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Wellness Wednesday for December 27, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Alright tell me about creatine. Is it good?

Also BCAAs. Do I need to eat this stuff? Are all these exercise supplements total BS?

I've personally never noticed a difference when taking creatine or not, whether it be bad things like bloating and cramping or good things like better swoleness and gym performance.

However, I take at least 5 grams each day because why not? Creatine is cheap, might as well satiate the placebo effect. From The ScienceTM and gymbro word-of-mouth over the past 25 years or so, creatine is possibly the most effective legal supplement, aside from protein-supplementation. Gun to my head, I would estimate it has, on average, a mild positive effect.

It's also likely diet-dependent: Creatine is naturally found in red-meat, so there may be diminishing marginal effects if you eat beef. There's been some studies suggesting that creatine-supplementation can be especially good for vegetarians, including for cognitive ability.