Creatine Benefits: The Supplement Worth Taking

Looking for ways to boost your fitness journey or support healthy aging? Here’s something interesting: creatine is not just a supplement; it’s a game-changer. And it’s not just for body builders and rugby players, if you’re an active woman over 40, creatine is a fantastic value for money supplement with an excellent safety profile that is worth taking!

This article will walk you through how creatine can benefit your muscles, brain, and overall health in simple steps.

Key Takeaways

• Creatine helps muscles produce more energy, improving strength and endurance during high-intensity workouts (HIIT), weightlifting and sprint intensity workouts (SIIT).
• Creatine supports brain health, potentially supporting those with risk of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease by maintaining dopamine levels.
• Adding creatine to your diet can support muscle recovery after exercise and muscle growth due to increased hydration of muscle tissue.
• Studies show taking creatine might help with controlling blood sugar levels, making it beneficial for people wanting to manage their levels carefully
• Creatine is one of the safest supplements available when used correctly, offering benefits beyond athletics including combating fatigue and enhancing mental sharpness
• If you want value for money, Creatine is a supplement worth taking, the lowest hanging fruit out there for performance considering how inexpensive it is for the benefits you can experience and its fantastic safety profile.

Understanding Creatine

Creatine is a substance that our bodies make naturally. It helps give muscles the power they need to lift weights and sprint. You can also find creatine in foods like meat and fish. Besides what we get from food and our bodies, many people take extra creatine as a supplement. This extra boost helps them do better in sports and build more muscle. It can benefit women in particular because women make less creatine than men, and this ability declines as we age.

Creatine is a combination of three different amino acids: glycine, arginine, and methionine. When creatine enters your body, it binds with a phosphate molecule, creating ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is your body’s natural energy source.

Creatine turns up your energy for better workouts.

Many athletes add this supplement to their routine because it increases phosphocreatine stores in muscles. This means the body has more fuel to make ATP, which is the quick energy muscles use during exercise. Taking creatine makes it easier for your body to produce energy fast, letting you push harder during high-intensity activities like weightlifting or sprinting.

Creatine is also osmotic, which means it pulls water into muscle tissue, in effect increasing their size through hydration.

The Function of Creatine in the Body

Creatine plays a big role in how your muscles make energy. It helps your muscle cells work better and longer, especially during quick bursts of activity like sprinting or lifting weights. If you want to take a deeper dive, take a listen to this podcast clip with Peter Attia and Layne Norton:

Energy Production for Muscles

Muscles need a lot of energy to work well, especially during exercise. This energy comes from adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which our bodies make using creatine. This is because the supplements help increase phosphocreatine stores in your muscle cells. These stores are like extra fuel that helps make more ATP quickly when you’re lifting weights or sprinting. This means you can push yourself harder and see results faster, whether it’s building muscle mass or just staying fit and healthy.

Supports Muscle Functions

Moving beyond simply boosting energy, creatine plays a key role in enhancing muscle functions. This powerful supplement aids muscles in their recovery after workouts. It supports the repair of wear and tear muscles endure during resistance training or any high-intensity activity. By increasing the size of muscle fibers, creatine ensures that your exercises translate into stronger, more robust muscles over time.

Creatine doesn’t just power up your muscles; it rebuilds them stronger for the next challenge.

Enhances High-Intensity Exercise Performance

Creatine bolsters performance during quick, intense bouts of activity by fueling muscles with more energy, making it easier to sprint faster or lift heavier weights. People who include this in their diet often see improvements in strength and speed. Creatine also helps athletes recover quicker between sets. This means you can push harder for longer without feeling worn out too quickly, this can also help to increase your VO2 max over time. Whether you’re a runner looking to shave seconds off your time or a weightlifter aiming to set new records, adding this supplement could be a game-changer for your routine.

