Creatine Gummies Have a BIG Problem... (w/ Alexander Cortes)

American creatine. It's a huge market, it's growing, with 25% year-over-year growth. Why is it not in the United States? The geopolitics of this are crazy. Yeah. China just really owns the market, right? They're like 90% of the global supply. On the surface, you can push it off. You think about it and you're like, "No, I want that here." When something becomes so mainstream and something becomes so pervasive, a lot of myths start to [music] come into the mix. This happens and it's like a 0.1% and then it catches fire and it's like, "Don't do this because the creatine's useless." >> Let us make this very clear. Three bald guys are talking about this. Our hair loss did not happen from creatine. This is not some like ashwagandha. Creatine is made in the body, up to 1 g per day. It can't be controversial. X can make it controversial. >> [laughter] >> So many fitness influencers try and do all this other stuff and they like go off the rails and do this. Not my man right there. He's bringing it back, baby. I can't wait for him to start wearing a top hat cuz he's so rich. >> [laughter] >> I was already pumped about American creatine, but I'm like juiced on it now. Your creatine will be delivered by an bald eagle. Cool. >> [laughter] >> We have a fun one today. Our first time kind of getting in the weeds and picking something specific, uh creatine. Not just what my mom accused me of taking steroids with in high school. A big topic. It's come back to life. It's having its moment again. It's for the girlies now. It's for the girlies now. Like it started out as like the thing I bought in the shady supplement shop growing up and now it's like in a pink container for the girlies doing Pilates. Um but I think that's because there's just other benefits that have been found and whatnot. Yeah. And we have a really cool guest coming on today. Alexander Cortez, aka >> Wait, wait, wait, wait. He is doing something very interesting. So, he started a movement, the American creatine movement. We lost our manufacturing of creatine in the US. Yeah. >> he's bringing it back, baby. Yeah. >> No Germany, no China, USA, USA, USA. >> It's interesting because creatine had like you said, it's having this moment. And it's in everything now. Like gummies, powder, they're putting it in drinks. They're putting it in protein bars. >> Bulletproof just came out with a coffee and creatine powder. It's in everything. And what Ajax is doing is really important because when you bring domestic production into the mix, you're increasing trust. You're also, you know, we're in a bit of an American exceptionalism and dynamism kind of a period right now. Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's like dream big, baby. >> Yeah. >> On the surface you can you can You can give a little bit of >> Push it off and then you you think about it and you're like, no, I want that here. >> Your creatine will be delivered by an a bald eagle. To your front door. >> [laughter] >> Stealth bomber will fly over. Uncle Sam >> know if he's done the branding, but there should definitely be some like, you know, >> [clears throat] >> the whole >> percent. A jacked Uncle Sam. >> Yeah. >> [laughter] >> There is no supplement that's been studied as much as creatine. I know it's such a sound bite that everybody says. It's considered a nutrient more than a supplement. But for this for the sake of this, we can call it a supplement. >> We don't have to be like focus super much on the semantics as much as the point I was going to make is yet it's still controversial. Supplements have this inherent controversy to it. >> Yes. But when you frame it as a nutrient it can't be controversial. The body makes it. >> X can make it controversial. >> Protein is controversial. >> Well, they're idiots. >> [laughter] >> You know, like come on. I think it's important we should frame that and and clarify that that it is something your body makes, up to 1 g per day. And it's in our diet, maybe not enough than it should be, but this is not some like you know, ashwagandha or your like supplement herbal kind of a thing like >> All the big criticisms that we're going to address later on in the episode. Yeah. The kidney stuff, the hair loss, etc. Have all been like pretty disproven or they were in isolation and couldn't be replicated. Again, we'll get more on that in the future. But it's just so interesting to me that like people pick this hill to die on when there's like Like GLP-1s are way more controversial. There are like so many much more controversial things in the health space. Like why are you picking creatine as the one you fight over? >> It's been 30 years. We have enough data. Like let's just But okay, but you know what? It's It's There's a counter to this though. >> Okay. >> It is also getting way too much glaze. >> That's true, too. Like there's this guy Max Lugavere. You know You know Max Lugavere? He's like an author. He has a podcast. Yeah, he has a podcast. He tweeted a couple months ago. He was like, "Why is no one talking about creatine?" And you know me, I can't help myself. So I spent the time like a petty bastard and I took I typed creatine into Google and I took like 30 screenshots of all the recent headlines on like Forbes and like Men's Health and I put them in a collage and I replied. I was like, "Yeah, no one's talking about it." >> [laughter] >> He wasn't being ironic. He was being dead ass. >> was being serious, but it's like is the point though is that like it is everywhere. Like And And so when something becomes so mainstream and something becomes so pervasive, a lot of myths start to come into the mix. A lot of falsehoods, you know, marketing talking points come into play. And you got to kind of We got to hip check some of these people because there's a lot that it does that people don't talk about and there's a lot that people say it does that it's not doing. For better or for worse. You know what's so funny? >> [laughter] >> I actually I'm laughing before I say it. You know how like uh when the the crypto girlies start talking about Bitcoin, they're like >> Yeah. Top