If you ever searched for fitness supplements, there's a good chance that you've stumbled
upon the supplement Creatine.
From gyms, to magazines, to websites, and maybe even from your fitness buddies.
The science of creatine deals with energy production, specifically in replenishing used
energy.
As humans, we use the molecule ATP as our energy source.
Unfortunately, your muscle cells want to keep the levels of ATP in the cell pretty low.
Reason being is that if we use too much energy at once, it will cause cells to be acidic
and muck up all cellular functions.
In order to combat this, the muscle cells need a little help from creatine kinase.
When ATP is used, creatine kinase helps keep the acid levels in check by taking out hydrogen
ions.
On top of that, creatine kinase also takes another byproduct from used ATP called ADP
and brings it to its buddy phosphocreatine to replenish ATP.
This system of energy production, known as the Phosphagen system, is the system used
to produce energy for the first 10 seconds of intense physical activity before other
energy production from other sources, such as sugar glucose and fat, is even utilized.
Where creatine comes in is the production of phosphocreatine.
Remember, your body doesn't like too many ATP molecules in cells, so whenever your body
has excess ATP, ATP reacts with creatine to formulate phosphocreatine.
The more creatine in your body, the more phosphocreatine produced, the more energy you can replenish.
And this is where creatine supplementation comes into play.
Although your body can naturally synthesize creatine from the breakdown of the amino acids
glycine and arginine, studies consistently show that taking creatine supplements can
be beneficial, especially with increasing power output.
A meta-analysis showed subjects improving power output by up to 26% after taking a creatine
monohydrate supplement.
But one thing that creatine supplementation does not do which many people believes it
does is increase muscle mass, well at least not directly.
The two ways that muscle mass might increase with creatine is by providing more energy
for higher power output, which then provides a greater stimulus for muscle protein synthesis,
and by retaining water, which might make muscles seem bigger without adding actual muscle mass.
And there's even more benefits.
Creatine supplementation has also been linked to replenishing glycogen, which is also important
for energy production, reducing depression symptoms, decreasing fatigue, and there's
also even study that showed vast improvement on reducing headaches and dizziness from kids
that suffered from traumatic brain injury.
As far as how and how much you should take, many manufacturers have recommended using
a "loading" phase, where for the first week you take more creatine than you would for
the following weeks, but the research shows that there's not really any significant benefit
in doing so.
The most typically recommended amount that has shown positive benefits is between 3-5
grams per day and you can decide to stop taking creatine whenever you want to.
But what about the dangerous side effects you've heard about creatine?
There are definitely concerns in the case of what creatine does to your kidneys and
liver, but, these concerns have either been debunked or lack any concrete evidence, especially
in human trials.
The only notable side effect is the retention of water in your cells, which might make you
look a little bit more plump and a weigh a bit heavier, but if that's one of your goals
to begin with, more power to you.
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