What is Creatine?
Creatine is a substance that occurs naturally in muscle cells. It helps your muscles produce energy during weightlifting or high-intensity exercise.
Taking creatine as a supplement is popular among athletes and bodybuilders to increase muscle, strength, and performance.
Chemically, it has many similarities to amino acids. Your body can produce it from the amino acids glycine and arginine.
Several factors can influence your body's creatine reserves, including meat intake, exercise, muscle mass, and hormone levels like testosterone and IGF-1.
About 95% of your body's creatine is stored in your muscles as creatine phosphate. Another 5% is found in your brain, kidneys, and liver.
When you supplement, you increase your stores of creatine phosphate. This is a form of stored energy in your cells because it helps your body produce more of the high-energy molecule called ATP.
ATP is often referred to as the body's energy currency. When you have more ATP, your body will perform better during exercise.
Creatine also changes several cellular processes that lead to increased muscle mass, strength, and recovery.
How does Creatine work?
Creatine can improve health and athletic performance in a number of ways.
During high-intensity exercise, its primary effect is to increase phosphocreatine stores in the muscles.
The additional stores can then be used to produce more ATP, a key energy source for weightlifting and high-intensity exercise.
Creatine can also help you build muscle in the following ways:
Increase Work Volume: Achieve more total work or training volume in a single session, which is a key factor in long-term muscle growth.
Improve Cell Signaling: Can increase cell signaling, which aids in muscle repair and new muscle growth.
Increase Anabolic Hormones: Studies have shown that hormone levels, such as IGF-1, increase after taking creatine.
Increase Cell Hydration: Elevates water levels within muscle cells, which can lead to a cell-volumizing effect, which may play a role in muscle growth.
Reduce Protein Breakdown: May increase total muscle mass by reducing muscle breakdown.
Reduce Myostatin Levels: Elevated levels of the protein myostatin can slow or completely inhibit the growth of new muscle. Supplementing with creatine can lower these levels, increasing growth potential.
Creatine supplements can also increase the storage of phosphocreatine in the brain, which may improve brain health and prevent neurological diseases.
Effects of Creatine on Muscle Building
Creatine is effective for both short-term and long-term muscle growth.
It helps many different people, including sedentary individuals, older adults, and elite athletes.
A 14-week study in older adults determined that adding creatine to a weight training program significantly increased leg strength and muscle mass.
In a 12-week study in weightlifters, creatine increased muscle fiber growth 2-3 times more than training alone. Total body mass gains also doubled, while bench press, a common strength exercise, was performed with one rep maximum.
A large review of the most popular supplements selected creatine as the most beneficial supplement for increasing muscle mass.
Effects of Creatine on Strength and Performance
Creatine can also improve strength, power, and high-intensity performance.
In one review, adding creatine to a training program increased strength by 8%, weightlifting performance by 14%, and bench press one-rep maximum by 43% compared to training alone.
In trained strength athletes, supplementation for 28 days improved cycling sprint performance by 15% and bench press performance by 6%.
Creatine also helps maintain strength and training performance while increasing muscle mass during periods of intense overtraining.
These significant improvements are primarily due to an increase in your body's ability to produce ATP.
Typically, ATP is depleted after 8-10 seconds of high-intensity activity. But because creatine supplements can help you produce more ATP, you can maintain peak performance for a few extra seconds.
Human studies show that creatine can also help older adults, vegetarians, and those at risk for neurological disease.
Vegetarians tend to have lower creatine reserves because they don't eat meat, which is a major natural dietary source.
In one study of vegetarians, supplementation improved memory tests by 50% and intelligence test scores by 20%.
While it can benefit older adults and those with reduced stores, creatine has no effect on brain function in healthy adults.
Different types of creatine supplements
The most common and well-studied form of supplement is called creatine monohydrate.
Creatine monohydrate is very inexpensive and backed by hundreds of studies. Unless new research says otherwise, it seems like it's the best choice.
Creatine Safety and Side Effects
Creatine is one of the most well-studied supplements, with studies lasting up to four years showing no negative effects.
One of the most comprehensive studies measured 52 blood markers and observed no adverse effects after supplementing for 21 months.
There is also no evidence that creatine damages the liver and kidneys in healthy people who take normal doses. That said, those with liver or kidney problems should consult a doctor before supplementing.
Although people associate creatine with dehydration and cramping, research does not support this connection. Studies have shown that it can reduce cramping and dehydration during endurance exercise in the heat.
The bottom line is that creatine is one of the cheapest, most effective, and safest supplements you can take.