signal. Top signal. It's over. We're top signal. The people that have been DMing me on my personal Instagram recently asking me about creatine. I'm like, "It's over." Yeah. Creatine's done." Well, dude. And this goes back to what we say we said it before in previous episode. Health is fashion right now. >> Health is fashion. >> So, just like skinny jeans, creatine's in, and then it's going to go out, and then it's going to come back in again. You know what's my favorite example of that? It's a brand I love, Primal Queen. You know about Primal Queen? >> Yeah, Primal Queen. Like I love Chucky, the founder of Primal Queen. They took something so not sexy, organs, desiccated organs, and made it so sexy. And also, like It's a good thing for people to do. >> were just talking with Andrew about this on the fertility episode about nose-to-tail eating, and that's like kind of filling that gap. And then they gave it like some really cool like '90s electric branding and stuff, and like Primal Queen. >> Like Pit Vipers. Yeah, yeah, Pit Vipers. It's [laughter] like Pit Viper branding. Yeah. So good. Shout out Chucky. Shout out Primal Queen. You want to do like a little vibe check, bring everyone up to speed on creatine? Let's do it. >> Okay. I don't think a lot of people know this. Creatine is made in the body. It's made in the liver, in the kidneys, and I think even some in the pancreas. I could be wrong. I think it's made from three amino acids, I think, and I hope I'm getting this right. Arginine, methionine, and glycine. And so, then you also get it from your diet. You get it from poultry, red meat >> beef, red meat, even seafood, I think you get it from. And >> would be like like muscle meats from cows is probably the highest concentration. >> is is the high the highest one. >> that. My teenage self read that on a forum somewhere. I've been sticking with it for 20 years. >> [laughter] >> In the early days of creatine, it was used because they were like, "It makes you stronger." Right? Like that was kind of the idea. And it helps it helps with ATP production in in the body and in the muscles. And so, the idea was like I think they said it used to give you like a 5 to 10% edge on strength. It's been studied a bunch. And now it's back in the mix for brain health, for um bone health, anti-fatigue anti-fatigue >> I actually see that brought up more. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It's having a rebrand in a way. And then something else interesting is that like the dosages have kind of changed and drifted over time. >> Well, and that my favorite memes are like, you know, the the guy from Star Wars like, "More!" >> Yeah. It's just like, "30 mg a day." >> of the top signal and they're like, "5 5 g a day." Like Rhonda Patrick was like, "No, it's not 5 g a day, it's 10 g a day." >> And then I was like, "Okay. Okay." Then a study came out and they were like, "20." And I'm like, "20? What?" And then they were I saw someone else they were like, "More." More. It's like, "When does it end?" Honestly, I was thinking that people should chew six knobs per tooth brushing session. >> Yeah, you should actually take one jar is one use. >> jar is one use, yeah. That's what I was I I mean, I feel like that's just like makes sense, yeah. Yeah. Um, but we'll get into the dosage stuff a little later. >> that later. 20 years ago, it was not quite in the zeitgeist like this because there wasn't social media. A young teenage me going to the gym, the first advice that the meathead at the gym told me was like, "Get protein and creatine and like lift weights." Right? Like those are like those are like the the first things are given and I I I made the joke at the beginning, but like I remember my mom being like, "What are you taking?" Like it's creatine, [snorts] Mom, it's fun. Uh, it's interesting that it like had it it already was established and then it just like quietly went away and it was just something that like only people that lifted knew about and talked about and like if you were somebody who was like into a bodybuilding, but not even body, just fitness in general, you took creatine. It was like almost like understood, but it was just like not talked about it as much and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, boom. Which is everywhere again. >> They hired a great publicist. >> They Whoever that is Whoever the creatine publicist is, they crushed it. And now it's on Good Morning America, Michael Strahan's talking about creatine, right? So like it's crazy how it went. Yeah. To be fair, in the '90s, the supplement market was so unregulated or just unlooked after that you could buy legit steroids like at your local vitamin place. >> I got my first prohormones? I went to the local sketchy supplement shop. I was like, "What do you got in the back, bro?" No, no, no, up front. [laughter] There is like you could buy a lot of this stuff up front and it's like this is natural test booster. Then you look and it's like Anavar. Pro Oxylite banned. Jack3d, amphetamines in it. Uh there was some others too that were like in that realm. There was a like this deer antler extract stuff which ended up being actually just like Anavar, like you were saying. >> Yeah. There was crazy >> Horny Goat Weed. >> [laughter] >> Gas station boner pills. I worked at GNC actually for a while, but after that phase. I thought he was about to say I worked at a gas station. >> [laughter] >> You don't know anything about me. Chris Masterjohn, genius. We're big fans of Chris. of epic proportions. Talks about creatine in a very different way. Most people are talking about it brain, muscle, bone, whatever, you know, the girlies love it for their reasons. >> But what Chris Masterjohn shows is it's actually the power grid of the mitochondria. Which is something I feel like almost no one's talking about. I mean, maybe deep in the literature, but I mean, I'm reading a bunch of stuff and to be honest with you, creatine's not at the top of the list that I'm I'm reading literature about. He has the MitoM test, like the mitochondria test to like determine mitochondrial function. And he'll tell you if like complex