Stuart Phillips (he/him) (@mackinprof)

Agreed on both counts. Lean mass is not muscle. What DXA calls lean mass is muscle plus water, organs, skin and connective tissue, and a change in lean mass after a diet or a protein supplement tells you very little about how much actual muscle moved. See below.

CookWoW Verified account @cookwow_fun 11h

@mackinprof A visual separating lean mass from measured muscle would help readers interpret protein headlines. Keeping the population, measurement method and preprint status alongside quoted numbers could prevent a research estimate becoming a universal prescription.
View quoted post on X

Stuart Phillips (he/him) @mackinprof 7h

You can’t fix a protein deficiency that doesn’t exist. The US protein target (1.2 to 1.6 g/kg/day) rests on 30 trials of dieting adults with obesity, applied to everyone, with no link to exercise. Ten years on, nobody will be much healthier. Protein is great. It is not magic.

Stuart Phillips (he/him) @mackinprof Oct 7

1/ 1.6 g protein/kg/d (0.7 g/lb) still does it. The case for more rests on a measurement that's about half NOT muscle. New preprint. 10 points, the first at my own expense.

Stuart Phillips (he/him) @mackinprof Oct 7

😂

Javed Alam Verified account @jalam1001 Oct 7

Title: Effects of creatine supplementation with and without exercise and diet intervention on body composition, cognitive function, and markers of health in middle-aged and older adults

Authors: Jisun Chun, Yuhang Liu, Giuliet L. Kibler, Hudson Lee, Khatereh Babakhani, Nathaniel Rhoades, Ian Bivins, Joungbo Ko, Broderick Dickerson, Drew E. Gonzalez, Ryan J. Sowinski, Chris J. Rasmussen, and Richard B. Kreider.

Summary of main findings

The 12-week study included 64 adults aged 45–65 who completed the intervention. Participants received either 10 grams of creatine monohydrate daily, divided into two 5-gram doses, or placebo. They participated with or without a supervised exercise and weight-loss diet program.

Creatine increased lean tissue mass in both conditions. At 12 weeks, participants taking creatine gained approximately 1.1 kilograms without exercise and 1.27 kilograms with exercise and diet. The placebo groups showed little change in lean tissue mass.

Combining creatine with exercise and diet produced a greater reduction in body-fat percentage: 3.24 percentage points, compared with 1.87 percentage points for exercise and diet with placebo. Creatine also improved measures of muscular strength and endurance, including in participants without structured exercise.

Selected cognitive tests showed improvements in memory, processing, attention, executive function, and reaction time. Results varied across tests. Creatine combined with exercise and diet also improved total Mini-Mental State Examination scores compared with the placebo groups. The authors describe the individual cognitive findings as exploratory.

HbA1c decreased in both exercise groups and in the creatine group without exercise, while fasting blood glucose did not change. Selected blood-lipid measures improved modestly in the creatine group without exercise, although the overall lipid-panel analysis did not show a significant group-by-time effect.

Creatine combined with exercise improved vigor and reduced total mood disturbance compared with the non-exercise placebo group. Selected quality-of-life measures also improved.

Supplementation was well tolerated. Reported side effects were infrequent, mild, and similar across groups, and nobody withdrew because of the supplement. Serum creatinine increased slightly; calculated kidney filtration decreased but remained within the paper’s stated normal clinical limits.

View quoted post on X

Stuart Phillips (he/him) @mackinprof Oct 6

1/15
New creatine paper in JISSN claims 10 g/d helps middle-aged and older adults keep muscle, strength and cognitive function, with or without exercise. I read all 33 pages. The data don't support those conclusions. A 🧵

Michael Morelli Verified account @morellifit Oct 5

This new creatine study is insane.

People who never trained took 10g of creatine a day and gained more lean tissue (2.43 lbs) than people who were lifting 3x a week with no creatine (0.31 lbs).

Here's the breakdown: (1/18)

View quoted post on X

Stuart Phillips (he/him)

Latest posts 5