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

> In the introduction they talk about creatine loading

(1) Yes, that the loading phase was BYPASSED. = (

"Those on creatine did bypass a loading phase, which includes taking 20 to 25 grams daily for up to one week. While it is common to start with a loading phase, it can cause gastrointestinal issues and is not necessary to reach saturation levels – the maximum that the body can store at any one time. "

My understanding, to reach saturation without a loading phase - it takes about 3 to 4 weeks. (Could be wrong, going off of memory there.)

With loading, I've read it takes 1 to 2 weeks to reach saturation.

(2) Without measuring creatine levels, what was even tested? How many people were creatine "non-responders?" How many people were getting plenty of creatine from their diets already?

(3) Was the creatine regimen effective and optimal? Water intake is another factor. I don't think a set of 50 people divided between 2 groups is going to be anywhere near enough to capture a nuance like efficacy of the regimen vs no regimen.

> Also, their study is looking at lean body mass changes after the "wash-in" period, so any effect that increased recovery is supposed to have on lean body mass when following the exercise protocol they give for the time period they studied should be captured, no?

I'd say no, simply because it is not known whether the wash-in period was actually a wash-in period without knowing if creatine levels actually changed in a significant way. Second, the study group of beginner weight lift lifters is a chaotic data set. The gains of lifting weights vs not lifting weights is likely magnitudes different from creatine vs no-creatine supplementation. Some beginners might easily get 10% more muscle mass vs 5% for others. An effect that is expected be very low is going to be completely lost in the noisy data. Let alone that we are starting from a questionable baseline.

Overall, since the body can absorb up to about 5g of creatine a day, and the body is likely already intaking 1 or 2g per day - this study is kinda only looking at the effect of an increase of creatine from a moderate dosage to a maximal dosage, across beginner weight lifters. It's like, say you're a bit dehydrated, instead of drinking 500ml of water per day, you now start drinking 550ml of water and then measure any changes from starting a brand new weight lifting routine.

Bullshit. It's like saying protein powder doesn't increase muscle on Ronnie Coleman or Arnold or anyone who is at their protein limit.

Some people have high creatine by themselves from meat sources or from own body, or some already have muscles saturated with it.

Creatine slightly boosts pure lean muscle growth. But most importantly it saturated muscle with creatine and increases its mass, ofcourse the increase isn't muscle tissue but water and resources bond to it. People usually count sarcoplasmic hypertrophy from glycogen as "muscle gains" even when they are short term and goes away after low carbs or depletion. Also as with anything when you stop doing it, it will go away. Also muscles are mostly water (75-80%), Mike Menzter also said that which reminded me.

Who will benefit from creatine? The ones who has it low. How can it help? Allows to push harder, allows to store more fluid and hydrate cells internally, may trigger MPS more often/recovers better.

It is like, "by itself" creatine don't go and build muscle, but it boosts whatever mechanism if they weren't already.

Some reality checks, don't expect signifiant size, don't expect significant contractile muscle size increase, expect water weight and boosted performance, but that is if only your muscles weren't actually saturated with creatine.

Ps: not sure about the boosted MPS signalling.

Added to that, creatine could influence how close you feel to failure. I'd like to see some data, for participants training until failure. That would still be somewhat subjective, but i'd argue, less so.

Honestly, likely not that much. From what I've found you can get recommended dosage and more from just eating the right foods. Right meaning foods rich in what you're looking for. Now in context that may be hard for some people or they just don't like those foods. So supplementing makes sense.

You are misinterpreting the study. They are interested in the change in lean body mass wash-in to post RT because that is the lean body mass that can be attributed to more than just the initial increase from simply taking creatine. The increase in females that you cite is including that initial increase, which is not interesting.