one is busted for you or if like if you have a gap in complex two, whatever. It like determines where in the chain of energy production that like your mitochondria are struggling. Okay. And what he sees actually is that when you add creatine to the mix, your mitochondrial function comes back online in a much better, more more profound way. >> Interesting. So basically what Chris Masterjohn is kind of saying, and I'm sorry Chris if I'm butchering this, but he's saying that creatine allows the mitochondrial energy ATP to now go through the cell. Almost like lube a little bit for the cell and like allows like the ATP to go where it needs to go. And he also says that it decreases the ionic strength in the muscles. That basically messes with the cross bridging and that directly makes you stronger. What Master John is saying is very different than a lot of the talking points around creatine. I mean anecdotally, right? I have done a lot of creatine cycling in my life. Right? Like over the last 20 years I probably have had 10 different phases of being taking it every day and not taking it every day. You feel stronger 100% or I I should say I feel stronger 100%. >> So, we have said this before on the show that like everything goes back to mitochondria. Yes. And so maybe people who don't feel anything don't have bottlenecks in their mitochondria. >> mitochondria healthy. Yeah. >> Right? So, like maybe the people who take creatine and feel it, that means you really needed it. If you don't feel it, maybe you're already, you know, getting decent enough creatine in your diet. Whatever. But if you feel it, your like body starved for creatine. >> just started going like, wow, so this is opening up the pathway and then you could take mod C and methylene blue to make that pathway have more being shoveled into it and then it could really boost your mitochondria. [laughter] Mitochondria. Let's talk a little bit about the forms cuz this I think this is a confusing thing. >> Yeah, and you know what's crazy? I actually think that back in the day when creatine had the again in my lifetime it's first popularity, this was more of a conversation than than now. We were talking about this before, but monohydrate is gold standard. It's the one everyone talks about. But this is the only the only one that's studied. That's the most important one. 95% of studies plus are on monohydrate. It's just the one that we know about the most. Not that it's the best necessarily. And we don't know we don't know the answer to that, but No, but we know is that if you go monohydrate, you're going with all the literature out there. You have the creatine HCL, which apparently just dissolves better in water maybe, is that what it is? Or like it it has better absorption. So, maybe if you're like kind of uh [ __ ] your brains out a little bit. >> stuff potentially. That This is what is said Yeah. by the science. Not only do you have the different forms like monohydrate or HCL, but there's gummies now. There's gummies. Um a lot of controversy around these gummies. Yeah. This is going to sound so biased cuz I'm I own a supplement brand, right? But like I almost can like kind of forgive some of the people because like I bet that some of the folks that got in trouble were newer brand owners. What happens is when you cook down a gummy, the creatine content goes down. There's a We can explain exactly what's happening. >> creatinine. >> It breaks into creatinine. So, when you test it for creatine, it's not going to come up on a test. >> Maybe some brands just never put it in there either. If we're giving the benefit of the doubt >> Yeah. as somebody who started from a zero experience in the supplement industry, I could easily see some like co-packer manufacturer be like, "Yeah, don't worry. I got you, dude." And like, you know, I got my 10 grand to start my business for this small run, and they didn't even like put it in there or they didn't care about the cook down happening, and they knew you wouldn't be able to afford to third-party test, and just kind of happened. Now, I don't want to let people off the hook because I'm sure there was just as many >> Also cheap. It's cheap. >> One thing that people don't realize is there's a ton of supplement manufacturers. Unlike a lot of businesses, probably a couple hundred supplement manufacturers, and a lot of them >> more. >> Real quick, just a side note. I had a friend pull a list from SupplySide West of like every vendor that was there that that was a supplement It was 1,600 long items on the list. That's just in the US and just at SupplySide West. It's crazy. Yeah, and a lot of these guys are just like, "I'm going to start it in my basement." And they don't actually understand the science of how this stuff interacts. So, they may have just picked a manufacturer that's like doesn't understand that creatine converts into creatinine when you dissolve it in water for a long period of time. So, they're like, "Oh, I put plenty of creatine in there." And then they've just been making a ton of people's formulas with not understanding what happens to the >> And there's a totally separate conversation about the ethics of that, right? And if there needs to be more regulation on it, yada yada. Everybody, we're here, as we mentioned, we have Ajac visiting us today to talk creatine. Fun fact, over a decade ago, he was one of my first X follows that I was for any fitness for any purposes. I used to buy all his programs. I was like his biggest fan. And also, I told him, now that we're like friends and we talk, it's like a full circle moment, but the first time we met in person, we were talking and we talked about how so many fitness influencers try and do all this other stuff and they like go off the rails and do this. Not my man right there. He stayed with it for over a decade. He stayed true and he kept on his line and we love you for it. So, we're really happy to have you and and and to talk about this. >> I found him in 2015. Ed Latimore was how I found you. I think you guys did some like project together and then I I started following you. It's like 11 years now that I've been following