:00:54.660 Did you say second grade?
00:00:57.020 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:00:58.580 So San Diego Sand Skippers was the name of the jump rope team.
00:01:02.380 And it was part of the International Rope Skipping Organization at the time.
00:01:05.600 They have a different name now.
00:01:07.160 But essentially, there's teams that were all around,
00:01:11.000 not only just the U.S., but it was global.
00:01:12.780 It still is.
00:01:13.840 And we would jump rope and we would compete.
00:01:16.700 So we would go and compete every year.
00:01:19.140 There was a camp in Boulder, Colorado.
00:01:21.660 Everyone would come from around the world and we would compete.
00:01:24.120 Wow.
00:01:24.660 Yeah.
00:01:25.520 And listen, it's hard exercise.
00:01:27.220 It's really, right.
00:01:28.240 It's shoulders, it's arms, it's forearms.
00:01:30.840 It's a full body exercise.
00:01:31.980 And weight bearing.
00:01:32.780 So you're getting the bone density benefits, which, thank goodness.
00:01:35.400 But so I was a competitive jump roper from the age of about 8 to 16.
00:01:40.160 And that was a big part of my life.
00:01:42.920 And not only just a competitive jump roper, but also like I would very leadership role because I would travel around and start teams at different schools.
00:01:50.380 So I was going to schools, doing demonstrations with my team and then starting teams for them.
00:01:54.760 And so you get this very leadership role.
00:01:57.420 You get to early on.
00:01:58.540 Confidence building early on.
00:02:00.200 And so it was a really great experience.
00:02:01.520 This is in San Diego, in California.
00:02:02.800 Yeah.
00:02:03.180 Yeah.
00:02:03.580 The team was starting.
00:02:04.480 Anyways, that was a complete – I wasn't taking creatine then.
00:02:07.800 But fast forward, you know, a couple of years ago, I was, you know, probably about 45, 44 when I really started getting serious about resistance training.
00:02:16.440 And creatine came into that equation for me.
00:02:19.280 And why is that?
00:02:20.200 Well, when you take supplemental creatine in the form of creatine monohydrate, it's the most well-studied form.
00:02:26.920 Creatine then in the body, it gets converted into creatine phosphate.
00:02:31.660 And it's basically stored that way in your muscles, for example.
00:02:35.680 And it's the major source of energy.
00:02:37.800 So you need creatine phosphate.
00:02:39.000 The phosphate is used to make energy.
00:02:40.980 And so what happens is that when you take in creatine and you're doing training, like anything that's resistance training, any kind of explosive training, any kind of high interval, you know, high-intensity interval training, even aerobic exercise, the creatine allows you to make energy faster.
00:02:58.020 And so it basically affects your training volume.
00:03:01.120 You're able to do one to two more reps per set because you're recovering faster.
00:03:05.940 You're making energy faster.
00:03:07.020 And so it plays a role in that, you know, exercise volume.
00:03:10.620 And that's why if you look at many, many different studies of people doing, you know, resistance training versus resistance training with creatine, they'll gain more muscle mass or lean body mass, including muscle.
00:03:21.340 They'll gain strength benefits if they're also adding creatine, not because creatine itself is anabolic.
00:03:27.340 It's not.
00:03:28.000 It's because you're able to do more work, right?
00:03:31.560 So it's allowing you to do more work.
00:03:34.020 Therefore, you're getting the muscle adaptations, right?
00:03:36.100 So I became very interested in creatine because of that.
00:03:38.520 And it was very clear to me after looking at the scientific literature, after talking to experts like Dr. Karen Kandao, he's out of the University of Regina, he does a lot of creatine research, that if you do five grams a day, that's about what it takes to saturate your muscle tissue.
00:03:56.340 It takes about three weeks to get there where five grams, okay, muscles are ready.
00:04:01.140 And so that was that was what I was doing initially.
00:04:05.100 And then I started really getting deeper into the creatine research.
00:04:08.500 And I was like, wow, from the neck up is where it's really interesting, the effects on the brain.
00:04:15.800 Creatine.
00:04:16.420 Yes.
00:04:17.020 Yes.
00:04:17.460 So we make creatine.
00:04:18.900 We can make it from our liver.
00:04:20.420 Steak and.
00:04:20.880 Yeah.
00:04:21.260 So we make it.
00:04:21.840 We can make it without any steak, without any meat.
