Health & Medical Nutrition

Let"s Talk About Creatine

Creatine is obtained through your diet via meat, and is also produced in the liver.
About half of your daily needs coming from each.
For example, if you need 2 grams of creatine and you consume 1 gram from your diet then the other 1 gram will be produced in your body.
Creatine is a component of the 'CP' part of the ATP-CP (adenosine triphosphate - creatine phosphate) which is part of the metabolic processes that occur during short bouts of exercise such as sprinting and weightlifting.
Stored ATP is an important energy source and is always used during exercise}.
ATP has three phosphate molecules.
During exercise, muscle contraction results in a phosphate being lost.
It now become adenosine diphosphate (ADP) which is instantly recycled back to ATP by the molecule CP.
And thus ATP stores are replenished.
ATP resynthesised in this way using CP will only last for 10 - 12 seconds.
Any longer and ATP will be produced via glucose and fatty acids.
What does creatine do? If you have high-energy phosphate stores within your body, then you will have the ability to produce much more force.
This high-energy-rich compound fuels your muscles during high intense workouts.
It allows you to sustain activity longer.
But the real treat in creatine is its ability to assist in recovery between sets and workouts.
Better recovery will produce better quality of work during exercise.
It also produces more quantity in workloads since more can be done without overloading your body beyond its ability to recover fully.
This will obviously result in bigger strength and better performance gains.
There is a massive amount of well-controlled research showing that creatine supplementation is effective and will result in improvements.
If you are training with weights, doing repeated sprints or throws for example, then creatine will help increase your strength, muscle mass and performance.
However, it is unlikely to help you if you're seeking improvement for endurance events.
Should you supplement with creatine? It is worth mentioning that taking creatine will vary its results depending on the quality and individual.
The majority of people however, do better with creatine then without it.
There is still some that worry about creatine being safe.
It is frequently promoted by the media, using individual case studies, as unsafe.
As someone once said, 'You can prove anything with one case.
' There is no well designed study that shows creatine to be unsafe amongst healthy populations.


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