If you spend any time in the gym, scrolling fitness accounts, or browsing nutrition advice pages, you’ve probably noticed that creatine is “having a moment”. Once pigeonholed as something for the big biceps crew, creatine has evolved into one of the most well-researched and genuinely useful supplements out there for men and women alike, endurance and strength athletes alike.
And yes, it deserves the hype.
Let’s explore why, and why you might want to consider adding it to your routine…
What is Creatine?
Creatine is a naturally occurring compound made in your liver and kidneys, and also found in foods like red meat and fish.
In the body, it’s stored mostly in your muscles as phosphocreatine, where it helps rapidly regenerate ATP – the energy currency your muscles and brain burn through during activity. When we think of energy currency, we tend to think of glucose, but creatine is there when we’re under really high demand; think extreme high intensity exercise like one shifting explosive heavy weights in the gym. The brain can also utilise the creatine/ATP pathway when glucose is in short supply like when we’re maxing out on glucose use in our muscles for extended periods of time through endurance sport.
Essentially, the body is a clever beast and likes to have multiple options for fuel supply for our tissues and most importantly, our brains. As we learn more about these, we can capitalise them by artificially raising levels of one particular fuel for a pathway to enable the body to get more from that pathway. Making sense? Okay good.
Creatine isn’t just for gym bros.
Historically, creatine’s association with bodybuilding scared many women and endurance athletes away. Let’s clear that up:
- Creatine doesn’t make you bulky overnight. You can gain some water inside your muscle cells (about 1–2kg for many people), which is actually a good thing – it supports performance and recovery – but this will gradually subside as you get used to the increases in creatine stores.
- Women can benefit just as much, if not more. Research shows creatine can help offset age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia), improve high-intensity performance, and support lean mass maintenance during fat loss.
Creatine is worth your attention even as an endurance athlete, why? Because when you’re getting the gym work done, the intervals, the strength work, creatine is going to be there as your friendly little sidekick, flushing and replenishing your ATP quicker than you can say “max effort”! Which means it might just help you with all that foundational work that goes into creating an awesome all round athlete, endurance or otherwise. It might also be that combined with a good level of carbohydrate in the diet, creatine helps to enhance glycogen replenishment, leading to better recovery in between sessions.
With all that in mind, creatine is fast becoming something that I see 99% of my athletes taking before they even get started with me, because the positive impact is being so widely spoken about.
Are there benefits outside of the gym?
There has been chatter about the potential benefits of creatine in other parts of the body, not just our muscles. Given that we know the brain manufactures and utilises creatine for its own benefit, it makes logical sense that creatine supplementation may well enhance brain function too. However, it seems like the brain, as always, is a little more complex than that and so far I’ve yet to be convinced that supplementation has any significant effect on cognitive health1.
Another field where people have been found raving about creatine is in its potential to help with heart healthy benefits. However, yet again, my opinion is currently that I remain unconvinced for healthy individuals, but I am intrigued about how heart health might be improved in some people who have heart failure or disease for example2.
The main takeaway is that most studies are looking for positive effects and as yet, I can see no evidence of significant detrimental effects of creatine supplementation on heart and brain health at present and actually, I’ve a tonne of clients who’ve said anectdotally, they feel sharper and more awake on the supplement. Perhaps it’s the placebo effect or perhaps it’s a side effect waiting to be discovered officially! Who knows!
Dosing: How to Start Creatine
Because creatine is such a widely used supplement with such a long and reliable history, you’ll find there are plenty of protocols to choose from when you start your creatine journey. From my point of view, this is the easiest strategy:
➡️ 3 – 5 grams per day, consistently.
You don’t need complicated loading phases or fancy timing. Just take it once a day, preferably with a meal to help absorption. For most people, we don’t even specify 3 or 5g, we just say, load the scoop and chuck it in your drink. Yes, there are more nuances you can look at with this, but as always, let’s keep it simple and get the major benefits first shall we? Without having to be a nutrition nerd…
Some of you will have come across the loading phase method. This basically looks to load you up and build up your muscular stores of creatine, faster. It involves a 20g per day loading dose for around a week, dropping to 3-5g maintenance dose daily thereafter. HOWEVER. While this gets the creatine stores built faster, it does come at a cost – INTENSE water retention. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather avoid…
That’s why I always recommend option 1 instead. It’s just nicer.
Side Effects and Considerations
Creatine has been around for donkey’s years and as such, I’m pretty comfortable that it’s a safe and effective supplement. I take it daily in my protein shake and I think I reap the benefits. HOWEVER, a few things to consider…
- Initial weight gain from water retention (inside the muscle, not fat) – this is temporary but will be much more noticeable if you follow the loading dose protocol
- Occasional mild bloating or GI discomfort (usually if you take large doses at once) – again smaller doses of 3-5g daily avoiding the loading dose should help avoid this.
- If you have kidney disease, consult your doctor first (but healthy kidneys tolerate creatine perfectly well).
If you’d like help personalising your supplementation strategy, or understanding how creatine fits into your overall nutrition, get in touch t steviepotter@thewonderclinic.co.uk