Ali Gordji-Nejad, Andreas Matusch, Sophie Kleedörfer
Harshal Jayeshkumar Patel, Alexander Drzezga, David Elmenhorst, Ferdinand Binkofski, Andreas Bauer
2024 · Scientific Reports
AbstractThe inverse effects of creatine supplementation and sleep deprivation on high energy phosphates, neural creatine, and cognitive performances suggest that creatine is a suitable candidate for reducing the negative effects of sleep deprivation. With this, the main obstacle is the limited exogenous uptake by the central nervous system (CNS), making creatine only effective over a long-term diet of weeks. Thus far, only repeated dosing of creatine over weeks has been studied, yielding detectable changes in CNS levels. Based on the hypothesis that a high extracellular creatine availability and increased intracellular energy consumption will temporarily increase the central creatine uptake, subjects were orally administered a high single dose of creatinemonohydrate (0.35 g/kg) while performing cognitive tests during sleep deprivation. Two consecutive 31P-MRS scans, 1H-MRS, and cognitive tests were performed each at evening baseline, 3, 5.5, and 7.5 h after single dose creatine (0.35 g/kg) or placebo during sub-total 21 h sleep deprivation (SD). Our results show that creatine induces changes in PCr/Pi, ATP, tCr/tNAA, prevents a drop in pH level, and improves cognitive performance and processing speed. These outcomes suggest that a high single dose of creatine can partially reverse metabolic alterations and fatigue-related cognitive deterioration.
Metadata: Crossref. Abstracts retain their original authors’ rights.
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There was actually a VERY recent study on mega-dose creatine for sleep deprivation: > "Single dose creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in cerebral high energy phosphates during sleep deprivation" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9 You need a dose high enough to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, around 0.3g/kg (so ~30g for a 100kg person).
Yep. From what I read mental fatigue (mental math problems is what the study used) or sleep deprivation are two scenarios in which creatine boosted cognition and memory. Here are the sleep deprivation studies https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16416332/
As a vegan you dont get any creatine since you're not eating meat, so your body has to make it itself, which requires a ton of methylation and if you're like me and have bad genes for methylation your body had a hard time with it as it is. So by supplmenting creatine you're reducing some of that burden. As far as sleep goes, high dose creatine has been studied to have an extermely positive effect on brain function during sleep deprevation, better than stimulants/caffine I think the prescribed dosing for creatine and sleep deprevation is 0.35g per KG, much higher than the typically recommended dose of 5gs a day for muscle. The positive effects on the brain come at much higher doses. Which is perfectly safe for your kidneys, this is a myth (as long as you dont already have poor kidney function). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16416332/
I have bad central sleep apnea, and regardless of CPAP I still end up with poor quality sleep unfortunately. I was on stimulants like Modafinil and Ritalin for over a decade, which comes at a huge cost physically, mentally. Its the only supplement I take other than Vitamin D, I'm not some freak biohacker. I've completely replaced stimulant use with 15g of Creatine a day, and 25-30g on days when I feel especially sleep deprived. It has actually changed my life. I decided to try this after reading this paper and will never go back: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9 There's lots of interesting literature on Creatine starting to be published.
To add another data point, a 2024 study [1] on the mental effects of single doses of creatine was using 0.35g/kg of creatinemonohydrate, or about 28g for a typical adult male. Though obviously high doses are safer if you just do them once And an earlier 2018 article [2] argued that "Evidence suggests that the blood–brain barrier is an obstacle for circulating cre- atine, which may require larger doses and/or longer protocols to increase brain creatine as compared to muscle. In fact, the broad spectrum of creatine sup plementation studies that span different dosing pr- tocols (e.g. high-dose short-term, low dose longer- term), co-ingestion of other…
nutrients/compounds (e.g. carbohydrate, protein, insulin), different popu lations (e.g. vegetarians, elderly, patients, athletes) is unavailable for brain creatine adaptations" 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9 2: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bruno-Gualano/publicati...
I liked this one https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9 They went with the premise of "a little a day seems to help, what happens if we feed ridiculous quantities once". The sort of medical research that appeals to the engineer in me and something you can only really do with compounds that are already known to be unlikely to kill your patient if you exceed the usual dose. Also I strongly suspect they did this to students given the age range. There's more literature out there than this. That paper's references are probably a reasonable start point. But as creatine is very cheap and has been widely consumed by athletes for ages now it's about as low risk a gamble as any out there.
For me its changed my life in terms of energy levels. I have bad sleep apnea and have totally gotten off of prescription stimulants because of high dose creatine. Creatine seems to have a strong postive effect on the brain when taken in doses higher than those taken for exercise. Im not interested at all in creatine for exercise. Just google: "Creatine for sleep deprevation" And as a vegan you dont get any creatine since you're not eating meat, so your body has to make it itself, which requires a ton of methylation and if you're like me and have bad genes for methylation (google MTHFR gene polymorphism) your body had a hard time with it as it is. So by supplmenting creatine you're reducing burden on your body greatly. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16416332/
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