Creatine Explained

Have you been thinking about taking everybody's favourite performance enhancer - creatine but don't know what it is for or how it can help you in your workouts? In this article, you are going to learn how it works, what it can do for you during your workout, and why it's simply one of the best sports supplements out there.

Creatine is in fact one of the most studied supplements in sports science as well as the safest sports supplement. Creatine improves exercise performance, and strength and reduces fatigue, it may also have neurological and cognitive benefits.

What is Creatine?

Creatine is an amino acid but it isn't used to make protein; it's found naturally in foods like beef, pork and fish. Also, creatine is made in your own body every day so creatine is a completely normal and healthy part of your metabolism, not some dodgy artificial substance that has been discovered in a lab. As mentioned above as animals produce it in their cells creatine is found in animal muscle and that's why meat eaters tend to have higher levels of muscle creatine than vegans, however, It is not recommended to use meat as your primary source of creatine because to get the same amount of creatine as you'd get in one scoop of creatine monohydrate powder you'd need to eat almost 1.3 kilograms of beef. This would not only come with a lot of unnecessary calories - about 1500 calories if you use lean beef it's also very expensive. That's why creatine supplements can be so beneficial and valuable for the money.

Continuous supplementation of creatine can increase the amount of creatine in your muscles by 20% to 40%. Another advantage is that the creatine that you can buy in supplements is usually 100% vegan which could be beneficial as vegans tend to have lower levels of creatine than meat eaters putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to performance.

What does Creatine do?

The main role of creatine in the body is energy production. Specifically, high-intensity energy production is the kind of energy used for short quick explosive movements like lifting weights. The body generates energy using a molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is broken up to release energy and it loses a phosphate group and becomes adenosine diphosphate (ADP). Creatine is found in the muscles joined to a phosphoryl group and can recharge the ADP by replacing its phosphate and turning it back into ATP. That way your muscles have a more constant supply of energy for high-intensity work.

More creatine in your muscles allows you to train or perform harder and for longer. In reality, that means creatine can benefit exercise performance in a lot of different ways. There's a huge amount of research to suggest that creatine can improve sprint performance, help lift more weight, do more overall volume, and improve glycogen synthesis in the muscle which means you have a ready source of energy for continued exercise. Moreover, it can improve the anaerobic exercise threshold which is the ability to do quick, high-intensity or explosive exercise. Lastly, it might improve aerobic capacity and improve recovery.

In summary, creatine can help you build more muscle by allowing you to train harder, accumulate more high-quality training volume, and recover better which in the long term leads to muscle growth.

Dosage Explained (Amount)

How much creatine should you have? There is a straightforward answer to that question. You should take three to five grams per day. Creatine powders usually come with a mini scoop which measures out to about 5 grams of creatine. Taking one of those a day will be sufficient for most people. In regards to deciding if you should take 3 or 5 grams, it depends on your size. The bigger and more muscular you are the more creatine you may need. so very big and muscular individuals who are also very active might want to take even more, maybe up to 10 grams a day. You don't need to worry about overdosing creatine as it's perfectly safe and you'll pee out the excess.

The point of supplementing with creatine is to build up the amount of creatine in the muscles to the point where you can't increase it anymore. Once muscles are saturated with creatine 100% all you need to do is to maintain it at this level. By the way, this is the point at which you'll get the most performance-enhancing effects. It can take up to four weeks to fully saturate your muscles with the aforementioned dosage.

A loading phase is also an option if you don't want to wait 4 weeks for maximal muscle saturation with creatine. Take a higher dose of creatine, usually 20 grams a day for a week to load your muscles with creatine and then drop down to three to five grams a day to maintain that level of muscle saturation. There is no need to load but it may help you get faster performance results.

Dosage Explained (Time)

What time of day should you take creatine? There is a straightforward answer to that question as well. It doesn't matter when you take creatine. The most important thing is to take it daily and consistently to keep the muscles saturated with creatine all the time. It doesn't matter if it is taken before or after a workout as it's not going to give you any kind of pre-workout boost. This is simply because muscles need to be saturated with creatine to get performance-enhancing effects as mentioned above.

How long can you stay on creatine? Again, a quick and straightforward answer is you don't need to stop taking creatine at all. It is safe for long-term use with some studies of creatine doses as high as 30 grams per day for up to five years without any problems at all. Moreover, there's no biological mechanism that could cause a serious problem in healthy people.

In Summary, take 3 to 5 grams of creatine daily, preferably with food at any time in the day. Remember that you might start experiencing the best performance-enhancing effects of creatine up to 4 weeks from starting your supplementation. 

Types of Creatine

There are different forms of creatine monohydrate: creapure, micronized creatine, regular creatine monohydrate, and tablets. 

Creapure is a specific form of creatine monohydrate produced by the German company Azkam Trustburg. It is one of the purest creatine available on the market with a purity of 99.9% compared to regular creatine monohydrate which is around 98% to 99% pure.

Micronized creatine is creatine that simply has been micronized which means the powder has been made even finer, so the particles are smaller and at greater number. This gives a greater surface area than regular creatine which is supposed to substantially increase the absorption and reduce the risk of stomach upsets. If regular creatine monohydrate gives you stomach upsets then you might want to try micronized creatine to see if it's better tolerated.

The caveat is that regular creatine monohydrate is already absorbed very well and if it doesn't cause any stomach upsets then you shouldn't worry about it.

Safety/Side Effects

While creatine is an incredibly safe supplement it has been shown to have some side effects in some people - gastric distress. It can upset your stomach when you take creatine which is why it is not usually recommended to load creatine. However, you can try to reduce this side effect by not taking creatine on an empty stomach and trying to split your dose into smaller amounts throughout the day. In general, all the evidence we have so far says it's safe to use in healthy people.

Weight Gain/Water

This isn't a problem for most people unless they have an obsessive relationship with scales. When you start taking creatine you might notice a sudden increase in weight sometimes up to as much as 2.5kg or even more but that stabilizes when you are using it consistently. Furthermore, it's not fat that you gain. Weight gain is caused by the fact that creatine attracts water to it to be stored, mostly in the muscles. If anything you may notice that your muscles look bigger and overall they may look leaner.

Note that because creatine makes you hold a bit more water it doesn't mean you have to start drinking gallons and gallons of water. You should be drinking a lot of water already by the way. Again, this water is stored intracellularly rather than extracellularly which is the desired effect as the muscles look bigger or fuller which leads to your overall physique looking better.

Dosage/Timing/Saturation

Supplements can have acute and/or chronic effects. For example, caffeine has an acute effect because when taken you can experience the results almost immediately, if not up then surely within 45 to 60 minutes. Creatine doesn't work that way as explained in the first part of this series of articles. You feel the effects of creatine by saturating your muscle cells with it. This can take up to a week if you load or a few weeks if you take just 5 grams a day. Then the effect is pretty constant once the muscles are loaded. So, it doesn't matter if creatine is taken in the evening one day and the morning the next. There is no need to worry about taking it exactly 24 hours between doses.

If you stop taking it once your muscles are fully saturated from taking creatine it can take about 4 to 6 weeks for creatine levels to drop back to normal which could only cause losing a little bit of water weight and a drop in performance in the gym. However, you will not lose your muscles.

Final Thought

Creatine Monohydrate is the most studied supplement out there in terms of its safety and benefits. It is absolutely safe and effective for increasing performance in the gym. It is recommended to take 3 to 5 grams of regular creatine monohydrate daily, preferably with food at any time in the day. No loading phase is required. Remember that you might start experiencing the best performance-enhancing effects of creatine up to 4 weeks from starting your supplementation.