Created: January 19, 2022
Modified: January 19, 2022
Modified: January 19, 2022
creatine
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- In the cell, creatine is stored as phosphocreatine. It acts like a 'backup' adenosine:
- Phosphocreatine can can donate its phosphate group to turn an ADP molecule back into ATP, while itself reverting to plain creatine.
- Thus, having high levels of phosphocreatine effectively extends your ATP reserves. If a cell runs out of ATP, it just converts some phosphocreatine and immediately it's back in business.
- The conversion between creatine and phosphocreatine is catalyzed by specific enzymes, 'creatine kinases'. This occurs much faster than cellular respiration can create new ATP from glucose.
- Having more creatine gives you more short-term endurance. You can lift a few more reps, or sprint for a few seconds longer. It's proven effective for increasing the rate of muscle gain in weightlifting.
- For longer-term endurance activities, like distance running, cellular respiration ultimately becomes the bottleneck after your phosphocreatine reserves burn down. Creatine supplementation would make no difference here.
- Creatine may have nootropic effects?
- Creatine monohydrate is one of the best-studied and safest supplements in existence.
- Side effects of supplementing creatine:
- It draws additional water into cells, causing bloating and increasing your water weight -- most people tend to gain a few pounds while they're on it. But this is temporary; when you stop taking it your cells return to their previous equilibirium and
- It has a reputation for kidney concerns, but this is unfair and due to confusion. Because the kidneys are responsible for filtering creatinine (the metabolite of creatine) out of the blood, kidney function tests measure the level of creatinine; high levels of are supposed to indicate kidney problems. For a long time people got confused and thought that supplementing creatine must damage your kidneys, because it causes you to fail kidney health tests. But of course the increase in creatinine is explained away by the creatine supplementation. There's no evidence or proposed mechanism (that I'm aware of) for creatine actually damaging anyone's kidneys.
- My NP Jess advised me to stop taking creatine a week before coming in for PrEP lab work.