Today's discussion is all about nutrition and supplementation to maximize your fitness exercise and performance goals I'm super excited to discuss today's topic which is nutrition and supplementation for performance and recovery and I'm particularly excited about this conversation because I've been interested in supplementation and nutrition for performance really since my teens but also because in recent years we've witnessed a massive transformation in the general public in terms of their view of supplementation and nutrition first of all more people are thinking about nutrition what is good nutrition what is not a  very barbed wire topic as you know but there are some truths in there that we'll discuss but also supplementation you know whereas 10 15 years ago I think most people um would either be really into supplements that was a small percentage of people but the majority of people were either told or were thinking oh you know vitamins you mostly excrete them they're just expensive urine nowadays it seems that many people including many of my colleagues and Physicians all the way down to sports performance experts are taking and making recommendations about certain supplements and so the way that I like to think about supplements is that they aren't necessarily just supplements which makes it sound like they are augmenting what should already be there but you're not quite getting enough of but indeed a lot of thesethings we call supplements are very potent compounds that can transform our ability to perform in the short term to recover from exercise and that can really shape brain chemistry hormone patterns acutely and when taken long term so I'm very excited about today's topic and to be able to try and sort through this let's call it a cloud hopefully not a storm but this cloud of supplements that are out there because indeed many of them are excellent and can provide us a lot some of them are terrible and then some just don't do anything and therefore are terrible because either they have side effects or because they're very expensive and they don't do anything and then of course within the realm of nutrition there's an equal amount of of confusion but that's why I'm talking to you because you're going to put Clarity and structure and definition on these incredibly important topics you you absolutely nailed it there one of the major reasons supplements can work is because you can consume nutrients in extremely high concentrations such that you would not get in nature through food having said that you really do want to focus on the basic sleep nutrition hydration and I'm going to get into very specific detail later with some of those things that said there are plenty of situations and circumstances when supplementation can do exactly what you said also though because you are taking them in such high concentrations they can also be unproductive they can be destructive or they can be counterproductive so in case if you're taking a couple of supplements over here it may actually be counteracting the benefits of some of the other supplements over there so in the ideal situation we would be able to work like snipers here so we would be able to run full biological testing so extensive blood work and saliva and urine and stool and have an in-depth analysis of your gut microbiome and your stress patterns and your time of day and your cortisol curve and like all the things that we do in our high performance folks with that then we can get extremely high Precision supplementation and and quite honestly our philosophy is we only give individuals exactly what they need so even some of the standard uh generally safe and effective supplements we don't really necessarily use them if there's no specific need we've talked about the consequences of this with things like antioxidants but even simple stuff like stimulants and other tools that are effective for Recovery we don't use them unless we have a reason that said that's not the reality for a lot of people they're not going to be able to do something like that or somebody who can help them in that so there are a handful of supplements that I would consider to be in my my 80 20 rule which is sort of like the 20 of supplements that are going to give you 80 of the benefit for the lowest cost and so what I can actually do is just sort of start there even though this like burns my skin and my soul a little bit I absolutely hate this 


I am the context guy I'm the it it depends it's high Precision guy but let's be real um there are a number of supplements that are fairly effective and fairly cheap for a wide range of outcomes so this is for general public this is for people who want to do the three buckets right you want to look a certain way so supplements that could enhance muscle growth and fat loss non-hormonal based supplements of course supplements that can improve energy or physical performance again from everything from you know squatting more to feeling better in your yoga class to having more energy throughout the day to our third major bucket that we've been talking about throughout this entire series which are longevity so we can cover those first if you'd like to start there yes absolutely let's start there oftentimes when we think of supplements we immediately jump to High Sport performance type of things or vigorous workouts or muscle building though that doesn't necessarily have to be the case take for example creatine and I've spoken about this at lengthens with Darren kandow who's done a tremendous amount of research I was just up at his lab recently in Canada and he has covered extensively in fact


