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Funny how arguably the most cost-effective, efficacious over-the-counter sports supplement has the worst reputation. Often inaccurately associated with bulging biceps, fake tans, and kidney damage, creatine, contrary to the cultural stigma, will not turn you into a Jersey Shore cast member nor will it cause any of the mythical side effects often associated with the substance. Facts are facts and the fact is that creatine has outstanding benefits for athletes who engage in short duration explosive movements. And beyond these proven athletic benefits, creatine supplementation has been shown to have significant neurological and cognitive benefits all with minimal risk.
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Mr. Creatine, A Brief History
Back in 1993 Ed Byrd, aka “Mr. Creatine,” co-founded Experimental & Applied Sciences (EAS) which became the first company to bring supplemental creatine monohydrate to market. Thanks to Bryd’s researched-based approach to sport science, creatine supplementation quickly gained acceptance from experts in sports medicine and both amateur and professional athletes.
Around that same time, Olympic level athletes started putting down the best performances of their careers and revealing that they had started consuming supplemental creatine. There was a great deal of controversy surrounding these early adopters and naturally the media looked to the most negative science around to supply the frothing masses with a reason to castigate these “doping” athletes. While it’s not entirely clear where the bad reputation of creatine is derived from, it’s most likely a combination of misunderstanding of its efficacy, coupled with the obvious advantage that it gives athletes who use the compound combined with misinterpreted studies that claim creatine supplementation can cause kidney damage, dehydration, and something similar to “roid rage.”
Photo: Warren Goldswain
Dispelling The Creatine Myths
Let me clear up these concerns quickly so we can move on to the important, peer-reviewed, scientifically significant stuff. Creatine can dramatically improve sports performance in athletes who regularly rely on their phosphagen system for their primary source of energy, regularly engaging in bouts of brief, rapid, and powerful movements. This gives athletes who consume supplemental creatine in certain sports a distinct advantage over those who do not. However, being incited towards athletes for taking the supplement, which is considered legal by all major sporting organizations including the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee, is like being be angry at someone for putting honey on their granola to make it taste better — it’s irrational and you can have it too!
As for the claims of kidney damage, this is true only for some individuals who already had a preexisting kidney condition. No evidence has ever been found that creatine use has negative effects on renal function in healthy individuals.
For the dehydration misnomer, this has never been confirmed by any creatine study; and there have been quite a few of them. In fact recent studies have shown that creatine may aid hydration in hot and humid conditions. This misunderstanding perhaps came about because athletes who start supplementing with creatine are able to do more work than previously and did not adjust their fluid intake adequately. Of course you do want to drink more water when taking creatine (as it does increase water retention in the muscles), but this isn’t because it has the power to make you shrivel up in the middle of a hill climb but rather because you may be climbing more hills faster.
Then there is the whole “roid rage” concern. This, too, is completely unverified by any reputable science and is more folklore that can be found on all sorts of internet forums and has somehow made it into the mainstream consciousness. There have been studies done that show that creatine supplementation is correlated with increased co-factors of testosterone in college aged males. While the study was inconclusive as to the biological/chemical relationship of creatine to increased-T, reputable experts on the topic attribute the increase again to the increased amount of work that creatine monohydrate supplementation allows athletes to perform where increased levels of testosterone is a natural adaptation to lifting heavier loads and doing more work.
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How It Works
Creatine is an amino acid derivative constructed from arginine, glycine and methionine. It is produced naturally by the body in the kidneys, liver, and pancreas at a rate of about one to two grams per day. Creatine can also be obtained from food (particularly red meat) and supplementation.
To understand the role creatine plays let’s start by thinking about an all out sprint or anything that requires maximal effort. Typically as healthy individuals we are able to go for about eight to 12 seconds before we must slow down if we want to keep going and this goes for running, biking, padding, and generally riding just about anything. But after that eight to 12 second threshold, our body becomes depleted of the main energy source for that type of high-intensity work, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This is where creatine comes in and provides the extra material to regenerate and replenish our ATP stores. What supplemental creatine does is increase the intramuscular creatine pool that our body has to draw from and this allows us to go all out for a longer duration without needing to slow down. This is confirmed by research that shows higher concentrations of intercellular creatine are linked with improved force during maximal contraction and improved staying power with high intensity exercise.
Photo: Baylor University
The Research
In terms of sports supplements creatine is about the most well researched there is. A PubMed paper from a researcher at Baylor University reviewed over 500 research studies that all evaluate the effects of creatine supplements on muscle physiology and/or exercise capacity in healthy, trained, and various diseased populations. In addition this paper discusses over 300 studies looking at the potential performance value of creatine supplementation. In reviewing all of this literature on the use of supplemental creatine, 70% of these studies show statistically significant positive results while 30% show no performance improvements with no negative results reported (roughly 20 to 30% of the population are non-responders to creatine due to already high levels of dietary creatine intake or other genetic factors). That is a huge body of literature reporting overwhelmingly positive results with minimal, if any risk in healthy populations. It is worth noting that something with this level of confirmed benefits with no side effects is almost unheard of in the world of sports nutrition. It is unlikely that whole milk or even peanut butter could withstand this level of scrutiny with such positive results and limited negatives, not to mention that relative to other supplements including most protein powders, creatine is dirt cheap making it a no-brainer for high performing individuals.