you. And it's crazy we're friends now. It's wild. Yeah, [laughter] wild world we live in. With no further ado, why don't you I'm sure 90% of people watching this have at least heard of you or familiar with you in some capacity, but why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? I appreciate that, guys. No, that's touching, genuinely. I'll be 37 this year. I've spent my entire life in the health space, let's call it that. I've been a personal trainer essentially my whole life. Yeah, I started doing a personal brand back around 2012 before there was a name for it. I had some very good mentors from the publishing industry, like Muscle & Fitness editor, who sort of put me on to that scene when it was still forming, told me that ebooks can make me a ton of money and I decided to run with it. I actually have been on X for over a decade now and I I may always made writing my primary way of communicating with people. So, I've I've sold a lot of ebooks. I've made a lot of amazing friends and X is obviously very unique what's become in regards to the relationships you can build. You know, but it's been the power of the relationships and network that's been enabled me to build my businesses and taken me all over the world and I've been to a lot of places and I've So I met my wife, I met all of you guys. So it's definitely worked out. Bolster TJ's point, I've always tried to stay true to just helping people be healthy. I didn't go down the route of trying to be a guru or religious shaman or No ayahuasca one shot dude? No or ayahuasca getting one shotted by earth mother goddess and by 8D Mesoamerican demons. >> [laughter] >> But health is wealth, I believe that, that's my principle and I've stuck by it. >> I remember the first tweet. We all were talking about it. You were like, "American creatine." Like I remember the first day you were tweeting about it when the idea came to you and now it's like you're you did it. >> Yeah. That's crazy. Tell me how you came up with the idea. Creatine I knew was it's a huge market, it's growing. There's going to be a crossover into the medical space in about like a year, two years time. So all of the the new research that's being done, it's all medically oriented towards aging, anti-aging, memory loss, Alzheimer's, dementia, reproductive health. So I was thinking, you know what? I want to start like a supplement company, sell supplement. I want to do creatine. I wonder if I can do American creatine, American made creatine. And I very naively assumed that there must be a company that can make it or or does that already. And there was not. So creatine monohydrate is made in two countries. It's about 10, maybe 15% Germany, AlzChem. They make that. They make Creapure, which everyone I think is familiar with if you try to buy premium. And then all the rest is Chinese. So China just really owns the market, right? They're like 90% of the global supply. And those are your two choices. You know, there's no differentiation, there's no nowhere else to buy from. You can go to Germany, it's the one company. You can go to China, which is a few companies. And that's it. And it was just bizarre to me that this is a this is a billion dollar supplement, which and it's a growing supplement, right? Like stupid 25% year over year growth. Like why is it not made in the United States? Uh a few reasons, but the primary reasons being is that the precursor chemicals, which are called There's a lot of words to this, cyanamide and sarcosine, those are not made in the US domestically. Uh and they've not been made domestically for decades. But it was made domestically at one point? At one time it was. It was synthesized here domestically. Up until 1999, there was one company in particular called Fon Steel. They're based in Michigan. And they made American creatine. Up up until around '97, all the creatine in the world was either German or American. >> Oh wow. >> But yes, so I mean this this gets like geopolitical. The two precursor chemicals, the cyanamide in particular, that used to be made in the United States. That chemical that that it's was built or is I should say it's made with the Frank-Caro process. So the Frank-Caro process uh in chemistry, it is a heating process. It's what It is what preceded preceded the Haber-Bosch process. So before the Haber-Bosch process, there was Frank-Caro. Cyanamide, you get by reacting limestone and coal together. You heat it up to 1,000° C, you get uh calcium cyanamide calcium carbide, then you heat that up and then you get cyanamide. So at the turn of the century, this was actually the primary uh agricultural nitrogen additive that was used to help grow crops. And then it had sort of its day in the sun. It is also used very heavily in the industrial industry. So cyanamide, you turn it into DCD, dicyanamide. It's the dimerization form of it. You use that in epoxies and laminates and electronics and uh PCB, like your motherboards. A lot a lot a lot of industrial uses. Is that why that steel company was making the creatine in the US or the precursors? Fon Steel itself, they only did synthesis. The company that made in the United States was literally called American Cyanamid. Oh really? >> they were they started around I want to say 1907. And they closed down 1995. Uh and over the years, they expanded to enormous number of chemicals. They got bought out in 1995. It was like a $9 billion buyout. You know, it's a pretty big. Like it was one of the biggest buyouts ever at the time. In the '90s. But the cyanamide production had gotten shut down over the years by EPA regulations in 1970s and the rising cost of material, especially with the energy crisis in 1970s. And you know, American Cyanamid they made a lot of different chemicals, but they just ended up quitting cyanamide production entirely. The sarcosine production, sarcosine, I don't know if that ever was made in the United States. China, they started industrialization hard in 1990s. The CCP realized this very intelligently that if we want to make electronics, if we want to make cars, if we want to make you know, any kind of advanced materials, we need cyanamide. Flat out you