Prepare to have your health questions answered
here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions with
Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center
in downtown Ventura. Now, here's Dr. Todd. Good
afternoon. I'm Dr. Todd Bankley, board -certified
doctor of non -force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine. I've got an exciting
show today, continuation of last week's discussion
about new research showing things that everyone
needs to know about preventing Alzheimer's. And
something even more exciting, a way to perhaps
make modest for people who already have Alzheimer's.
Is there something you can do if you already
have it, if it's too late? But I always stress
the most important thing for everyone to know,
the purpose of this, of podcasts, radio shows
like this, the purpose of all of my communications
with patients and potential patients and members
of the public, all the people who email me and
text me with questions about... Alzheimer's,
the focus has to always be the same. Prevention
is key. Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia,
these are all neurodegenerative conditions that
involve the loss of brain cells, destruction
of brain tissue that takes years and decades
to develop. And there are no symptoms until...
Decades of deterioration in brain cells have
occurred. By the time you have your first signs
of memory loss in most people, 30 % of that most
important functional part of your brain is gone.
You lose 30 % of... the brain cells in the part
of your brain that's most important for recording
memories before you have your first consistent
signs of unusual memory loss. Not forgetting
where you put your keys once in a while, but
sustained, repeated, the kind of memory loss
where other people are starting to question you.
How come you didn't remember that? It just happened.
What can you do to reduce your risk? How do you
identify your current risk factors? Is there
anything that can help if you've already got
Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia? Last
week, I started talking about exciting new research
that's come out about creatine's effects on preventing
and even reversing, slightly reversing. The damaging
effects, chronic inflammation, insufficient nutrients,
and even loss of supply of oxygen to the brain.
All of the things that you've ever heard about
to maintain heart health, cardiovascular health,
will also help maintain brain health. Loss of
circulation to brain cells is always part of
any chronic neurodegenerative condition, like
Alzheimer's, all forms of dementia, even Parkinson's.
These all involve loss of nutrients, loss of
oxygen supply and other nutrients, resulting
in loss of brain cells and dysfunction because
of inflammation to the cells that would otherwise
function normally and prevent you from having
these chronic neurodegenerative conditions. I
received a number of exciting questions after
last week's show about creatine. Creatine monohydrate,
that's the most important form of creatine. is
a nutrient that is familiar to exercise athletes,
enthusiasts. It's one of the most popular nutritional
aids for athletes and studies have consistently
shown improvements in high intensity exercise
performance, post -exercise recovery, injury
prevention, thermoregulation, rehabilitation,
and concussion and or spinal cord neuroprotection.
So it's not new that creatine can help protect
your brain. There have been studies for many
years now showing various aspects of that, proving
various components. As with so many things, the
research comes out in bits and bits. What's exciting
about the most recent research is it actually
has shown that it can reverse the damage. in
the brains of folks who already have neurodegenerative
decline, already have signs of memory loss, mild
cognitive impairment, early signs of damage from
all of the stresses that affect all of us. One
of the most common questions I've been getting
is, okay, I'm in, where do I get creatine? Creatine
in powder form, you can get it in capsules, but
it's better to get a powder because the dose
that you want to take. The research supporting
reversing and benefiting preventing neurodegenerative
conditions is usually for most people about 10
grams a day, at least 5 grams a day. grams, not
milligrams, grams. And, you know, most capsules
are one gram, a thousand milligrams or less.
Like most people are familiar with vitamin C,
1 ,000 milligrams, vitamin C, that's a good sized
capsule. So when you want to think about taking
things that are bulky to get an adequate dose,
that's more than one gram, more than a thousand
milligrams, you're going to want to take a powder.
Otherwise it's going to be a whole bunch of capsules
that are really a pain to take. And creatine
doesn't really have much flavor. You can throw
it in with any other shake that you might already
be making. And the one that I recommend, it's
not the only good one, but the one that I recommend
and have been seeing some interesting results
with is by Thorne. Thorne, T -H -O -R -N -E,
is an excellent top shelf reputable company that's
been around for a long time. So you know that
if you take any of their products, they're going
to be safe and very likely to be very effective.
Wow, that just sounded like a great commercial
for Thorne Products. I should get paid by Thorne
for promoting their products. I do not. I do
not get paid by any supplement company to promote
products. I mention name brand products on this
show because people are always asking me, what
should I take? And my answer to start with is
always the only way I know to see if any product
is good or better than the rest is to give it
to a few thousand people. and do some kind of
diagnostic test, a blood test, a urine test,
a hair test, a stool test, and have a goal. You're
giving them this product for a specific reason.
