Creatine after 45, retatrutide’s 25% weight-loss result, and a better way to track blood pressure
Welcome to The RECLAIM Report, my weekly newsletter on evidence-based men’s health, performance, hormones, sleep, body composition, and longevity. Five minutes, with enough detail to know what to do next.
On deck today
What a creatine trial in adults aged 45 to 65 actually measured.
Why a big retatrutide result deserves attention, and why Health Canada is warning about products sold online.
What happened when a clinic made home blood pressure readings easier to share.
Happy Sunday,
A scan says you gained lean mass. A drug trial reports 25% weight loss. Your blood pressure cuff gives you a number you’d rather forget. Each number tells you something. Before you act on it, ask what was measured and what decision it should change.
1. Creatine after 45 and what “lean mass” means
A 12-week study looked at creatine monohydrate in sedentary adults aged 45 to 65. Participants chose whether to join the exercise-and-diet program or the non-exercise group, then were randomized to creatine or placebo within those groups. Sixty-four people completed the study, including 24 men. The researchers reported favourable changes in lean tissue and some strength outcomes. Creatine trial
The headline version is that creatine builds muscle while you sit on the couch. The scan leaves more room for interpretation. DEXA lean tissue includes water, so an increase doesn’t tell you how much new contractile muscle you built. And because people chose whether to exercise, the study gives us a cleaner comparison of creatine versus placebo within each group than it does of training versus sitting out.
The move this week: If your goal is to get stronger, track the weights and reps you can actually do. If you’re curious about creatine, that gives you something more useful to watch than a single scan result.
2. Retatrutide’s 25% result and the Canadian reality
In an 80-week phase 3 trial in adults with obesity without diabetes, average weight fell by 25.0% in the highest-dose retatrutide group and 3.9% in the placebo group. That’s a difference of about 21 percentage points in the analysis that accounted for what happened after people stopped treatment. The trial compared retatrutide with placebo, so those numbers can’t settle how it stacks up against another medication. TRIUMPH-1 trial
A published trial and a product listing online are two different things. Health Canada has identified unauthorized injectable products sold as retatrutide. A vial labelled “research use only” offers no assurance that it contains what the seller claims or that it was made safely for injection. Health Canada advisory
The move this week: If you’re considering obesity treatment, ask your prescriber or pharmacist what’s authorized and available for you now, what benefit to expect, and how you’d monitor it. Keep the trial result in mind and leave the research vials alone.
3. The blood pressure readings your clinic actually gets to see
In a six-month pilot at community health centres in San Diego, 63 of 73 participants in the wireless monitoring group sent multiple readings. Seven of 127 participants in the standard group returned paper logs. Sending readings and returning a log are different measures, and the study wasn’t designed to show that wireless monitoring improved blood pressure control. Still, the gap is a good reason to ask how many readings ever make it out of the kitchen drawer. Home blood pressure monitoring trial
The move this week: Use a validated home monitor with a cuff that fits. Take readings under consistent conditions and agree with your clinician on how and when to share them. The best export format is the one your clinic will actually open. Hypertension Canada’s home monitoring guidance
My favorite thing this week
Hypertension Canada’s validated monitor list. It solves a problem that a five-star review can’t. A review tells you whether someone liked the cuff. Validation tells you whether the model met an accuracy standard. Search for the model number before you buy. Validated blood pressure monitors
Client conversation of the week
A 28-year-old man told me he’d started taking testosterone on his own. No prescriber, no baseline bloodwork. He felt great for the first month. Then he started feeling tired.
The first month tells us how he felt. It doesn’t tell us whether his testosterone was low before he started. And now that he’s taking it, a blood test can help us understand what’s happening today, but it can’t recreate his baseline.
There are a few things I’d want to check. Depending on what he’s taking and how often, testosterone levels can rise and fall between doses. If the fatigue follows that pattern, the timing of his symptoms and his bloodwork matters. I’d also ask about snoring, waking up unrefreshed, and daytime sleepiness. Sleep apnoea can cause fatigue on its own, and untreated severe sleep apnoea is a reason to avoid starting testosterone. Endocrine Society guideline
I’d also want a complete blood count. Testosterone can raise hematocrit, the proportion of blood made up of red blood cells. That’s an important safety check even if it turns out to have nothing to do with why he’s tired. Fatigue can also come from something unrelated to testosterone, so I’d keep the assessment open. And at 28, I’d ask about plans for children. Taking testosterone can suppress sperm production, even while testosterone levels in the blood look fine. Endocrine Society guideline
This is what a proper workup buys you. Before starting, a prescriber can check whether symptoms line up with two low morning testosterone measurements on separate days, investigate why the levels are low, and talk through fertility and baseline safety labs. If treatment makes sense, you also leave with a plan for when to repeat labs and what would prompt a change. Endocrine Society guideline
If you’ve already started on your own and feel worse, bring the product details, dose, and dates you took it to a licensed prescriber. Tell them when the fatigue started and whether it changes between doses. That gives them more to work with than guessing at the next dose.
One quote to finish your week strong
“It is dogged as does it.”
Charles Darwin repeated that line from Anthony Trollope in an 1877 letter. It applies surprisingly well to health habits. A routine you can repeat on a busy Tuesday will give you more to work with than a perfect routine you manage twice a month. Darwin Correspondence Project
Final thought
Pick one number you’re tracking and decide what you’ll do with it. If it’s strength, log the same lifts. If it’s blood pressure, agree on when to send the readings and who will review them. The number earns its place when it helps you make a decision.
If you want help working out where to start with energy, sleep, body composition, or performance, book a 20-minute RECLAIM fit call through the program site. RECLAIM Men’s Health
References
Creatine supplementation with and without exercise and diet in adults aged 45 to 65. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition , 2026.
Retatrutide for treatment of obesity, TRIUMPH-1. New England Journal of Medicine , 2026.
Wireless home blood pressure monitoring with health coaching. JMIR Formative Research , 2026.
Hypertension Canada home monitoring guidanceand validated device list.
