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Creatine supplementation improves brain performance in vegetarians [pdf]

33 pointsby ulvundabout 15 years ago

10 comments

dejbabout 15 years ago
Edit : it should be noted that this is from 2003. I'm sure newer research has been done. (Re-Edit. Not much by the looks of it)<p>One question this raises is why isn't there a know correlation between high red meat diets and higher brain performance? All things being equal the the study suggests a significant advantage for higher intake.<p>Here are my best guesses in order of likelyhood<p>- The benefit is temporary and relates more to the raising of levels rather the absolute level.<p>- The amounts of creatine involved (equivalent of 2 pounds red meat per day) are too much for anyone to ingest naturally for long, but this level is required to see significant benefits.<p>- The benefits of creatine are being counteracted by some other substances in red meat therefore masking it's effect on heavy meat eaters.<p>- The reported high average IQ of those who chose to become vegetarians masks the fact that the lack of creatine in their diet does actually make them dumber.<p>Anyway it looks interesting especially for those without much natural creatine intake.
gwernabout 15 years ago
Relevant link: <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training/browse_thread/thread/fe4ee2f0c994e40e/d24bcf30c083ec3e" rel="nofollow">http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training/browse_thread/...</a><p>tl;dr: Rawson 2008 is a broad null result for healthy young omnivores who aren't idiots. Vegetarians, idiots, the sleep-deprived, and old people may benefit.
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chaosmachineabout 15 years ago
The graphs seem to show ~50% increase on Raven's Progressive Matrices tests, and ~30% on backwards digit span tests.<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/7jZT4.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/7jZT4.png</a><p>Those are pretty large gains, I'm tempted to try supplementing this.
lurkerperpetualabout 15 years ago
A very interesting topic for a study would be similarly testing groups of omnivores, vegetarians and vegans, to see if there are any detectable mental capacity differences. It should be less controversial than comparing the same between races and genders.<p>The 'we developed bigger and better brains from eating meat' is an often used rationale for the omnivore diet.
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ulvundabout 15 years ago
From the abstract:<p>" .. In this work, we tested the hypothesis that oral creatine supplementation (5 g/day for six weeks) would enhance intelligence test scores and working memory performance in 45 young adult, vegetarian subjects in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design. Creatine supplementation had a significant positive effect (p , 0.0001) on both working memory (backward digit span) and intelligence (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices), both tasks that require speed of processing. These findings underline a dynamic and significant role of brain energy capacity in influencing brain performance."
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duncanjabout 15 years ago
Why do the graphs change the name of the line between point 2 and point 4?
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tokenadultabout 15 years ago
It's time to link to Peter Norvig's article about reading research studies again:<p><a href="http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html" rel="nofollow">http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html</a>
jeyabout 15 years ago
This study is from 2003 and makes extravagant claims. Have there been any followup studies that corroborate it or qualify it? Were these vegetarians seriously deficient?
hackermomabout 15 years ago
Just thought I'd add this...<p>Creatine is naturally produced in the human body by amino acids. Just because you're a vegetarian, it doesn't mean you suffer a shortage of the particular amino acids required for producing creatine. Most vegetarians fall under the "ovo-lacto" umbrella, meaning they will eat egg and milk, and pretty much anything else made by animals, just not the animals themselves - being a vegetarian myself, I often say: "I'll eat food made by animals, just not food made OF animals" - and many vegetarians also use various "fullworthy" protein supplements containing all the essential amino acids, guaranteeing them all the components needed to produce creatine while being a vegetarian.<p>I myself use protein supplements to ensure, together with food, that I get a bit more than 1 gram of fullworthy protein per kilo body weight a day, and that is an amount that actually even meat-eaters, without supplements, can have a hard time reaching on a daily basis.<p>Addendum:<p>Digging a little bit on Wikipedia, I found the three amino acids (of which only one is essential) that Creatine is produced from in the body:<p>Arginine (non-essential) - vegetabilic sources: "wheat germ and flour, buckwheat, granola, oatmeal, peanuts, nuts (coconut, pecans, cashews, walnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, pinenuts), seeds (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower), chick peas, cooked soybeans."<p>Glycine (non-essential) - synthesized in the human body from Serine, also a non-essential amino acid.<p>Methionine (essential) - vegetabilic (and animalic) sources: "High levels of methionine can be found in sesame seeds, Brazil nuts, fish, meats and some other plant seeds; methionine is also found in cereal grains."<p>Judging from this, it seems that a vegetarian has to maintain a really lousy and unhealthy diet in order to suffer a Creatine shortage. Maybe the test subjects were university students on a Ramen diet.
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ilkhd2about 15 years ago
After I switched to vegetarian diet I have not noticed _any_ difference in brain/personality/iq, I ve just lost extra weight. And have less allergies. Aside from that - nothing.
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