Creatine is probably one of the most researched supplements on the market. Research has corroborated the reports from athletes that creatine supplementation can increase exercise performance and muscle mass especially in conjunction with resistance training. A good overview about creatine can be found in this article
Clinical pharmacology of the dietary supplement creatine monohydrate. Persky AM, Brazeau GA. Pharmacol Rev. 2001 Jun;53(2):161-76. Review. PMID: 11356982; abstract available online at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11356982?ordinalpos=6&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSumEntire article at:
http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/full/1v1When you start supplementing with creatine, you can expect typical weight gain somewhere between 1 and 2 kg. This weight gain is initially brought on by water retention, but may be maintained by changes in amount of lean body mass. In general, athletes desire this effect. It gives your muscles a fuller look.
How should you dose it? Well, it is entirely up to you whether you want to “load” or not. Either way, your body will reach a saturation point. If you load, you reach the saturation point faster – that is all. As an example, after about a month of regular creatine dosing at 2-5 grams/day (or about a week of loading at about 20 grams/day) a saturation point will be reached.
Do you just take creatine on your weight training days or every day? Well, that really depends on whether you have reached your saturation point yet. Let’s say that you desire to “load” creatine. Well, you can achieve this by something such as follows: ingest 20 g of creatine each day for 6 days. This elevated tissue concentration can then be maintained by simply ingesting 2-3 g/day thereafter.
Although some people (and many supplement companies) tell you that you should take 5 grams creatine pre workout and 5 grams post workout, this is nonsense (unless you are loading). Why is it nonsense? Because you can maintain creatine saturation levels just fine with 2-3 grams per day. See,
Muscle creatine loading in men E. Hultman, et. al, J Appl Physiol 81: 232-237, 1996; abstract at:
http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/81/1/232So, what if you are stubborn and still want to take 10 grams per day every after you have become saturated? Well, your body simply pisses out the extra creatine that it does not use. This chart shows that only around 3 grams per day is needed and any more is pissed out like that simple chart depicts.
So, if you have one or two off days where you are not exercising, but you have been chronically using creatine, then taking those couple days off from creatine will not matter. Why? Because saturation can be maintained with less than daily dosing.
So, what’s a good way to look at frequency of creatine use? Well, assuming that you have never used creatine before or that you have not used creatine in a few months, then your levels should be at baseline. So, if you do not “load” then you would want to consume 3-5 grams of creatine 5-7 days a week for the first month or so.
Should I take my creatine with juice or some type of “fast” carb? This does not matter. Granted, during a “loading” phase, if you have a large dose of insulinotropic substrate it will enhance accumulation of the creatine, but it really is a large dose, which probably is not desirable for most people reading this due to the likely large caloric intate. So, while huge amounts of insulin can enhance total creatine accumulation during “loading,” so can certain exercise parameters. But why would you need to accumulate more creatine faster? Maybe if you started taking creatine 5 days before a photoshoot, but otherwise, I just don’t see any tangible benefit. If you are curious about these large levels of insulin, the research shows that it takes 70-100 grams of carbohydrates or 50 grams carbohydrates + 50 grams protein or 1 g / kg carbohydrates - or an insulin concentration of about 100 mU/l to maximize it. As I stated above, most people do not have the room in their diets for that.
Nonetheless, once your muscles are saturated, timing your creatine with juice or other substrates will not make much of a difference in maintaining saturation or uptake.
So, if you purchase a fancy supplement that has creatine in it paired with dextrose (oops, sorry EAS), you are essentially wasting your money and should just buy straight creatine monohydrate which you can find everywhere fairly cheap. There is no point in trying to speed up creatine uptake once you are past the loading phase (or once your cells are saturated with creatine). Also, by following this advice, you can eat more quality carbs instead of nutritionally empty dextrose.
For those of you who have heard the bros at the gym or GNC tell you that you need to take creatine with some type of sugar, let me make clear,
You do not need sugar for creatine absorption. Why? Well, the creatine transporter is not insulin-dependant. The creatine transporter is a sodium-chloride dependant transporter. What doe sthi smean? It means that no sugar is needed for uptake. Now, as I indicated above, a supraphysiological level of insulin stimulates Na-K ATPase pump activity and enhances creatine accumulation, but that really is most notably only during loading. After you are saturated, the creatine absorption is not really enhanced much even with huge spikes in insulin. Got it? Once you muscles have reached the saturation point basically no amount of sugar is going to jam more creatine through CreaT1 (the sodium-chloride dependant creatine transporter). Bodybuilding/researcher Layne Norton has explained this idea when discussing combining creatine with protei/glutamine. “Creatine and glutamine have completely different receptors. Creatine transport into skeletal muscle is regulated by the Creatine Transporter while glutamine transport into skeletalmuscle is regulated by a system known as "System Nm." The only thing these transporters have in common is that they are both sodium-dependent transporters, meaning that they use differences in sodium concentrations across the cell membrane to drive creatine into cells. Apparently somewhere along the line, somebody believed that since glutamine and creatine transporters both shared that characteristic, they must be the same transporter and the myth spread from there. Let the confusion end here: they do not share the same transporter, and taking protein/glutamine with creatine won't decrease creatine uptake into muscle.
