Perex: Creatine supplements help athletes perform better during intense exercises and build more muscle mass for increased endurance and muscle recovery during workouts.
What is Creatine?
Creatine is a naturally occurring substance found in muscle cells in our body. It is one of the natural energy sources of the human body that plays a vital role in muscle contraction. Creatine is the primary component of phosphocreatine, a natural substance found in the skeletal muscles of vertebrates. Phosphocreatine is responsible for regenerating ATP (Adenosine triphosphate), a crucial energy source, at the cellular level.
Role of Creatine in Dietary Supplements and How Does It Work?
Many athletes consume creatine supplements to boost their strength, stamina, and performance. It helps them perform high-intensity workouts, such as heavy lifting. Creatine dietary supplements are most commonly consumed by bodybuilders, hockey players, football players, and wrestlers.
The most commonly used creatine dietary supplement is creatine monohydrate. It helps improve muscle performance in shorter periods and is a boon for athletes and fitness enthusiasts involved in activities, like weightlifting, bicycling, sprinting, and other high-intensity exercises.
When you consume creatine supplements, most of it will get deposited in your muscles. The muscles will further convert it into a more usable form of creatine, called phosphocreatine, created by adding phosphoric acid to creatine. Additionally, the extra creatine helps our muscles create more ATP as we use it to fuel the body cells during intense exercises.
Moreover, creatine supplements can help build lean muscle tissue, enabling your muscles to retain more water. Therefore, pressure created from the stored water in the cells helps the muscles to swell, which further develops an environment for the cells to grow.
Does Creatine Make You Gain Weight?
So, does creatine make you gain weight? The short answer is yes! Creatine can make you gain weight because of the water retention in the muscle cells. The process also promotes lean muscle building. However, creatine supplements won’t make you obese or fat.
The primary role of creatine is to draw more water content to the muscles, thus making them look fuller. It might cause the athlete to weigh more, but never leads to obesity. Creatine supplements can optimize an individual’s hydration condition by helping the muscles to rebuild and recover from strenuous activities, thereby improving their performance.
Recommended Dosage of Creatine Supplements
Although you should consult a healthcare professional to learn about the right dosage based on your health conditions and needs, let’s discuss a general dosage recommendation for creatine supplements. The following recommendations are considered safe and effective to maintain the required creatine levels in your body.
Take 20–25 grams of creatine every day for about 5–7 days. It’s better to divide the dose into 5-gram servings four to five times daily. Furthermore, on workout days, you can consume the supplement shortly before or after your workout sessions. On your rest days, you can take creatine with food.
Summary
So, does creatine make you gain weight? Yes, it does, but in a healthy way. Creatine helps boost muscle mass and performance of athletes without making them fat.