00:04:24.420 Our liver can make it one to three grams and our brain can make it again.
00:04:28.620 And then we can have a dietary source of it.
00:04:30.920 As you mentioned, the major dietary source is meat, muscle meat being, of course, the highest because it's stored in muscle, right?
00:04:37.360 Poultry, fish also has higher amounts of creatine.
00:04:39.840 So as you can imagine, vegetarians and vegans really in trouble if they're not supplementing because they're only relying what their body can produce.
00:04:47.380 With that said, you know, studies started coming out looking at the effects of creatine on the brain.
00:04:54.100 And it's really, to me, very exciting.
00:04:57.000 This area of research is new.
00:04:59.160 I think it's the new part of creatine research that's kind of exploding now.
00:05:04.400 A lot of creatine researchers were previously only looking at muscle.
00:05:07.440 Now they're also looking at the brain.
00:05:09.640 So the brain, as I mentioned, also makes its own creatine.
00:05:12.780 But obviously, the brain's using a lot of energy as well.
00:05:16.900 And so creatine being, you know, stored as creatine phosphate is a great source of energy.
00:05:21.020 The problem is if you're only taking in five grams a day, your muscles are consuming all of it.
00:05:26.380 It's saturating them.
00:05:27.840 And so research out of Germany has shown that if you take 10 grams a day, you can actually increase the creatine levels in certain brain regions by twofold.
00:05:37.600 Okay.
00:05:37.740 That was the first study that to me that was convincing.
00:05:40.140 10 grams a day, right?
00:05:41.100 Because you have to go above that five to get spillover to the brain.
00:05:44.480 Okay.
00:05:44.920 Again, these are preliminary studies.
00:05:46.740 A lot more to do.
00:05:47.520 But I'm just telling you, you know, why I now.
00:05:51.100 You're going to get everybody using creatine now.
00:05:52.460 And now I take, this is why I take 10 grams a day.
00:05:54.280 You take 10 a day.
00:05:55.040 So creatine, let me just tell you.
00:05:57.660 So creatine for the brain, now the question is, well, if it's getting into the brain, what is it doing there, right?
00:06:02.520 And so there are studies showing that really creatine in the brain shines under a stressful condition.
00:06:08.540 Okay.
00:06:08.920 So that could be psychological stress.
00:06:11.040 That could be sleep deprivation.
00:06:12.740 That could be brain aging, neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's disease, anything that's stressing the brain, that's where creatine shines because stress is an energy consumer.
00:06:22.420 It is taking energy away from normal brain function.
00:06:25.580 And so when you give yourself more energy, you know, in the form of creatine, you're now allowing that energy to go to cognition, right?
00:06:33.280 So there are studies showing, for example, sleep deprivation being the classic way to stress your brain, that if you take someone who's healthy and you sleep deprive them for 21 hours, but you give them 20 to 25 grams of creatine, their cognitive function is not only not compromised, like it would be if you didn't sleep for 21 hours and then did a battery of brain test, right?
00:06:55.880 It was better than their baseline cognitive function.
00:06:59.140 So it improved their cognitive function even more than their baseline, which is before they were sleep deprived.
00:07:04.280 There's also studies showing that Alzheimer's disease, people with, you know, mild cognitive decline, early Alzheimer's disease, if they're given 10 or 20 grams of creatine, it can improve cognitive function as well.
00:07:14.660 So.
00:07:15.100 Do you drink it just with water?
00:07:16.740 Do you mix it with grape juice?
00:07:18.000 Well, you know, I don't know if you've seen the studies.
00:07:19.700 It's better if it's with grape juice.
00:07:21.740 What do you, what do you mix it with?
00:07:22.960 I'm not a big fan of juice because it's really high in sugar without the fiber matrix.
00:07:27.420 So fiber matrix, like if it was a fruit slows the glucose response, juice, no bueno.
00:07:33.560 I would say don't mix it with juice.
00:07:35.500 I actually put my creatine in, first of all, I do 10 grams a day and I usually split it up between five grams and five grams.
00:07:42.920 And I usually do the first one in like my cup of coffee.
00:07:46.220 Don't be worried about coffee negating the effects.
00:07:48.480 I talk to the expert, Dr. Darren Kando.
00:07:51.860 Unless you're consuming massive, massive amounts of caffeine, like if you were doing like caffeine pills or something, then maybe I would be worried, but not with a normal.
