If you’re an athlete or fitness enthusiast on the lookout for supplements to boost your exercise performance, you must have heard of creatine. But we live in a world where a plethora of products and supplements are available for enhancing our workouts and aiding us in our fitness journeys. So naturally, there’s also a lot of confusion and unfamiliarity regarding what some supplements do, what they’re good for, how to take them, etc.
We’re here to clear all those doubts – specifically about creatine. We’ll discuss how creatine can enhance your performance, the various types of creatine, and how creatine monohydrate stands out among the rest. So if you’re looking for all things creatine, you’re at the right place!
What Is Creatine and How Does It Work?
Creatine appears naturally in our body, largely found in our muscles and skeletal system. You’ll see everywhere that creatine is described as an “ergogenic supplement”, which means it helps increase our physical and mental capacities for labour by reducing fatigue. Creatine ensures your muscles have a steady flow of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) – the primary fuel your cells use for energy, especially during physical activity. This way, creatine increases our energy, enhancing our performance ability and delaying fatigue. In fact, it’s one of the more popular supplements for resistance training.
Creatine supplementation leads to:
• Increase in muscular power/strength
• Increase in body mass
• Fast recovery between intense exercise routines
• Increased capacity to perform high-intensity exercise
• Improved sprint performance
• Enhanced tolerance to heat to reduce heat-related injuries in certain sports/exercises
These effects have all been researched and proved, solidifying the advantages of creatine for workout and exercise performance. (1)
Creatine for Muscle Growth
While we’ve discussed creatine’s advantage of elevating your workout performance, it’s also effective for muscle gains. It helps build muscle during resistance training. It can improve your muscle mass and strength even in individuals with low physical activity levels. So let’s look at how:
1. Enhances Muscle Performance: Creatine gives your muscles quicker energy (ATP), helping you push harder and lift heavier. More intense workouts mean more stimulus for muscle growth.
2. Cell Valorization: Creatine increases the water content of your muscle cells, making them look fuller and more pumped. This also creates a more anabolic (muscle-building) environment.
3. Reduces Muscle Breakdown: It can help reduce muscle damage and inflammation after workouts, allowing for quicker recovery and more consistent progress.
4. Supports Lean Mass Gains: Consistent creatine use helps increase fat-free muscle mass, making it a top supplement for those focused on muscle growth.
Other Benefits of Creatine
Apart from its key role in muscle functions and enhancing our exercise performance, creatine has a lot of other health benefits:
1. Effects on the Brain: Not just our muscles, but even our brain requires a lot of ATP to function to its best ability. So by boosting brain function, creatine plays a role in improving our capacities for short-term memory. Meats are rich in creatine, so vegetarians usually have lower levels of it. So it’s especially important for vegetarians to supplement creatine to improve brain function.
2. Preventing Diabetes: Creatine not just brings energy to the muscles, but also helps push blood sugar into the muscles. This way, it reduces blood sugar levels and can prevent diabetes.
3. Preventing Neurological Diseases: Several neurological diseases are triggered by a decline in “phosphocreatine” levels in the brain – the storage form of creatine in the body. Of course, increasing creatine will naturally increase phosphocreatine, helping prevent or treat neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, brain injuries.
4. Reducing Fatigue: As a result of boosting energy and cognitive function, creatine indirectly reduces fatigue – both mental and physical. So we have increased energy, attention, and endurance thanks to creatine.
Breaking Down the Different Forms of Creatine
Creatine can largely be differentiated into six different types:
1. Creatine Monohydrate (CM): This is the most common form of creatine supplementation. It’s been shown to enhance performance during high-intensity exercise and increase fat-free muscle mass.(2) It has more research to prove its effectiveness than any other type, giving it the strongest scientific support and a well-established safety profile. CM is also water-soluble, so you’ll find that most supplements are powder forms. (2)
They’re generally considered safe, with no serious side effects reported. So for its extensive research-backing, safety, and effectiveness, creatine monohydrate is the best creatine supplement to take.
2. Creatine Ethyl Ester (CEE): This is believed to be more bio-available than CM, meaning that it’s better absorbed by the body. Although it’s shown to have positive effects on body weight by increasing body mass, it’s not as effective as CM. In fact, CEE breaks down into creatinine (the waste by-product of creatine) more easily than CM does. So you’re not even getting the full benefits of creatine with this form. It’s thus one of the lesser recommended types of creatine.
3. Creatine Hydrochloride: This form of creatine is more soluble than CM and CEE. But it lacks research proving its effectiveness in comparison to CM. It’s good for performance enhancement and increasing muscle strength, but there’s nothing that proves it would be better than CM. So this too remains one of the lesser used and recommended forms.
4. Creatine Magnesium Chelate: This type is formed by “chelating” magnesium with creatine, which means magnesium gets attached to the creatine molecule. Like all other forms, creatine magnesium chelate can also improve exercise and sports performance. But it’s only equally effective as CM. So the lack of further research makes even this form of creatine less credible and trustworthy than CM.