need it. It's It's not like a It's not a optional chemical. You need it. I mean, you're talking agricultural, industrial, pharma, defense even. So China, starting around '96, '97, they started pumping tons and tons of creatine to global market. And they caught everybody off guard. It came kind of came out of nowhere for the market. Like, how how are they selling so much creatine? >> [laughter] >> It didn't make any sense, right? They They collapsed the They collapsed the market. They took over completely. Every American company went out of business. Stopped selling it. The only last company standing was AlzChem in Germany. Uh, and they became the predominant, you know, supplier in the world. They didn't do it just to sell creatine. They did it because it was part of the industrialization strategy. So it's almost like creatine is like a canary in the coal mine for a healthy manufacturing infrastructure of a country. The geopolitics of this are crazy. >> Yeah. That's [laughter] why China dominates the creatine market today. Uh, Wow. You know, when you when you look at the again, you look at like you break down the industrial tree of like, okay, you got you know, you got limestone coal, you got calcium carbide, you got cyanamide. Oh, okay, it makes sense. It allows you to really integrate your economy and now you can make tons of things at a very low cost, which China does obviously. Uh may- they done so to great effect. I mean, props to them. You know, but you also realize the hole that's missing in the US economy, where I kind of talked about this in the article I published like a day or so or yesterday. Things go in layers. You have like finished products, you got IP, you got advanced stuff. And then it breaks all the way down to just raw materials. Do you have gas? Do you have coal? Do you have sand? These kinds of things. The US has very abundant feed stock raw materials. But then you get to layer two, it's like that's where it gets iffy. There are There's a lot of refinement capability you won't have. Cyanamide costs it's right at that layer two, layer three layer, or layer two, layer three, you know, junction of like, "Okay, if you have calcium carbide, which we in fact do, we have a ton of it, well, you should be able to make it." But we don't. You know, and because we don't make it, everything above that layer, you just remove it, right? Remove that from your whole economy. You know, so cyanamide by itself, like, is it a multi-trillion-dollar chemical? No, but there's billions of dollars of products you can build off it. And China realized that. That's why they That's why they did it. That's why they make all the creatine that they make. Um so, you know, so that's you know, that was the challenge I was presented with. I'm like, "How How do you effectively bring this back to the United States and do so in a cost-competitive fashion, right?" Two things. First off, if you had a gun to my head, how good the answer was going to be, that's probably three times as good as I would have said. [ __ ] awesome. >> Second of all, I really hope that in a few years, you're my billionaire friend. I really [laughter] hope so. I really hope I'm like, "Yeah, I know a couple billionaires. You know, AJ, remember him? Yeah, we're boys." Like, that's what I want. That's what I want. I want that conversation. >> bars with Bezos. >> Yeah, yeah. He He actually walks with a cane now. I don't know what happened, but he So, I'm curious now. So, you figure this out and you didn't bow out, right? Like, I I would have read that, I would have been like, "Wow. All right, I'm out." Where do you go from there? >> Yeah, a good question. So, cyanamide is on the critical chemicals list. So, meaning it's excluded basically kind of from tariffs, more or less, because we absolutely need it for all the industrial processes I laid out. And the US government actually knows this. If you're to ever to make this economical, the old industrial processes to let's say like build a you're going to build a massive, you know, furnace, you're going to make this stuff, like you're talking hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars capital expenditure, operational expenditure is going to be pretty big. Like there has to be a better way. So, yeah, I can't give away too much, but I basically I put out like a call to action, right? I'm actually you guys kind of saw this. I'm like, "Hey, yeah, I'm doing American ingenuity. I want to talk to people." I was able to get in touch with some very good scientists who it could cuz our chemical let's say like chemical scientists who are US-based. And there is a number of process improvements and technological improvements to making these chemicals. Basically meaning there are ways to make them much more efficiently with less energy and much cleaner. Basically if you're going to make chemicals and let's say you want to do something that's cool, it's like you have to find a better way to make that chemical. The evolution of chemistry industrial chemistry like sort of like semi-industrial chemistry is just finding more efficient ways to produce your you know to produce your output. And for these chemicals there actually are quite a number of better ways. So, when I found those those guys, I put together a crew literally of like a bunch of engineers and chemists. I'm like, "All right, I think like we think this is possible. Let's start working on it." And that's what we've been working on. So, yeah, I can say you know for anyone listening like is it really economically viable to make this stuff in the US? 100% it is. Without a doubt it is for for less money than you might think. Now, I mean it doesn't mean it's going to be cheap cheap, but like this can be done. It doesn't require a crazy amount of capital. And there is legitimate both public and public and industrial need for it on multiple levels. And I think I remember reading a post that you have had like made up an alpha batch for lack of a better term. So, we have made some. Yeah, we're we're going to be making some more. Does it taste like freedom? >> [laughter] >> It I mean, it's pretty pretty chalky, right? It