Shadowing Practice: Creatine: is there truth behind the hype? - Learn English Speaking with Video

Creatine.

Once the supplement of choice for bodybuilders and elite athletes, it's now officially broken out of the gym and hit the mainstream.

But like many supplements, it's hard to get to the bottom of whether it actually does what it says on the tin.

So we're here to help.

Today, does creatine live up to the hype?

From The Guardian, I'm Madeleine Finlay and this is Science Weekly.

Ian I've heard so many claims about creatine

and I know a lot of people taking it as well

and doing the job

that we do it's really hard not to be sceptical of any kind of supplement at all

so I want you to tell me is creatine worth bothering with

but first I guess I need to know what it is?

Sure.

So creatine is a naturally occurring compound, okay?

I mean, it's made from amino acids, three different types of amino acid, glycine, arginine and methionine.

And people might think of amino acids as the building blocks of proteins.

They are the building blocks of proteins, but creatine itself isn't a protein.

It's too small to be a protein, but it's made out of amino acids.

What's it doing in our bodies?

What do we need it for?

Creatines really sort of comes into its own in your body when you're doing sort of high intensity activity.

But let me give you some background first of the sort of what's going on inside cells

when they're doing this and then we'll see how creatine slots in.

So scientists talk about a sort of an energy currency in cells

and that energy currency is a compound called adenosine triphosphate, ATP.

And as the name suggests, adenosine triphosphate has three phosphate groups attached to each molecule.

When a cell wants some energy, it can split off one of those phosphate groups and

that releases a bit of energy that the cell can put to good work.

So that can be used to contract muscles, say.

and it leaves you with ADP, adenosine diphosphate, okay, because you've lost one, you go try to die.

Now, when you're doing a lot of intense exercise, you can burn through your ATP very quickly.

You can do this in seconds.

So where does creatine come in?

Well, creatine in your cells, it binds to phosphate.

It forms a compound called phosphocreatine, and in fact, that's how most creatine is stored in your in your cells

and what phosphocreatine can do is it's really good at donating

the phosphate back to adp to rebuild it to atp

so it's almost like a recharges the adenosine triphosphate

so you've used it goes down to adp phosphocreatine comes in

gives it the phosphate back back to atp you can then use it again to do things

so that is how creatine is is working

and it's enabling the cell to kind of replenish the ATP when it's burning through it really quickly.

Okay, so when you're doing high intensity exercise in particular, creatine has this role where it can help the cells release more energy for longer.

But how do we actually make creatine in our bodies?

We make some of our creatine in our pancreas, liver and kidney, okay?

And we make probably one to two grams.

And a lot of that goes to your sort of skeletal muscles, and a little bit goes to your brain, your heart, and some other tissues.

So we're making, probably a lot of us anyway, we'll be making about half of our creatine.

The rest you're gonna get from your diet.

Now, it depends sort of what you eat, obviously.

Foods like red meat and fish are rich in creatine

because it's in the muscles and What's good about creatine is because it's a small molecule it

Can kind of get absorbed straight into your system It doesn't

get broken down as it goes through into your into your bloodstream and so on obviously if you're vegan or vegetarian

They tend to have lower creatine levels in their cells because because plants don't have creatine in them,

but they can eat foods which will have the three amino acids in with which to build creatine in their bodies.

And so if you're eating like a lot of nuts and legumes, you're going to get the amino acids you're going to need to build creatine in your body.

And if you're vegetarian, dairy foods and eggs as well are going to help.

Right, Ian.

So we know that creatine has this useful role in our bodies.

We can make it through the foods that we eat.

So how well studied is it as a supplement?

Creatine's got a really long history.

It was discovered by a French scientist in 1832.

And, you know, really since then, it has become one of the most studied supplements out there,

often in the context of sort of building muscle in training.

When you do a quick search under creatine, you'll find thousands of research papers looking at creatine and what it does and what it doesn't do.

When you look at the effects specifically on women, actually, it's not as impressive.

I mean, you'll find maybe only a few hundred papers.

So the research is definitely skewed and there's less known about the actual specific effects in women.

When you hear that there are thousands of papers, it sounds very impressive.

But then the question is, when you go and look at those papers,

how many of them are going to be those high quality gold standard research studies that you always look for.

And one of the big problems in any kind of supplement research is you go to the paper, you look at the affiliations and the declarations and you see,

ah, okay, this has actually been paid for by a company that makes the supplement.

And of course, you understand why that is.

But then at the same time, it's a big pinch of salt on any kind of result that you see.

So look, I think it's fair to say I'm still a bit of a sceptic on this

but give me the big picture on the evidence for supplementing creatine.

Totally I mean whenever you're looking at research and particularly

when you're looking at research on supplements you want to check whether

that research has been conducted by a company

that happens to sell supplements okay absolute conflict of interest 101

that you want to check out but you know having said

that the evidence that you know creatine supplementation can give you this sort of training boost does seem to be pretty reliable.

There seems to be as good as a consensus that that is happening and it all makes a lot of sense.

I think the question then becomes, okay, well, how big a deal is that, right?

And what's interesting here is if you think about how much creatine does a particular person store in their muscle cells,

like just from the diet they have already and so on.

And then you think about how much could they potentially store in those cells.

And that gap is quite interesting.

So, you know, most people would be able to store more creatine if they were having supplementation.

And you'd imagine they would get some effect then if they needed this intense energy sort of, you know, for doing intense exercise.

But we're all different. And so

that is where it becomes a bit tricky as to knowing how much of an effect an individual is going to experience.

