We can pull a tiny glowing screen from our pocket and access nearly everything that’s written about everything, yet we use it to find out what celebrity is cheating on another celebrity with yet another celebrity as though it gives any kind of meaning to our own lives. We have more information about health and wellness than ever before and it could not be more accessible, yet we’re arguably less healthy and collectively well than we’ve ever been in the history of mankind. In fact, this is the first time the CDC has ever predicted the lifespan of the latest generation to be shorter than their predecessors. But… if we choose, we can use the information at our fingertips to become the most DOMINANT version of ourselves.
Enter creatine. It’s the most studied, most researched supplement on the market. Its safety and effectiveness are well-documented, yet most people are ignorant, willfully or otherwise, to its inherent and important benefits. That being said, we won’t tell you to take it.
What? Why?
Because if you’re eating a proper diet; if you’re eating the whole animal, nose-to-tail, horns-to-hooves, bones-to-blood, then you’re getting more than enough dietary creatine.
Creatine is an amino acid made by the body and found primarily in ruminant products like red meat and milk. It accumulates in muscle cells as well as the brain and aids in cellular water retention. This helps maintain an energy supply for the muscles, increasing the capacity for strength gains, muscular endurance, quicker healing, and heightened mental acuity.
A cursory Google search on the benefits of creatine will give you countless studies and research papers to read and, if you’re a science dork like we are at The Fittest, you can get down a rabbit hole that would take days to climb out of. The studies that are most eye-opening, however, are the ones comparing creatine supplementation in meat eaters vs. vegans or vegetarians and both brain performance and athletic prowess. What has been found over and over is that dietary creatine supplementation in those who do not eat meat has profound and pronounced benefits when it comes to athletic performance, lean muscle mass, growth hormone production, memory, mental acuity, and cognitive reaction time. In those who eat meat, whether they be omnivores or carnivores, creatine has no measurable benefits in any of the aforementioned areas because they already have adequate cellular creatine saturation.
Layman's terms: Creatine in vegans: very necessary. Creatine in those eating an evolutionarily appropriate diet that prioritizes meat and organs: waste of money.
If you want to be firing on all cylinders and performing in the most DOMINANT fashion possible, eating the same nose-to-tail diet as our bad ass, predatorial, evolutionary hunter ancestors will prime you to embody your FITTEST form. And creatine is not the only necessary nutrient found exclusively in animals… Choline, Vitamin K2, Vitamin B12… these are also essential and cannot be found in plants. We’ve said this before, but some of these cannot be adequately supplemented without danger. Synthetic B12, for example, comes from a derivative of cyanide, which is not on the short list of things we want to ingest. So get a ribeye. Get some liver. If you don’t want to do that, eat a Liver King Bar. It has creatine. No excuses.
Email our performance experts if you're looking for more guidance on how to implement an evolutionarily appropriate diet into your life.
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