The special white powder
It’s a white powder made in a lab that helps your brain work faster and makes you feel unstoppable.
Of course, I’m talking about creatine. What else would I be referring to, bru?
There’s a lot of misconception and fear surrounding creatine - bloating, diarhoea, weight gain. I’m here to answer some of the most common questions and concerns I hear about creatine so you can be a bit more informed about it.
Before we go ahead, you should note that I have been taking creatine every single day for the past 3 years and I experience no adverse effects from it.
HOWEVER: I highly recommend consulting your doctor before taking creatine as this is article for informational purposes only - no advice is better than professional medical advice.
With that out the way, let’s jump in.
the benefits of creatine
Creatine has many benefits and here’s a few that I find the most tops:
- More Strength and Energy: When you lift, ATP (the energy molecule) is broken down and used up. These molecules are made up of something called phosphocreatine. Since creatine adds more phosphocreatine to your body, you can make more ATP - more energy, more strength.
- Bigger Muscles: Creatine causes more water to be drawn to your muscles, and this increases your lean muscle mass.
- Healthier Brain:One of the reasons that causes brain diseases is a reduced level of phosphocreatine. Like I said in point 1, creatine increases your phosphocreatine levels and this may help reduce or slow down brain diseases like Alzheimer’s or epilepsy. Also, your brain uses a lot of ATP, and like we talked above in point 1, more ATP means better brain function.
There’s a lot more to the benefits of creatine, so if you want a deeper dive, check out this article.
how much creatine do you need?
There is no set specific way that you should take creatine. There have been a number of studies done like this one posted on ScienceDirect, but none of them have come to a sure conclusion on how much you should take.
If you Google it, you’ll be told that 3-5g per day is enough, but according to the study on ScienceDirect, there are two ways to take creatine:
- Absolute Dosing: Doing a ‘Loading Phase’ (I explain what this is in the next section) and then taking a standard set amount of creatine everyday, such as the 3-5g recommended.
- Relative Dosing: Taking 1g of creatine for every 10kg of your body weight with no loading phase. (I do this one - I’m 80kg so I take 8g everyday)
My recommendation:
DON’T DO A LOADING PHASE - you’ll understand why just now, keep reading.
- For General Brain Health: Take the recommended 3-5g per day consistently over a couple months to reap the benefits - Absolute Dosing.
- To Optimize Performance and Muscle: Take 1g for every 10kg of your body weight - Relative Dosing. This amount for performance and gains makes the most sense as it’s tailored to you specific body type and will ensure there’s enough creatine for your brain and muscles.
Let’s answer some common questions.
does creatine make you bloat/gain weight?
Short answer: Yes and No.
The only way you can get bloated from creatine is from something called a ‘Loading Phase’. What’s a Loading Phase?
In order to see results from creatine (if you’re taking it for gym), you have to allow creatine to accumulate water and energy into muscles, which takes time (usually a couple weeks). The Loading Phase is the shortcut you take when you want to see these results faster - for one week, you take just over double what you’re meant to have in a day and this causes creatine to accumulate faster. For example, I weigh 80kgs and my normal daily creatine dosage is 8g, so loading phase will have around 18-20g of creatine per day for 5 - 7 days.
This loading phase causes significant gain in total body water, which can lead to bloating and be mistaken for weight gain.
The solution: Just don’t do a loading phase. Start taking your regular dosage of creatine everyday consistently - you’ll still get the results you want, but with a much lower risk of bloating.
does creatine give you diarrhoea?
Short answer: Yes and No.
Just like with bloating, you only get diarrhoea from creatine when you take too much of it at once.
This study concluded that there’s no reason to believe that creatine supplementation has any bad effects on your digestive system if you take the recommended and suitable dose for you.
In this study, they gave one group (let’s call em Group A) of soccer athletes 5g of creatine twice a day (10g total per day) for a month. They gave another group (Group B) 10g of creatine once a day (so the whole 10g at once).
The found that Group A only had around 28% incidences of diarrhoea, while Group B was around 55% incidences of diarrhoea.
What does this mean? Creatine most probably won’t give you diarrhoea if you take it carefully. According to the study, if you take recommended a dose of creatine, and split up your daily dose into two servings per day, there’s no reason to expect pooping problems.
does creatine have a bad affect on your kidneys?
Short answer: No.
This study concluded that taking the right dose of creatine doesn’t negatively affect your kidney function.
The reason people assume this is because creatine can artificially raise your blood creatinine levels, and because the lab tests look for higher creatinine levels to indicate your kidneys are shot, it can raise a false alarm in your blood tests.
The study says that this increased creatinine level is “transient”, meaning it’s only temporary. Also, because it “artificially” raises your creatinine levels, it just means the creatinine amount in your blood is raised, but does not mean your kidney functions are impaired.
does creatine cause hair loss?
Short answer: Nope.
This study gave 5g of creatine to a group of weight-trained guys over 3 months.
The hormone they were looking for was called ‘DHT’ which is the primary hormonal driver of hairloss in both men and women. Basically, higher DHT means more hair loss.
They found that after the 3 months, creatine didn’t cause any increase in DHT levels. In fact, there was no significant change in DHT levels at all.
As you can see, creatine is really well-researched supplement. There’s not much risk from taking it if you do it correctly.
Is it absolutely necessary? Not really, most of your gains come from your diet and training.
But will you get stronger, look bigger, have more energy and be mentally sharper? Absolutely. If you want to take any supplement for performance, this is the one I recommend.
Just make sure it’s purely CREATINE MONOHYDRATE that you’re buying - that’s all you need and it’s much cheaper than the ones with additives.
