Hey everyone, it's Mikki here, you're listening to Mini-Mikkipedia on a Monday, and do you do what I do and like stack all your powders together?

I'm in the habit of putting my greens with my aminos and my creatine, collagen if I've got it on hand, which I mostly do, and just downing it all at once alongside my coffee.

You might be someone who, in fact, puts your collagen, puts your creatine in your coffee, and thinks that's the best approach to save you time, be a bit more efficient in the morning, and save one extra glass.

And then, of course, someone in your training group or a reel on your phone tells you that, in fact, you've just wasted your creatine, that hot liquid destroys it, coffee will cancel it out, and while you're at it, your creatine monohydrate is actually, it's the wrong kind because it isn't.

It isn't water-washed or buffered.

So, I wanted to just address a few of these claims today, just to see where the evidence lies, because, of course, I get a bit curious about this too, because you do see a lot of this noise on social media, and whilst I've never really heard the likes of Darren Kandell, Scott Forbes, Jose Antonio, who are people who publish in the area of creatine research talk about it, I see it a lot from other people.

So, let's look at what actually happens.

When you put it in something warm, whether caffeine blunts what creatine does, what actually differs between tubs of creatine monohydrate, and where the whole acid wash versus base wash thing comes from.

So, I just think that these are good things to explore, just so we sort of know what the evidence says.

So, firstly, when people say creatine breaks down, what they mean is that creatine can fold in on itself.

It can lose a molecule of water and become creatinine, which is, in fact, what your sort of blood results measure when you're looking at kidney function.

Interesting.

So, creatinine is the waste product your kidneys clear every day, and it doesn't really do anything useful for your muscles.

So, the question isn't really, you know, is creatine fragile in a vague way.

The question is how fast that one reaction happens under the conditions you actually use it in.

Because if it happens too quickly, you may not...

You may not get the benefits of creatine because it's broken down too quickly.

So, if we're thinking about just the tub of creatine, the answer is basically never.

Creatine monohydrate powder held at 40 degrees for more than three years showed no measurable conversion, even when stored at 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Creatinine only turns up in trace amounts after about 44 months, which is close to four years, right?

So, in the tub, the answer is...

Well, it basically never does.

So, creatine monohydrate powder held at 40 degrees Celsius for more than three years showed no measurable conversion from creatine to creatinine.

Even when stored at 60 degrees, creatinine only turned up in trace amounts after about 44 months.

So, your gym bag in a hot car is no problem at all to creatine monohydrate if that's how you store it and how you transport it from gym to work to home, etc.

However, once creatine is dissolved...

It is a different story.

And three things determine the speed with which that creatine converts.

The acidity of the liquid, the temperature, and time.

So, data from a lab that was reproduced in a 2022 review by Creda and colleagues shows that at room temperature, creatine at a neutral pH, so roughly water or milk, is relatively stable for three days.

As the liquid gets more acidic, those losses do climb.

So, after three days at 25 degrees Celsius, you see about 4% loss at a pH of 5.5, 12% loss or conversion at a pH of 4.5, so we're getting a bit more acidic, and 21% conversion at a pH of 3.5.

Now, the thing is, though, is that that pattern doesn't keep going as things get more acidic.

Below a pH of about 2.5, the conversion essentially stops because the part of the molecule that has to swing around in class...

Below a pH of about 2.5, the conversion essentially stops because the part of the molecule that has to swing around in class...

...closes that ring.

It does something, it gets protonated, and it locks in place.

And your stomach pH sits below that, which is why at least 1% of creatine monohydrate is degraded during digestion.

And around 99% of what you swallow is either taken up by the tissue or shows up in your urine as creatine.

So, do remember that.

So, what about coffee?

Coffee sits at a pH of around 5, and it starts hot.

So, in principle, it's a faster environment for that reaction.

The truth, though, is that nobody has ever published a study timing creatine breakdown in a normal mug of coffee, minute by minute, and measuring what's left.

What we can do is take the published kinetic data and run the numbers.

So, if you extrapolate the room temperature rates using the temperature relationships reported in stability studies...

...a coffee held at around 70 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes lands at a loss in the low single digits.

Somewhere around 1 to 5%.

Depending on those assumptions.

And, of course, your coffee doesn't stay at 70 degrees.

