What Is Creatine And What Can It Do For You? | Creatine Explained
#creatine #creatinemonohydrate #creatinebenefits
Creatine is one of THE most researched supplements on the markets. It's been studied for decades and yet there still seems to be some confusion among people, especially beginners, on what creatine can do. We'll discuss what creatine is, what it can do and what concerns you might have with supplementing with creatine.
Creatine is a compound that’s composed of three amino acids and the vast majority of it is stored in your skeletal muscle. It basically regenerates ATP to extend the amount of time you can perform exercises at a high level of intensity. By supplementing with creatine, you can improve exercise performance which ultimately leads to more strength and muscle gain. But do you really need to use a supplement?
As far as internal creatine stores go, your liver produces about 1g a day and you get about another gram of creatine from your food, mainly through animal foods such as beef, chicken and seafood. However, if you want to saturate your muscles with creatine, you need to consume about 3-5g per day consistently. Consuming this amount solely from your diet is actually pretty impractical if not downright impossible. For context, you’d need to eat about 2lbs of steak just to get 4g of creatine. So unless you plan on eating 2lbs of meat per day, supplementation makes the most practical sense.
There is nothing illicit about creatine or the use of it. Among beginners, there’s this sense of mystery surrounding creatine almost to the point where it’s seen as an anabolic substance. Obviously the use of creatine will result in muscle and strength gains, but it doesn’t provide gains even close to the magnitude of what you would observe in enhanced athletes. What creatine does is simply “top-off” your muscle storage so that you can push yourself just a bit further than you previously could. Let’s say you can bench press 185lbs for 8 reps. With creatine saturation, you’ll probably find that you can bench press 185lbs for 10 reps.
Creatine’s effect on hair loss is also unclear. A single study performed back in 2009 showed that the use of creatine among college aged rugby players increased DHT which is a contributor to the development of baldness. However, there has not been another study to date that replicates the results from the one in 2009. Furthermore, the increase in DHT still kept it within normal range of DHT levels. The conclusion that creatine drives hair loss is just not an established correlation and should really be of little concern since there hasn’t been another study replicated. My interpretation is this: the current body of evidence doesn’t have enough support to definitely say that creatine causes hair loss.
The last concern that most people have is weight gain. I think what concerns people is they think this water weight will give you a puffy or bloated appearance, but you have to understand that water is drawn INTO the muscles to increase cellular volume. If anything it will give you a more muscular look. You can expect about a 1-3% increase in bodyweight from the increased amount of water.
When it comes to dosing with creatine, there are two options: a loading phase, where you take 20-25g of creatine a day for a week and then after that week, you consume 5g every day or a regular phase where you just consume 5g of creatine every day. The difference is that a loading phase will saturate your muscles with creatine much faster than a normal phase but it may come at the cost of some stomach discomfort. Whichever option you choose is really up to you because the end result will be the same, which is muscle creatine saturation.
Timing of creatine ingestion really isn’t as important when used consistently. Studies have shown that taking creatine post-workout with a high carbohydrate meal is probably superior than taking it before a workout but those benefits mainly appear during the first 2 weeks of using creatine where your goal is to fully saturate your muscles. Once you receive that level of saturation, creatine timing doesn’t appear to have any sort of meaningful impact. The bottom line is when you stop taking creatine, you’ll return to baseline levels in about 4-6 weeks.
The last thing I want to go over is choosing the type of creatine. The most common and recommended is creatine monohydrate and it’s the most stable and widely studied form. It’s also the cheapest form of creatine. The general consensus is that other forms of creatine will not provide superior benefits or effects relative to their increase in cost when compared to creatine monohydrate.
0:00-0:21 Creatine Intro
0:22-1:00 What Is Creatine?
1:01-1:40 Do I Need Creatine Supplementation?
1:41-2:23 Is Creatine A Steroid?
2:24-2:46 Kidney Function
2:47-3:25 Hair Loss With Creatine?
3:26-3:48 Creatine Weight Gain
3:49-4:12 Creatine Bloat
4:13-4:48 Creatine Dosing
4:49-5:47 Creatine Timing
5:48-6:21 Best Type Of Creatine?
6:22-7:03 Summary
7:04 Outro