And this is something I spoke to Justin Roberts about, and he's a professor of nutritional physiology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

If you're doing high intensity activities, going to the gym and you're doing every day or every other day where there's a high demand on the body,

that's where creatine probably has a role to play.

But also when you look at the amount of physical work that can be performed,

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what you often see is a faster rate of recovery between exercises, meaning chances are you're able to do more.

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So if you look at some of the more recent studies, particularly in older people, the kind of driving factor

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that seems to be in play is that the training volume increases because they're able to do more.

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Okay, so supplementing with creatine, there is this possibility

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that you can get this benefit of being able to train a little bit harder or maybe a little bit longer.

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Is that why it's associated with gaining muscle? that's right

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but i spoke to justin about this and he really wanted to make clear

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that you know just taking the creatine alone is not going

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to affect your muscle mass people might think well creatine equals

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muscle mass it it doesn't there are hypothesized theories around whether creatine may relate to

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or trigger muscle growth but fundamentally it comes back to the training

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if you're not physically undertaking some sort of training that's going to stimulate the muscle like resistance training, then creatine is unlikely going to have a profound effect.

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But beyond the sort of the big guns, there's also more limited evidence for benefits in other areas.

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There are some emerging studies that have shown that you can potentially, with high amounts of creatine,

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increase creatine in the brain because it's a highly active tissue in terms of energy demand.

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And so there have been a few studies that suggest that in a sleep deprived state, and that's a key factor,

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that you might actually be able to have better mental

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or cognitive functioning in a sleep deprived state with high amounts of creatine.

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creatine's also been used in the skincare industry for about 20 years

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and the claim there is that it helps with the production of collagen

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and we actually have a podcast coming up on on collagen specifically

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but the research on creatine and effects on collagen looks pretty shaky to me

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and there's just so much that we still don't understand okay ian

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if somebody does want to start taking creatine what's the best way to do

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that how should they do it well the way it's done in a lot of the studies

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when they're looking for an impact from from taking it

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when people are training is they they do a kind of

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a loading phase at the beginning where you take a quite

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high dose of creatine for a few days to sort of really sort of push your levels up

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and then you drop down to a sort of a maintenance dose

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but you know you don't have to do it

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that way you can take a lower dose

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and maybe it it will take a bit longer to have any sort of real effects.

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One thing people might get confused about when they're looking at creatine is it just comes in so many different forms, right?

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I mean, first of all, you know, there are powders, there are gummies, there are drinks, but also there are different names.

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I mean, you can have like creatine hydrochloride, you can have creatine ethyl ester.

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Most of the research has been done on a form called creatine monohydrate.

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But, you know, I think

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these all are making sort of slightly different claims about how well they're absorbed

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and things like that and again this is something else i spoke to justin about

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when i first got into nutrition creatine was available in powder form only

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when i first got it uh years ago

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and as time's gone on kind of the the concept of creatine has changed from powders into tablets into gummies

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and even skin patches

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the first thing i would say is where's the science on a lot of these

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and if you look at the literature probably the overwhelming amount of science has been done on creatine monohydrate

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which is highly absorbed it's like 95 to 99 absorbed

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so it's highly absorbed and it's generally stable in a fairly solid form like a powder

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so when i see claims

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that uh you know another type of creatine is suddenly miraculously

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a lot better a lot better than creatine monohydrate i'm very skeptical

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because it's already highly absorbed are there any risks or side effects from taking creatine

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The evidence so far suggests that creatine at the doses people take it at when they're doing supplementation is actually pretty safe.

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I mean, certainly, you know, in people who are who are healthy.

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There are some case reports in sort of a bit of

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the older literature of people with existing kidney problems having some side effects.

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But apart from that, really, the only thing I've seen is that some people can get like bloating from from taking it.

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And I spoke again to Justin on that.

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For some people, how they take creatine can lead to things like bloating and water retention.

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So if you're taking high amounts of creatine or you're taking it with carbohydrates, for example, in a sports drink,

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then your body will hold on to some of the water actually because of the creatine retains a bit more water.

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And for some people, they get a little bit more gut bloating and a little bit more water retention.

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so Ian I kind of can't believe that I'm saying this

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because always on Science Weekly we just recommend healthy diets

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and more beans and nuts but it looks like there is something in creatine

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so for somebody who is not an elite athlete who is

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just doing a normal amount of exercise going down to the

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gym like the rest of us is it worth going back to that original question taking creatine You know, it's not necessarily cheap to get the supplements.

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So is it going to help them do one extra rep or 10?

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So that's like, you know, an active area of research is to does creating supplementation really help people who aren't going to the gym

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and are just sort of carrying on with their lives as normal, right?

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And I think that's going to be an interesting one to watch.

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But for the moment, certainly the evidence is way in favour of people who are needing

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that burst of energy and doing it in part of their training and getting the health benefits and, you know, the strength benefits that come from the training.

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So that seems to be where the evidence is at the moment.

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I think it's going to be really interesting to see, though, you know, does it help older people who are losing muscle mass?

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Would it help slow that?

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Would it help other people who are having muscle problems or what have you?

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And I think that, again, is where we need to see more research.

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But yeah, I think for the moment, definitely if you're doing the exercise and you need to be sort of want to be pushing yourself more in your exercise.

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But I think as a sort of something for the general sort of person who isn't doing any of that, I don't think the evidence is really there yet.

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So depends on the circumstance.

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Another nuanced conclusion from Science Weekly.

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Ian, thank you very much.

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Thank you.

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And that's it from us today.

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Don't forget to hit subscribe.

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And if you take creatine as a supplement, let us know if you think it's made a difference to you.

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We'll be back with another episode later this week.

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See you then.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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