Accelerates Muscle Growth

Creatine boosts muscle growth by changing how our cells work. It makes the fibers in our muscles bigger. This happens because creatine raises levels of a protein that helps muscles grow, called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), and lowers levels of another protein that stops muscle growth, known as myostatin. People taking creatine see big gains in lean body weight and muscular size quickly, especially when they start using it. This can also be because creatine is osmotic and draws water into the muscles for mass gains as well, this is to help muscles with their pumping, lifting, pushing abilities. supporting your hard work in the gym.

Taking creatine is like giving your muscles a fast track to growth.

This supplement consistently stands out for improving athletic ability. With just a week’s use—5 to 7 days—people notice significant changes not only in their muscle size but also in strength training outcomes. Creatine doesn’t just add bulk; it works on a cellular level to ensure those new gains are solid and beneficial for enhancing overall athletic performance.

Going Beyond Athletic Performance

What else can creatine do for you? Did you know creatine can help your bone and brain health?

 

Cognitive Support for Neurological Conditions and Healthy Aging

Moving beyond athletic performance, creatine shows promise as support for healthy cognition and brain health, particularly as we age and in those who are at risk from neurological conditions like Parkinson’s Disease. This is because the brain uses a significant amount of ATP energy and relies on phosphocreatine stores and dopamine levels to function effectively in particular supporting movement and mood. Creatine may help to slow or stop the decline of levels of these substances in the brain.

This approach offers a new avenue for managing Parkinson’s disease symptoms, opening doors to potentially more effective care strategies without relying solely on traditional medicines.

May Assist in Lowering Blood Sugar Levels and Combating Diabetes

Moving from the benefits for neurological diseases, another advantage of creatine is its potential in managing blood sugar levels. Research has shown that using this supplement might support your body to control glucose in your blood more efficiently. This happens because creatine makes GLUT-4, a glucose transporter in your muscles, work more efficiently.

A study over 12 weeks found that individuals who took creatine while exercising had more stable blood sugar than those who only worked out. I tried mixing my workouts with creatine and noticed feeling more balanced throughout the day; my energy dips were less frequent.

Combining exercise with creatine supplementation can be a game-changer for managing blood sugar levels.

Can Support Brain Function & Cognition

Creatine boosts your brain power. It plays a key role in energy production, which is vital for our brains to work at their best. Studies show taking creatine can make you sharper and improve memory. This is especially true during demanding tasks or under stress.

Reduces Fatigue and Tiredness

Just as creatine helps the brain work better, it also fights off feeling too tired or worn out. People who take this supplement say they don’t feel as dizzy or sleepy during the day. This is great news for those with illnesses like muscle weakness, lung problems, heart trouble, and more breathing issues. They’ve found that their energy comes back a bit when they use creatine.

Safe and Easy to Use

Creatine is a well-trusted supplement, famous for its muscle-building powers. Many people use it every day without problems. It fits easily into daily routines, whether added to shakes or taken as a pill. The evidence shows that both older men and women can see better muscle performance from creatine. This makes it a go-to choice for those looking to improve their health and strength.

Taking creatine doesn’t require any complicated steps or special equipment. Just mix it with water or your favorite beverage, and you’re good to go. It’s made to be safe, with loads of studies backing up its benefits and minimal side effects for most people. You don’t need to do what was traditionally known as a ‘loading phase’ where you slowly build up the stores in your body before you can hit a maintenance phase, you can simply start supplementing daily and use your creatine in addition to your daily vitamins!

If you want to saturate your muscle cells with Creatine quicker, for example, if you have a competition coming up, you can load at higher doses, but this may cause gastrointestinal distress for some people.

Sources of Creatine

Meat, fish, and dietary supplements are great places to start looking.

Natural Sources

Creatine hides in everyday foods that many of us eat. Think seafood and red meat, rich sources your body loves for more than just protein. I’ve found adding a salmon steak or a lean cut of beef to my weekly diet boosts my creatine intake naturally, without much fuss. It’s interesting how our bodies work with what we feed them, turning these meals into muscle and brain fuel.

Our liver, pancreas, and kidneys also play a big part in this process, churning out about 1 gram of creatine daily. This internal production teamed with the right foods sets us up well before supplements even enter the picture. So next time you’re meal planning, consider throwing in some fish or meat known for their creatine content. It’s an easy win for those looking to support their health without diving deep into supplement territory first.

