Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

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…

Recovery means you can’t walk up stairs after a leg day

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

#132

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

rd11235 wrote: post #7

I don’t understand the trend of individual studies making it to the top of HN, while metaanalyses are ignored, despite examining 10s or 100s of such individual studies in aggregate to reduce noise. There are we-are-human reasons, but are there any logical reasons?

Individual studies don’t exist in a vacuum. They can cite tens to hundreds of papers just like a meta analysis. The difference is in addition to the literature review they had to do anyway to develop their research question, they also contributed novel data to the field and tried to put it into context. Meta analysis don’t get published in big journals like Nature, novel data do.

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

#133

Post by dgfitz » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #120

dgfitz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the glaring reproducibility crisis in the scientific community, creatine seems the wrong focus at the moment.

Because of this crisis, no one should be allowed to study creatine? What other things shouldn't be studied in order to solve the glaring reproducibility crisis? How does not studying things help? Is the scientific community "focused" on creatine?

It just doesn't matter. People who use creatine understand how it works and what the purpose it serves. Read the rest of this thread for anecdotes.

Study it to death, I care not. If I had research money, I wouldn't use it to kick a dead horse.

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

#134

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #52

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.

Thats basically how all my lifting friends eat. In college it was chicken breast and white rice and franks red hot sauce to make that otherwise unseasoned food palatable every dinner and lunch. Copious protein shakes. You can imagine the farts from my roommates during bulking…

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

#135

Post by globular-toast » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

tekla wrote: post #62

globular-toast wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean your 1RM for any of those lifts isn't particularly interesting if you're around a young man 180-220lbs or so. You weren't loading enough. At my max weights (600lbs Deadlift, 400lbs Squat, 340 Bench) , I needed to take 2-3 days off minimum

~160lb, 30yo. I know it's nothing special on the world stage but it's irrelevant because everyone is on gear these days and I've never even taken creatine (got scared about hair loss, lol). I also used to rep out both dips and chinups with 60kg of weight attached which tended to attract attention. But no matter what I did I never felt like I needed to take days off. I remember the DOMS in the very early days of the gym, but that just stopped happening and never came back.

Maybe I wasn't pushing myself hard enough, but I also never got injured. How much more could I have realistically achieved by pushing harder? I don't think much. I got really put off trying so hard when I realised how many people were on gear.

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

#136

Post by sebastiennight » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:27 PM UTC

unionjack22 wrote: post #95

This adds nothing to the conversation but seeing the lively discussion here on hn about lifting, exercise, and studies is quite rewarding. Good to see technical folks passionate about their health and fitness.

This reminds me of watching the original infomercials for P90X and Insanity and thinking that their testimonials seemed to include a disproportionate number of tech geeks... Maybe we're the real prime market for this after all

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

#137

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

tekla wrote: post #55

kkzz99 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And yet the OP study claims otherwise.

Why is this one study more believable than the others?

> Also hell, your own damn link says that elite athletes seem to get no benefit from creatine vs younger ones,

Where are you seeing that? All I could find was the opposite:

> In trained athletes, creatine has been reported to reduce body fat and improve some measures of anaerobic exercise performance, strength, and power output.

But regardless,

> 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.

doesn't follow; it's perfectly plausible that something could help more in initial training but actually work then.

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

#138

Post by y-c-o-m-b » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

beezle wrote: post #123

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #107

I tried creatine. Taking it in powder form mixed with my protein shake made me feel awful. Not worth it. Seemingly does nothing.

Don't take it on an empty stomach. Don't do the overload the first 10 days, instead stick to just 5g daily. It will take a little longer to get the full effect of the loading stage but with far less risk of stomach upset.

I have more issues with it when there's food in my stomach vs when there's not. In fact if I eat anything within 15 minutes (in either direction) of consuming creatine, I will for certain have diarrhea. I have zero issues with it on an empty stomach. These days I just make sure not to eat anything within an hour of the creatine and I'm good.

Agreed on the loading phase. It's not worth it.

EDIT: should add that I've been taking creatine for several years

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

#139

Post by notesinthefield » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

gavinray wrote: post #71

notesinthefield wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious to see support for the TRT statement - I myself have been on test cyp and anastrazole for the better part of two years with not one side effect. Been in and around steroid users in the strength sport realm for 15. The people with "nasty" side effects are almost always abusers that blast/cruise too often with no AI or PCT e.g dumbasses. Its been a life changing experience for me (going from low 200 ng/dl free…

Do you really need Anastrazole at that dose? General marker is x4-6 weekly dose for free test, so I'd wager you're taking somewhere between 150-200mg? I found that contrary to popular advice, I felt much better without taking an aromatase inhibitor and letting my estradiol float at the higher end of the reference range. There's some science backing the idea that Test/E2 are meant to exist in terms of a relative ratio…

I only take the guidance of my doc as recommendations for AI's have always been all over the place and ive been with him forever - I started at 2x/2weeks and now its once every other week. On top of that my estrogen numbers have always been high so it makes sense. Its been an experiment - I did tank it once and uhh, the side effects were interesting

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

#140

Post by seadan83 » Wed, Apr 02, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC

svnt wrote: post #101

aNapierkowski wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I took a look at the methodology here, it seemed like this should have been accounted for in the plan though maybe I'm missing something. That said this is just one study and will play into meta-analyses at some point which are more interesting After the 7-day wash-in, both groups followed the same RT program that comprising 3 full-body sessions a week for 12 weeks (Supplementary Materials, Table S1). All sessio…

Their methodology does seem to potentially capture what is at question here, by use of perceived exertion to adjust weight for repetition maximums. It is possible it doesn’t capture everything, because they don’t say anything here about setting the initial load, or adjusting the load up for low perceived exertion, only down for high perceived exertion.

Not sure anything is captured. Need control for diet and measurements of existing creatine levels. It takes a few weeks to get creatine higher after supplementation. This is a small sample sized study that strikes me as dubious. Particularly compared to others that have done muscle biopsies. The pre-warm up routine is itself sus, that impacts lifting potentially more than creatine. Creatine also has a role in recovery, good luck measuring that..