Pure Creatine: A Bigger Help Than You Previously Thought

 

Why should you buy creatine? How about because it is one of the most well-studied supplements out there, and is considered by many to be the safest way to substantially improve your peak physical performance, while also enhancing your cognitive status. Pure creatine has a direct role in the production of ATP, and can, therefore, allow you to improve your strength, boost your short-term explosiveness, help with recovery, and make it less likely to experience mental fatigue after high-intensity exercise.

Pure creatine is a way to preserve muscle mass when going through a diet. It can indirectly improve endurance by supporting your overall training capacity, and, if we are being totally honest, it’s perhaps the most cost-effective way to get stronger, without utilising dangerous anabolic steroids. Now, does it work the same for everyone? No, not really. In my case for example, while it did indeed improve the maximum number of reps I could do, it never actually made me bulkier.

I didn’t see an increase in water retention. However, my friend, who started taking creatine at the same time as me, did. In fact, he gained 3kg in just one and a half weeks. Creatine, in the right circumstances, can improve your performance, make you look leaner, and help you maximise your potential strength. Plus, it can significantly help you even if you are not really an athlete.

Is Creatine Safe and WADA-Approved?

Yes, and yes. In fact, if you buy creatine, you are choosing one of the safest supplements around. Pure creatine is not an artificial compound, created in a lab and with unknown long-term ramifications on the development of our body. Creatine is naturally produced in our kidneys and liver and it’s found in fish and red meat. Decades-long studies have found no correlation between the consumption of creatine and adverse health development. Quite the contrary.

Creatine doesn’t disrupt the body’s natural hormone production, doesn’t affect our kidneys, in recommended doses it doesn’t impact the enzymes of our liver, and it doesn’t cause dependency. Creatine boosts the body’s natural energy levels, regulates the production of ATP, and there is growing evidence out there that it can actually decrease the risk of developing neurodegenerative conditions.

Why does WADA allow it? Well, creatine doesn’t pose a health risk and it’s not considered to violate the spirit of fair-play competition. It doesn’t artificially alter hormone production; it doesn’t mask other drugs and it’s not doing anything else besides boosting the body’s natural ATP production. So, it’s allowed, and thus it has become ubiquitous with high-level sporting competitions.

How Should Creatine Make You Feel?

Well, it should make you feel better. High-quality pure creatine is not a simple supplement. It’s a way to improve your energy level, maximise your potential and improve your maximum strength. It will not make you buff or increase your lifts five times over. But it should lead to a noticeable increase in your strength levels, and that feeling you get when you push yourself too hard should slowly but surely start to be reduced.

Why should you buy creatine? It’s simply everywhere and it’s proven to work. Creatine can give you the mental clarity required to continue your daily activities after intense workouts, it can support your recovery, it helps with hydration, as it pulls extra fluids inside muscle tissue, and it can eliminate energy drops in the middle or at the end of workouts.

If You Buy Creatine, Should You Combine It with Electrolytes?

There’s no reason not to do so. Electrolytes are electrically charged minerals that are involved in pretty much all the internal processes required to keep us going. But when we sweat, we lose a significant percentage of these electrolytes, especially Sodium, and the effects can be seen in our daily performance. Did you sweat a bit too much? Then you are likely now dealing with cramps, fatigue, mental fog, or DOMS.

Electrolyte intake can alleviate the unwanted effects of high-intensity training. But remember how I said that creatine can pull water into cells? This means that the combination of electrolytes and creatine simply makes sense.

If you train regularly, if you are living in a hot climate, and you sweat a lot, taking creatine combined with electrolytes is probably the best possible way to improve your physical performance while ensuring that your body’s baseline of charged minerals remains acceptable. Personally, I like to take Pure creatine in the morning and electrolytes just before starting my workout routine. But everyone has their own preferences, and there’s no wrong way of doing it.

How Does Creatine Even Work?

Well, to start with, we need to define what creatine actually is. To keep things simple, you can think of creatine as a compound, created from amino acids, that your body produces in the liver and kidneys, and also collects from meat. Its role is to help rebuild ATP, after quick, highly-intensive efforts, and for this end, creatine is mostly stored inside skeletal muscles, in the form of phosphocreatine.

Now, you’ve probably heard of ATP. The energy currency inside our cells. When muscles contract ATP is released, losing one phosphate, which then transforms it into ADP. This releases energy and keeps us going. But our reserve of ATP is limited, and when you run out of it, your energy levels will simply collapse. The role of creatine is to donate its phosphate to ADP and turn it back into Adenosine triphosphate.

You can think of it like a battery. When your phone is about to run out, creatine can give it a 10% battery boost in order to finish your important tasks before it shuts down. Now, this boost is limited, and only really works for high-intensity, short bursts of action. But the effects are noticeable. When you buy creatine and administer it in the recommended dosage, it can encourage muscle growth, help with post-workout recovery and give you that extra 1% you need in order to maximise the potential of your body.