Creatine Supplements

Creatine supplements boost your muscles and brain levels of phosphocreatine. They support your workouts, sports, and daily tasks by allowing your body to become stronger and more energetic. These supplements pack a powerful punch for muscle endurance, sprint ability, resistance to fatigue, and recovery times.

People see bigger muscles and lean body weight in just 5-7 days of taking these power-ups, but ultimately your stores build up over a period of around 30 days, then you can maintain with a daily dose. Your body gets creatine from foods like fish and meat, but sometimes not enough.

Different Types of Creatine Supplements

Pure Creatine

Pure creatine, also known as creatine monohydrate, is the traditional, popular, and inexpensive choice for supplementing to support muscle strength, size, endurance, performance, and cognition. People who don’t eat meat may have lower levels of creatine since it’s mainly found in animal products. For them, adding this supplement to their diet can fill that gap. Plus, if you often feel tired or sluggish, creatine has been shown to reduce fatigue and refresh energy levels without serious side effects. Perfect for busy, active men and women as they get older. We have O2B Pure Creatine as a powder that you can stir into your chosen liquid 30-60 minutes before your workout, most people take 3-5 grams per day (approx 1 tsp).

O2B Kre-Alkalyn

O2B Kre-Alkalyn stands out in the creatine supplement market because it works super-fast, requires no loading or high doses, comes in a convenient capsule form, and has been buffered for higher pH levels.  This means that any potential gastrointestinal side effects (these symptoms don’t occur for everyone) from the acidic conversion of the standard creatine monohydrate to creatinine are buffered with an alkaline powder to prevent this from happening, therefore there is more creatine available for your muscles and energy production.

The results from supplementing with Kre-Alkalyn have been well studied and show increased endurance, stamina, muscle mass, VO2 max, and power in athletes with no adverse effects such as bloating, cramping, or water retention. The recommended dose is 1.5 – 3g of Kre-Alkalyn twice a day for optimised athletic performance.

Interactions of Creatine with Other Substances

Creatine works well with some substances but not so well with others. For instance, mixing creatine and caffeine might seem like a good idea to boost energy levels. Yet, studies show the mix does not always work as we hope. On one hand, creatine increases water in muscle cells while caffeine can make you lose water. This could counteract how effectively each works.

Taking creatine with coenzyme Q10 or L-arginine might offer benefits though. These combos can help improve exercise performance and support your muscles even more than taking creatine alone.

Conclusion

Creatine packs a powerful punch for your health and fitness goals whilst maintaining an excellent safety profile and price point. It boosts muscle strength, and stamina, potential for improved endurance, and sharpens your mind. With science-backed perks like faster muscle growth and better glucose control, with a fantastic safety profile, it’s clear why this supplement is so popular and definitely a supplement worth taking.

FAQs

1. What does creatine do for your muscles?

Creatine plays a big role in improving skeletal muscle growth and helps prevent muscle loss, especially as you get older. It gives your muscles the energy they need when you exercise or play sports which may allow you to go harder for longer. It also pulls water into muscle tissue for increased hydration and therefore size!

2. Can taking creatine help with brain injuries or diseases?

Yes, research shows that creatine can help support the brain and cognitive abilities.

3. Are there any side effects to using creatine supplements?

While most people use creatine without problems, some might experience minor adverse effects like weight gain due to water retention, and possibly bloating or cramping, in which case the Kre-Alkalyn buffered version would be recommended. Read more about why Kre-Alkalyn can be better than Creatine for some people here.

4. Is it safe for everyone to take creatine supplements?

Mostly yes! But if you have conditions like bipolar disorder or kidney disease, it’s important to talk to a doctor first. Safety comes first—especially for pregnant women or those with specific genetic disorders related to amino acid processing.

5. Why is there so much talk about creatine in sports nutrition?

Because the International Olympic Committee and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) both recognize its benefits in improving strength and energy during high-intensity training sessions without being considered doping—it’s legal and effective!