How Creatine Can Support Longevity, Muscle Mass, and Bone Density

In this interview, Nutrition Outlook Associate Editor Erin McEvoy speaks with Dr. Michael Fredericson, Co-Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, founder of Stanford Lifestyle Medicine, and a member of Elysium's Scientific Advisory Board, about creatine's expanding role in longevity, strength, and muscle mass in women.

Dr. Fredericson opens by explaining that creatine's benefits extend beyond sports performance into healthy aging positioning creatine as a complement to resistance training for preserving these reserves as people age. He also discusses Elysium's new creatine-based system Creatine+, which pairs creatine with HMB (beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate) and pomegranate polyphenols, and how the complementary mechanisms increase ATP availability, fuel higher-intensity exercise, and reduce muscle protein breakdown.

Dr. Fredericson addresses why creatine can be especially relevant for women, who experience accelerated muscle mass loss and greater bone density concerns with age compared to men. He notes that combining creatine supplementation with resistance training can help maintain or even enhance lean muscle mass and strength in aging women, with some literature suggesting potential bone density benefits as well, though he cautions these effects are likely more modest than other bone-focused interventions.

A partial transcript can be found below.

Erin McEvoy: To start out, for decades creatine was thought of mainly as a supplement for active and sports nutrition, but recently it's become a focus with longevity and date and daily wellness. In what ways have you seen creatine affect health outside the context of physical fitness?

Michael Fredericson: Well, if you look at longevity in terms of the ability to maintain our functional capacity, and so part of that is maintaining muscle mass, muscle strength, and even what we call muscle power, as well as your bone density, those are all very important as we age, because we know that they start declining, particularly after we hit around age 50, and so the more that you can maintain that, the more reserves you're going to have as you get older, and to be able to stay in that functional zone, because once you get below a certain level of strength, muscle mass, power, your ability to really get by in life, even do things related to just at what we call acts of daily living can really be compromised, so creatine is really a great complement to any type of resistance training to help offset that.

McEvoy: That's definitely important, a growing focus as what we've seen as well. So, diving specifically into Creatine+, the new ingredient from Elysium, they built a system by pairing creatine with HMB and pomegranate polyphenols. What do these contribute individually in terms of benefits? And then how do they also work together with creatine?

Dr. Fredericson: Sure, sure, so creatine by itself basically helps facilitate increased training intensity, so it allows greater what's called ATP, you think of it like your energy molecule in the mitochondria of your cells, and it allows greater ATP availability while you're doing high intensity exercise, particularly in those people have the lowest baseline stores, so for instance, people who are vegetarians are probably going to be, are typically lower in creatine. Now HMB, or beta hydroxy beta methyl butyrate, has additive benefits on increasing lean body mass and strength, so it works on a distinct but also a complementary mechanism, so essentially what HMB does is it helps reduce muscle damage as you're doing your strength training, so it significantly decreases muscle protein breakdown, what we call anti-catabolic, while also stimulating muscle protein synthesis, what we call anabolic, so you can think of creatine giving you the energy to do higher intensity types of exercise and HMB is essentially keeping that muscle from breaking down as much and also helping stimulate new muscle protein synthesis, so the two work actually quite well together.