What is Creatine?

Creatine is a supplement, yes, but it is also made in the body.

If you didn’t already know, your body is a magical place. It knows that you aren’t just going to be performing one type of activity for a set duration. You’re all over the place. One day you’re here, the next day you’re there. One moment you’re lifting a boulder to open the cave door, the next moment you're chasing for miles after some caribou. At the end of any given day, you’ve exerted yourself in numerous ways and have used different parts of your body for different lengths of time. So, your body has to be able to cope with all of this variety of exertion. What I mean is that your body doesn’t just produce energy in one way. There’s a whole bunch of different ways it does this, and creatine is a part of one of those ways.

Creatine is made in the liver and stored in the muscles, typically in the form of phosphocreatine. When we talk about it in terms of energy, it can help muscles produce ATP during maximal efforts for short durations, usually for about 6-10 seconds. It gets depleted rapidly in these circumstances. After a short period, much of it is gone and your body has to make more and send it to your muscles.

If you can make it, then why ingest it? The answer is quite simple: to have more. The more you have, presumably, the more energy you can have. However, more is not always better. There is a point at which it stops mattering how much creatine you’re having. For the best results, studies show that a loading phase of 20-25g/day for 5 days and then a maintenance phase (of indefinite length) of 2g/day should keep your muscles appropriately juiced up, but not overly juiced.

If you have too much, what can happen? Well, there aren’t many documented, bad side-effects of creatine supplementation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that you can get some gastrointestinal discomfort (tummy aches), cardiovascular problems, and muscle cramps. People sometimes experience this during the loading phase. The loading phase is unnecessary. Skip it if you don’t want to deal with this. It will just take you 30 days to get to the appropriate creatine storage in your muscles if you just start and continue with just the maintenance dose. One of the other side-effects of creatine can be weight gain; however, this can also be a benefit depending on what your goals are.

Other benefits include increases in strength, power, and recovery. All good things, if you’re into being a better version of yourself. It should be noted though, that it is not a one-day performance enhancer. It should be used long-term to experience benefits. It’s also cheap. Like, really cheap.

All of this sounds too good to be true. I agree; however, no research, even long-term (5 years), shows adverse effects of creatine supplementation. The International Society of Sports Nutrition, which sounds very official, believes that creatine monohydrate “is the most effective ergogenic nutritional supplement currently available to athletes with the intent of increasing high-intensity exercise capacity and lean body mass during training,” (International Society of Sports Nutrition). That to me sounds like high-praise.

Should you use creatine? Sure! It really can’t hurt, unless you’re allergic to gainz. Do you have to use it? No, and to be honest, many whey protein isolates have creatine in them already.

References

Haff, G., & Triplett, N. T. (2016). Essentials of strength training and conditioning (4th ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Kreider, R. B., Kalman, D. S., Antonio, J., Ziegenfuss, T. N., Wildman, R., Collins, R., … Lopez, H. L. (2017). International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Retrieved May 17, 2020, from https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-017-0173-z

Muscle & Workout Supplements Review. (2019, November 29). Retrieved May 17, 2020, from https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/review_creatine_BCAAs/creatine/#whatclfound-bcaas