No, elevated creatinine levels is only a sign of kidney disease if all else remains equal. Consuming more creatine will naturally increase production of creatinine because creatinine is a byproduct of the kidneys processing creatine.
In other words, it's not a very reliable signal for kidney disease. There is a more reliable blood test called a "Cystatin C" test.
Just out of curiosity, were those creatine supplements pure creatine? Or were they workout supplements that might have also included caffeine or other things?
TBH this sounds like it could be entirely unrelated to creatine. It just sounds like you have shedding and thinning without Minoxidil and Finasteride, and it stops when you start taking them again.
> At one point I stopped Mino and Fin, but kept the creatine and the shedding increased rapidly.
I think it's a common for shedding to accelerate after stopping Minoxidil.
I appreciate the comment, but the point of going to the trouble of posting the extra details is to show that I isolated. Understood if it wasn't clear.
I just want to raise my voice that, in my experience, yes, I had hair loss issues on creatine. Every time I respond to a comment on reddit, youtube, twitter, here, there is always a sea of "Nope, sorry" comments that I must be mistaken. My hair line disagrees. The extra rep isn't worth it.
100% correct on shedding after mino stoppage however.
Not sure about the "kind", but minoxidil works by increasing blood flow to hair follicles. So if massages can have a similar effect, I don't see why it couldn't help.
I've also read that maybe massaging the muscles around the scalp to loosen it might help. E.g., a scalp that's too tight can have detrimental effects on the hair follicles.
That being said, I don't know what kind of evidence there is to support either of those things. Seems like a safe enough thing to try though.
I've found it helps cognitively if under a lot of stress and/or sleep deprived. If I'm not especially stressed and am well rested, I don't know that I notice any difference.
There's a difference between having built up intuition through experience about how to play chess, and figuring out how to encode that information in a program. In other words, the amazing chess player can probably provide valuable insight into any given board position, but they may struggle to generalize that insight.
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