The obvious concern is the negative health consequences of prolonged creatine supplementation. Potential health issues with continued use of Creatine From a creatine supplement standpoint, if you’re having creatine at some point during the day, the muscles will be staying close to their saturation point and you should be getting benefit from your creatine. The subject of pre, post or even intra workout nutrition is a complex subject of highly personal preference and one we will leave for another day. In terms of purely creatine concentration of the muscles, the loading phase here has done its job and the intent here is to keep the levels coasting close to optimum, without letting them drop precipitously by having too little or wasting precious supplements by dosing beyond the body’s ability to absorb them. Some choose to have this with their pre workout protocol, others have it post work out (combined with a high GI (glucose index) drink, coupled with protein to aid protein synthesis and recovery - and some may even choose to do both. Here the user can ease off the tedium of frequent doses of creatine and coast on the more relaxed regime of 1 (or perhaps 2 at max) doses a day for a total of 3-5g daily. Supplementing with Creatine – The maintenance phase Ok, so after discussing the loading phase, the next phase is relatively the simplest to unpack, the maintenance phase… This is likely a good enough indication that the trainer is close enough to the highest muscle concentration of creatine they can achieve and there are plenty of other aspects of training for lifters to concern themselves over, apart from worrying about if they have achieved optimal creatine saturation. Users beginning a creatine cycle will find their bodyweight will initially increase due to creatine’s water retaining properties and plateau off at this level, regardless of the loading phase is continued or dose increased. Most users will find their experiences mirror common knowledge here and the most creatine they can absorb is about 20-30 grams for 5-7 days, before hitting their muscle saturation point.Ī fair question here is how would a lifter know they have indeed hit full muscle saturation of this supplement? Without access to complex equipment, daily urine samples and perhaps muscle biopsies, it would be difficult to know, but before anyone starts googling for local lab supplies… the real answer here is that it really doesn’t matter. The technical reason is that in broad terms, creatine uptake to the skeletal muscles is limited, so most of the creatine will hit a metabolic traffic jam and not be going anywhere productive.Īnd at a more discernible and quite literally, visceral level, most users will find the reason not to experiment frivolously with the loading phase dosage is gastrointestinal distress ie: nausea and perhaps vomiting, instead of the expected hard training – which if you’re browsing the Bulk Nutrients site, you would obviously be more excited about the latter than the former! Obviously, once you’ve got your high-quality creatine on your supplement shelf or in your gym bag, you want it to be improving your training as soon as possible… and this is exactly the intent of the loading phase of the creatine cycle - by hitting peak muscle saturation in the shortest time.Īt this point, some creative readers may be thinking “hey, can I speed up the whole process by taking 50… 100… or maybe even the whole 150 grams of the loading phase in one go and save 5 days before hitting peak gains?” The goal is to hit peak muscle saturation quickly However, for optimal benefits, ideally, the user would want to get full muscle saturation of creatine as soon as possible… right? Absolutely! There is only so much supplemental creatine that the muscles will hold, regardless of how much is consumed, which will be determined by genetics, amount of lean muscle mass and other factors. Regarding the reasons for the loading cycle, the other part of the equation is muscle saturation. In fact, contrary to the short plasma half-life, a study has shown that only 46% of ingested creatine will be excreted after around 24 hours (1) with creatine levels (after following a full loading phase) only dropping down to pre supplementation levels after 30 days. After ingestion, some of that creatine will make its way into the muscles and stay there, which is where this supplement needs to be to do its thing! Whilst creatine has a relatively short plasma (blood) half-life of around 3 hours after ingesting, this isn’t the full story.
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