Creatine Monohydrate vs HCL — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:01] form is better? Creatine monohydrate or creatine hydrochloride? Now, let's talk published study that actually compared the two different creatines head-to-head in about 45 or so young athletes between

[00:14] the ages of 18 and 25. It's really the best sort of head-to-head comparison that we have on creatine monohydrate versus creatine hydrochloride. But what is monohydrate and what is hydrochloride? Very simply, we have the

[00:27] makes. Your liver and your kidneys and actually your brain makes creatine from arginine and glycine as well as methane. So your body makes this, your cells make it. It's mostly made in your liver but also made in your kidneys. 95% of body

[00:43] creatine is actually stored in your skeletal muscle. Uh this the other 5% is distributed pretty evenly throughout the heart and the brain and other tissues. Uh especially the eye also the ears. We know that creatine it basically helps

[00:55] improve cellular energy metabolism. And it it's important to recognize before we talk about monohydrate versus hydrochloride that creatine is not directly anabolic. It helps increase cellular energy so that you have better

[01:08] training stimulus and in so doing you have more anabolic stimuli to the skeletal muscle. So that's important to remember. This isn't like a hormone or a pro hormone. It doesn't cause hair loss. We have reviewed those studies that I

[01:20] can link in the description or the cards where we talked about that creatine is safe for both men and women of all ages, even infants and newborns. The placenta leverages a lot of creatine as well. Okay, so that being said, before we talk

[01:35] about what this study did and compared in terms of testing the relative between creatine monohydrate and creatine hydrochloride, let's talk about the chemical structure here. So you have creatine which again is endogenously

[01:48] made from essential amino acids. The two essential amino acids that it's made from is arginine uh as well as methane. And so yeah, glycine is not an essential amino acid. Uh but it's important to recognize that your cells make this

[02:01] stuff. And so when we get creatine exogenously in the form of a supplement, this paper actually does a good job of talking about this. They do say there are many forms of creatine on the market including creatine nitrate, creatine

[02:16] citrate, creatine ethylster, and buffered forms of creatine which are not bioavailable sources of creatine and are less effective or more expensive than creatine monohydrate. They say creatine monohydrate is the most commonly used

[02:29] type of creatine which combines, this is where I was going, it combines creatine and water. So the mono hydrate, think hydration water. So it's creatine bound

[02:41] with basically water. It's generally generally safe degrading slowly even at high temperatures and low phes. Intestinal absorption of creatine monohydrate is close to 100% and it has a very high purity. That's why I like it

[02:55] especially the raw material that has been synthesized in Europe when compared to the raw material synthesized in China. We've done many videos on this. to look out for. Well, really three when it comes to creatine. Discyan diamide,

[03:11] dihydrotriazine as well as creatinine. Now, creatinine is a natural byproduct of ammonia metabolism uh in your kidneys. And creatinine can cause problems in the body. Now, I know when you look at the word creatinine, it

[03:25] it's we're talking about two different molecules here. And so some of the raw material raw material coming from China has higher levels of the dicy diamided dihydrotriazine and creatinine. So that's why over at myioscience uh my

[03:40] biases here is I also you know have a supplement manufacturing facility and company. We we exclusively use the German material. Uh really great folks over at all biotech. So for any you know creatine variations we have stick packs.

[03:54] have micronized versus unmicronized. I'll put links in the description below. Uh there's a lot of adulterated creatine products on the market and that's why we are doing what we're doing. So there's

[04:06] hydrochloride? Well creatine hydrochloride is a salt. So hydro HCl. So think like betane HCL. It's really basically stomach acid, right? But why

[04:19] is this not really needed? Well, you have HCL in your stomach, you know? I mean this as soon as you swallow creates monohydrate, right? it's introduced to hydrochloride uh hydrochloric acid uh in your stomach. And so this salt uh is

[04:33] theorized to have better water solubility. And so that's the big stick here. The raw material uh suppliers that are promoting the creatine in China, right? There's there's no non-Chinese creatine hydrochloride on

[04:47] the market. So you're still getting the creatine derived the raw material calcium carbide from from limestone essentially undergoing all these chemical reactions to actually end up with creatine. But it's all of the the

[05:00] hydrochloride is manufactured in China. And so that's another reason why I'm not a huge fan of it because as we have reviewed before many papers and my own sort of investigation into into this has found that the Chinese raw material is

[05:15] adulterated oftent times with the daine diamide and the dihydrotrizine as well as other things like arsenic and potentially mercury and things you don't really want. And so I'm that's one reason why I'm not a huge fan of that.

