Creatine Deficiencies - A (not so) Novel Approach

As I was mentioning in my prior entry, Evan seems to be suffering some creatine deficiencies.  I've gotten an updated set of labs done as of this morning, so I will know his starting point.  I've ordered some creatine supplement such as the type body builders use.  I plan to start supplementing him starting tomorrow morning.  I was wondering why no one has thought of this approach to help these kids and other individuals as its a major cause of mental handicap and a common issue in the family of leukodystophy diseases.  My sister forwarded this article to me earlier today of a documented case that this approach was used.

http://www.ashg.org/genetics/ashg05s/f205.htm

In this article, the child had low creatine and at 16 months of age was only functioning at a 7 month old level. After being supplemented with 400 mg/kg/d (400 mg per kg of weight) of creatine per day, growth rate accelerated to the normal range. At 18 months she showed developmental age of 10 months, a clear increase in development. Creatine dose was increased to 600 mg/kg/d at 20months and at 29 months she showed a developmental age of 23 months and (80% and 86% of chronologic age).


Holy cow!  I'm so excited to try this!! 

All the same, I should expect some gain from this. Studies have shown that creatine supplementation boosts cognitive ability even in normal adults.

Check out this blurb from Wikipedia:

Cognitive ability


A placebo-controlled double-blind experiment found that vegetarians who took 5 grams of creatine per day for six weeks showed a significant improvement on two separate tests of fluid intelligence, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and the backward digit span test from the WAIS. The treatment group was able to repeat longer sequences of numbers from memory and had higher overall IQ scores than the control group. The researchers concluded that "supplementation with creatine significantly increased intelligence compared with placebo."[20] A subsequent study found that creatine supplements improved cognitive ability in the elderly.[21] A study on young adults (0.03 g/kg/day for six weeks; only 2 g/day for 150-pound individual) failed, however, to find any improvements.[22]