Creatine is a compound formed naturally in the human body that is primarily involved

in energy production in our muscles and brain.

It's also naturally formed in the bodies of many animals we eat, and so when we eat their

muscles we can also take in some creatine through our diet.

It was named after creus, the Greek word for meat, in which it was first isolated.

We need about two grams a day, so those of meat may get like one gram from their diet,

and their body makes the rest from scratch. There are rare birth defects where you're born

without the ability to make it, in which case

you have to get it all externally through diet.

But otherwise our bodies can make as much as we need to maintain normal concentrations

in our muscles.

When people cut out meat, the amount of creatine floating around their bloodstream goes down, but

the amount in your brain remains the same, because your brain just makes all the

creatine it needs, the level in vegetarian muscles is lower, but that doesn't seem to affect

performance as both vegetarians' meaters respond to creatine supplementation with similar increases

in muscle power output. And if vegetarian muscle creatine was insufficient, then presumably

they would have seen an even

bigger boost.

So basically, when you eat meat, that just means your body doesn't have to make as much.

If creatine muscle content dropped as we grew older, that might help explain age-related muscle

loss, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Biopsies taken from the muscles of young and old adults show no difference in creatine

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