Yet despite this wealth of literature on the on supplemental creatine it is very likely that you will encounter friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers that will echo the anti-creatine message that has been so pervasive in the media for years and even many physicians will claim that creatine is ineffective and even harmful without having read any of the scientific literature on the subject. This is unfortunate not just because it is scaring well meaning, high-level athletes away from it’s use but because creatine supplementation is incredibly beneficial beyond just the realm of athletics.
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Creatine As A Nootropic
Creatine’s effect of increasing intracellular energy by way of replenishing ATP is not just reserved for muscle activity, it increases the energy of all cells in the body including those in the brain. It is this recent realization that has lead creatine to be categorized as a nootropic, a class of drugs that are known to enhance memory or other cognitive functions. This is leading many mental high-performing, Silicon Valley-types to start supplementing creatine as recent studies have made a compelling argument for it’s use in non-athletic endeavors as well.
In recent studies creatine supplementation has been found to significantly boost cognitive function. In one of the most oft cited studies on the topic, researchers in Australia looked at 45 young adults, all of whom were vegetarian (this makes it easier to control as vegetarian diets, absent of meat and fish are extremely low in dietary creatine) found “Creatine supplementation had a significant positive effect (p < 0.0001) on both working memory (backward digit span) and intelligence (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices), both tasks that require speed of processing. These findings underline a dynamic and significant role of brain energy capacity in influencing brain performance.” This study used a creatine dosage of 5 grams per day over the course of six weeks. Other studies have confirmed that creatine may have additional neuro-protective effects agains disease like Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). So yeah, it’s pretty rad.
Photo: Brian A. Jackson
Where It Fits In With The Adventure Athlete
Given all of these findings and considering the lifestyles many of us lead as “action and adventure athletes” — to use the parlance of the day — creatine supplementation should be considered a much welcomed addition to our nutritional regimen, particularly for periods when our output is highest, whether that’s in training, competition season or a stretch of time when we know we are going to be getting after it on the hill, trail, or in the water on a regular basis. If we are willing to choke down kale smoothies and beet juice for our wellbeing it stands to reason that something as effective and low risk as creatine should also be at the top of our nutritional hit list.
And this gets to heart of the argument and the point of this article; I too have been turned off by the idea of creatine use in the past. It has, after all, been branded and marketed towards the type of person that is essentially the antithesis of the adventure athlete. Yet the fact that we have come to associate creatine with the body-builders of muscle beach, the mirror obsessed bros at your local globo-gym, and the ball sport athletes that may or may not have turned us off to team sports at a young age, does not change the science and the seemingly irrefutable benefits of creatine supplementation.
Think of a banked slalom, the downhill section that burns the quads every time, that stretch of river that demands everything you’ve got, or the wave that requires a little more paddling to catch—just a sampling of scenarios that seriously tax our energy reserves when we need them most. And unlike sports played on the courts, fields, or in the arena, the implications of not having enough in the tank for the adventure athlete can hold far greater and potentially disastrous implications.
It may take a bit of pride swallowing and perhaps an uncomfortable and previously unthinkable trip to the vitamin shop but you must put your faith in the facts, the really compelling, researched-based facts, and do your best to ignore the muscle bound Mr. Universe contestant with veins thicker than most of our fingers that grace the majority products in that section of the store. We should also ignore the thought that consuming the products with this obnoxious labeling will make us turn out like this guy. You’re not going to accidentally wake up looking like Arnold in ’75, that takes a bit of work (and a bit of Dianabol).
Photo: Syda Productions
Time To Add It In
Stick to straight creatine monohydrate, one ingredient, unflavored and try to get it from a reputable company — Jarrow Formulas and Now Foods have very good reputations in this area — supplements are not items where you want to opt for an off brand. Mix three to five grams in water, your sport drink or smoothie, and consume it during or immediately after your activity. It has often been suggested that there is a loading phase required when supplementing with creatine however there is little research that supports this claim and the confirmed benefits of creatine have all been gotten with regular and sustained use of three to five grams per day (this includes days off, consuming it at the same time you would normally exercise or in the morning) for an extended period of time four to six-plus weeks. There is also no research that supports cycling off creatine as necessary or more healthful than uninterrupted consumption. Long term studies with higher doses than the five grams recommendation have been conducted with no reported side effects—though generally cycling off anything is a good idea, it allows you to see how your body is effected by certain foods, drinks, or supplements and will just increase your understanding of yourself.
Whatever your stance on supplements is up to you, just know that creatine supplementation has far more in common with taking fish oil and flax for the omega-3s than it does with petri-dish compounds that raise hormones to super-physiological levels, come with a litany of dangerous side effects, and improve sports performance by wholly artificial means. If we strive to provide our bodies with the best fuel for performing our best day-in and day-out then we must not ignore certain beneficial nutrients because of undeserved negative connotations and associations. With almost no mentionable trade offs creatine fits the bill of the high intensity athlete’s best friend, and that goes for all athlete’s on the mountains and in the water.
Citations:
Is the use of oral creatine supplementation safe?
The neuroprotective role of creatine.
Effects of creatine supplementation on renal function.
Putting to rest the myth of creatine supplementation leading to muscle cramps and dehydration.
Effects of creatine supplementation on performance and training adaptations.