comes out as like a very chalky powder you have to find. Call! >> [laughter] >> Yeah, cue cue the eagle screaming. But, uh as of right now, I'm looking for people that want to help support the project and you know, get it off the ground. Uh which can actually be done quite quickly. We could have we could be going to market within 12 months. Given how important this chemical is, I know there's a ton of grants, right? I used to work in the defense industry. Have you experienced any of that yet? Yeah, we are exploring that. Yes. Obviously, you are in pursuit of becoming the king of creatine. But, in the interim, when you're just the prince, what brand are you buying? What do you recommend? What do you not recommend? Like, what is your general advice you're giving, you know, putting on your back your fitness influencer hat? Where are you pushing people and what do you tell them to buy? There's two companies, I'll say, that do a fantastic job. So, I have to shout out Creapure. Creapure is fantastic. That that company has a very defined iterated process and the quality is unmatchable, more or less. There is a Chinese company, I believe, NNM Nutrition. They have purest creatine that's come out as well. Look, it's a little more if you want to be more affordable. That's also a good option. We Creapure works in the United States. Obviously, goes into tons of products. The reason why Chinese creatine in the past they got bad reputation is during 1990s, they in fact pumped out low quality product. If your creatine is even like 98.5% pure, and it's got DCD in it and much other stuff, it's going to make you sick. You're going to get the runs. It's not going to digest well. Recently, like in the past year, every time me and my wife take creatine, like we get a stomach ache. And I'm like, am I just getting old or is this like it's a new manufacturer, new product? >> go like the fully micro-ionized route? Like a crea- like German the German company Alzchem, they have Crea Vitalis, which is like the very powdery version of that. You could try that out. Like they're again their quality is like you're never going to question it. You know, the other factor the mistake that people make with taking creatine is they don't take it with enough water. Yeah, we were talking about this. Yeah. Does the form matter to you? Like are you monohydrate maxi? Yeah, monohydrate does work for most people. So, the other form you can utilize which is creatine hydrochloride. This is it may be like a salt form essentially. It doesn't taste good at all. You have to take a bunch of capsules, but it does absorb a bit better. Now, the there's one company that makes in the United States, Concrete. They actually do the synthesis here. They So, they don't make the precursor not integrate supply chain. They but they do synthesize. Props to them. Awesome. They're kind of like a forerunner. Um I will say the claims around like the 7x absorbability henceforth you only need 1 g. I mean the literature is pretty light on HCL compared to monohydrate anyway. Also, my brain immediately going to as I've explored capsules for so many things now, you can only put like 700 800 mg max in a capsule. So, if you were going to do the recommended doses would be taking 20 caps? >> Yeah, totally. More. Yeah, I mean if you're taking like 10 g a day like it's not practical. It's it's not as if your body is absorbing. I mean the implication there is like 7x absorption. So, you're telling me that monohydrate is only like what? 10% absorption and hydrochloride 70? That's flat out not true. Yeah. But you know, digestion wise sometimes that does digest better for people. So, you could try that. Just you're going to be spending a bit more money. Can you give me a little bit of insight as to like the drama behind the creatine gummies and how like they tested them and there's like zero creatine in them? You know, these people are making these creatine products and like they it either breaks down or they was never put in in the first place. Like can you just walk walk us through that a little bit? That was a fiasco that whole thing. I mean the the guy that did the investigation James props to him. Like fantastic guy. Like credit credit that he went through all that. Creatine One of the challenges of working with is that it's actually made through an exothermic process. You combine the two chemicals, they're in a liquid form, a sort of kind of slurry. You heat it up to about 80° C, so about let's say 175°, maybe a little bit hotter. It stirs around for a while, you pour it out, you evaporate, you dry it out, and then you end up with creatine. Creatine is heat sensitive, so it makes it hard to work with the gummies. Anyone trying to make a gummy will learn this very fast. Like you have to be very careful with how you control your heat. What these companies did, a multitude of them, and this is just to terrible ethics, right? There's no other way to describe it. Creatine gummies they started to take off. Create, you know that company? Great company. You know they they had creatine in their gummies. Dan McCormick, I think is the only one that tested positive for having the advertised creatine, from what I remember. And that's why they're in Target. >> Yeah, that's why they're in Target. They're respected. They're just like knobs, baby. >> [laughter] >> We did want to shout out Create for actually being one of the only ethical creatine gummies on the market. Yeah, I had messaged Dan. I mean I don't know, I probably got lost in his DMs. Like, "Hey, if you ever want American creatine, I'm going to make some in [laughter] the future." Love it. Love it. But uh yeah, this is like food chemistry in the lab. They found a way to make it, incorporate it, and it comes out as a nice gummy. Uh but yeah, that's an expensive process. You know, doing chemical iteration will easily run you into the hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. What the other companies did, because they're just run by by [ __ ] basically, by [ __ ] they just decided just to forego the creatine. Or they were putting the creatine in, not enough of it, and letting it burn up in