It cools from the moment you pour it.

On a 5 gram scoop, we're essentially arguing about a fraction of a gram.

So, and remember, creatine's job is to keep your muscles saturated and topped up over weeks.

Not to deliver a precise dose by the milligram on every single day.

So, I just don't think that it matters that much.

And, of course, however, it does.

It is worth noting...

It is worth knowing that the warm liquid was part of how the creatine was given in some of the earliest research.

In the original work showing that oral creatine raised muscle creatine stores, it was dissolved in warm to hot water.

And other earlier studies used hot tea.

Partly this was practical because creatine dissolves far better as the temperature rises, about 14 grams per litre at 20 degrees, compared with 45 grams per litre at 60 degrees.

So, I mean, it doesn't really matter if it dissolves for you.

Your muscle's taking it up because if you swallow that grit, you're still getting it.

But the warm does fix some of that dissolving problem or its ability to dissolve.

There is actually a new laboratory paper from 25 where researchers put commercial creatine through heat from 60 to 200 degrees.

UV light, different pH levels in drinks, including coffee, orange juice, and an energy drink.

And temperature came out as the biggest driver of change.

They identified a range.

Of degradation products beyond creatinine.

So it's sort of useful.

And it is a reason not to bake creatine into things or boil it.

And someone actually asked this on a post I did on social media.

They said, oh, I bake it into my breakfast bake.

And I'm like, you may not want to do that.

But it was a stress test designed to characterize what forms.

It wasn't a measurement of how much you lose stirring a scoop into a flat white and just drinking it.

So practically, stir it in and drink it.

Where you'd actually lose creatine.

And what you lose a meaningful amount is actually time, a big batch of creatine lemonade made on a Sunday or to sip throughout the week or a coffee you forget about and reheat at lunchtime.

That's the problem, right?

So make it and have it overnight is fine as well.

If you're making your preparation on a Sunday before having it at a gym, having it on the Monday morning before having breakfast, I don't think that's a problem.

Now, caffeine doesn't actually cancel out creatine.

There is a 1996 study.

And it took nine men who had a very high creatine dose, half a gram per kilogram of body weight per day.

So about 35 to 40 grams daily for six days.

In one condition, they added caffeine at about five milligrams per kilogram per day.

Creatine alone improved performance by about 10 to 23 percent when they looked at these maximal knee extensions.

But with caffeine on board, that improvement disappeared.

However, muscle phosphocreatine.

Ended up around the same amount in both conditions, four to six percent.

Caffeine didn't stop creatine getting into the muscle.

So whatever happened, happened downstream of that.

And there are two explanations.

Follow up from the same research group found creatine shortens muscle relaxation time or caffeine lengthens it.

So when both were taken, caffeine's effect won out.

But of course, the second explanation may also hold, and that's a gut upset, right?

So in a conference abstract by a group.

By another lab, several people loading big doses of creatine reported GI distress that eased with placebo, but not with caffeine.

And the authors also raised the point in the original study, caffeine was withdrawn before testing.

So withdrawal from caffeine rather than the caffeine itself may have played a part.

Now, that isn't a full peer reviewed paper.

So it was just an abstract, but I just think it's worth noting that.

And then another study in a trial of 54 active men.

Creatine loading with coffee with caffeine pills or on its own produced no real differences between the groups.

And a 2022 systematic review pulled together 10 studies and found that when caffeine is taken acutely before exercise,

after you've already loaded creatine, there's no interference.

When two are taken together daily during a loading phase, two studies showed interference, three showed none, and one showed a benefit.

So with regards to your coffee,

I think the.

The protocol that showed the problem was the heavy loading doses plus a substantial daily caffeine dose tested on a very specific lab protocol of knee extensions.

So there is that potential for the GI distress.

And I think that's what the researchers sort of put that down to.

So if you're GI sensitive, just do that.

Right.

Other thing is, of course, the, the way the creatine monohydrate is prepared.

So creatine monohydrate is made industrially by reacting sodium,

psychosinate with cyanide and water at around a pH of 10 and at 80 degrees,

then crystallizing it, filtering it and drying it.

When that process is well controlled, you get something extremely pure,

which is probably most of what you're seeing in very well-regulated markets for supplements.

