Creatine and aesthetics, does it help or hurt, is it worth it? ...

Don't forget you should really cycle creatine as you can only store so much in your muscle, I do 4 weeks of 5g a day and 4 weeks off it.

gninja2022 wrote: »

Don't forget you should really cycle creatine as you can only store so much in your muscle, I do 4 weeks of 5g a day and 4 weeks off it.

This defeats the whole purpose of creatine. It's a muscle saturate and takes several weeks to hut optimal saturation levels.

psuLemon wrote: »

gninja2022 wrote: »

Don't forget you should really cycle creatine as you can only store so much in your muscle, I do 4 weeks of 5g a day and 4 weeks off it.

This defeats the whole purpose of creatine. It's a muscle saturate and takes several weeks to hut optimal saturation levels.

You are right and wrong. Saturation yes, but for shorter periods due to possible effects. If you are young 100% healthy then you can advise them to take a consistent high dosage, but not everyone on here is like that so have caution with your advice.

Your kidneys have to clean all creatine from your system and your loading then with all this additional waste creatine is bad.

Humans carry about two grams of creatine per kilogram of lean muscle mass (one gram per pound). The maximum we can put into muscles is about 3g/kg (1.4g/lb)[47]. To hit this level, a 70kg male would need about 25 grams of creatine supplementation. We only use about 2g per day.

Do your own research then have a grown up conversation chap. https://academic.oup.com/ckj/article/4/1/23/376016 as an example , is the earth flat as well?

Here's a source of some good information on creatine
https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/

Lots of studies linked, it can be used indefinitely, cycling on/off isn't required.

Summary from the section about interaction with kidneys.....
"Moreover, numerous scientific reviews on both the long- and short-term safety of supplemental creatine have consistently found no adverse effects on kidney function in a wide range of doses."

gninja2022 wrote: »

Do your own research then have a grown up conversation chap. https://academic.oup.com/ckj/article/4/1/23/376016 as an example , is the earth flat as well?

You present a single person case study and suggest that either I or others need to have a grown up conversation? Maybe you should evaluate your ability to research before making absurd comments.

If you want real research, look at the examine.com site as it is an unbias source of scientific information. But in case you want to do a little reading, below are many meta analyses on the topic of creatine, it's usage and safety. And just in case you don't understand the prioritization/weighting of scientific evidence, below is a pyramid.



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5679696/


https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2018.00115/full

"In adults, a growing number of published randomized controlled trials are available that support the safety of creatine supplementation. These studies have been conducted in both athletic and general populations and range from as short as a few days to as long as 5 years without any adverse changes in markers of clinical health (12, 13). Multiple studies have assessed and reported that creatine supplementation has no adverse impact on clinical health markers in competitive athletes (13–17), non-athletic populations (18–25), and in clinical populations (26–29). Furthermore, recent evidence suggests that creatine supplementation is unrelated to the formation of carcinogenic heterocyclic amines in humans, which was a long-standing concern due to creatine's potential role as a precursor of the compounds (30). Generally, the only clinically-relevant side effect of creatine supplementation is weight gain (primarily fat-free mass), which is often a desired outcome in athletes, primarily ones with an emphasis placed on strength, power and body size, and clinical patients with any type of muscle wasting disorders (2). A summary of these studies can be found in Table 1."

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-017-0173-z

"In a normal diet that contains 1–2 g/day of creatine, muscle creatine stores are about 60–80% saturated. Therefore, dietary supplementation of creatine serves to increase muscle creatine and PCr by 20–40% (see Fig. 4.) [7, 8, 10, 46,47,48]. The most effective way to increase muscle creatine stores is to ingest 5 g of creatine monohydrate (or approximately 0.3 g/kg body weight) four times daily for 5–7 days [7, 10]. However, higher levels of creatine supplementation for longer periods of time may be needed to increase brain concentrations of creatine, offset creatine synthesis deficiencies, or influence disease states [13, 19, 23]. Once muscle creatine stores are fully saturated, creatine stores can generally be maintained by ingesting 3–5 g/day, although some studies indicate that larger athletes may need to ingest as much as 5–10 g/day in order to maintain creatine stores [7, 8, 10, 46,47,48]. Ingesting creatine with carbohydrate or carbohydrate and protein have been reported to more consistently promote greater creatine retention [8, 22, 49, 50]. An alternative supplementation protocol is to ingest 3 g/day of creatine monohydrate for 28 days [7]. However, this method would only result in a gradual increase in muscle creatine content compared to the more rapid loading method and may therefore have less effect on exercise performance and/or training adaptations until creatine stores are fully saturated. Research has shown that once creatine stores in the muscle are elevated, it generally takes 4–6 weeks for creatine stores to return to baseline [7, 48, 51]. Additionally, it has been recommended that due to the health benefits of creatine, individuals should consume about 3 g/day of creatine in their diet particularly as one ages [27]. No evidence has suggested that muscle creatine levels fall below baseline after cessation of creatine supplementation; therefore, the potential for long-term suppression of endogenous creatine synthesis does not appear to occur [22, 52]."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464621002176



"During the past 30 years, creatine has been attentively investigated to detect, assess, understand, and prevent any side effects or adverse event linked to its use in human nutrition and medicine. A vast majority of pharmacovigilance studies demonstrated favorable safety of supplemental creatine, with creatine poses no adverse health risks in healthy people and clinical populations across various life stages and conditions, at dosages ranging from 0.03 to 0.8 g per kilogram of body weight per day for up to 5 years (for a detailed review see Balestrino and Adriano, 2019, Antonio et al., 2021). An initial mild weight gain (~1–2% of body mass) is the only consistently reported side effect from creatine supplementation (Eckerson et al., 2008, Deminice et al., 2016, Almeida et al., 2020). This effect appears to be dose-dependent since lower doses of creatine (e.g., 0.03 g/kg/day) cause no weight gain or notable changes in body composition (Rawson, Stec, Frederickson, & Miles, 2011). In line with affirmative evidence from safety trials, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently recognized creatine monohydrate as a safe ingredient (Generally Recognized as Safe, GRAS) (Food and Drug Administration, 2020), which labels creatine as a non-toxic food substance under the conditions of its intended use. A search through the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Adverse Event Reporting System (CAERS), a database that contains information on adverse event and product complaint reports submitted to the FDA for foods, dietary supplements, and cosmetics, revealed that creatine (and multi-component products containing creatine) was recorded in only 23 reports out of 30,766 (0.075%) (CFSAN Adverse Event Reporting System, 2021). This further strengthens the proof of creatine harmlessness although any individual report requires attention and careful evaluation for systematic causality. Sporadic case reports described in the literature have been refuted in well-controlled clinical studies showing that creatine supplementation does not increase the incidence of gastrointestinal distress, musculoskeletal injuries, or kidney dysfunction (for a detailed review, see Kreider et al., 2017). Interestingly, creatine appears safe when supplied through a regular diet at the populational level. For instance, the odds ratio for having failing kidneys in U.S adults consuming ≥ 2.0 g/day of dietary creatine compared to low-intake counterparts (<1.0 g/day) was 0.74 (95% CI from 0.39 to 1.38) (Ostojic, 2021b), indicating no significant association between creatine intake and kidney dysfunction in the general public. Still, patients with renal impairment should not be treated with creatine unless careful analysis of the risk‐benefit balance proves favorable (Balestrino & Adriano, 2019)."