VEGETARIANS facing a tough mental challenge such as an exam might want to consider taking a dietary supplement used by many athletes. Two small studies suggest the supplement, called creatine, boosts the brain power of people who don鈥檛 eat meat.
But it is not yet clear whether the benefits persist for as long as people continue taking creatine or diminish after a few months. And unpublished research done in the UK suggests extra creatine does not help meat-eaters, 快猫短视频 has been told.
Creatine helps cells replenish stocks of a chemical called ATP, the immediate source of energy for the contraction of muscle fibres and other cellular processes. Athletes often take creatine 鈥� available in health food shops 鈥� for sports such as sprinting that require intense bursts of energy.
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But thinking is also energy-intensive. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e fuel-limited every time you鈥檙e thinking,鈥� says Catherine Rae, a biochemist at the University of Sydney in Australia. So Rae wondered if adding more fuel in the form of creatine would make a difference.
Although the body can make creatine, much of it usually comes from meat and fish 鈥� half a kilogram of beef contains about 2 grams. Rae thus suspected any effects would be greater in non-meat-eaters, so she asked 45 vegetarians in their 20s to take 5 grams of either creatine or a placebo daily for 6 weeks.
The volunteers鈥� reasoning ability and short-term memory was tested before and after the 6 weeks. In one test, for example, Rae鈥檚 team found that those who took creatine could remember an average of 8.5 numbers, compared with 7 for those on the placebo (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol 270, p 1529).
David Benton, a psychologist at the University of Wales, Swansea, says the results for vegetarians are similar to those of a larger unpublished study he did last year, in which volunteers were given either a placebo or 20 grams of creatine for 4 days. But most of the 120 undergraduates in his study were meat-eaters 鈥� and they did not get any boost in brain power. 鈥淭he results may be true of vegans and vegetarians but can鈥檛 be extended to the general population,鈥� he says.
The findings are surprising, because there is no evidence that creatine boosts vegetarians鈥� physical performance any more than that of meat-eaters. Nor is it clear whether, on average, creatine boosts the mental performance of vegetarians above that of meat-eaters, or whether vegetarians perform slightly worse than meat-eaters to start with.
Taking creatine supplements is not known to be dangerous for healthy people, but it can cause water retention, bad breath and flatulence.