Walk into a gym and run this little social experiment.

Ask who eats the most meat.

Big dooode bro in the corner raises his hand.

Traps like shoulder pads. Deadlifts that make the floor nervous. Probably has a freezer that looks like a cattle crime scene.

Now ask who will respond best to creatine?

Same guy raises his hand again.

Confident. Certain. Completely wrong.

What Nobody Tells You

Your muscle doesn’t care about your identity.

They care about saturation.

Creatine lives in skeletal muscle with a hard ceiling around ~150–200 mmol/kg dry muscle.

That ceiling is not a suggestion.

It’s a nightclub bouncer with a clipboard and zero tolerance for your nonsense and a pocket full of 2-dollar bills.

Once you’re full?

You’re full.

Everything else gets escorted out the back door and turned into creatinine like a drunk guy getting tossed into the alley.

Starting Point

Here’s the split most people miss:

Omnivore baseline creatine ~120–160 mmol/kg
Plant-based baseline creatine ~90–110 mmol/kg

Translation:

The meat-eating warlord is already halfway to the ceiling before he even touches a supplement.

The vegan lifter?

They’re standing in the lobby with an empty VIP pass and a freight elevator waiting.

Dose stays the same.
Protocol doesn’t change.
The outcome? Completely different ride.

Fun Parts

Your plant-based client doesn’t have a disadvantage here.

They have a physiological cheat code.

Dr. Darren Candow and Scott Forbes have both hammered this point:

Vegetarians and vegans tend to see greater increases in muscle creatine content after supplementation.

We’re talking roughly 20–50% larger increases compared to meat eaters.

That’s not a rounding error.

That’s the difference between:

“Yeah I guess I feel a bit stronger…”

…and

“Why did my squat jump 20 lbs and my sleeves suddenly feel tighter?”

Down the Nerd Chute

Creatine uptake is driven by the creatine transporter (CreaT1).

Think of it like a loading dock.

If your muscle is already stacked with creatine?

The dock workers slow down. No urgency. Warehouse is full.

If you’re underloaded?

Every transporter is screaming:

“Get this stuff now Brosefus!”

That’s why low baseline = bigger response.

Not magic or better genetics…
..Just simple substrate availability and transporter kinetics.

Meanwhile… Back at the Meat Counter

You’ve got the high-meat lifter who says:

“Creatine didn’t do anything for me.”

Cool story Bro.

I am going to give that a WAG (wild a$$ guess) that you were already 85–95% saturated.

You didn’t need a loading phase.

You needed a reality check.

At that point, creatine is exactly what Dr Forbes said:

Sprinkles on a fully frosted cake.

And yeah… sprinkles are nice..

…But they’re not the reason the cake exists.

Summary

If you coach plant-based athletes:

Run 5 g/day creatine monohydrate.
No weird “buffered ultra-hyper-alkaline” nonsense.

Give it 4–8 weeks.

Track:

Strength
Body weight
Lean mass

Then watch what happens.

Because this is one of the rare cases where physiology hands someone an advantage and the industry pretends it doesn’t exist.

f you’re dealing with a “non-responder”:

Slow down.

About 25–30% of people show minimal response.

But most “non-responders” fall into one of three buckets:

Already near saturation (high meat intake)
Quit too early (less than 3–4 weeks)
Dosing like a distracted ADD squirrel

Before you write yourself off, check the basics.

Takeaway Time

To maximize creatine response, it isn’t about who eats the most meat…

…It’s about who has the most room left in the tank.

And in this one very specific corner of the universe?

Your vegan client is walking in with an empty reservoir and a firehose. Add creatine, and they will love you forever.

If you want to actually use this instead of just nodding along like a caffeinated bobblehead…

Then get the Complete Creatine Manual.

With a ton of references but in a language you can understand and apply immediately.

It’s $37 normally.

Use code DRMIKE and grab it for $27 before this Wednesday at midnight PST

​https://creatine.miketnelson.com​

Much love,
Dr Mike
​
PS — There’s a special kind of chaos when someone calls themselves a non-responder… while eating a pound of steak a day.

Check the inputs before blaming the output.

The manual shows you exactly how to tell the difference.

And yeah—this is one of those things that actually works in the real world, not just in a lab.

Use code DRMIKE and grab it for $27: https://creatine.miketnelson.com​

_____________________

Mike T Nelson CISSN, CSCS, MSME, PhD
Associate Professor, Carrick Institute
Owner, Extreme Human Performance, LLC
Editorial Board Member, STRONG Fitness Mag

Mike T Nelson is a PhD and not a physician or registered dietitian. The contents of this email should not be taken as medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any health problem - nor is it intended to replace the advice of a physician. Always consult your physician or qualified health professional on any matters regarding your health.

..