I don't know, that's a strange concept; what about cleaning your teeth? Should I stop using fluoride toothpaste to strengthen my teeth naturally?

edit: on a second thought... it IS making the frogs gay... so.. maybe

Get the sensodyne with novamin, it works drastically better than fluoride alone

Is eating plenty of carbs to have good performance during exercise a “free lunch”? It’s more like it’s just optimising what you eat to give the body what it needs during exercise, no?

Creatine is pretty much in that category. It’s just a natural source of energy, essentially. You get it in some food as well. And you don’t get much benefits unless you’re doing strength exercise.

There may be some benefits for the brain as well, especially in older individuals. I doubt that there’s any significant downsides in general.

Drinking water? The body will get more and more thirsty!

Taking vitamin supplements because the modern diet doesn’t provide all the nutrients your body needs? The body will start demanding more vitamins!!

it is difficult to be empathic when your post starts with a flawed premise.

This is demonstrably false in a lot of cases. For example, if you eat excess calories your metabolism wont adjust. You’ll just get fat.

No, you actually do have a lot of leeway in how much you eat, where you body stays the same weight, because the body adjusts how much energy it uses. Also "excess calories gets you fat" might be a circular argument or truism or whatever, as in excess calories is excess only because it gets you fat.

So there’s no way to gain or lose weight. I see

Lol. I was actually debating whether to add something like “Obviously, once you get past a certain point, you start gaining or losing weight”. I figured it would be obvious and I wouldn’t have to say it but apparently not.

It's non-obvious because it completely undermines your point

It does not. Either you didn’t read my post or you don’t know what leeway means. The idea is your body tries to keep you at the same weight by adjusting its calorie usage. Not a complicated concept. And not a complicated concept to understand that the body can only adjust so far before being forced to put on weight or lose weight.

No one eats excess calories as any type of supplement or natural enhancement, so your example does not work as a counterpoint to the free lunch principle.

So you’re arguing that the free lunch principle doesn’t apply to lunch?

>There is always a downside

Are you claiming that the downsides of creatine outweighs the benefits, or only that there's some non-zero amount of "downside"?

Eating food? You'll eventually die.

I share your concern and I'd add one more:

The motivation behind wanting to be 10% stronger will (probably not) go away after starting a creatine regime. So where do you go from there? Testosterone? Steroids? I can't speak for anyone else but when I work out I am usually trying to meet or beat my last session (despite the march of death) so I think I'm at risk of going too far with supplementation.

I once had a headache and thought about taking an aspirin, but you know if I take an aspirin and feel 10% better, I'll want to feel even better so I'll then just have to take meth, there's no other possibility.

I would hope it's the knowledge of testosterone having significant side effects that would stop you from wanting to take it, not the fact that you haven't taken creatine yet.

You wait two years for the drugs that inhibit the muscle growth inhibitor hormone to get through clinical trials and then do a mounjaro plus the inhibitor inhibitor cocktail to cut fat amd grow muscle with limited work i thought everyone knew this,.....;)

> Putting lotion on your face? The skin will produce less oils

dont you want the skin to produce less oils? so you dont get such an oily nose and such for example

Dry cracked skin is a lot worse for your health. The body is producing oils for a reason

And yet...

The people I know with radiant, flawless skin all use Asian-style skincare with a meticulous nightly regime of like 10 syrups, oils, and unguents.

Everyone I've ever met who says that people shouldn't use shampoo/lotion/face wash because it makes the body stop producing oils has been NOT as attractive - putting it kindly.

if they stop the skincare routine, it will take years to recover to baseline