Creatine has long been the darling of gym bros and supplement pros. Touted as a muscle-building powerhouse, it’s naturally produced by the liver, pancreas and kidneys and is found in protein-rich foods. Creatine supplies energy to muscles and is popular for promising to deliver extra gains with little effort. New research has put that belief to the test, however, and found it lacking.
Details of the 13-week, 54-person trial were published in the journal Nutrients. The researchers evaluated the effects of the study participants’ thrice-weekly guided resistance training sessions over 12 weeks with and without creatine supplementation. The 34 women and 29 men in the study were aged 18 to 50. Half of the group was randomly assigned to receive 5 grams of creatine daily and started taking the supplement 7 days before starting resistance training. Both groups of participants gained lean muscle by the end of the study, with no differences between the groups.
“We’ve shown that taking five grams of creatine supplement per day does not make any difference to the amount of lean muscle mass people put on while resistance training,” said Mandy Hagstrom, study co-author and exercise scientist at the University of New South Wales, in a statement. “The benefits of creatine may have been overestimated in the past, due to methodological problems with previous studies,” she added.
A Smarter Study Design
In previous studies, participants started creatine supplementation and strength training at the same time, blurring the line between the supplement’s effects and those of the training. This study incorporated a 7-day “wash-in period” before training began. This way, the researchers could measure the effects of the creatine supplementation alone.
During the first week, people receiving creatine showed an increase in lean mass, gaining about half a kilogram more than the control group. This change was higher for women than men. However, during the training period, both groups added about two kilograms of muscle with no significant between-group differences.
“The people taking the creatine supplement saw changes before they even started exercising, which leads us to believe that it wasn’t actual real muscle growth, but potentially fluid retention,” Hagstrom said.
Water Weight or Muscle?
Creatine pulls water into muscle cells, which may inflate lean mass numbers, at least initially. But when the training began, that early boost vanished. Based on the results of previous studies, “You would have expected our creatine group to put on three kilograms of muscle over the 12-week program, but they didn’t,” said Imtiaz Desai, the study’s lead author.
Dose Matters
Five grams of creatine per day is a common maintenance dose. However, this study shows it might not be enough to fuel extra growth. “Once they started exercising, they saw no additional benefit from creatine, which suggests that five grams per day is not enough if you’re taking it for the purposes of building muscle,” Hagstrom said.
Some lifters begin with a “loading phase” of 20 to 25 grams a day for up to a week. This wasn’t used in the study. It can cause stomach trouble and isn’t necessary to reach the body’s full storage capacity.
Desai believes higher doses, such as 10 grams per day, may be worth testing, along with longer-term studies. “When you start weight training, you have those beginner gains in strength and those start tapering off around the 12-week mark. It would be really interesting to see if creatine has more of a long-term benefit,” he said.
Buyer, Beware
While further research will help clarify creatine’s effects, researchers hope the study results will cut through the current creatine hype and encourage consumers to take a closer look at marketing claims when choosing supplements.
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