Creatine metabolism and psychiatric disorders: Does creatine supplementation have therapeutic value?

Abstract

Athletes, body builders, and military personnel use dietary creatine as an ergogenic aid to boost physical performance in sports involving short bursts of high-intensity muscle activity. Lesser known is the essential role creatine, a natural regulator of energy homeostasis, plays in brain function and development. Creatine supplementation has shown promise as a safe, effective, and tolerable adjunct to medication for the treatment of brain-related disorders linked with dysfunctional energy metabolism, such as Huntington’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease. Impairments in creatine metabolism have also been implicated in the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders, leaving clinicians, researchers and patients alike wondering if dietary creatine has therapeutic value for treating mental illness. The present review summarizes the neurobiology of the creatine-phosphocreatine circuit and its relation to psychological stress, schizophrenia, mood and anxiety disorders. While present knowledge of the role of creatine in cognitive and emotional processing is in its infancy, further research on this endogenous metabolite has the potential to advance our understanding of the biological bases of psychopathology and improve current therapeutic strategies.

Biomarkers and long-term labour market outcomes: The case of creatine

“…For instance, traits like emotional resilience enable some individuals to persevere in tasks such as job search that others may give up on (Moorhouse and Caltabiano, 2007). There is also evidence that creatine is negatively associated with mental disorders such as depression (Allen, 2012). Conversely, depression lowers employment probabilities, though it seems to have no impact on weekly hours worked nor hourly earnings (Peng et al, 2013).…”

“…It could be that creatine has positive effects on cognitive performance particularly in stressful situations. Positive effects of creatine on cognitive behaviour have been found especially in situations associated with reduced brain creatine, such as sleep deprivation, mild exercise and stressful mathematical tasks (Allen, 2012 Turban et al, 2009). Therefore, apart from Extraversion, these results suggest that higher levels of creatine might be associated with better performance in the labour market.…”

“…Creatine supplementation can also increase backward memory span (Hammett et al, 2010) and cognitive performance of elderly people (McMorris et al, 2007b). In addition, studies based on individuals with inborn errors in creatine production and rat experiments confirm that creatine has an important role in normal brain development and cognitive functioning (for a review see Allen, 2012). …”

Creatine and entrepreneurship

“…As a robustness check, we reran all regressions with control variables for meat and fish intake in 1980, because these may be confounding factors in the relation between creatine and entrepreneurship (Allen 2012). These analyses were based on somewhat smaller subsamples because of data availability, but the results (available upon request from the authors) are in line with the findings reported here.…”

“…It enhances physical performance, for example in high-intensity exercise (Wyss and Kaddurah-Daouk 2000), and improves mental ability and cognition (Rae et al 2003;Allen 2012). Therefore, greater effort intensity may result in labour market outcomes in which great effort is needed and rewarded as creatine reduces (increases) the costs (returns) to effort.…”