You test before and after with an objective,
standard lab test and see if it makes the change
that you expect. And Thorne products have consistently
done that, as have Orthomolecular products, Designs
for Health. There's a whole bunch of good top
-shelf companies that are just far better generally
than... You're likely to get far better results
than if you buy things, most supplements, from
stores. Creatine monohydrate is the form you
want to take. The only common side effect of
it is weight gain. But in this case, that's a
good thing because it increases the water content
of muscles and can even help increase muscle
mass, which is why so many athletes use it. And
increasing muscle mass is almost always a good
thing, even if your weight goes up, because muscle
mass... burns energy and tends to keep you slimmer
over time and make it easier to lose weight and
keep your metabolism up. Creatine has long been
a favored nutritional aid for athletes because
of all of the things that it does to help increase
athletic performance. But there's also a number
of clinical applications involving neurogenerative
diseases like muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's,
hunting disease, in addition to Alzheimer's,
what we're talking about today, but also Diabetes,
osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, general aging,
brain and heart ischemia, loss of circulation
to the heart and the brain, adolescent depression,
and pregnancy. So there are really interesting
ongoing studies showing the potential benefits
of supplementing creatine. Making sure you're
getting enough creatine in your diet from food
is always the starting point. There is creatine
in beef and in other animal products. And just
Google food sources of creatine, C -R -E -A -T
-I -N -E. But for many people over a certain
age that have risk factors for some of these
other conditions, it does make sense to consider
supplementing. 10 grams a day is the dose that's
used in most of the studies, which you're going
to want to take in powder form. 10 grams a day
would be 10 or more capsules if you were to take
it in capsule form, and nobody wants to do that.
And the powder doesn't really have any taste.
You can mix it in with any other shake that you're
making. It's basically just food. So the standard
doses for most applications are between 3 and
10 grams per day. So the powder that I recommend
from Thorne is a 5 -gram scoop. It's about a
teaspoon. And most of the studies for brain degeneration
are based on 10 grams a day. But there are also
studies in several different applications that
show maintaining as little as 3 grams a day.
which many people do get from food if you eat
animal products, but if you're vegan, probably
not. As little as three grams a day has significant
health benefits over... over a lifespan. If you
do that every day, just as a regular part of
your diet, check and check your diet, make sure
you're getting at least three grams a day, then
you're going to have significant benefits for
several of the things we've been talking about
just by doing that. But if you're a little behind
the curve, if you have some of these conditions
already, if you're over 50 or over 60 or over
70, the older you get, the more likely you will
benefit from supplementing more of it. And the
safety studies have shown that short and long
-term supplementation of up to 30 grams a day,
30 grams a day for five years, is safe and well
-tolerated in healthy individuals. in patients
of all ages. So that's a broad statement. I haven't
actually seen all that data, but it was published
as part of this study. The important thing is
it's relatively easy to get the basic benefit
by getting at least three grams a day from food.
And if you can't figure out if you're getting
that or not, shoot me an email. You can also
Google creatine content in food, you know, best
food sources of creatine. And, you know, do a
trial period for, say, three months of supplementing,
at least five, and probably better for today's
discussion for any kind of brain symptoms, 10
grams a day, and see if you notice a difference.
I'm Dr. Todd Bankley. You're listening to Safe,
Effective, Natural Solutions to Almost Any Health
Challenge. Today we're talking about the benefits
of getting adequate amounts of the amino acid,
which is made from several other amino acids,
which means it's kind of like a precursor of
protein or a component of protein. The benefits
of creatine monohydrate supplementation for reducing,
sometimes perhaps new data is showing it might
be possible to even reverse some of the effects
of age -related dementia. A whole host of other
studies showing various aspects. The list that
I just went through, we're going to break that
down a little bit now. So a growing collection
of evidence supports that creatine supplementation
may improve health as individuals age by lowering
cholesterol and triglyceride levels, reducing
fat accumulation in the liver, reducing homocysteine
levels, and serving as an antioxidant. So it
does this by enhancing glycemic control. Anything
that helps build muscle mass and maintain muscle
mass is going to tend to keep you more in the
direction of burning fat for energy and reducing
your cravings for grain, starch, and sugar. And
because of that, it can even slow tumor growth
in some types of cancers. But the main point
is anytime you increase strength or muscle mass,
you're likely to minimize bone loss. You're likely
to feel full. You're likely to crave starch and
sugar less. And you'll probably find it easier
and more rewarding to exercise more with, you
know, reward whatever. whatever effort you put
in to exercising. So also on this list of benefits
is improving functional capacity in people with
osteoarthritis, people with fibromyalgia. So
these are people that just find it very difficult
to do any kind of exercise because A, it's exhausting
and or it hurts. So if you can reduce inflammation
and build muscle mass and strength, you're likely
to reduce both of those things. Anytime you do
anything that makes it easy to exercise more
and increase circulation to your brain, it's
likely to positively influence cognitive function
and can even serve as an antidepressant. Your
brain is the most sensitive organ of any part
of your body to any mild, slight nutrient deficiency.