 I think I put up a post perhaps I could draw this up um where he laid out all the Myriad of benefits of creatine this is taken in the you know typically three to five grams per day of dose of creatine monohydrate which has the most research behind it seems to be extremely low side effect in almost anyone and the benefits including course things like muscle performance and strength and things like that and if you go back to our discussion and our episode on metabolism and endurance we talked about the phosphoryl creatine system so you can figure out kind of what this is going to do in terms of effect that said there's excellent information and data coming out and all on the benefits of bone mineral density and creatine there's a ton of work looking at a host of cognitive factors from memory executive function to effects potentially on even things like depression mood to alzheimer's Parkinson's uh all forms of neurodegenerative disease in fact it's it's pretty obvious the brain loves creatine as a fuel and so not only we sort of discussed in the episode as being the fuel for skeletal muscle contraction but the brain needs to do that as well the astrocytes are on the brain need to be able to provide energy Etc so it's very clear that metabolism in the brain is reduced with things like TBI and potentially concussions so um now to be extremely clear creatine does not prevent any of those diseases it does not treat any of them and the data are mixed but it's more and more are coming some show a little bit of benefits I'm showing you know maybe none but I'm not aware of any research in those areas that show it has any downside for the most part side effects are extremely minimal if not null and then potentially some benefit and depending on the specific study so we could put up a if you'd like a couple of links directly to those meta-analyzes and folks can go through those things one by one so um I only say that to again maybe expand our understanding or thinking about what these types of supplements can do it's not just about growing muscle or you know high performance it's everything to again there's an association with recovery so creatine is fantastic for recovery for muscle for muscle damage it helps and can potentially Aid in fat loss and a whole host of things so you can actually also even look at websites like examine.com I have you know no affiliation with them

whatsoever but if you want to just type in something like creatine monohydrate you can see a whole list and you'regoing to see thousands of studies of the potential benefits of creatine so that is is always number one on my list I'm relieved to hear that creatine sits at the top of your supplementation list because well first of all I started taking it when I was in college at that time I was taking it in this kind of loading mode where you take it in um you know anywhere from uh 15 to 25 grams per day often causing some gastric distress often combining with fruit juice to try and shuttle it into the muscles sure and then so-called maintenance phase of reducing to 10 or 15 grams per day now days I just take about five grams or so although later I know you're gonna tell me why I should probably be taking more than five grams per day given my body weight so I know we'll get into some of those specifics a little bit later but in addition to experiencing Direct effects on muscle size and strength which I did I don't know how it contributed to my cognitive function or if it does now because there's really no way to tease that out with with standard at home tests like a scale but it is very clear to me based on the literature that you described and some of which we've covered on other episodes of the podcast that the phospho creatine system is vitally important for forebrain function right the forebrain of course being the the portion of brain broadly speaking the portion of brain just behind your forehead that is responsible for planning action setting rules and context so even as simple as if you're going downfield in a game of soccer or basketball and you're on offense and then uh you make an attempt on goal or basket and then it switches and you go back now you're on defense that being on defense is very different than being on offense and that goal excuse me that that rule switching is a prefrontal cortical function as is every context dependent way of thinking or acting and so anything that can favor function of the forebrain I think is good for uh humans in general it suppresses anxiety allows us to interpret what's going on for us and so I'm very um relieved and gratified to hear that creatine sits at the top of the list also as I'm sure you'll point out again later creatine is for the most part a relatively affordable supplement for most people so here we're not talking about something that's really esoteric or that you have to you know fly to some remote location to get an infusion of right um but although I apologize to all you because I know the price has skyrocketed recently really yeah why is that I think it's just well nobody knows but it's quote unquote Supply and uh demand issue if you will so those prices have gone up there's also of course been shipping problems in the world and things so uh every time I talk about creatine right now people just flame me for like oh my God it's so expensive now I'm like I know I'm sorry but honestly it's only so expensive because you're used to being so cheap so when you when you counter the fact that you're like right yeah like relative to the other stuff you're probably taking relative to any other number of purchases um for the it still lands very high in my Roi List my you know my 80 20 because of that it's um it can be taken any time of the day it doesn't have to be in magical combination you talked about co-ingesting with carbohydrates that can enhance uh how quickly you can get into the system in fact it's it's going to work on the exact same mechanisms will probably potentially talk about hydration but these things are shuttled so anytime you bring in carbohydrate that's going to be shipped into tissue as quickly as it performance with Dr Andy Galpin and as always thank you for your interest in science