the production process. It's crazy. >> And they all they all copycat each other since everyone's just trying to sell a gummy, right? >> Right. Oh, yeah. And >> And I guess doesn't a similar thing happen if you like mix it in water and just like put it in your fridge and drink it the next day? Like the creatine starts to break down into creatinine, right? Creatine in room temp water, cold water, it stays quite stable. Okay. You know, for a day. It'll stay stable for a day. The challenge though, this is what the beverage industry, whoever solves that is going to make a lot of money. Uh when you put creatine in water, let's say if it breaks down by, you know, 1% over 24 hours, a month later that's pretty significant, right? >> Yeah. If it's sitting on shelves, I mean, yeah, you're you're totally >> doesn't work. It doesn't work. Creatine in coffee, as the coffee temperature drops, you might lose like 1, 2%. It's very marginal. I'm glad you brought up the coffee because I think Paul Saladino said don't drink it with coffee not because of the heat, but because of the caffeine prevents absorption in the gut. Is that true? I don't know I haven't looked into that. >> No, that's that's not that's not true, either. Like the research on that is if you if you look at it, it's very mixed, like does it actually happen? Right. >> Those are two for molecules, like they're not competing on like a receptor site per se or for an enzyme. So, I I I'm not to start a beef with Paul. I like Paul, but that that's just not No, it's all love. It's all love. >> this is this is just one sound bite we're talking >> Friendly banter. This happens, and it's like a 0.1%, and then it catches fire, and it's like don't do this because the creatine's useless. It's like, well, he he meant 0.1% degradation. It's fine. >> were just talking about this, the hair loss myth. Let us make this very clear. Three bald guys are talking about this. Our hair loss did not happen from creatine. >> man. You got to talk about the creatine and the hair loss, not us. It's based off that one study in 2009 with rugby players that they had like raised DHT, and then it hasn't been able to be recreated since. So, like that's I till like Calvin's point, it's like one thing catches fire. It's like one Yeah, and then it's just We were talking earlier before you came on about the slippery slope of the dosages. In the '80s, '90s, and even early 2000s, it was like a strict 3 to 5 g a day, and now people are like 20 g a day. It's like Yeah, more, more, more. Where do you stand on that? >> So, if you go back and you look at some of the like very These are very bro recommendations from the 1990s about creatine loading, like you should be loading 20 30 g a day. Uh take you drink grape juice with sugar. It'll help you absorb faster. I'm not saying that you need to do that. I'm not That's not my suggestion like you must do that. You do hit saturation quicker, at least in regards to especially like brain tissue, your brain um metabolism. Now, the downside to that, you know, the caveat is that if you try to like shotgun 20 g of creatine, you're going to be on the toilet. Like that that's not going to digest well. You want 5 g at a time with about like a half liter of water. So, if you do you got to do 10 g, you're going to drink a lot more fluid. Uh but then you can break up into dosages. But that level of dosing does work for cognitive health. I I think what will probably happen in the future and this is this is not I'm not giving away alpha here. Like this is being worked on. There's an intranasal form of creatine that's being developed right now in France actually. Phase two clinical trials and they are working on a version that you can basically [snorts] put into an inhaler. Really? Ripping lines Creatine will be sick. >> [laughter] >> Why am I very bullish on creatine? Like we got to make in the United States. Creatine is going to have significant crossover with the medical community, you know, medical science very very soon. It's already being studied for that. Yeah. Yeah. At that point you have the whole medical market of it's going to be medical grade creatine we're going to be talking about. >> It's a platform more than it is an ingredient. It's not just something you mix in water for the gym now. It's it's a nutrient. Like when you look at it through the lens of a supplement, it's like this extra thing, but a nutrient is something that you need for the body. And so, I think that it's important that people start thinking of creatine as a nutrient more than a supplement. >> like a really good time to be someone who's about to build a manufacturer in the US of creatine. >> [laughter] >> Right? There's been some research in with creatine and heart failure support. So, this is not used in the United States at all. Like there has been legitimate clinical research in using creatine in like an intravenous form among essentially Uh, people who have had heart attacks or doing going through cardiac rehab. So, yeah, again, it's just there's going to have to start Over the next 5 years, you're going to start seeing it it get used for a lot of different other conditions. There's also research going on right now for reproductive health. >> A meme that's begun on our show where everything we talk about comes back to mitochondrial health. At the end of the day, like everything just no matter what it is what we're talking about, it all just like seems to funnel back down to that. Uh, and and Elon was bringing up before we were talking about it how Chris Masterjohn is like one of the only people that speaks about creatine's connection to mitochondrial health and how it can kind of help with pathways. Yes, I'm paraphrasing him, but creatine essentially acts as extra mitochondria. It does give you more ATP to work with. He has a whole article on it. We'll link his article. >> Yeah, yeah. It's hard to talk about Masterjohn's stuff without doing him a disservice cuz he's so detail-oriented. >> much smarter than [laughter] we are. Yeah, if anyone is, you know, has hard to diagnose health issues, brain fog, low energy, like you know, they they haven't really