Episode 490: JJ Virgin on HRT and Creatine HCL: The Protocol That Actually Works for Women

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Yeah, you look insanely good.

I mean, I was going to ask you, are you on?

Like, are you doing HRT or steroids?

Yeah, are you on something?

Well, no, because you're so ripped.

And if you don't mind me asking, how old are you?

So I'm 60, wonderful.

60.

And I'm wonderful, okay.

60, wonderful.

And I'm an open book.

I'll tell you everything I'm doing.

I had been on hormone replacement therapy from the moment my hormones started to shift.

And here's what was super cool about that.

So when I was on Dr.

Phil, he had a little chapter in his book called Weight Loss Resistance.

And I thought, that, what a concept.

I fell in love with this idea because working in real life, working in the wild, I saw people that were eating, eating right, exercising, and stuck, especially, you know, perimenopausal women.

And this whole idea that nothing changes when you're perimenopausal, your metabolism stays the same is got to be men saying that.

Not one perimenopausal woman will say that to you, I don't think.

Yeah.

You know, and when did you start?

Because I think that's a big question that people are very confused with.

Well,

yeah, you start when things start to shift.

So that's different for everybody.

That could be late 30s.

It could be early 40s.

For me,

early 40s, I think I was around 44.

I remember all of a sudden, I used to always be the sweaty one, like sweaty, sweaty, sweaty, you know?

And all of a sudden, I'm cold and I got a little constipated and I started to lose my eyebrow.

And this happened like that.

And one of my friends was an integrated med doc who was like, looked at my TSH, which was 2.25.

I remember.

Totally in the range.

And I was hypothyroid.

And the minute he gave me a little thyroid, it's like the lights came back on.

Everything normalized.

The next thing that happened was I could not recover from from my workouts like I used to.

Now I know from Dr.

Vonda Wright that this is musculoskeletal syndrome due to menopause.

But back then I was like, I had no clue.

I was just like, what is going on?

And my

gum started to bleed a little bit.

And my dentist is like, that's low estrogen.

So the minute these things started to show up, I started to treat it.

So I started first with thyroid.

Then I get a little testosterone, which helped bring my estrogen back.

I never did progesterone until I started to really use estrogen consistently because for me, progesterone makes me gain weight and weep.

It just

wow.

I never felt good on it.

In fact, we had a doctor in Palm Desert, California, who literally, he was a nut job.

He put everybody on progesterone therapy, men and women.

He thought everyone was progesterone deficient.

And you would put them on like 100, 200 milligrams every single day.

And then he put everyone on thyroid with the goal to drive their TSH to as close to zero as possible.

I mean, horrible.

And he put me on progesterone and I gained 12 pounds in a week.

I was like, okay, this is not for me.

So now, once I started to get, you know, more into perimenopause, I could, I started to cycle it in, but low dose where, you know, most people are doing about 100 milligrams, I was doing 50.

So I never could use that.

And that's why I say these things, you have to know the symptoms of the different hormones and what's low and really where your ideal levels would be and pay a close attention because there's no way a doctor is going to know that.

They won't know how you're feeling.

They're not inside, you know, in with you.

But I literally have been on hormones since my, you know, what, mid-40s.

And do you feel at this, at like at this stage, are you still having to tweak it depending on different things?

Or now you have it, like, is it dialed in at a certain point?

It's dialed in.

What was interesting is, you know, once you get through menopause, life is so, it's fabulous.

It's famous.

I always say, you know, there's two amazing things, empty nesting and menopause.

These are like amazing things that I hear people go, oh my God, empty nesting.

I'm like, it's the greatest thing ever.

Right.

You have your life back.

It's fantastic.

They come over, they leave.

It's awesome.

You know, how old are your kids, by the way?

They're 27 and 28.

Okay.

That's great.

Yeah.

Yes.

So menopause, once your hormones are stabilized, it's the perimenopause that's like crazy because it's, you know, you're trying to like shift things when they're all over the place and trying to supplement that way.

The only time I had to shift this a little bit is I went to Korea a couple of years ago and got on this very special ginseng and it made my hormone receptors more sensitive and I was able to lower my doses, which was pretty cool.

Oh, wow.

But no, I didn't put it together until I was hearing a lecture at A4M and I went, oh, that's what happened.

I was like, what happened?

That's so I find that like the problem is that I hear a lot with me, I get, I get asked this a bunch.

Like if people are going on testosterone, but they're not doing estrogen yet.

And like, you know, there's so much information out there.

And I think people then stop, they don't even do anything because they're like, it's basically like an analysis paralysis, right?

You don't know what to do.

So you don't do anything.

You find a really good doctor that knows this stuff that actually specializes in menopause, right?

Which is amazing that you could be an agynecologist and not trained in menopause and you'll hear all of them telling you, yeah, we didn't get trained in it.

So you find someone trained in hormone replacement therapy because you might need testosterone and not estrogen.

