What is Creatine?
Creatine monohydrate, commonly known as creatine, is a dietary supplement that athletes, body builders in particular, use to increase high intensity exercise performance and body mass. Creatine is also a natural substance found in the human body and the bodies of most animals. Skeletal muscle is the richest store of creatine monohydrate, with about 95% of the body's creatine supply, and the remaining 5% is stored in other parts of the body. Most of the human body's creatine comes from dietary ingestion. In fact, skeletal muscle is not only the largest store for creatine, it is also the richest natural source of the substance. Thus steak, for example, which is skeletal muscle, is rich in creatine monohydrate. Often when dietary consumption is insufficient to meet the requirements of the body, it is synthesized in the liver from three amino acids, arginine, glycine and methionine. The pancreas and the kidneys also synthesise a small amount of creatine when necessary.
The benefits of creatine monohydrate were recognised when a high degree of correlation between muscular creatine content and muscular activity was found in animals. It was noticed that wild animals had much higher creatine monohydrate levels than animals in captivity. Later, theories were postulated regarding increased muscular activity and availability of creatine to the human body. With the development of synthetic chemical production, creatine production for enhancing physical performance came about. Prior to this advance, creatine was either extracted from the urine of animals, or removed from skeletal tissue. However, these methods were extremely expensive, laborious and finally yielded very little creatine. Once synthetic production was invented, creatine was freely available for widespread use by athletes and for undergoing investigation. Creatine is now available as the monohydrate salt, which means that attached to a molecule is one molecule of water, for greater stability.
Dr. Eric Hultman, conducting a study at Karolinska Institute in Sweden, was first to clearly demonstrate an effect of creatine monohydrate in humans. Dr. Hultman found that taking a fixed dosage 20 grams of creatine monohydrate daily for less than a week increased creatine content in muscle fibres by almost 20%. An increase of this degree is more than adequate to provide a noticeable boost to exercise performance during sustained bursts of effort, as well as short strenuous periods of exercise. This observation meant that creatine would benefit both sprinters and endurance athletes alike. An interesting observation to note here is that the year this study was made public, 1992, was the same year that the British track team performed spectacularly well. Their success was attributed to the use of creatine, which was part rumour, and part truth.
Benefits of Creatine Monohydrate Use
Each cell in the body requires energy to perform various life functions. This energy is stored in the cell in the form of phosphate bonds in molecules of adenosine tri-phosphate, or ATP. When a cell undertakes an activity of some sort, say, muscular contraction, it uses up this energy to do so. ATP loses a phosphate bond and is converted to adenosine di-phosphate, or ADP. ADP contains relatively less energy than does ATP, so, in this form, it is useless to the cell.
This is where creatine comes in; it takes on a phosphate group to become phosphocreatine, or PCr. In this form, it is able to donate its phosphate group to the spent ADP, and convert it back to ATP. The muscles now have more fuel to burn, and this enhances performance.
Lactic acid build-up is an issue with many endurance athletes, and excess lactic acid causes fatigue. It is thought that creatine helps buffer lactic acid build-up, and this would be a great advantage to endurance athletes. With extra creatine in the muscles, one can push oneself harder at a workout, and the result is greater fitness and greater muscle mass.
Little wonder, then, that creatine is the best selling sports supplement of all time. With a combination of slick marketing techniques and proven benefits, creatine supplements are ingested by many professional and amateur athletes, and many high school athletes are experimenting with it as well. In 1998 alone, over $200 million worth of creatine products were sold around the world. It's immense popularity only goes to show that it indeed does deliver benefits to athletes. Creatine provides a major boost for short explosive activity, and is extremely beneficial to sprinters and weight lifters. It has been noticed that creatine supplements allow weight lifters to do more reps, sets or weights before fatigue sets in. A sprinter's muscles slip more easily into action with creatine.
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