During an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience with Derek from More Plates More Dates, the conversation turned to creatine supplementation and the emerging trend of athletes and fitness enthusiasts taking significantly higher doses than traditionally recommended.
The discussion began when Rogan mentioned a recent podcast with Chris Masterjohn about creatine’s impact on performance. “They’re trying to figure out what is the correct dose and a lot of people are going 20, 30. They’re getting pretty high, you know, because recommended was like 5 milligrams I think,” Rogan said. “And now everyone’s saying actually the real benefits are at 20 and, you know, at least 10.”
Derek acknowledged the trend but immediately offered an important caveat: “I think a lot of people when they hear the stuff like, you know, I heard you can go up to 20 grams of creatine, or you know the highest impact dose in caffeine literature is you know 3 to six milligrams a kilogram. It’s not like IÂ imagine Chris is like blindly recommending anybody start there. It could easily get misconstrued that way in like a clippable format if people will just like hear the headline and then run with it.”
He emphasized starting low: “You should start as low as you can with caffeine and you could get an ergogenic effect as low as I think the lowest dose was like 50 to 100 milligrams probably if you equated to body weight, but it’s all like tolerance dependent.”
Regarding creatine specifically, Derek warned: “Same with the creatine, you know, you might s**t yourself if you go to 20 right away. Like you don’t want to start there.”
He pointed out that even high-profile figures experience digestive issues: “I think Rhonda Patrick, amazing content, and she tolerates 20 grams well, which is kind of like surprising because I know a lot of women who don’t. I think she does probably microdoses it throughout the day and is really regimented about making sure she’s diligently spreading it out. But some people who they bomb 20 at a time, even guys who think they have iron stomachs just s**t all over the place.”
Rogan shared his personal experience with creatine gummies: “I stopped with the gummies and I went to powdered form. I felt like I’m tired of eating these f**king things…. I was eating like 15 a day, 15 gummies a day.”
Derek explained the benefits of higher doses for cognitive function and recovery: “Going back to the 20 grams and the offsetting of, you know, performance deteriorations, I do think it’s basically offsetting kind of the deficiencies in ATP production, especially locally in the brain, and also kind of offsetting the pulling of resources away from like methylation support and whatnot in order to produce the endogenous creatine as well.”
He continued, “These things can all be impactful to kind of like get you back to almost baseline. So if you’re in a deteriorated state, being able to offset the performance decrements from an otherwise, you know, sleep deprived state or, you know, you’re traveling or what have you, like it can absolutely be super impactful and the literature has shown that time and time again.”
The conversation highlighted how creatine has evolved from being viewed suspiciously in the 1990s to becoming a widely accepted supplement, though proper dosing remains a topic of ongoing research and individual experimentation.
