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Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

unsw.edu.au

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Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#51

Post by ahoy »

dgfitz wrote: post #27
laszlojamf wrote: post #4

The way I understood it creatine by itself doesn't promote muscle gain all that much. It's the fact that you can potentially do one to three more reps which does. But that still means you have to do the reps. https://leangains.com/supplements-you-might-actually-find-us...

This has been known for ~15 years. I'm not sure what this study thought it was debunking.

There is value in studying things that are "settled" science. You can reinforce or deepen the existing understanding, or uncover nuance that wasn't widely understood before.

Note that this link is not the study! The published paper makes much more specific claims.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/6/1081

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#52

Post by itsoktocry »

skadamat wrote: post #6

I've had the pleasure of working with a personal trainer who has a broad educational training background. She emphasized that creatine "kind of helped" but it was really only that last mile 5% benefit. And the effect would mostly be long-term (1-2 years of dedicated training). She just told me to focus on trying to get 1 gram of high quality protein daily for pound of body weight. This study is just one study, but to…

>She just told me to focus on trying to get 1 gram of high quality protein daily for pound of body weight.

You hear this a lot, but it is incredibly difficult to eat eg 175g of protein every day. That's 4 chicken breasts, every day.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#53

Post by kkzz99 »

tekla wrote: post #39

This has been known for quite a while? Even /fit/ makes fun of people who claim that creatine makes you bigger faster.

No? There are a lot of studies showing positive benefits: >The primary benefit of creatine is an improvement in strength and power output during resistance exercise. Creatine is well-researched for this purpose, and its effects are quite notable for a supplement, both in the general population,[6][7][8][9] and specifically in older adults.[10][11][12] When used in conjunction with resistance exercise, creatine may modestly increase lean mass.[7][12][11][13] In trained athletes, creatine has been reported to reduce body fat and improve some measures of anaerobic exercise performance, strength, and power output.

https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/?show_conditions=tr...

And as a general rule of thumb: Don't take anything from 4chan seriously.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#54

Post by adrian_b »

econ wrote: post #40
adrian_b wrote: post #17

I do not understand why would anyone believe that creatine can influence muscle gains. Muscle gains require an adequate protein intake, but creatine has no relationship with that. Creatine, as phosphocreatine, provides energy storage for short-time anaerobic effort. After the available phosphocreatine is exhausted, only a lower power can be sustained, at the level that can be supported by the conversion of glucose in…

The effect is dramatically different for different people. I have something around 30-60% more endurance with creatine which is insane. From what little I understand it helps move fluids though muscles. I can't imagine muscle growth doesn't benefit from that specially in seemingly poorly hydrated dry muscles like mine.

For myself, after switching to vegan food, taking a creatine supplement had very noticeably improved the endurance for things like weight lifting or short sprints at maximum speed.

However, that has just restored the level of performance from when eating non-vegan food.

The effects of creatine should vary both between humans, because they may have different capacities for internal creatine synthesis, and depending on the kind of food that they eat, i.e. whether it is naturally rich in creatine, or not.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#55

Post by tekla »

kkzz99 wrote: post #53
tekla wrote: post #39

This has been known for quite a while? Even /fit/ makes fun of people who claim that creatine makes you bigger faster.

No? There are a lot of studies showing positive benefits: >The primary benefit of creatine is an improvement in strength and power output during resistance exercise. Creatine is well-researched for this purpose, and its effects are quite notable for a supplement, both in the general population,[6][7][8][9] and specifically in older adults.[10][11][12] When used in conjunction with resistance exercise, creatine may mo…

And yet the OP study claims otherwise.

Also hell, your own damn link says that elite athletes seem to get no benefit from creatine vs younger ones, meaning that its not really increasing muscle mass, just a combination of placebo, water retention, and maybe a burst of energy in the early stages of getting fit.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#56

Post by jdhendrickson »

globular-toast wrote: post #49
LostMyLogin wrote: post #5

I've been lifting five to six days a week since 2012, with some de-loading periods between, and have had my nutrition and sleep locked in for the majority of that time. Anecdotal of course, but I will still sit here and say that creatine is the only supplement that has actually worked over all those years - in fact, it's the only one I currently take. I recover so much better when on roughly 5mg of Creatine for an ex…

I've never really understood what people mean when they talk about recovery. Is this something you can feel? Or does it mean you couldn't lift the same weights the very next day or something? I lifted consistently for years, no supplements, 1RM around 65kg OHP, 115kg BP, 140kg squat, 200kg DL and apart from immediately after the gym I never felt like I needed to recover. Maybe my volume wasn't high enough? I was very…

Yes, if you were not experiencing a need for recovery, you were not providing enough stimulus. I was a powerlifter. there were times when I couldn't walk the next day. recovery is a major factor.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#57

Post by Johanx64 »

arresin wrote: post #12
chank wrote: post #2

Over the years through my own involvement in sports and physically demaning jobs with trying a lot of different supplementation, I've come to the conclusion that most (if not all) supplements provide little to no value beyond a good diet. If they do, they're either illigal as non-perscription and/or require regular physician monitoring use correctly.

I don’t want to be rude but your anecdote (and all anecdotes like this on anything to do with health) is uninteresting and useless.

Unironically, I trust anecdotes more than any random nutrition study.

The more I personally know the person, or the more connectedness I have, the more his anecdote is worth listening to.

This study is a collection of mere 54 random anecdotes (!), random people of the street.

Anecdote of a random min-maxing turbo nerd on hackernews >= 54 random people from the street.

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#58

Post by Tumlomu »

parthdesai wrote: post #47
laszlojamf wrote: post #4

The way I understood it creatine by itself doesn't promote muscle gain all that much. It's the fact that you can potentially do one to three more reps which does. But that still means you have to do the reps. https://leangains.com/supplements-you-might-actually-find-us...

Yeah, that's also the case when people scoff at pro bodybuilders due to steroids. Steroids don't magically give you the gains, you still have to put the work in. You just get rewarded more, and quicker at cost of other side effects.

[dead]

Re: Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

#60

Post by graeme »

parthdesai wrote: post #47
laszlojamf wrote: post #4

The way I understood it creatine by itself doesn't promote muscle gain all that much. It's the fact that you can potentially do one to three more reps which does. But that still means you have to do the reps. https://leangains.com/supplements-you-might-actually-find-us...

Yeah, that's also the case when people scoff at pro bodybuilders due to steroids. Steroids don't magically give you the gains, you still have to put the work in. You just get rewarded more, and quicker at cost of other side effects.

I don't know if you mean steroids specifically or also testosterone, but exogenous testosterone actually does raise muscle mass.

So it's fundamentally different from the creatine mechanism above.

For example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5989848/

Here's one on steroids with a no exercise group, they saw gains: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8637535/

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