Have you ever heard of an athlete or sportsperson who is not familiar with creatine? This popular nutritional supplementation holds its place as one of the leading products in the market for reasons that go beyond mere name recognition and unsupported reputation.
Creatine has come a long way since its implementation started to generalize and its prestige has evolved over time as more users became aware of its multiple benefits. In this new blog entry, we will have a look at some of the perks that come along with creatine supplementation.
Enter PERKS OF CREATINE INTAKE!
the basic workings of creatine
Creatine is an amino acid located mostly in the body’s muscles as well as in the brain. The main source of creatine for most people is through creatine-rich foods (such as herring, red meat, and nuts), while also being naturally produced by the body’s liver at a rate of 1 gram a day.
Creatine helps you store more glycogen in your muscles, allowing them to grow larger and improving strength. Creatine also increases the amount of ATP available to your muscles, allowing you to perform exercises for longer periods of time without feeling the effects of tiredness and fatigue. It will also aid with quicker recoveries, which will allow you to get back to your workouts sooner.
It is always a good moment for a reminder, right? Let’s move on then!
IMPROVED MUSCLE PERFORMANCE
This is, without question, one of the leading reasons that make creatine so popular among its users. It achieves it through a series of processes that result in better muscle condition for workout.
For instance, creatine actively promotes the growth of muscle mass by boosting the formation of proteins that create new muscle fibers. Apart from this, it can also raise levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which is a hormone that also promotes an increase in muscle mass.
Moreover, creatine supplements pushes a process called cell volumization, which rapidly increases the size of your muscles by boosting the water content in muscle cells in a completely fat-free process. Other instances of research have lead to the conclusion that creatine decreases levels of myostatin, a molecule responsible for stunting muscle growth. The result of the reduction of myostatin levels is extra help in helping you build muscle faster.
LOWER RISK OF INJURY
After several decades of investigation, scientific consensus agrees that taking creatine supplementation can help reduce the chance of getting hurt after a hard workout. Creatine also helps prevent delayed onset muscle soreness, which is the stiffness and pain you feel in your muscles one or two days after strong workout.
Additional pieces of research suggest that creatine minimizes exercise-induced muscle damage as an acute training response, proving effective in reducing the level of exercise-induced muscle damage following a single bout of strenuous exercises
Science has even studied the effects of creatine in medical rehabilitation with positive results. Research findings point at creatine supporting recovery from exercise by decreasing exercise-induced damage, aiding the adaptive response to exercise, and augmenting the physiological response to training.
These results suggest that creatine may also promote maintenance and mitigate the loss of muscle mass, endurance, and muscular strength, as well as increasing glucoregulation during periods of immobilization.
MUSCLE REBUILDING
Are you ready for more perks of creatine intake?
A very important factor in effective muscle recovery is refraining from activity to give the body enough time to properly heal before resuming activity. Longer periods of inactivity inevitably lead to the loss of muscle mass, so creatine can be of great help in these circumstances.
Creatine supplementation after returning to training can accelerate the process of muscle rebuilding. Science has this aspect covered too: a study on fin swimmers under rehabilitation of tendon injuries found that creatine supplementation diminishes muscle mass loss, and also supports faster recovery of muscle size.
BETTER ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE
One of the main reasons behind creatine’s popularity among athletes is its scientifically-backed beneficial nature regarding athletic performance. Creatine helps you lower your demand for oxygen by using phosphocreatine in your body, which translates into an enhancement in your performance – typically during intense activity.
As a consequence, the effects of creatine can be perceived as a boost of high-intensity exercise performance, particularly in HIIT workouts, an increase in muscular strength and power and muscle mass, as well as the promotion of the effects of resistance training on strength and muscle mass.
There are several ways in which all the benefits of creatine intake can be more intensely felt. For instance, research on the Wingate test – which measures both muscular power and anaerobic capacity in 30-second periods – also shows a boost in power output after supplementation.
Additionally, the higher need for oxygen required by resistance running can also be mitigated through creatine supplementation by lowering these demands from your body. Moreover, the data for intermittent sports – be it endurance, court, or power-based – has also revealed the benefits of creatine supplementation.
POSITIVE EFFECTS FOR GENERAL HEALTH
After all we have learned to this point, you may think that it is basically athletes who benefit from creatine supplementation. However, we still have a few surprises in store.
For the general population, creatine supplementation may help manage blood lipid levels and cholesterol, triglycerides and fat accumulation in the liver. Furthermore, its antioxidant properties may reduce oxidative stress in the body, thus decreasing the chance of heart failure. At the same time, its properties can help people with diabetes manage their glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity.
In older populations, it may help reduce sarcopenia, while also improving bone mineral density. Additionally, it can help maintain muscle mass and promote fat mass loss, as well as aid cognitive function, working memory, short term memory and processing speed. All these benefits would improve when combined with resistance training.
There are also some therapeutic effects, such as an improvement in rehabilitation following musculoskeletal injury, better muscle performance and functional capacity in people with fybromyalgia, and potential anti-depressant effects.
conclusions
How do you like them perks of creatine intake? Once we know all this information, it is much easier to understand the reputation of creatine and where all the hype about its benefits come from. From improved muscle performance and better athletic output to muscle rebuilding, lower risk of injury, and positive effects for general health, the perks of creatine sumpplementation really make it worthy of its name.
Regarding the different formulas in which creatine is presented, we would recommend that which contains both creatine monohydrate and phosphocreatine — about which you can learn more in this article.
This makes the exclusive formula of Clonapure® the one product in the market that gives you immediate energy for your muscles, translating into more energy, shorter recoveries and better overall performance. Clonapure® is manufactured in a GMP site and has had its purity and quality consistently verified through continuous testing (HPLC). Do you want to give Clonapure® a go? This is the place!
