Creatine and Creatine Supplements
By Donovan Baldwin
Creatine monohydrate, or, more commonly, simply creatine, is an amino acid. It can be manufactured by your body for the purpose of helping supply energy to your muscles and nerve cells.
Although it normally is made by the body, and is made available by eating foods which are high in protein, such as red meat and fish. In your body, creatine will be stored in your muscle tissue, and any excess is normall excreted in the urine.
Creatine Supplements
While creatine is made available by eating certain foods, athletes have found that it is difficult to get appropriate quantities of this substance, which can enhance athetic perfomance and muscle growth. Therefore, a good quality creatine supplement is often recommended by fitness professionals.
An additional problem with getting creatine from food sources is that it is often destroyed during cooking and processing.
Still, unless you are actively participating in weight lifting, body building, or other resistance and high perfomance sports activities, you can probably get the creatine you need from a nutritionally balanced diet. The body IS also capable of manufacturing creatine from other amino acids.
So, Why Take Creatine Supplements
Well, for the average person, it CAN sometimes be difficult to get an appropriate amount of creatine for perfomance and muscle growth, especially with today's diet. Again, creatine can help improve activities of short duration which demand high intensity effort, such as weight training, sprinting, or similar exercises. It is also believed by some researchers that creatine may help decrease muscle fatigue and production of lactic acid during muscle activity.
One thing which makes creatine supplements popular with many bodybuilders and weight lifters, is that it reproduces many of the effects of steroids without the drawbacks.
Effect On Individual Performance
While creatine supplements have not been extensively studied, and results tend to be more anecdotal than clinical, researchers generally agree that there is some benefit to performance and muscle growth, which I, personally, have experienced at age 74, but, individual results tend to vary from person to person.
