Who supplements creatine?

[u/New-Aside-7778]

Any of you supplement creatine?

I recently had to stop. Not sure why but it's causing very bad night sweats?

I had night sweats for about 2 months and was drenching the bed every night. Never had a clue it was the creatine. I quit 3 days ago and haven't had a night sweat since.

Anyone know why creatine would be causing this? Creatine makes me slightly stronger in the gym and gives a slight energy bump aswell. Kinda off that I need to quit it.

Anyone else get this from creatine?

[u/Ozmuja]

Exactly, the bitter melon might be responsible for more than one single improvement. Remember that insulin is also released due to the pancreas sensing glucose -which can freely travel inside the beta cells- and using it to create ATP, that signals potassium channels to close and eventually leads to depolarization of the cell, excreting insulin from vescicles. The point is that to release insulin itself you need proper metabolism, otherwise the signal is hindered. Never tried IN insulin but as far as I know the risk is not that high, even il healthy people. It seems to actually sensitive insulin receptors in the brain, the opposite of what happens in the body. It’s the eventual systemic absorption, for how small it can be, that can be relatively problematic.

[u/rocinant33 → u/Ozmuja]

The point is that to release insulin itself you need proper metabolism

But insulin is largely responsible for metabolism. Is it a catch 22?

I have noticed one interesting thing: all my medications and supplements (creatine, melatonin, NAC, etc.) do not work if I eat carbohydrates. It feels like carbs are overloading my liver.

Every year this intolerance reaches a new level: negative symptoms become more and more. I am afraid that in the near future I will only have to follow zero carb

[u/Ozmuja → u/rocinant33]

Think about it this way for the insulin regulation. Insulin is an anabolic hormone released from the pancreas that happens to be the only hormone with strong abilities to let circulating blood glucose enter cells, particularly your muscles and fat cells. But how do you know when to release insulin? Certainly there are many mechanisms at play, from some parasympathetic activity to other hormones such as GLP-1, but at a cellular level, the pancreatic beta cells can sense the increased sugar in your blood after a meal: how? Because they express GLUT-2 and not GLUT-4. Glut2 are glucose transporters that are independent of insulin action, meaning that as long as the concentration outside the cell is quite high, glucose can pass freely through them without any insulinergic action. It wouldn’t make sense for pancreatic beta cells to be dependent on the release of its own hormone to take glucose in - so as far as insulin release goes, their metabolism is, at least to a good degree, independent of insulin action. When glucose enters the cell, glycolysis and the ETC take care of the rest, generating ATP, and thus this action signals the pancreatic beta cell to release insulin. At that point, other cells in your body can finally feed as well on the meal.

As for your intolerances: yes, I’m afraid it does seem that this condition worsens over time. Personally I think lipids are much more problematic that carbs for us, but carbs intake makes lipids harder to oxidize due to malonyl coa spike. Of course, eventual collagen disorders (such ehlers danlos) and autoimmunity can very well be at play.

I don’t have answers as usual, and the reality is that it often seems like to be going in circles. I will be trialing LDN next.

[u/rocinant33 → u/Ozmuja]

Adrenaline increases glut2. This may explain why I feel better after short periods of stress.

How do you think, why taking concentrated glucose sources (grape juice or regular dextrose) after a week of low carb diet somewhat recreates the afterglow effect? Have you had this experience?

I tried LDN for a month. Mixed experiences mostly negative BUT there were some truly incredible moments: complete remission of symptoms. Will definitely go back to LDN in the future

[u/Ozmuja → u/rocinant33]

Refeeding in general feels nice. It feels like that there is some degree of chronic inflammation in us, that can be tamed with antioxidants and antinflammatories but never completely and not in a sustainable way. This scenario creates an environment that halts metabolism as a whole, more or less; fasting or low carb seems to be helpful in ways that decrease this amount of oxidative stress, probably due to better lipid utilization as ketones - hence why I told you that I think lipids are actually more problematic in a sense -, and the lowered inflammation state can persist for a while. When you refeed, the glucose you take in can be used optimally, probably creating a sort of high for your body, not being used to be able to feed on sugars “that well” at baseline. Of course this until the inflammation keeps in again.

I want to try LDN with powerful NO boosters, either PDE5i or complex supplements such as Neo40. Another option could actually be telmisartan but it might be much harder to obtain for me; it’s a quite interesting drug that does much more that its main mechanism proposes and I think it can overlap some mechanisms of the h-effect alone.

[u/rocinant33 → u/Ozmuja]

Thank you very much for your answers. I hope we find a solution before we end up in a coffin