Creatine improves Covid fatigue/symptoms (article)

[Hope_eternal]

A very small study but worth a look.

They looked at 12 people suffering with long COVID. Six were given a placebo and six 4g creatine supplements daily for six months.

After 3 months participants reported a reduction in general tiredness.

Within six months they reported a significant drop-off in symptoms such as loss of taste, breathing difficulties, body aches, headaches and difficulties concentrating.

I wish they’d do bigger study with it or maybe they have? Can’t seem to find anything else on it. Probably as with most things ME everyone reacts differently.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...&cvid=2fac5a40620f40b6a9097d6d96b45403&ei=109

 

[Hope_eternal]

A very small study but worth a look.

They looked at 12 people suffering with long COVID. Six were given a placebo and six 4g creatine supplements daily for six months.

After 3 months participants reported a reduction in general tiredness.

Within six months they reported a significant drop-off in symptoms such as loss of taste, breathing difficulties, body aches, headaches and difficulties concentrating.

I wish they’d do bigger study with it or maybe they have? Can’t seem to find anything else on it. Probably as with most things ME everyone reacts differently.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...&cvid=2fac5a40620f40b6a9097d6d96b45403&ei=109

After seeing a post by @mountain_hiker who took creatine and was having unpleasant anxiety and irritability (sorry I’m not advanced enough to link it here) I’ve come across some articles that indicate this can happen. I guess the group in the study was too small and it didn’t pick this up or if they did experience it, it wasn’t mentioned. So just a word of caution if you decide to try it.

https://www.realmuscle.co.uk/post/creatine-anxiety

 

[Judee]

The UK Daily Mail version of the article said, "The participants were also made to walk on a treadmill at varying speeds so researchers could measure the amount of time it took for them to become exhausted.

Those who had been taking creatine for six months lasted a little over a minute longer on the treadmill than those who had been taking placebo."

Idk but a one minute increase in endurance after six months doesn't seem like that much to me.

???

 

[Hope_eternal]

The UK Daily Mail version of the article said, "The participants were also made to walk on a treadmill at varying speeds so researchers could measure the amount of time it took for them to become exhausted.

Those who had been taking creatine for six months lasted a little over a minute longer on the treadmill than those who had been taking placebo."

Idk but a one minute increase in endurance after six months doesn't seem like that much to me.

???

Hmm they didn’t talk about that in the article I provided. Only generalized improvements were indicated, as shown below. If you can please link it, I would like to read it. Sounds like you found a more detailed article. Thank you.

“They were followed up at three months and six months with those taking creatine having a significant increase in levels in leg muscles and across the brain.

Dr. Sergej Ostojic said: ‘Creatine induced a significant reduction in general fatigue after three months of intake compared to baseline values, while the scores for reduced motivation worsened after six months in the placebo group.’”

 

[Judee]

If you can please link it, I would like to read it. Sounds like you found a more detailed article. Thank you.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12537145/Gym-supplement-creatine-long-covid.html

I didn't mean to discourage you. There are some threads here too about creatine. I think Hip talks about creatine hcl in some of his posts and Mary and some others get a boost from BCAAs though I think for me they cause ammonia issues. (I haven't tried the creatine ever though but wonder if it would do the same.)

Still maybe some of them could be helpful for your son.

 

[Hope_eternal]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12537145/Gym-supplement-creatine-long-covid.html

I didn't mean to discourage you. There are some threads here too about creatine. I think Hip talks about creatine hcl in some of his posts and Mary and some others get a boost from BCAAs though I think for me they cause ammonia issues. (I haven't tried the creatine ever though but wonder if it would do the same.)

Still maybe some of them could be helpful for your son.

lol well geez they left some important details out of the article I provided No you didn’t discourage me. It’s good to have all pertinent information. Unfortunately the article I found didn’t have it.

It’s Kindof confusing because although the creatine supplemented participants were only able to go a little over a minute longer on the treadmill, they did seem to have improvements with overall brain function, motivation and energy. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if they do a longer study with more participants. It is peculiar that the creatine participants had clear improvements with fatigue brain function but could only exercise one minute more than those that didn’t take it. I wonder why they didn’t further explain that or further investigate it?

 

[ilivewithcfs]

I saw this study and also heard a recovery story on YouTube, where a person said,that creatine was very helpful. It's encouraging. I took 10 mg daily for a while, it caused insomnia after about 10 days. I will possibly give it another shot with the dosage of 4 mg a day, if what I'm trying currently doesn't work out.

 

[Hope_eternal]

I saw this study and also heard a recovery story on YouTube, where a person said,that creatine was very helpful. It's encouraging. I took 10 mg daily for a while, it caused insomnia after about 10 days. I will possibly give it another shot with the dosage of 4 mg a day, if what I'm trying currently doesn't work out.

It is very encouraging! For those that can tolerate it, it could be a game changer. I’m going to see what my son’s doctor thinks about it and may try small doses to see how it goes. He’s been bed bound for over a year so it would surely be worth a try if he can get around a bit more with this added to his regime. If you do decide to take a smaller dose, please let me know how it goes. Wishing you much health and recovery

 

[ilivewithcfs]

It is very encouraging! For those that can tolerate it, it could be a game changer. I’m going to see what my son’s doctor thinks about it and may try small doses to see how it goes. He’s been bed bound for over a year so it would surely be worth a try if he can get around a bit more with this added to his regime. If you do decide to take a smaller dose, please let me know how it goes. Wishing you much health and recovery

I really hope your son gets better, it's such a terrible disease. Currently I'm trying out cumin, it's cheap,safe and surprisingly effective (at least so far). There's an entire thread about it on this forum. If it fails - I'm going to give creatine another shot and will let you know how it goes.

 

[Wishful]

they did seem to have improvements with overall brain function, motivation and energy.

I notice that those things are hard to reliably measure, and thus easy to "play with the numbers" to make the study results look good. For "I'm too exhausted to continue", one minute longer might just be "noise": a random variation that was published because it was positive and could be spun into even better sounding terms (dramatic increase in stamina!). I expect that plenty of PWME have tried creatine, and it hasn't proven to be a reliable treatment. It might help some people, and I think it's quite low-risk (I think it's sold in big containers on the body-building shelves), so no need to get medical approval for trying it.

 

[Hope_eternal]

I really hope your son gets better, it's such a terrible disease. Currently I'm trying out cumin, it's cheap,safe and surprisingly effective (at least so far). There's an entire thread about it on this forum. If it fails - I'm going to give creatine another shot and will let you know how it goes.

Thank you it’s definitely been a life changing experience . I will search for the thread. Sounds like something we could implement easily.

 

[Murph]

The UK Daily Mail version of the article said, "The participants were also made to walk on a treadmill at varying speeds so researchers could measure the amount of time it took for them to become exhausted.

Those who had been taking creatine for six months lasted a little over a minute longer on the treadmill than those who had been taking placebo."

Idk but a one minute increase in endurance after six months doesn't seem like that much to me.

???

I checked the study. they went from 894 second to 959 seconds. that's 15 minutes to 16.
The other group barely changed.
p value is 0.75. so it's within what you'd expect from statistical noise.

I actually think creatine might help but 4 grams a day and 12 people in your study? You're not going to find anything unfortunately.