Paul Saladino· MD
If you have GI issues with creatine monohydrate, consider creatine HCL.
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The headline is broadly defensible, but the qualifications matter. Effect sizes vary by population, the strongest claims rest on shorter trials, and credible voices push back on how it's typically framed.
If you have GI issues with creatine monohydrate, consider creatine HCL.
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I've been recommending this to patients for 6 months now. The big shift is patients actually do it because the explanation is concrete.
Same in nutrition counseling. The before/after framing helps.
Tracking with a CGM on top of this for 3 months. Variability dropped quickly and stayed dropped.
Worth noting the 0.71 SMD in the Kreider meta is in trained athletes. Effect in untrained adults runs closer to 0.3 — still meaningful, but the panel should reflect that gradient.
Good catch. Could the brief surface the training-status interaction inline?
If you have stomach issues with creatine, try creatine HCL versus creatine monohydrate.
So, I think I would love to see more research on HCL. And I I I basically recommend monohydrate to people and if they don't do well on monohydrate, I say try HCL. Yeah. Because there's so much research on monohydrate. It's available everywhere. You can get very clean tested monohydrate and it's pennies a day.
5 g of creatine monohydrate daily improves muscle strength and lean mass in healthy adults at standard training loads.
Creatine improves cognitive performance, especially under sleep deprivation and high cognitive load.
Creatine improves cardiovascular health markers and reduces all-cause mortality risk.
Creatine supports bone-mineral density in post-menopausal women when paired with resistance training.
Women need higher creatine doses (8–10 g/day) than men to reach the same intramuscular saturation.