Unfortunately, its action, its use and its dangers are not yet well known by the general public, so much so that one can read a lot of contradictory information about it.
In this article, we will comb through creatine in order to unveil all its secrets and abolish common misconceptions about it.
What is creatine?
Creatine is a substance that is made in small part within the body from amino acids such as glycine. It is also found in food, especially red meat. However, to obtain 5 g of creatine, it is necessary to consume more than 1 kilo of steak per day and such an amount of meat is not recommended for your health. This is why creatine supplementation is really interesting for an athlete.
Creatine, an essential supplement
Creatine has many benefits for the athlete. First of all, it will be used to quickly produce energy which will allow the athlete to be more efficient on short-term efforts (sprints, heavy series in bodybuilding,...).
What is the role of creatine?
It promotes recovery after training by accelerating the repair of muscle fibers.
It allows a significant gain in strength, which will improve your performance in training.
Finally, this increase in strength and recovery will lead to muscle mass gain over the long term. The athlete will be able to train heavier, recover faster and thus be able to chain productive sessions more easily and have a progressive overload, which will lead to muscle gain.
What are the effects of creatine?
The first effect of creatine is energy production. Energy is present in our body in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), this ATP will be transformed into ADP (adenosine diphosphate) by releasing a phosphate ion. This reaction will lead to the release of energy which will be used by the body to breathe, digest, carry out physical activities,...
To synthesize this ATP, the body will use different energy substrates such as glucose, fatty acids and phosphocreatine (or creatine phosphate). This pathway is the fastest to produce ATP and it is used in the anaerobic alactic sector dedicated to short and intense efforts.
Studies have shown that creatine supplementation increases the body's creatine phosphate reserves by up to 30%, thus improving the athlete's ability to perform short-term efforts but also facilitates the repetition of these by renewing more ATP stores easily.
Creatine also plays a role in recovery because it improves the renewal of ATP stores in the human body. After an effort, the body's priority being to renew its energy stocks, it will focus first on this aspect before starting to repair the muscle fibres. Creatine can quickly redo these stocks, the body will then focus more quickly on protein synthesis and therefore the repair of damaged fibers.
Creatine also increases muscle strength. This gain is between 5 and 15% but it depends on the individual. Some will gain more strength from their creatine intake and others less.
Finally, creatine has an effect on intramuscular water retention, which will cause a small weight gain in people who start taking creatine. If you therefore gain weight rapidly, it will therefore not be a fat gain, nor a muscle gain, but simply water. We will visually have the appearance of a bigger muscle but not of a fat gain.
Creatine is known to improve strength
Is creatine dangerous?
Creatine has long received bad publicity from some media passing it off as a doping product or wanting to wrongly incriminate it in certain cases. In reality, creatine has never been officially considered a doping agent by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which definitely puts an end to this myth.
Another danger that is attributed to creatine is the toxicity that it would constitute for the kidneys. Taking creatine would increase the level of creatinine in the blood, which would be harmful to kidney function. In reality, creatine presents absolutely no danger to the kidneys and even if your creatinine level is a little higher, remember that this phenomenon is common among bodybuilders and that it is not directly due to taking creatine.
Finally, a carcinogenic effect of creatine was mentioned but the researchers quickly extinguished the rumor because there is absolutely no proof of such a hypothesis in the scientific literature.
Creatine therefore presents absolutely no danger to the human body and the bad publicity that has been given to it is not based on any scientific evidence.
Does creatine have side effects?
Creatine can have some side effects but nothing to be alarmed about. These are rare and often associated with an existing pathology or taking a drug. Many scientific studies have shown that creatine has no adverse effect on known markers of health status.
Creatine, however, would cause very mild hypoglycemia. This is why it is often advised against taking it just before training, but keep in mind that this reduction is so slight that you do not feel any impact.
However, if you suffer from kidney or liver disease, depression or severe high blood pressure, it is best to consult your doctor before consuming creatine.
On the other hand, taking creatine is not recommended in the case of bipolar disorders, schizophrenia and in pregnant women.
When and how to take creatine?
It has been shown that a dose of 3 to 5 g of creatine per day is ideal to acquire all its benefits. Taking more than 5 grams per day will not increase its effectiveness and too high a dose can even be harmful.
In addition, taking creatine in a single dose is also useless because the muscles will not be able to capture it ideally and a majority of the ingested dose will be eliminated through the urine. To improve the retention of creatine by the muscles, it is ideal to distribute the doses over the day. Taking 1 g of creatine with each meal will allow the muscles to better absorb the creatine and thus improve its efficiency.
Finally, you must consume your creatine continuously and not in cycles. Continuous intake leads to improved performance, which allows for good progressive overload and therefore greater muscle gains.
What are the different types of creatine?
It is the simplest and most effective form of creatine. It is found either in powder or in the form of capsules (which can facilitate the distribution of doses). Creatine monohydrate can be certified by the Créapure® label which guarantees a high quality product. Indeed, it guarantees a product of great purity because it is free of any potentially toxic waste that may be produced during the manufacturing process.
It is a buffered creatine monohydrate, this process aims to raise the pH in order to make it more alkaline and to facilitate the absorption of creatine. In reality, this type of creatine does not present a superior absorption to creatine monohydrate which remains the reference product.
Creatine ethyl ester:
Studies tend to show that this form of creatine is less effective than creatine monohydrate. In addition, it would degrade more quickly into creatinine and could have a small harmful effect on the kidneys.
Creatine HCl or creatine hydrochloride:
It would have the advantage of producing less water retention and being better tolerated than creatine monohydrate. However, no scientific study exists to confirm this information.
It is a creatine coupled with nitric acid so that the latter is transformed into nitric oxide (NO) in the body. NO causes blood vessels to dilate and therefore better congestion in training. This is the reason why we often find this type of creatine in pre-workouts.
This association of 3 molecules of creatine with a molecule of malic acid would have the advantage of being better assimilated than a standard creatine monohydrate and that it would be necessary to consume less of it. Indeed, 3 g of tri-creatine malate would be equivalent to 5 g of creatine monohydrate however, no study has been conducted on the subject in order to have proof of this hypothesis.