It's like everybody is different and there's no, it's not like the guy in Palm Desert with standard dosing.

That's crazy.

That makes no sense.

What about supplementation?

For example, creatine is a big, hot, is a hot topic now.

Everyone's talking about it.

And I think women are still very nervous about creatine because we remember that people like men who are who are always taking creatine and they look big and bulky.

What's your stance on creatine?

Do you take it?

So I just came out with a product.

Actually, I launched it at Unimonia called my husband named this, wait for it, Shia Tine.

Oh, cute.

Okay, here's what happened.

So

if I could go back in time and tell my younger self something, it would have been start creatine in your teens.

Now, I was training people at Gold's Gym in Venice, and they were all, and they were all those big dudes, and they all took creatine.

I'm like, I'll have none of that.

Thank you.

Right.

Right.

And, you know, creatine does not make you have big muscles.

It doesn't.

If it does, if it did, it would be banned substance.

What creatine does is it gives your body creatine for the phosphocreatine system to make ATP.

So it helps you make energy.

And creatine is in your muscles and in your brain.

If you have enough, if you don't have enough, it's not going to be in your brain, but it's in your muscles and your brain.

I think it is the single most important supplement beyond the basics of like DNK, magnesium, and fish oil for women 40 plus.

I think it should be an absolute, you need this for a couple different reasons.

Number one, it's going to help with energy production.

And one of the biggest complaints as women start to get into perimenopause is that they have poor energy.

This can help and it can help not just with body, but can help with mental, like with focus, with mood.

In fact, there was a study done on postmenopausal women on SSRIs, and those who did creatine actually had way better changes in their mood than those who didn't.

They're now doing studies on it for neurodegenerative diseases and for cognition.

So it helps you work out harder because of the energy.

It also helps you with recovery, but it doesn't build, you don't take creatine, sit on the couch, and something happens.

Now, here's what happened, as I started to dig into this a couple of years ago.

I

looked at it.

I'm like, everybody needs to be on this, right?

And especially women, we have less tissue stores of this than men do.

So I was like, we need this and we need it in in our brains.

And so I was like, you know, pushing it.

I was a creatine pusher.

And everything I'd ever heard was monohydrate, it's the most studied.

So do that one, which is true, it's the most studied, but it's kind of like, you know, a rotary phone.

Just because we've always used it doesn't mean that's the best one, right?

I mean, would you switch over, you know, would you still be using a rotary phone at this point?

No, you would not.

So what I kept hearing back from women, and these were some of my closest friends who are doctors who are like, I'm not going to take it.

I don't like the way I feel.

I feel bloated.

My stomach hurts.

I was like, just get through it.

And they wouldn't.

And I go, this is a problem.

Well, a year and a half ago, I was speaking at a medical conference and talking about powerful aging.

And I talked about creatine and this, this researcher followed me out.

And he had, he is the one who developed and patented creatine HCl and showed me all the research showing that creatine monohydrate, about 15% of it actually gets into your bloodstream.

And so that other stuff is causing some of that extracellular fluid retention, some some of the GI issues.

And that, so he went to solve the problem and created an HCL version that all of it gets into the bloodstream.

So you need a seventh of the dose and you don't get those side effects that are, you know, frustrating women.

So I wouldn't have done this except I kept hearing from women and hearing, I was like, all right.

So that's what I created was a creatine HCL.

And what you'll hear out there is, well, monohydrates, the one you should take, it's the most studied.

And all the rest are marketing hypes and they're just more expensive.

Except the reality is you need a smidge compared to the monohydrate.

So, BS.

And I had all the research studies to show this uptake, and it's significant.

So, it's pretty interesting.

So, that's what we just launched because I want women to take it.

And I know how crazy we get with weight.

We do.

And of course, we do.

It's all psychological.

That's why we are cardio junkies, right?

Because we think if we're sweating harder and we're moving faster and we're doing it longer, that we're getting a better result.

And that's like the same thing.

Like the, I I think so 80s.

It's so 80s, but

yet that's what you see.

Like there was a great meme

that was going around that someone sent me of like middle-aged women exercising.

They're doing everything but with the exercises they should be doing.

You know, they're like bouncing on a swing outside or they're doing they're on the rebounder.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're on the rebounder.

That was one of them.

Do you remember the rebounder?

We, so when I was at UCLA, I still remember this in the sorority house because somewhere the idea was like you could burn 100 calories with 10 minutes of rebounding so literally people were like pigging out and jumping on the rebounder totally i mean

our body is not a bank account i mean come on it's true and i i feel like listen the way i look at it is like some movement is better than zero movement so all the power to you but if you want to change your body composition it's not going to be doing that and that's just the bottom line you don't have to you don't have to believe it but you'll you know the proof is an it's just it's just science you know and here's the biggest challenge is unless you're tracking your body composition, you wouldn't know anyway.

And this is why we have to move off of weight and we have to go to what that weight's made up of.

