Creatine is a naturally occurring substance found in muscle cells. It aids in the production of energy in your muscles during high-intensity exercise. Meat consumption, exercise, muscle mass, and hormone levels such as testosterone and IGF-1 all have an impact on your body’s creatine storage. Total muscle creatine appears to be lower in vegetarians than in non-vegetarians, according to certain research. The primary source of creatine is thought to be an omnivorous diet. Lacto-Ovo vegetarian or vegan muscle creatine concentrations need to be supplemented to reach non-vegetarian levels.
The majority of creatine comes from your diet, with the remainder produced in your liver and kidneys. Many athletes and bodybuilders use creatine supplements to build muscle mass, increase strength, and improve their physical performance. While creatine can be found in whole foods, it is more beneficial to take it as a supplement, especially when trying to consume large amounts of creatine, such as during creatine loading, because the amount of red meat or fish required to satisfy guidelines would be impossible for most people. Supplements are generally considered safe in healthy individuals. However, before taking creatine supplements, consult your doctor.
Approximately 95 percent of your body’s creatine is kept in the form of phosphocreatine in your muscles. The remaining 5% is stored in your brain, kidneys, and liver. When exogenous creatine is supplemented, intramuscular and cerebral stores of creatine and its phosphorylated form, phosphocreatine, increase. The increase of these stores can provide therapeutic benefits by preventing ATP depletion, promoting protein synthesis or lowering protein breakdown, and maintaining cellular membranes,
The Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, as well as the American College of Sports Medicine, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, have all approved creatine as a performance-enhancing substance. Creatine supplementation can boost maximum power and performance in high-intensity anaerobic repetitive work by 5 to 15%. Although creatine does not affect aerobic endurance, it does boost power during short sessions of high-intensity aerobic exercise.
Creatine monohydrate is the most effective nutritional supplement accessible to athletes for increasing high-intensity exercise capacity and muscle mass during training. Creatine supplementation has been shown in multiple trials to enhance muscle mass during exercise. Over 4–12 weeks of training, body mass increases are typically one to two kg higher than controls.
Increased muscle creatine levels have been proven to improve performance during repeated high-intensity exercises, such as interval training or football. It boosts fatigue resistance in exercises lasting fewer than 30 seconds, allowing you to exercise at a higher intensity for longer. Furthermore, when paired with resistance exercise, increasing muscle creatine level promotes strength and muscle mass growth even more than resistance exercise alone. Muscle mass gains appear to be the outcome of an athlete’s better capacity to undertake high-intensity exercise, which allows him or her to train harder and induce larger training adaptations and muscle hypertrophy.
The risk for weight gain has been recognized as the sole clinically relevant adverse effect of creatine monohydrate administration. Despite worries about the safety and potential side effects of creatine supplementation, many short and long-term safety studies have found no adverse effects.
Many studies have looked at the effects of creatine supplementation on muscle physiology and exercise capacity in healthy, trained, and diseased individuals. Short-term creatine supplementation (for example, 20 g/day for 5-7 days) has been shown to boost total creatine content by 10-30% and phosphocreatine reserves by 10-40%.