get to the root causes, get that test done. It does a very very cool breakdown of your mitochondrial complexes. But, where creatine factors into that is it gives you increased respiration overall in the electron transport chain. Gives you more ATP to work with. Uh, so, you know, it gives you energy. Like you'll flat out. That's why that certainly at higher doses, like you can take 5 g, but the 10 g level's where you really start to notice the effects. Uh, yeah, there's a guy, Brian Cranston, Canadian uh, writer who wrote for T-Nation years ago. Or I think like maybe he still does. T-Nation. Shout out T-Nation. Yeah, right? Like we're getting we're getting like old bros, old school. So, yeah, Brian Cranston, I remember back in like 2010, he was recommending 10 g a day for anyone else did. So, I mean, props to Brian as well. Like he he kind of pioneered just doing that in the first place. And he said, he's like, "Hey, when I take 10 g, I just got more energy. I notice an effect from it. It seems to do more for my brain than my muscles." Not only do I know that, I did that. >> Yeah, you felt it. Sick, dude. You think I'd be more jacked if I've been talking about all this and doing it for so long? [laughter] Like We like to do this thing called minimum effective dose. What's like a good protocol that works [music] for most people? >> I'd say take take 10 g a day. Take 5 g morning, 5 g midday. Take it with about half liter of water. Uh your best bets for brands going to be so Creapure or you know maybe if you want something even like higher quality, more broken down, Creatine ethyl same company it's just the fully micronized version. Nice. Awesome. Great. >> And when can we expect American creatine to give us American diarrhea? >> [laughter] >> Yeah, if all goes well with what we're developing um with the monohydrate and some other cool things, we should be hitting the market in 12 months. No way. I thought I did not realize it was that fast. >> Incredible. Oh my god. Hold on. There's a caveat. There's something he's like hold on hold on. Well like our production run is going to be small. We'll have an we'll be able to make probably let's say like probably about 2,000 kilos a month. So it like it's going to sell out, you know, if the demand is there, right? >> the inner circle only. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be like [laughter] get I'm going to tell everybody get the americancreatine.com. Go sign up. That's where we'll announce it when we finally make it available for sale. What's the thing you're looking ahead to is going to be like the most controversial thing or the number one controversy you see when people talk about creatine? Creatine is a medical nutrient. It it's not a bro supplement. I I this is why I've been screaming at VCs basically for like past 2 weeks. It is not just muscle building. It helps in the gym. Its effects are systemic across every system in the body, across all metabolism. And it has the you know obviously potential, but it has the utility to be legitimately life-changing, health-changing for people. >> Jimbros right again. Jimbros right again, baby. Yeah, tr- trust in bros, okay? Trust in bros. Trust in >> are undefeated. Well, we're really excited to um watch you ride that wave. >> 100%. >> I can't wait for him to start wearing a top hat cuz he's so rich. >> [laughter] >> Anyone who's listening to this and they want to be one of the first people to get some American Creatine, American Creatine.com. If you are someone you're coming from you know the world where you like to help people, you like to help businesses, let's just say it that way. The company Athanor, so a t h a n o o a n o r Athano Incorporated. That's the actual company. That's that's where all the cool like the actual chemistry stuff is happening, right? So that's what I'm building out right now and we're looking for friends to help us out with that whole build out process. But feel free to send me a message on X, you know, contact me that way. I'll be happy to talk to you. Awesome. We'll be in touch, for sure. 100% You guys are awesome. Thanks, man. Great job. Good talking to you guys. Well, that was cool. Dude, I had no idea how much creatine is involved in like just the world. >> How often do we have that conversation on the show, right? Where after we're like we were so dumb on this topic. >> already pumped about American Creatine, but I'm like juiced on it. I thought we'd be talking about like the conversion to creatinine, but like conversation just went way forget about that. That's 90s talk. I think that's way better cuz everyone's talking about the conversion of creatinine and the different types. You can Google this. What he just talked about no one's talking about. >> Happy accident. Happy accident, [laughter] baby. Oopsie. And he was talking about making money off ebooks and I was like yeah, my money. >> [laughter] >> Love it. We put out a fertility episode. That episode is near and dear to me. It's something that I that I'm dealing with, but also I think that anybody who's either wants to have kids in the future, is struggling now, is even just not struggling, just looking to have kids, I think it's worth listening to for everybody. And like we've been saying everything comes back to mitochondria. That's no exception. But all of this stuff what we were talking about today that it all kind of comes together, but that one I definitely think would pair well with us. Totally. If you have a topic or a guest that you want to see on the show, I feel like people trust us a little bit more that we've done like almost [music] 10 episodes. Tell us. Tag people that you want to see on the show. We want to promote our friends on X. We want to promote anyone who might be watching that is actively doing stuff in health and just have a conversation. >> And we want to learn, too, right? Even if we don't know about it. We want to learn so we can come in completely dumb and ask them questions if they're an expert, but please >> Just don't teach us about being bald. >> Yeah, we're good on hair. This has been Down to Health. See you next week. Bye, y'all. >> [music]