[05:28] The second reason is it's significantly more expensive. And then the third reason is I've talked to the folks at all biotech. Um I know several uh folks haven't you all looked at this where they're like well we have and there's

[05:41] significantly more expensive and it doesn't have any human data showing it's better absorbed so why would we sell it? And I was like oh okay that kind of they could but they choose not to because it's not superior. but instead

[05:55] they make a micronized version of creatine uh that's really well absorbed and um is more water soluble and that doesn't have GI issues. But that's that's the push, you know, on different supplement companies selling the

[06:07] hydrochloride. It's more expensive. It's a salt. It's purportedly has better water solubility. But this study compared head-to-head um hydrochloride versus monohydrate in athletes and had them do resistant training and they had

[06:22] a placebo group that did not that did resistant training but but no creatine whatsoever. And the the short end, you know, the short of the long story is when comparing monohydrate versus hydrochloride. So I think that's the

[06:37] most important thing is if you're going to take something that's more expensive, you would think that if you were to randomize some 45 young athletes to do one dimension intervention or the other that there would be some between group

[06:49] differences and there just wasn't. Um and so this is just one study, but we don't have any really good human evidence to suggest that creatine hydrochloride is any better. There's some short-term absorption studies, some

[07:03] invivo uh sorry, in vitro type stuff. Uh and and we really don't have any uh data here. But what I like about this study is they looked at strength and they also looked at various hormonal responses looking at testosterone, growth hormone,

[07:18] IGF-1, testosterone to cortisol ratios, on and on. uh changes in leg press on and on. uh changes in leg press versus bench press strength and squat as well as thigh muscle circumference area. I mean they looked at all these

[07:32] between group differences comparing the monohydrate versus hydrochloride uh dosing and they did do a a loading phase initially uh as well as in both groups. Uh but that being said, there were between group differences between

[07:47] group that did not take creatine but was also resistance training at the same time concurrently. And so basically we can surmise from this that there is no can surmise from this that there is no advantage one way or the other. If you

[08:01] and you want to pay a little bit more for that because you think it's better absorbed or whatever, that's fine. But just know that it's significantly more in China. And so I would just make sure

[08:14] you're buying it from is third party testing the raw material for the testing the raw material for the well-known contaminants which again dyen diamide dihydrotriazine as well as creatinine uh and the heavy metals

[08:27] creatinine uh and the heavy metals arsenic lead and mercury. Okay. So in results show that hydrochloride increasing monohydrate supplementation along with resistance training increased muscle strength in both the leg press as

[08:42] well as bench press, arm and thigh muscle circumference area. Um but the changes between the different groups were insignificant. Uh so that's

[08:54] important to know. Now regarding the effects of creatine hydrochloride on performance, we can refer to studies by TBI at all and um finding that five grams of creatine HDL per day improved upper and lower body uh muscle strength

[09:09] creatine hydrochloride changed body composition. They say and they were comparing uh creatine monohydrate to hydrochloride at 5 grams a day. Now the thing about this which I think is important to recognize that creatine

[09:22] going to cost significantly more than creatine monohydrate. So just it's the practical nature of it is that it's significantly more expensive. Uh I'm not don't know it's not even a branded raw

[09:36] material. But you know in conclusion the investigators say here that according to does not affect creatine's bioavailability. Creatine monohydrate is 100% bioavailable. As credit at all stated in a systematic review that

[09:52] is more bioavailable and more effective than creatine monohydrate are not supported, which is consistent with the results of the present study. So again, that's fine, but you're going to pay a lot more money on a on a program basis

[10:08] of creatine. Uh most of the studies on creatine are are pretty clear. The dose on the monohydrate starts on the low end of 2.5 grams per day up to five grams per day is a maintenance. Uh and it's probably better for brain function if

[10:22] you start out with a 20 g load phase for about a week and then taper down to 2 to 5 g per day as a maintenance. Now, if you undergo a poor night's sleep or have social jet lag or actual jet lag from travel, um you can offset the cognitive

[10:39] decline that is linked with short sleep duration by having a super physiologic grams per day. So, that's what the research shows. Um I'm all about, you know, optimization and and being a zealot when it comes to raw materials.

[10:54] hydrochloride, especially considering that it's significantly more expensive. Let me know in the comments section below. As always, I'm grateful that you tuned in tuned into this video. If you enjoyed this content, please hit that

[11:07] and we'll catch you in a future show down the road. By now.