What is creatine?
Creatine is an organic acid that occurs naturally in some foods (mainly meat) and helps to supply energy to all cells in the body primarily muscles. Creatine is neither a vitamin, mineral, herb or hormone. Approximately 95% of the human body’s total creatine is located in skeletal muscles.
What does creatine do for our body?
The muscle contraction needs ATP (Adenosine triphosphate). ATP is used as energy source. ATP breaks one phosphate off his molecule, which produces energy that is needed for muscle contraction.What is left after a phosphate is broken off the ATP is the molecule called ADP (Adenosine diphosphate). The problem is that we only have enough ATP to fuel contractions for about 5 seconds which are not enough to even start a workout. In order for us to have a long workout our cells send out enzymes that break off the phosphate from the creatine. The Energy released from this sever and the phosphate molecule are recombined with the ADP to again form ATP. These provides an additional 20 to 30 seconds of energy to allow us to continue an intense set! Our muscle fibers contain 5 times as much creatine phosphate then it does ATP.
Where is our body getting creatine from?
Creatine is naturally produced in the human body from amino acids primarily in the kidney and liver. Then creatine is transported through the blood to the muscles. In humans and animals approximately half of the stored creatine originates from food (mainly from meat). A study on the effect that creatine has in vegetarians diet showed that total creatine was significantly lower than in non-vegetarians. Great source of natural creatine is- red meat(beef) and fish. Minimal amounts of creatine can be found in milk and cranberries. As mentioned earlier, when dietary ingestion is not sufficient, the body may synthesize its own creatine from amino acids. Other source of creatine is synthetically-produced supplement – Creatine Monohydrate. If you choose to use synthetically-produced creatine (Creatine Monohydrate), and I would highly recommend it to everyone who wants to bring his fitness to another level, you should remember to drink a lot of water.Water together with creatine will super hydrates your muscles, provide you with more energy and increase the pump!
Who needs to add Creatine Monohydrate as supplement?
Everyone who wants longer and energetic workout, fast recovery and in return lean muscle mass.
Is there health effects when used as supplement?
Extensive research over the last decade has shown that oral creatine supplementation at a rate of 5 to 20 grams per day appears to be very safe. Not only that, but creatine has been the number one supplement on the market for almost a decade, and no one has reported any adverse side effects from it.
Creatine has proved to be one of the best supplements today. A lot of people have picked it up without even reading it. Now when we know so much about it, I don’t see a reason why creatine is not in your supplement list.