00:08:00.120 So you mix it with coffee?
00:08:00.960 I mix it with coffee.
00:08:01.640 Morning and night or?
00:08:02.940 I do it all in the morning.
00:08:04.160 Okay.
00:08:04.700 You know, that's when I want my brain to function optimally.
00:08:07.620 So today, for example, I came from the West Coast and now on the East Coast.
00:08:11.780 So I am completely in a different time zone, three hours behind.
00:08:14.740 I had to wake up three hours earlier than normal.
00:08:16.320 My brain wasn't working as, you know, it was sleep deprivation.
00:08:19.700 So I actually took 20 grams this morning.
00:08:21.760 And I do that when I travel, when I'm sleep deprived.
00:08:25.280 I up my usual 10 grams to 20 grams a day because I have noticed it's not like a stimulant, like caffeine,
00:08:32.580 but I am better cognitively if I have that 20 grams after being sleep deprived.
00:08:39.960 And, you know, again, maybe it's placebo because I know about the studies, but you know what?
00:08:43.960 Placebo works.
00:08:44.640 So I don't care.
00:08:45.560 And there's not a real downside.
00:08:47.960 So that's funny.
00:08:49.240 That's where I'm at with creatine.
00:08:51.280 I get my mom to take it.
00:08:52.640 I think, you know, aging itself is a stress on the brain.
00:08:55.540 And like I said, it's the same thing as training.
00:08:58.440 Creatine, if you're not training, isn't going to make you gain muscle mass or strength.
00:09:02.440 It carries water weight sometimes.
00:09:04.440 It can sometimes cause you to carry water weight.
00:09:09.560 Like I said, creatine was something that EAS brought to the market in 1992.
00:09:14.800 You know, Bill Phillips, I don't know if you're familiar with this guy named Bill Phillips or not.
00:09:17.740 Have you ever heard of Muscle Media 2000?
00:09:20.580 This guy had like the number one magazine in bodybuilding that every bodybuilder would read
00:09:24.860 because they had Muscle Magazine, they had Flex, which was all the pictures,
00:09:28.260 and you would see the people.
00:09:29.760 Muscle media was the science.
00:09:32.100 So anybody that wanted the science of bodybuilding, this was the guy.
00:09:36.160 He wrote a book called Body for Life.
00:09:38.560 Yeah, that guy right there.
00:09:39.900 He was one of the first guys that openly came out and talked about, you know,
00:09:43.820 I do steroids, this is what I use, and da-da-da-da-da.
00:09:46.240 He went through the whole thing.
00:09:47.360 And creatine monohydrate was introduced, and then they brought out vanadol sulfate,
00:09:54.480 and then he brought out HMB.
00:09:56.480 HMB was massive in the early 90s, mid-90s.
00:10:00.420 But it's interesting to see creatine making a comeback.
00:10:04.160 Makes me want to think about getting back on creatine.
00:10:06.780 I haven't been on creatine for 20-plus years.
00:10:08.480 Oh, really?
00:10:09.640 Do you exercise?
00:10:11.100 I do, yes, I do.
00:10:12.140 20-plus years.
00:10:13.120 Oh, you should be doing 10 grams a day.
00:10:14.820 Yeah, well.
00:10:15.340 Try it out and let me know.
00:10:17.480 I'm going to.
00:10:18.220 For one, your training volume and recovery, you should notice an effect there,
00:10:23.260 where it's like you'll, like I said, one to two more reps per set.
00:10:26.420 Recovery is easier, but I'm really interested in the brain.
00:10:30.020 In the brain and what it does?
00:10:31.060 I'll tell you for me, and again, I am totally, like, could be placebo.
00:10:34.200 If I don't get my 10 grams in the day, I will have an afternoon slump.
00:10:40.280 If I get my 10 grams, I am good.
00:10:42.680 I am good.
00:10:43.240 See, this is what makes you likable.
00:10:45.220 You said even if it's placebo.
00:10:47.360 Because your space, the health space, is filled with a lot of overly confident people that speak in,
00:10:55.860 this is it, guaranteed, you know, and it makes the audience.
00:10:59.380 But what makes you attractive is you'll say, test it for yourself, see what happens.
00:11:03.580 We'll see.
00:11:03.920 Let's look at the both research.
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