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Creatine Found to Boost Brainpower
Eric Ass Raymond writes "According to this BBC article, researchers from the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Australia have found that the dietary supplement creatine - a natural compound found in muscle tissue - can improve not only your athletic performance, but also your intelligence and memory. One of the side effects, however, is an unpleasant body odour."
Instead of remembering the letters S-C-I-E-N-C-E, I can now take come creatine and remember the letters B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T. I'd like to see some of their numbers first before jump to a conclusion that creatine makes you smarter... Even if it were true, remember 1.5 items more than the next guy isn't going to change your life. I wonder if all meat eaters are smarter than their vegetarian counterparts? I should stock up on McD's $1 Double Cheeseburgers and say it's so I can become smarter.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
This is just another in the long series of sensationalist stories about studies that show *** increases ***, or doing X makes you better at Y.
What annoys me about these stories is that they are always based on small (eg 45) groups and they basically amount to pseudoscience and they give a bad view of the scientific community in general.
For example, how many times have you read stories about either possible cures or causes of cancer? Journalists should stop coming out with this crap and cover real scientific stories.
Just what we need. Another fairly simple study looking at a supplement that has not been tested adequately. Anyone remember the problems folks had when they were rushing out to purchase tryptophan? What about all the people dropping melatonin like there is no tomorrow? (most melatonin is derived from bovine pineal glands.....ever hear of spongeoform encephalitis?)
Look, the food supplements industry is not well regulated and thus the ingredients or amounts of active compounds in each of these supplements is not always known.
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What you're saying is similar to dismissing cars, trains and bicycles because" they're for the sick and injured not for the lazy and impatient - just walk to work like the God intended."
BOO! TERRO
So ask the men "this pill shrinks your penis by an inch, but makes you way smarter - would you take it?"
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The article mentions that creatine is a natural component of meat. So, that begs the question. Do most of us geeky smart asses ingest a higher proportion of meat in our diets than the average dummy? Is that why we stink and think? Inquiring minds want to know.
Is it fascism yet?
We really need a moderation option "-1 not funny"
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
You worked your ass off in school but didn't learn that some are NATURALLY smarter than others? All the time with the books but didn't pay attention to others to notice some are more adept at logic, music, art, athletics, etc.*? That it can take someone hours more to grasp the same concepts as someone else? Maybe some people are tired of being genetically disadvantaged in academics or arts?
You also need to learn that hard work without spending the time correctly slows progress. What's the problem with boosting intelligence so the effort is put to better use?
Life is also about a lot of luck. And if some are luckier than others, what's wrong with trying to spread the wealth? But I'm still quite skeptical of their claims...
*These are still broad categories. There are many aspects to intelligence and this is a simplification.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
I went through the creatine during by pill-popping super-exercise dude phase. Creatine did up my weight slightly but not my strength. I talked with some old coaches and found that they were only recommending it for elite athletes involved in rigorous training. Safely wasn't the concern. The creatine boost was considered so tiny that the expense was only considered worth it for a pro-level athlete, where a .1-3% improvement might actually make a difference.
It may have a brainpower effect, but I suspect it is minor, but the pill makers and newspapers will over sell this. I suspect a good cup of coffee will do more for your cognitive process.
P.S. Creatine has no steroidal effect. It increases cellular ATP and water levels. Any bulking in non-elite athlete is attributed to increased water ballooning the cells.
I don't want to insult anyone, but for me it's far more likely that lack of creatine (= vegetarian diet) is causing redused brain abilities than Creatine boosting brain power.
Seems more logical to me. They should have had test-groups various levels of Creatin doses, I would bet that only the lowest levels have a reduced intelligence while the rest is average.
FUD... there is creatine in your body every moment of everyday. Escpecially if you eat fish or seafood. Two worrisome cases? Two? Sh!t the sky is falling.
Adversity builds character. No matter what you do, there are still going to be people significantly better suited to doing certain things than you are.
But let's suppose that some drug is created that improves you significantly across the board. You grow up performing just as well as the other kids, all taking the drug and all conquering math, music, and language with ease. You've reached adulthood without any physical, mental, or, lucky you, emotional inequalities, inadequacies, or setbacks-- what happens when you run into something that challenges your superman status? Your language boosted mind discovers some ancient atlantian, and can't grok it right away. Or your tripped out scientific thinking center can't quite figure out why that one gene doesn't seem to be doing what it should. Or god forbid someone close to you gets sick, and can't be cured? How do you deal?
Humans grow through adversity. It is how we learn academically and improve emotionally. Muscles unused atrophy, and knowledge unused is forgotten. There seems a troubling trend(or perhaps tradation) of taking damaging short cuts around facing difficulty. For it we either stop growing at that difficulty and become dependent on the short cut to go through the motions of living, or we become dependent on the short cut and try to go further, only to be stymied by that which we skipped over.
Don't make the relatively simple too easy. You'll only pay for it later.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things