Everything You Need to Know About Creatine

Creatine helps 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.

Creatine is the top supplement for improving performance in the gym.

Studies show that it can increase muscle mass, strength, and exercise performance .

Additionally, it may help lower blood sugar and improve brain function, although more research is needed in these areas .

Some people believe that creatine is unsafe and has many side effects. However, scientific evidence does not support these claims.

In fact, creatine is one of the world’s most tested supplements and has an outstanding safety profile .

This article explains everything you need to know about creatine.

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.

Why use creatine?

Taking creatine as a supplement is very popular among athletes and bodybuilders. They use it to gain muscle, enhance strength, and improve exercise performance.

Chemically speaking, creatine shares many similarities with amino acids, important compounds in the body that help build protein. Your body can produce creatine from the amino acids glycine and arginine .

About half of your body’s creatine stores come from the food you eat — especially red meat and seafood — and the rest is made in your liver and kidneys from amino acids .

Where is creatine phosphate found in the body?

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 .

When you supplement, you increase your stores of phosphocreatine. This is a form of stored energy in the cells. It helps your body produce more of a high energy molecule called ATP.

ATP is often called the body’s energy currency. When you have more ATP, your body can perform better during exercise .

Creatine also alters several cellular processes that lead to increased muscle mass, strength, and recovery.

SUMMARY
Creatine is a substance found naturally in your body — particularly in muscle cells. Athletes commonly take it as a supplement.

Effects on strength and exercise performance

Creatine can also improve strength, power, and high intensity exercise performance.

In one review, adding creatine to a training program increased strength by 8%, weightlifting performance by 14%, and bench press one-rep max by up to 43%, compared with training alone.

In well-trained strength athletes, 28 days of supplementing increased bike-sprinting performance by 15% and bench press performance by 6%.

Creatine also helps maintain strength and training performance while increasing muscle mass during intense overtraining.

These noticeable improvements are primarily caused by your body’s increased capacity to produce ATP.

Normally, ATP becomes depleted after up to 10 seconds of high intensity activity. But because creatine supplements help you produce more ATP, you can maintain optimal performance for a few seconds longer.

SUMMARY
Creatine is one of the best supplements for improving strength and high intensity exercise performance. It works by increasing your capacity to produce ATP energy.

Creatine effects on the brain

Like your muscles, your brain stores phosphocreatine and requires plenty of ATP for optimal function.

Supplementing may improve the following conditions:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• Parkinson’s disease
• Huntington’s disease
• ischemic stroke
• epilepsy
• brain or spinal cord injuries
• motor neuron disease
• memory and brain function in older adults

Despite the potential benefits of creatine for treating neurological disease, most current research has been performed on animals.

However, a 6-month study in children with traumatic brain injury observed a 70% reduction in fatigue and a 50% reduction in dizziness.

Human research suggests that creatine can also aid older adults, vegetarians, and those at risk of neurological diseases.

Vegetarians tend to have low creatine stores because they don’t eat meat, which is the main natural dietary source.

In one study in vegetarians, supplementing caused a 50% improvement on a memory test and a 20% improvement on intelligence test scores.

Even in healthy adults, creatine supplementation may improve short-term memory and intelligence.

SUMMARY
Creatine may reduce symptoms and slow the progression of some neurological diseases, although more research in humans is needed.

Other health benefits

Research also indicates that creatine may :

lower blood sugar levels
improve muscle function and quality of life in older adults
help treat nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
However, more research in these areas is needed.

SUMMARY
Creatine may combat high blood sugar and fatty liver disease, as well as improve muscle function in older adults.

Different types of supplements

The most common and well-researched supplement form is called creatine monohydrate.

Many other forms are available, some of which are promoted as superior, though evidence to this effect is lacking.

Creatine monohydrate is very cheap and is supported by hundreds of studies. Until new research claims otherwise, it seems to be the best option.

SUMMARY
The best form of creatine you can take is called creatine monohydrate, which has been used and studied for decades.

Dosage instructions

Many people who supplement start with a loading phase, which leads to a rapid increase in muscle stores of creatine.

To load with creatine, take 20 grams per day for 5–7 days. Split this into four 5-gram servings throughout the day.

Eating a carb- or protein-based meal may help your body absorb the creatine, due to the related release of insulin.

Following the loading period, take 3–5 grams per day to maintain high levels within your muscles. As there is no benefit to cycling creatine, you can stick with this dosage for a long time.

If you choose not to do the loading phase, you can simply consume 3–5 grams per day. However, it may take 3–4 weeks to maximize your stores.

Since creatine pulls water into your muscle cells, it is advisable to take it with a glass of water and stay well hydrated throughout the day.

SUMMARY
To load with creatine, take 5 grams four times per day for 5–7 days. Then take 3–5 grams per day to maintain levels.

Safety and side effects

Creatine is one of the most well-researched supplements available, and studies lasting up to 4 yearsreveal no negative effects.

One of the most comprehensive studies measured 52 blood markers and observed no adverse effects following 21 months of supplementing.

There is also no evidence that creatine harms the liver and kidneys in healthy people who take standard doses. That said, people with preexisting liver or kidney concerns should consult with a doctor before supplementing.

Although people associate creatine with dehydration and cramps, research doesn’t support this link. Studies suggest it can reduce cramps and dehydration during endurance exercise in high heat.

One 2009 study found that creatine supplementation is associated with an increase in a hormone called DHT, which can contribute to hair loss. More research is needed, but people who are predisposed to hair loss may wish to avoid this supplement.

SUMMARY
Creatine exhibits no harmful side effects. Though it’s commonly believed to cause dehydration and cramps, studies don’t support this.