Shadowing Practice: PhD Gives His Take on Creatine for Longevity - Learn English Speaking with Video

creatine is really important because it's not in the mitochondria

so much as it carries forth the mitochondrial energy of the rest of the cell.

That also feeds back in the repair functions for the mitochondria.

And so I think optimizing your creatine status is super important.

And I think that everyone who's not eating one or two pounds of meat per day should probably be taking creatine.

And you can think of it as if you're eating red meat and you're eating it rare, you can err on the

Which is like a reddish fish and is actually quite high in creatine

if you're eating white meat white fish

and you're eating well done You want to err on the side of two pounds

because you're losing they don't have as much creatine then you cook the creatine out of them

And you wind up with much lower dose.

We should probably say salmon you're talking about wild salmon versus farm salmon, which has a dyed pink skin Well, it's not the red color.

I think it's coincidence that it's I think the red color is coincidence It's just a helpful way to think about it,

but it probably is the case at least every Atlantic farm salmon that I've seen you can tell that it's, well, if you look up in a database, it's way higher in fat,

but you can tell by looking at it that it just doesn't have that lean look that wild salmon has.

So I think creatine is a function of the lean tissue mass.

And it might be the case that wild salmon are doing a lot more swimming.

Wild environment is encouraging them to use their muscles in a way that increases their creatine synthesis.

That wouldn't surprise me.

I have tried to steel man the case of could there be a vegan diet

that would make you not need to supplement with creatine?

a half a kilogram of tofu and a half a kilogram of quinoa per day

and that's not typically what and that might rip a hole in your digestive system

but that's so i think

that most vegans should probably just supplement creatine the most of

the brain research is being done with doses around 20 grams

and there's the thought is

that the you know the muscles are going to take first dibs

and you need to have a high dose to get it

to the brain there's a lot we don't know about that

but you know as a default like if i was healing from a traumatic brain injury i would i would You know, I think if you have something that's this serious,

you do want to, like, know what your limiting bottlenecks are.

So I think actually doing mitochondrial testing is, that's like, one of the applications would be like,

"Oh, now it's really important that I have a six -month window where I need to maximize everything I can." And so...

You know, testing to understand your unique needs, I think, would be a way to supercharge that process when it's needed.

There was that recent study where they looked at sleep deprivation with creatine supplementation.

And so they randomized people to either drink a placebo drink or drink 20 grams of creatine through the night.

And they kept them awake all night and they had them do brain puzzle quizzes.

And when the subjects were getting the 20 grams of creatine, did way better on the brain puzzles.

And so the conclusion is creatine is somehow acutely preventing your brain from suffering during sleep deprivation.

And the rationale there is mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell or the power plant that's producing the energy.

Creatine is like the power grid, and it distributes that energy throughout the cell.

And so if the purpose of sleep is to restore the energy that you used up, but then you intervene by putting creatine in there,

rest and restore that energy because you've increased your capacity to distribute it.

That makes sense.

That is an interesting thing because it's fairly recent that people have talked about this.

It used to be people only thought of creatine as being a muscle to help you recover and help build larger muscles.

But then over the last, I would say, year or two, I started hearing talking about cognitive function, maybe even more than a couple of years, but about how it improves cognitive.

The sleep thing, though, is very recent, right?

creatine for six months doubles the rate of healing.

The field is in its infancy, but I actually, almost a decade ago, did a podcast on just creatine.

I called it more than a performance enhancer because if you just look at where it's distributed in the body, almost every cell and every tissue has the creatine system.

And so it really is this.

And if you look at the literature, they'll say, well, it's more important in certain cells.

It's really important in your muscles

Sometimes their energy demand is going through the roof and it's really important in like long cells.

So for example, your retina is part of your central nervous system

and it's a really long cell that's coming from the brain into the eye and creatine helps move energy back and forth.

If you just look at instead of where is it most important, you're just like, where is it?

Almost every cell in your body has creatine and it's helping distribute the energy that the mitochondria make throughout your whole body.

And that includes pumping stomach acid.

It includes sperm swimming up the vaginal canal.

look at where it is, you would think that creatine would help a lot more than muscles.

And it just turns out that all you need to do is start studying it to start seeing those effects.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “PhD Gives His Take on Creatine for Longevity”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: creatine, cell, energy, brain, salmon. This video has 64 sentences and 982 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:59. The speaker talks fast, about 197 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
creatine noun	/ˈkɹiː.əˌtiːn/	An amino acid, 2-(carbamimidoyl-methyl- amino)acetic acid, which naturally occurs in vertebrates and helps to supply energy to muscle and nerve cells.
salmon noun	/ˈsæmən/	One of several species of fish, typically of the Salmoninae subfamily, brownish above with silvery sides and delicate pinkish-orange flesh; they ascend rivers…
mitochondrion noun	/ˌmaɪtəˈkɑndɹiən/	A spherical or ovoid organelle found in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells and containing genetic material separate from that of the host; it is responsible for…
distribute verb	/dɪˈstɹɪbjuːt/	To divide into portions and dispense.
gram noun	/ˈɡɹæm/	A unit of mass equal to one-thousandth of a kilogram. Symbol: g.
deprivation noun	/ˌdɛp.ɹɪˈveɪʃən/	The act of depriving, dispossessing, or bereaving.
kilogram noun	/ˈkɪləɡɹæm/	In the International System of Units, the base unit of mass; conceived of as the mass of one litre of water, but now defined by taking the fixed numerical…
mitochondrial adjective	/ˌmaɪ.təˈkɑːn.dɹi.əl/	Of, or relating to mitochondria.
vegan noun	/ˈviːɡən/	A person who does not eat, drink or otherwise consume any animal products
puzzle noun	/ˈpʌzəl/	The state of feeling confused or mystified because one cannot understand a complicated matter, a problem, etc.; bewilderment, confusion; (countable) often in…
coincidence noun	/kəʊˈɪnsɪdəns/	The property of being coincident, occurring at the same time or place.
supplement noun	/ˈsʌp.lɪ.mənt/	Something added; especially, such an addition added to make up for a deficiency.
acutely adverb	/əˈkjuːtli/	In an acute manner
bottleneck noun		The narrow portion that forms the pouring spout of a bottle; the neck of a bottle.
digestive adjective	/daɪˈdʒɛstɪv/	Of, relating to, or functioning in digestion.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
turn out verb	To end up; to result.
use up verb	To consume, deplete, expend, or exhaust.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 14 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: deprivation /ˌdɛp.ɹɪˈveɪʃən/, reddish /ˈɹɛdɪʃ/, rationale /ˌɹæʃ.əˈnæl/
Long words — get the stress right: mitochondrion /ˌmaɪtəˈkɑndɹiən/, deprivation /ˌdɛp.ɹɪˈveɪʃən/, mitochondrial /ˌmaɪ.təˈkɑːn.dɹi.əl/, coincidence /kəʊˈɪnsɪdəns/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like creatine, salmon, mitochondrion.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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