5. Buffered Creatine: This is created by adding an alkaline powder to CM, or another creatine form. This new “buffered” version increases the stability of creatine in the stomach and prevents its formation into creatinine.(3) This was supposed to increase its potency and allow us to get its full-fledged benefits. However, studies have found lesser effectiveness of buffered creatine when compared with CM. Thus, there’s no proof to show unique advantages of buffered creatine, or why we should choose it over CM. (3)
6. Liquid Creatine: As the name suggests, this is just the liquid form of creatine supplements available as RTDs (ready-to-drink formulations). So basically, the creatine content is already dissolved and mixed in water. But even though this may sound more convenient, it’s less durable because creatine breaks down when it’s in liquid form for too long. Mixing a powdered creatine supplement into your drink maintains its properties better than liquid creatine. So the best creatine supplement form is in powders or dissolvable tablets, not RTDs.
The Winner: Creatine Monohydrate
When it comes to all the forms of creatine, creatine monohydrate stands out as the top choice. It’s got a unique edge over the others for being the most tried, tested, and trusted form of creatine on the market. It’s been around for decades and continues to be the go-to supplement for athletes, bodybuilders, and fitness enthusiasts alike. To summarise why creatine monohydrate is considered the best form available:
• Research-backed: It’s the most studied form of creatine, with decades of clinical research backing its safety and effectiveness. That kind of scientific support makes it the most reliable option out there.
• Proven Performance Benefits: CM has consistently shown results when it comes to increasing strength, boosting muscular power, enhancing endurance, and improving recovery time. There are several experiments and studies to back this up.
• Well-Tolerated and Safe: The best creatine monohydrate supplements are known for being easy on the stomach and having minimal side effects. They’re also suitable for both beginners and seasoned athletes, and people with sedentary or active lifestyles.
• Cost-Effective: Compared to newer or more “engineered” forms of creatine, CM is more affordable and accessible without compromising quality or results.
So if you want a supplement that’s not just powerful but also backed by science, creatine monohydrate remains the gold standard.
Creatine’s Role in Women’s Health
Women have 70-80% lesser creatine stores than men, and we all now know that creatine fuels energy towards your muscles and improves our strength and muscle performance. Some functions like enhancing exercise performance, improving strength and energy, and building muscle mass remain common for men and women. But for women, creatine brings some more benefits: (4)
1. Improving Cognitive Function: It’s been shown that creatine is more effective in women than men for improving cognitive function, specifically for memory, attention span, and processing speed. Apart from supplying energy to the brain cells, creatine also has neuroprotective properties, which means it protects brain cells from oxidative stress. This way, it helps improve cognitive functioning.
2. Improves Mood: Creatine levels in the brain are lower in women, and this largely affects not just cognitive function but also mood and emotion. Depression rates are also higher in women than men. So by incorporating creatine supplements, the boosting of cognitive function will also show significant improvement to mood and emotions.
3. Increasing Strength for Post-menopausal Women: Creatine supplementation in post-menopausal women effectively increases their muscle mass and function. Menopause brings about a lot of internal changes, like decrease in muscle, bone, and strength. But creatine counteracts this by reducing inflammation and oxidative stress, and boosting bone formation.
So women may benefit more from taking creatine supplements.
Tips on How to Take Creatine
When so many types of creatine and kinds of supplements exist, it can get confusing to figure out which ones are right for you. Here are some tips to help you choose the right supplements:
• Look for creatine monohydrate products over other forms. It’s better effective than the others, so make sure you opt for CM supplements.
• Choose certified products, that are correctly tested before use. This guarantees that the product is both safe and high in quality.
• Be wary of side effects. Although there are very few complaints of stomach issues like diarrhoea while taking CM, be cautious if you have a sensitive stomach.
• Talk to a nutritionist for their recommendation of which creatine to use and what kind of supplement fits your needs best (powder, tablets, chewables, etc.).
Recommended dosage: 3-5 grams per day.
Alternatively, creatine is naturally found in a lot of animal-based foods. So you can replenish your creatine content through food sources like red meats, fish, and poultry. Vegetarians can eat foods that provide the amino acids needed to produce creatine naturally; like quinoa, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts, and almonds.
Final Thoughts
In a world full of supplement hype, creatine is one of the few that truly delivers. Whether you’re aiming for increased strength, lean muscle gain, or better endurance during high-intensity training, creatine can help you get there. Moreover, creatine monohydrate is the safest and most reliable option among creatine types, making it the best creatine supplement for most people. Just remember to choose quality products, stay consistent with your dosage, and consult a professional if you have any specific concerns. Incorporate creatine monohydrate supplements and watch how they take your fitness goals to the next level.
FAQs
Q1. What does creatine do for the body?
By sustaining energy supply to your muscles during workouts, creatine helps improve strength and performance. This way it also supports gains in lean muscle mass.
Q2. What are the different types of creatine?
Creatine comes in different forms – creatine monohydrate, creatine ethyl ester, creatine hydrochloride, creatine magnesium chelate, buffered creatine, and liquid creatine. But out of these, creatine monohydrate is the most common and best recommended form, because it has more scientific backing and proven effectiveness.
Q3. Is creatine good for weight loss?
Creatine doesn’t directly burn fat. But since it boosts workout performance and muscle growth, creatine might indirectly support weight loss over time.
Q4. Which creatine is best for muscle gain?
Creatine monohydrate is the most effective form of creatine. By sustaining energy levels in your muscles during physical activity, CM enhances performance and can contribute to increased muscle gains.
Q5. How to take creatine monohydrate?
Typical daily dose of creatine monohydrate is between 3 to 5 grams. For more effective results, you can try “loading” with creatine, which means taking 5g creatine 4 times a day for the first week, and then reducing dosage to the standard 3-5g per day.