It needs a constant supply of oxygen. Your 20
% of your oxygen supply goes directly... to your
brain and a slight deficiency of that is always
a component as you get older arteriosclerosis
hardening of the arteries lack of circulation
to provide oxygen and all the other essential
nutrients your brain needs is always a component
of neurodegenerative disease that's why it happens
in old age and over time because of in large
part a loss of these essential nutrients to prevent
things from going south otherwise. So let's go
through some more of this research. Gualano and
associates supplemented patients with type 2
diabetes with creatine, five grams a day for
12 weeks during training, and the creatine supplementation
group significantly decreased their hemoglobin
A1c and glycemic control in type 2 diabetes patients.
So hemoglobin A1c is just the most important
test to evaluate your level of average glucose
over a three -month period you can test your
glucose in real time with a glucose meter or
an overnight fasting glucose test those are both
important but the hemoglobin a1c is the standard
test for evaluating the average glucose that
you have over a three -month period including
all the highs after eating and all the lows And
between meals, you can extrapolate an average
glucose level. And that's what really matters.
How high is your glucose on average over time?
If it's too high, that's what causes the damaging
effects of diabetes. All the problems you hear
with diabetes, losing parts of your feet, blindness,
erectile dysfunction, most importantly, heart
disease. Most diabetics die from a heart attack
or a stroke, but kidney failure also. People
who end up on dialysis usually don't live very
long and certainly don't live a long, enjoyable
life once they end up in that point. So you want
to protect your kidneys. You want to protect
your eyes. You want to protect your lower extremities
and feet. People notice this when they start
to have numbness and tingling and burning in
the feet. And eventually, tragically, so much
loss of circulation that they get gangrene and
have to have their toes and even other parts
of their feet, sometimes their whole feet, entire
feet, amputated. So creatine supplementation
is showing that it can help improve that. Kandao
and others reported that low -dose creatine combined
with protein supplementation increased lean tissue
mass and upper body strength while decreasing
markers of muscle protein degradation and bone
resorption in older men between 59 and 77 years
of age. So what doses are we talking about? They
were using very low doses, only 0 .1 gram per
kilogram per day. of creatine combined with 0
.3 grams per kilograms per day of protein. So
what does that mean? 0 .3 grams per kilogram
body weight per day is a common metric for the
minimum amount of creatine that one should get
across numbers of these studies. So what does
that mean? What is 0 .3 grams per kilogram per
day? Well, if you weigh 100 pounds, that means
you weigh 45 kilograms. And so if you do the
math on that, that means you should have a total
consumption of 13 .5 grams a day. So call it
13. If you weigh 200 pounds, double that, 27
grams. So in the broad scheme of things, most
people need to get a total in their diet, not
supplement, but if they're not getting this amount
in their diet, should target about... 13 .5 grams
to 27 grams of creatine per day. So this study
on increasing... Markers for increasing lean
tissue muscle mass, upper body strength, while
decreasing muscle protein degradation. There's
a test for that called creatine kinase that I
check on every patient. It's an important test
to see if you're getting enough exercise and
don't have any problems with too much muscle
tissue breaking down from nutrient deficiencies
and other causes. And also bone resorption. So
anytime you increase muscle mass, it just helps
so many things. It makes your heartbeat stronger.
It makes it easier for you to exercise. exercise
so that you can maintain muscle mass and stop
bone resorption and a whole host of other things,
which we're going to keep talking about over
and over and over again. So this study was only
using 0 .1 grams per kilogram per day of creatine,
which means about four grams a day, four grams
a day, plus the 13 or so grams of protein total.
So I know this is a lot of numbers. I'm going
to go through these a little bit more quickly.
And if you have questions about that. please
email me. You can also call and leave a message.
I'll call you back. The ringer on my phone is
always off, but I'm happy to return a call if
that's the easiest way for you. But the easiest
way to get me and get a quick response is to
text or email me. Chill back. also reported,
and his associates reported, that 12 months of
creatine supplementation at the same dose during
resistance training increased strength and preserved
femoral neck bone mineral density and increased
femoral shaft width in postmenopausal women.
So this is basically, these are some of the things
that they test when you get a DEXA scan, a bone
density scan. So this study is showing that combining
very low -dose creatine supplementation with
resistance training, so lifting weights, pulling
on cables and bands, the stuff you do at the
gym or at home, any way to increase muscle mass,
will also... maintain, and even increase bone
mineral density. And these are very low doses,
so imagine what could happen if you took more.
All of these studies, in general, most of the
studies that are published, for whatever reason,
just based on institutional bias and experience,
they're always testing things with such minimal
doses of things, especially if it's harmless.
