What is Creatine?

Creatine is naturally produced by your body in your kidneys, liver, and pancreas. It’s made from three amino acids — glycine, arginine, and methionine. On average your body can make 1–2 grams of creatine per day, which is stored primarily in your skeletal muscles.

The compound is also found in food, predominantly animal products like beef, chicken, pork, and fish. A typical diet provides 1–2 grams of creatine per day. Aside from being naturally found in many foods, creatine is available in supplement form. Although there are several forms of these supplements available, creatine monohydrate is the most well-studied, effective, and inexpensive form.

What Does It Do?

Creatine can improve health and athletic performance in a number of ways. In high-intensity exercise, its primary role is to increase the phosphocreatine stores in your muscles. The additional stores can then be used to produce more Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), which is the key energy source for heavy lifting and high-intensity exercise

Creatine also helps you gain muscle in the following ways:

Workload Increase - Creatine enables more total work or volume in a single training session, a key factor in long-term muscle growth

Improved Cell Signalling. Creatine can increase satellite cell signalling, which aids muscle repair and new muscle growth

Raised anabolic hormones. Studies have noted a rise in hormones, such as IGF-1, after taking creatine.

Increased cell hydration. Creatine increases water content within your muscle cells, which causes a cell volumization effect that may play a role in muscle growth

Reduced Protein Breakdown. Creatine may increase total muscle mass by reducing muscle breakdown

Lower myostatin levels. Elevated levels of the protein myostatin can slow or inhibit new muscle growth. Supplementing with creatine can reduce these levels, increasing growth potential

Is Creatine Safe?

Creatine is well regarded as a safe, well-studied supplement. Studies in a variety of people have shown no detrimental health effects of taking creatine supplements in doses up to 4–20 grams per day for 10 months to 5 years.

It’s commonly thought that taking these supplements may harm kidney health. However multiple studies have proven otherwise. In one study that looked at people with type 2 diabetes, a condition that may impair kidney function, supplementing with 5 grams of creatine per day for 12 weeks did not harm kidney health.

What does need to be noted though is that long-term studies in people with kidney disease are lacking. People with impaired kidney function or those taking medications should check with their doctor before supplementing with creatine.

Dosing strategies

Creatine supplements are typically mixed with water or juice and taken before or after workouts.

You can supplement with creatine in one of two ways.

Creatine loading

The standard way to take the supplement is through what’s known as creatine loading. Creatine loading involves taking 20–25 grams of creatine, split into 4–5 equal doses for 5–7 days. Following loading, 3–5 grams (14 mg/pound or 30 mg/kg) per day is necessary to maintain your muscle stores of creatine.

The purpose of loading is to saturate your muscle cells with creatine quicker so that you can experience its benefits sooner. To experience the effects of creatine, your muscles must be fully saturated with it, which typically takes 5–7 days of loading.

Maintenance dose

Skipping the loading phase and taking the maintenance dose of 3–5 grams daily is the other way to supplement with creatine. This method is just as effective as creatine loading, but it takes much longer — typically 1 month — to experience the same benefits.

Compared to the loading method, taking the maintenance dose over a longer time may be more convenient, since it involves just 1 dose per day rather than 4–5 daily doses.

Side effects of taking too much creatine

Despite the strong safety profile of creatine, taking larger than recommended doses isn’t necessary and may result in some minor side effects.

Bloating

Creatine loading can result in a significant gain in body weight due to an increase in both muscle mass and the increased water intake into your muscles. While harmless, this increase in body weight may cause bloating.

While not everyone experiences bloating when taking the supplements, you may be able to reduce it by skipping the loading phase and taking the maintenance dose of 3–5 grams per day instead.

Stomach discomfort

Taking too much creatine at one time can result in stomach discomfort.

That said, if you choose to follow the loading protocol, you can avoid these side effects by taking 20–25 grams of creatine split into 4–5 equal doses throughout the day.