Because, you know, my husband, case in point, weighs the same as he's always weighed.

And

he's always been athletic.

He's a volleyball player.

He was a baseball player.

And so.

A couple of years ago, we go get our DEXA scans because I'm like, I'm getting in the best shape of my life for 60.

So I trot him on in there.

He's always like, we'll go along with whatever I come up with.

And

he was a skinny fat.

He was 25% body fat, which is high for a man, you know, and he was, he was a skinny fat.

I was like way lower than him.

And I was like, wow.

At first, I was like, the machine must be wrong, except it can't be wrong.

It can't be that wrong, right?

Yeah.

So we completely shifted his programming.

He, he'd been resistant to going on testosterone.

He had lower T, gets on testosterone therapy, but also starts finally tracking his protein and getting the protein that he needed starts finally doing his creatine like he does all the things that i'd been like yakking about to do he does them all starts lifting heavier and he goes he drops 27 pounds of fat and puts on 24 pounds of muscle now three pound change looks like an entirely different body i mean like this is like he looks like a high school you know volleyball player body now wow it's a three three-pound change.

Three pounds.

He went from 25%

body fat to 10% body fat.

And so is it because he, he also, he was doing heavier weight more consistently and he dropped the other kind of more of a cardio, like biking, volleyball, whatever.

He was never doing, he does volleyball.

He'll do that for hit training.

He was never doing, like when I met him, he was drinking smoothies with like juice and running.

So we stopped that quickly.

But, you know, he was was not doing heavy, heavy weights and he wasn't eating enough protein and he wasn't consistent with things like creatine until he got the DEXA.

And that's why these things are so important.

Because when you see it in real life, like you can't go, oh, you know, because he looked fine.

You would never have thought anything of it, but the difference now is insane.

Wow.

No, I know.

I think a big issue with is bloating.

Women get bloated because the amounts that maybe they're taking.

Is there a way to eliminate bloating from taking creatine is it just the amount is there other things that we should take creatine hcl you won't get bloated so you won't get bloated with that one okay

you may get a little bit of fluid into your muscles if you're lucky that's what you want to have happen

you might get a little bit of it if anything it would be a half pound to a pound that would normalize but you want that like if you could get that you should celebrate it i didn't

you didn't get that i wish i had because that's good like remember when you're doing bioimpedance scales at home to check your total body, your body composition, it looks at total body water because total body water is how we look at fat-free mass.

More muscle, more water in the muscle, right?

So we look at that number.

You want more of that.

So you might get a teensy bit of it, but that's the whole reason I switched to HCL: you don't have to take the higher doses.

The dosing is somewhere between 750 milligrams to 1.5 grams.

I mean, it's tiny doses, so you don't have to take a lot.

And by the way, the other cool thing with creatine, I did a lot, I've been like last summer, did so much international travel, jump in time zones, and I read about it for sleep deprivation.

It's the best jet lag formula there ever has been.

It's amazing.

Really?

Oh, my gosh.

Like solved my problems.

So is it to help you fall asleep or is it just

it gives you that energy?

So what I do is like the minute I land, I take some and then I'll take it like two more doses throughout the day.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I actually read a study that was saying that if you are sleep deprived and you take creatine, it will, that the creatine will actually help your mental performance because if you're taking the creatine with sleep deprivation.

So I just need it enough.

Yeah.

Because your muscles will

preferentially use it and you need enough to get into your brain too.

So I pop a little bit more when I'm when I'm traveling to make sure I have it.

Like some of these neurodegenerative studies, now the company that has the patent on this HCL, I turned them on to some big top, if I said their names, you would know them, brain researchers who are using it now in their brain studies because, you know, they don't have to now use 20 grams of monohydrate, which is what they were doing, which was causing GI distress.

Now they can use a couple grams.

Oh my god, I want to try this.

It's called

send you some.

Please do.

Yeah, I'm going to send it to you.

I really will because I haven't started to take creatine because I'm one of those girls, women, who don't want to be bloated, who don't want to do all that.

And so I'm like,

bloated.

You know what?

Sign me up for that bloat.

Yeah.

No, I mean, that's exactly.

And the thing is, I'm not a shake person, right?

I don't believe in these shakes.

Shakes can you, you end up having a thousand calories in a shake and mostly sugar.

So I like to actually eat real food.

Are you mixing creatine with water?

How do you do it?

So I have two different ways I have it.

One is in capsules.

I put it together with taurine and magnesium because

I wanted a little ATP booster.

And both of those, I mean, we know taurine helps with longevity, but both of those help make ATP.

So I was like, and we never seem to get enough of this stuff.

So I was like, I'll put that all together.

So I created, that's the product I created.

And it's in capsules.

You take three and you can take another dose.

Like, I'll take three as my foundation.

Then if I'm going to the gym, I'll take another three, or you can use the powder and throw it.

What I like to do when I'm going to the gym is electrolytes, creatine, and some essential amino acids.