Creatine: Cutting Through the Myths #16381

Can creatine safely boost performance, decrease fatigue, and give you an edge over the competition?

Creatine is a performance-enhancing supplement used by famous athletes to boost short-term performance. Recent research has discovered that it aids endurance athletes too, even helping produce a final kick at the end of the race.

Some important questions, however, have been raised about Creatine and its effect on the body. A timely new book, Creatine – Cutting Through the Myths reviews the scientific research as well as the evidence of practical athletes to establish what Creatine actually does and doesn’t do.

Creatine – Cutting Through the Myths is written by experts and includes the findings of one of the world’s leading authorities.

Creatine – three ways to boost performance

Tests carried out at the Karolinska Institute in Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s found that increasing the amount of Creatine - or methyl guanidine-acetic acid - stored in the muscles improves muscle function and energetics. High levels of Creatine phosphate are thought to boost performance in three ways:

1. Providing an instant source of energy

2. Mopping up some of the fatigue-causing acid that builds up during high-intensity exercise

3. Directly stimulating muscle proteins to contract

Why does Creatine work when so many other sports supplements don’t?

The history of sport is littered with supplements that promise the earth yet deliver nothing more than a placebo affect. But Creatine is different.

Numerous double blind scientific studies have shown that supplementing Creatine produces a significant increase in maximal or high-intensity exercise performance in events such as running, swimming and cycling. Not only does oral Creatine boost maximal performance, but the greater the increase in Creatine uptake, the greater the performance increases.

Creatine not only helps sustain a high-intensity burst for longer, it speeds recovery enabling you to repeat those bursts sooner.

Endurance athletes

There is no doubt that Creatine is of great benefit to power and strength athletes such as sprinters and throwers. This has been confirmed beyond doubt by numerous scientific studies.

But recent research has found that endurance athletes can also benefit from Creatine supplementation by:

Improving the quality of interval training

Increasing strength

Staving off injury