Basic Benefits of Using Creatine Supplements
Of all the supplements on the market today, one of the most well-known and also misunderstood is creatine. Most of us have heard of it before, but most don’t really know what it can do for you to help you reach your fitness goals.
What Does Creatine Do?
The easiest way to explain what creatine does is to simply say that creatine increases the amount of energy available for use in your body. Not to get too technical, but when your muscles work they use ATP; creatine increases the amount of ATP that is available for your muscles to use.
Creatine is found naturally in your body, and you can also get small amounts of it by eating meat (muscles of other animals). The problem is that if you work out hard, you will probably burn up the amount of creatine in your muscles sooner than you’d like. That’s where using creatine supplements can help because they increase the available amount of ATP.
Benefits of Using Creatine
Here is a short list of just some of the reported benefits that people report when using creatine:
- Increased strength during workouts
- Increased energy during workouts (ATP), which means more energy to power through workouts
- Gains in lean muscle mass
- Enhance muscle size
Other Creatine Information
The other thing that makes creatine unique is that it is one of the most widely researched bodybuilding supplements on the market today. It seems that every couple of months there is a new study that comes out talking about the benefits of creatine supplements and also some of the myths surrounding them.
Entire guides have been written on creatine and most support the idea that using creatine supplements can benefit most people. But as with any body building supplement, different people will see different results from using creatine.
It seems that most people will see the largest weight and muscle gains when they first start using it as apposed to someone that has been using it for a longer period of time. This is why many individuals will cycle creatine, or in other words go through periods of use and non-use so their body doesn’t become too accustomed to it.
Creatine comes in many forms. You can buy it as simple creatine monohydrate, or you can buy more complicated formulas that include a carbohydrate as a transport mechanism. It is also important to consider the quality of the creatine. Micronized creatine is more refined and easier for the body to process. Creatine Ethyl Esters (CEE) are also on the market, but the jury is still out on whether these higher priced versions are any better than taking creatine monohydrate with a simple carb.



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