If they've proven that it's harmless to take
30 grams a day or combined with food. So, you
know, why not test more? When they do, they usually
find out even more benefits. Here's a couple
more studies showing that. A recent meta -analysis
of 357 elderly individuals with 12 weeks of resistant
training found that those who supplemented their
diet with creatine experienced greater gains
in muscle mass strength and functional capacity.
And another similar meta -analysis of 405 elderly
participants. also experience greater gains in
muscle mass and upper body strength with creatine
supplementation during resistant training compared
to training alone. So, this is pretty good evidence
that creatine supplementation can prevent loss
of muscle and bone loss in the elderly. A common
question is, well, isn't it better to get creatine
from food if possible? And the answer is absolutely
yes. Everyone should get... all the essential
nutrients they need from food when they can.
The only purpose of supplementation is to supplement
a good diet. That's why they're called supplements,
not replacements. You need to eat good food.
Our bodies are designed to absorb and assimilate
nutrients we get from things that we eat that
we find growing in God's green earth. But a lot
of people don't get enough nutrients. There's
a whole bunch of reasons for that that we can
identify on testing. That's where supplements
come in. But people ask that, so how do we even
know that the supplements work? Well, one way
to tell is does it increase your circulation?
You can measure these things in blood tests.
Here's an even better one. A number of studies
have shown that creatine supplementation increases
creatine content in the brain by 5 % to 15%.
Wow. That's impressive. If you can show that
not only is it in your bloodstream, but it's
reaching target tissues where you need it the
most, that's big. That's important. That means
it's worth trying for many, many people. And
that same study showed that those people that
increased their brain creatine content by 5 %
to 15 % had significantly reduced mental fatigue
and or improved cognitive function. I want to
stress, especially for noticing changes in your
brain, you should plan on, if you want to try
something, a lot of people try, I'm using, insert
air quotes please, try something for a few days
or maybe a week or two and then decide whether
or not it's working or not. For something, any
neurodegenerative condition. Anything that's
been around, a problem that's developed over
decades, which is what we're talking about, then
a proper trial is months, not days. You know,
two, three, four months, try something. If you
really want to know if it's going to work for
you or not, try it for two, three, probably something
like this, four months. And then notice if you
experience a difference. The good news is, for
example, Watanabe and others reported that creatine
supplementation at 8 grams a day for only 5 days
reduced mental fatigue when subjects repeatedly
performed a simple mathematical calculation and
also increased their oxygen utilization in the
brain. So these are standard tests. I'm going
to report a couple more of these. These are standard
tests that they use to measure whether or not
anything is working in your brain and also to
measure dementia. And colleagues reported that
creatine supplementation at 5 grams a day for
only 6 weeks significantly improved working memory
and intelligence tests. Intelligence tests requiring
speed of processing. McMorris and co -workers
found that creatine supplementation at 20 grams
a day, higher dose, for 7 days, only 7 days.
These are really short term. If you can notice
anything after a few days, that is huge. So 20
grams a day for seven days after sleep deprivation,
significantly less reduction in performance of
random movement. Some of these terms are kind
of technical, but they are the standard things
that scientists measure to determine whether
or not something is improving brain function.
So random movement, reaction time, balance, and
mood state all improved, suggesting that creatine
improves cognitive function in response to sleep.
deprivation. Well, who doesn't have sleep deprivation?
I don't. Hopefully you don't, but many, many,
many people do. If you're not sleeping seven
hours a night and waking up feeling rested and
ready to go, then you have sleep deprivation.
So this research also shows that creatine supplementation
can improve performance on random number generation.
forward spatial recall and long -term memory
tasks. And finally, another study showed that
only 5 grams a day for 15 days improved cognition
on some tasks. So this is just a short review
of a few studies that are out. There are more
ongoing. There are really exciting news. Like
I mentioned at the top of the show, the most
exciting thing is supplementing about 10 grams
a day of creatine monohydrate for most people
may even reverse some of the damaging effects
of dementia. If you liked what you heard today,
I'm... There's so much information coming out
that I've been collating this. Next week's show
is also going to be about other things you can
do to reduce your risk of Alzheimer's and maybe
even reverse it. You can get all the past episodes
on my website, BinkleyHealingCenter .com, and
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Thank
you for listening. Send me your questions. Email
is best. Text is also great. I look forward to
speaking with you right here next Friday at 2
p .m. Have a great weekend. You've been listening
to Safe, Effective Natural Solutions with Dr.
Todd Binkley. If you have a health question you
want discussed on the show, email your health
questions to drbinkley at binkleyhealingcenter
.com. Take advantage of this opportunity to ask
questions for yourself and for your loved ones
because our health matters. Join him next Friday
at 2 p .m. for safe, effective natural solutions
here on 98 .3 FM, The Word.