CREATINE BENEFITS
- josephplatt1979
- Apr 27, 2023
- 4 min read
What is creatine
Creatine is a substance found naturally in muscle cells, it helps your muscles produce energy during heavy lifting or high intensity exercise. Creatine is a combination of three different amino acids: glycine, arginine, and methionine.
Creatine benefits your muscles produce energy during heavy lifting or high intensity exercise. Athletes and bodybuilders often take a creatine supplement to enhance strength and improve performance, while older adults and vegetarians might take it to support brain health and quality of life.
About 95% of the body’s creatine is stored in the muscles, mainly in the form of phosphocreatine. The other 5% is found in the brain and testes.
How does creatine work?
Creatine helps to maintain a continuous supply of energy to working muscles by keep production up in working muscles. Small amounts are also found in your heart, brain and other tissues.
In high intensity exercise, its primary role is to increase the phosphocreatine stores in your muscles.
When not active, creatine is stored in the form of a chemical called phosphocreatine. With more stores of energy in your muscles in its phosphocreatine form, the body can create more adenosine triphosphate (ATP), your body’s main source of energy. This can help sustain strength training and other anaerobic exercises.
When you take creatine, you support your body’s hormone pathways and cell hydration, which can boost performance and help with muscle growth.
Creatine benefits
Supplementing with creatine can help you produce more ATP, so taking a creatine supplement can benefit you in the following ways:
Boosted workload - It enables more total work or volume in a single training session, a key factor in long-term muscle growth.
Improved cell signalling - It can increase satellite cell signalling, which aids muscle repair and new muscle growth.
Raised anabolic hormones - Studies note a rise in hormones, such as IGF-1, after taking creatine
Increased cell hydration - Creatine lifts water content within your muscle cells, which causes a cell volumization effect that may play a role in muscle growth.
Reduced protein breakdown - It may increase total muscle mass by reducing muscle breakdown
Lower myostatin levels - Elevated levels of the protein myostatin can slow or inhibit new muscle growth. Supplementing with creatine can reduce these levels, increasing growth potential
In addition, studies have noted that taking creatine supplements may aid in neurodegenerative diseases (such as muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease), diabetes, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, disorders of creatine metabolism or transport, aging, brain health and heart ischemia. Creatine supplements also increase phosphocreatine stores in your brain, which may promote brain health and improve symptoms of neurological disease
How to Take Creatine
Creatine is supplemented through one of two ways. The first way is called ‘loading.’ The loading phase requires taking 20g in split doses for 5-7 days. Following the loading phase, 3-5 g of it is supplemented daily. This is called the maintenance phase. The idea of loading is to saturate the muscle cells resulting in faster results. Supplementing with 3-5 g, without the loading phase, is the other method. Choosing this route will get you the same results as loading, but it will take you longer to experience the full benefits of creatine.
Regardless of the method you choose, cycling is not needed. Cycling creatine means going “on” and “off” of it every couple of weeks. People who recommend cycling this supplement claim that it will maximize the its effects and is needed to give your body a break. But the truth is, creatine cycling will not give you any added benefit over not cycling creatine.
When to Take Creatine
There are two general recommendations when it comes to supplementing with creatine. The first is to take it before your workout because it increases your strength. The second is to take it after your workout because it absorbs better.
I believe taking it post-workout is the most beneficial time for several reasons:
1. Insulin helps drive more creatine into muscle cells. In your post-workout meal, you should be eating foods that help spike your insulin. If this is the case, then taking creatine with this meal will help its uptake into muscle cells.
2. The body absorbs many nutrients better after a workout.
3. The creatine supplement will help refuel your body's low creatine phosphate stores.
Why do people take creatine supplements?
Professional and amateur athletes at all levels have been known to take creatine supplements to aid their workout routines and improve workout recovery. Creatine creates “quick burst” energy and increased strength, which improves performance but has little effect on aerobic endurance. Most people who use creatine supplements are male athletes and are mostly involved in power sports, such as football, wrestling, hockey and bodybuilding.
Is Creatine Safe?
Many studies have been done on creatine and it has been established to be a safe supplement to take. While some people experience side effects like stomach-aches, this is usually due to taking too much creatine at once or taking it on an empty stomach.
Since creatine has only been recently introduced to the market, it is hard to determine whether or not there will be long-term health effects from its use. However, it must be noted that, to date, there is not one reputable study that shows creatine has any dangerous side effects.
Where are creatine supplements purchased?
Creatine supplements come in a variety of brand names and products. The supplements are available over-the-counter at vitamin, drug, and grocery stores and online.
The most common is creatine monohydrate, a dietary supplement that increases muscle performance in short-duration, high-intensity resistance exercises. Studies show that taking these supplements benefit athletes during strength training, notably weightlifting and cycling. Other forms of creatine have not shown added benefits.
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