When it isn't, you can end up with leftovers and byproducts, creatinine, diacydiamide, dihydrotreazine, theuria.

And in some cases, heavy metals.

When Italian researchers tested 33 creatine supplements off the market,

44% had more than 100 milligrams per kilogram of creatinine.

About 15% had detectable dihydrotreazine and diacydiamide.

Listen to me fumbling over those.

What a surprise.

And these were above 50 milligrams per kilogram and mercury was present at trace levels.

None of that means that those products were dangerous.

Just so you know.

But it does mean 100% creatine monohydrate, it doesn't hold true, actually.

The German-made Cre-Pure is the one most of the clinical research has used, reported at 99.9% purity.

You don't have to buy that specific brand, but you do want to know that a product is third-party tested

and ideally one that will show you its certificate of analysis, if you ask.

Two other labels you'll see, micronized, just means the particles are smaller, so it makes us better.

There's no evidence.

There's no evidence it's more bioavailable, though.

And anhydrous creatine had the water molecule driven off with heat, so it's 100% creatine by weight rather than about 88%.

Trade-off is that the drying step tends to produce more creatinine as an impurity.

So plain monohydrate is a sensible option.

Now, it's interesting when people talk about acid versus base, and I do just want to sort of mention this.

So the claim is used in a couple of ways.

The first one is about manufacturing.

So the suggestion that cheap creatine is acid-washed leaves you bloated, and that the good stuff is water-washed.

So what the manufacturing literature shows is that acids are used during the synthesis to adjust the pH,

and the crude creatine is then purified by washing with cold or hot water and recrystallizing it.

I couldn't find any peer-reviewed evidence that acid-washing creatine exists as a distinct product category, or that it causes bloating.

If you know of any, please let me know in the comments.

If you know of studies, please let me know, because I'd really like to understand this better, but I couldn't find anything myself.

What actually differs between good and bad product is that impurity profile I was mentioning.

That's something you can test for and see on paper.

And on bloating, an analysis pooling the side effects from 685 creatine trials found gastrointestinal complaints occurred at rates similar to placebo.

So that's interesting.

The second version is the base side, so it's buffered alkaline.

The pitch is that your stomach acid destroys regular creatine, so you need a buffered version at a smaller dose to get it through intact.

But actually, that is the exact opposite of the chemistry we covered at the start.

Strong acidity is what stops creatine converting, and when it is tested properly, that claim doesn't actually hold up.

Jagem and colleagues took 36 resistant-trained people and compared the buffered product at the manufacturer's dose of 1.5 grams a day,

the buffered product at a standard creatine doses and ordinary monohydrate with muscle biopsies.

They found that the buffered creatine didn't raise muscle creatine more, didn't improve strength or body composition more, and didn't cause fewer side effects.

So if anything, muscle creatine tended to rise more with monohydrate than with the low-dose buffered version.

Creatine hydrochloride, or HCL, does get marketed of a similar logic as being dramatically more soluble, so it's just needed in tiny amounts.

The headline solubility figure compared the HCL form in a very acidic solution against monohydrate in an alkaline one.

So these are just two different things, and better mixing doesn't mean better uptake into the muscle.

It's also only about 78% creatine by weight, and in a 2025 trial in elite handball and softball players given 5 grams a day of either form for 8 weeks, outcomes were actually no difference.

So, takeaway then.

Creatine in the tub.

Creatine hydrochloride is rock solid, and a hot drink that you're going to start and finish, losses are small, and the warmth does help it dissolve.

Caffeine doesn't stop creatine getting into the muscle, and the evidence for blunting comes from a protocol that looks nothing like what your daily scoop in your cup of coffee is.

So the things that are important though are buying a third-party tested monohydrate, skipping the forms that promise more for less, like the creatine hydrochloride, which tends to be more expensive,

and take 3-5 grams.

Don't bake your creatine, and don't make it up on a Monday and then drink it on a Thursday, right?

These are the things that I want you to think about.

So just have it where it best suits you, and don't worry about the noise.

Alright guys, that's it for this week.

Let me know any thoughts around this or questions.

I'm over on Instagram, the thread is x, at Mikki Williden, Facebook at Mikki Williden Nutrition, or head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com.

Alright guys.

Have the best week.

See you later.

Bye.