The Advantages and Disadvantages of Taking Creatine

To be bigger, faster, and stronger has always been the goal of athletes, often at great costs. Everyone wants an advantage in the gym that puts them a step ahead of the rest. They want it so badly that they are often willing to risk their long term health for training advantages. People do not want to put health at risk, so when told that there is a supplement with no harmful side affects, a person goes for it. This is why many young people today are trying out the newly popular supplement creatine without knowing what it truly does. Creatine is a seemingly harmless muscle enhancing supplement that helps athletes train harder, but it actually has several detrimental side effects.

Before knowing what Creatine does, it is of vital importance to first know what it is. Creatine is an amino acid that occurs naturally in the body and is found in the kidney and liver. It provides energy to cells by creating adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. Most of the cells that creatine supplies energy to are muscle cells, and it fuels muscle contractions. Creatine as a supplement essentially does the same thing as the natural amino acid, just in larger quantities. For example, the body typically produces about 2-3 grams of the amino acid per day, while man-made supplements include daily consumption of about 15-25 grams of the substance. Because of its similarity to whey protein, many false protein supplements feature creatine as a main ingredient. Creatine is, in short, a natural amino acid that fuels muscle contractions and can also be synthetic and taken as a workout supplement.

Because of the complex nature of what creatine is, it is only natural that it gives off numerous side-affects, and many of these are positive. Mostly, creatine's rapidly expanding popularity is due to its extreme effectiveness. Forty percent of college athletes today use creatine to aid them in workouts; and college athletes are bigger, stronger, and faster than ever. Creatine products often give the user 5-10 times the amount of the amino acid that they gain naturally, so they have up to ten times the amount of fuel for muscle contractions than that of someone not taking any creatine. This excess fuel allows the user to experience sudden, high intensity bursts of power and strength that allow the athlete to go above and beyond what they are used to. Perhaps the most amazing quality of synthetic creatine is its potential as a treatment for several ailments, such as heart disease and muscular dystrophy. A preliminary clinical study suggests creatine supplements may help to lower levels of triglycerides, or fat, in the blood of individuals with high concentrations of triglycerides, a main cause of heart disease. It has also been found that those who suffer heart failure have low levels of creatine in their hearts. Evidence from randomized controlled trials shows that creatine treatment improves muscle strength in people with muscular dystrophies. One of the more interesting benefits found regarding creatine is that it increases one's cognitive ability. A placebo-controlled double-blind