Creating Creatine

By: Mujuthaba

Creatine has been around for a while as a supplement in our health and fitness shops. This has been proven to be a quite popular supplement, especially among our body builders. The intake of creatine as a supplement came into action after the 1992 Olympics, where a couple of gold medallists used it for their success. I’m not sure about the Maldives, but in the world, the consumption of creatine is supposed to be an estimated three million kilograms a year. From this you can fathom the popularity of this supplement.

Creatine is a non-essential nutrient, 95% of which is present naturally in our muscles. These include the heart muscles, skeletal muscles and smooth muscles (lining of the intestines...etc). The remaining 5% are based in the brain, liver, kidneys and testes of males. The naturally occurring creatine is orally derived from diets containing fish and red meat. This could prove a challenge to vegetarians (not that we have many in our country), who would only get trace amounts of creatine from plant foods.

Creatine is mainly used in muscle contraction of the human body. This is a major element which makes short burst activities possible, for durations lasting 10-12 seconds. Usually in sports performance, supplements are used to increase overall performance by increasing the naturally occurring form of the nutrients. Aim of supplementing creatine is to increase the duration at which the muscles can perform at a 100% maximum. A normal person can use their muscles at maximum for no more than 10-12 seconds. You can experience this when you start on a full sprint, and after a while you would need to slow down as you would not have enough creatine available. I’m trying to explain this in very basic terms without getting into any detail of muscle movement using creatine.

Creatine is mainly ingested as a supplement in powdered form of creatine monohydrate. It has been proven that proper supplementation of creatine increases the muscle creatine concentration by 40%. The recommended intake or loading of creatine supplement is 20g/day. This amount should be taken in 5g at four different times for six continuous days. After the six days are complete, a dose of 2g/day is enough to keep the level of muscle creatine at a higher level. Increasing the dosage doesn’t have any effect on improving performance. This method of loading is also recommended in creatine supplement containers. Creatine, being a protein, it is always helpful for it to be used by the tissues if taken with a carbohydrate. Most athletes ingest this supplement by mixing with high carbohydrate drinks.

Supplementing creatine is useful in short burst sports, such as squash, gymnastics...etc. Although it doesn’t have much proven effect on performance for endurance sports, such as long distance running. Creatine has a tendency to increase the body weight by 0.5-3.5kg. This is mainly due to its effect on retaining water in tissues, increased protein production and decreased protein breakdown. This would prove to be positive effects if you are a body builder, since protein is the building blocks of the body structure. Creatine supplementation has also proven to increase strength of weight trainers by 25% and increase their fat free mass (muscles and bone mass) by 60%.

As with all other supplements, creatine doesn’t come without detrimental effects from over loading or individual ignorance. Such ailments as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, kidney complications, liver complications, muscle cramps and increased blood pressure have been linked to creatine supplementation. Creatine supplementation should be taken into good consideration. Creatine has been proven to be one of the most effective supplements in the market, with almost no side-effects (with proper loading) and a history of exemplary results.