What type of creatine to buy?This is a good question, and the simple answer is to buy creatine monohydrate that has the work “creapure” on the label. There are lots of other types of creatines out there. Some of the more popular ones are creatine ethyl ester (CEE) and Kre-alkalyn (KA). I suggest that you avoid those and stick with creatine monohydrate (which is cheaper anyway).
Creatine monohydrate is superior in several aspects to CEE.
See,
The effects of creatine ethyl ester supplementation combined with heavy resistance training on body composition, muscle performance, and serum and muscle creatine levels. Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation, Baylor University, Box 97313, Waco, TX 76798, USA.
darryn_willoughby@baylor.edu. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2009 Feb 19;6:6. Abstract at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19228401This study compared creatine monohydrate to CEE and showed that CEE was not as effective at increasing serum and muscle creatine levels or in improving body composition, muscle mass, strength, and power as regular plain old creatine monohydrate. Here is a quote from the authors of the study: “our results seem to indicate that creatine estrication does not provide a superior alternative to creatine monohydrate for muscle creatine uptake.”
There is also a 2007 study that showed that CEE rapidly degraded into creatin
ine while creatine mono stayed almost completely undegraded for 2 hours in simulated stomach acidity. Child, R. & Tallon, M.J. (2007).
Creatine ethyl ester rapidly degrades to creatinine in stomach acid. International Society of Sports Nutrition 4th Annual Meeting
http://www.jissn.com/content/6/1/6So, since KA and CEE are both vulnerable to degrading rapidly in the stomach into the useless metabolite of creatine called creatin
ine, using either KA or CEE results in significantly less of the active agent reaching your muscle tissue (as opposed to regular creatine monohydrate, which remains intact).
Furthermore, here are two very recent studies:
1)
Non-enzymatic hydrolysis of creatine ethyl ester. Katseres NS, et.al, Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2009 Aug 21;386(2):363-7. Epub 2009 Jun 12. Abstract at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524547 This study indicates that the half-life of CEE in blood is on the order of one minute, suggesting that CEE may hydrolyze too quickly to reach muscle cells in its ester formand
2)
Non-enzymatic cyclization of creatine ethyl ester to creatinine. Giese MW, Lecher CS. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2009 Oct 16;388(2):252-5. Epub 2009 Aug 4. Abstract at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19660433 This study demonstrates that mild non-enzymatic conditions are sufficient for the cyclization of creatine ethyl ester into creatinine, and together with previous results obtained under enzymatic conditions suggests that there are no physiological conditions that would result in the production of creatine. It is concluded that creatine ethyl ester is a pronutrient for creatinine rather than creatine under all physiological conditions encountered during transit through the various tissues, thus no ergogenic effect is to be expected from supplementation.“In contrast to the claims of All American Pharmaceutical and Natural Foods Corp., the rate of creatinine formation from CM was found to be less than 1% of the initial dose, demonstrating that CM is extremely stable under acidic conditions that replicate those of the stomach. This study also showed that KA supplementation actually resulted in 35% greater conversion of creatine to creatinine than CM.”
“CEE is claimed to provide several advantages over CM because of increased solubility and stability. In practice, the addition of the ethyl group to creatine actually reduces acid stability and accelerates its breakdown to creatinine. This substantially reduces creatine availability in its esterified form and as a consequence creatines such as San CM2 and CE2 are inferior to CM as a source of free creatine.”
http://www.npicenter.com/anm/templates/newsATemp.aspx?articleid=18806&zoneid=28The effects of creatine ethyl ester supplementation combined with heavy resistance training on body composition, muscle performance, and serum and muscle creatine levels Mike Spillane, et.al Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2009, 6:6doi:10.1186/1550-2783-6-6
“In conclusion, when compared to creatine monohydrate, creatine ethyl ester was not as effective at increasing serum and muscle creatine levels or in improving body composition, muscle mass, strength, and power. Therefore, the improvements in these variables can most likely be attributed to the training protocol itself, rather than the supplementation regimen.”
And this may be the nail in the coffin of CEE:
Non-enzymatic cyclization of creatine ethyl ester to creatinine. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2009 Oct 16;388(2):252-5. Epub 2009 Aug 4. Giese MW, Lecher CS.
Creatine ethyl ester was incubated at 37 degrees C in both water and phosphate-buffered saline and the diagnostic methylene resonances in the (1)H NMR spectrum were used to identify the resultant products. It was found that mild aqueous conditions result in the cyclization of creatine ethyl ester to provide inactive creatinine as the exclusive product, and this transformation becomes nearly instantaneous as the pH approaches 7.4.
This study demonstrates that mild non-enzymatic conditions are sufficient for the cyclization of creatine ethyl ester into creatinine, and together with previous results obtained under enzymatic conditions suggests that there are no physiological conditions that would result in the production of creatine. It is concluded that creatine ethyl ester is a pronutrient for creatinine rather than creatine under all physiological conditions encountered during transit through the various tissues, thus no ergogenic effect is to be expected from supplementation.What about using the CEE to reduce bloating?I already showed you that CEE is an inferior type of creatine and should be avoided. Most likely the people that experience “less bloating” with CEE do so because when you use CEE you usually use a lesser amount of CEE in comparison to creatine monohydrate (due to the false assumption that its pharmacokinetics are better). The most likely explanation is that muscle creatine levels are not being elevated significantly with CEE bloating (and volumization) are also reduced. Seems like a poor trade-off to me.
