Ajay Kumar, a Cambridge GP who has helped develop a fitness app, this week discusses creatine - is it myth or magic?
Creatine is often taken by athletes and non-athletes alike to help boost sports performance and aid recovery.
In almost every health food shop in the country and in many gyms and sports clubs, large tubs of creatine in various guises can often be found.
However, what exactly is creatine and does it really live up to the claims and are there any drawbacks?
Creatine is a naturally occurring substance made up of amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins. Our liver and kidneys make most of the creatine and it is largely stored in our muscle fibres.
The creatine can be derived from meat in our diet especially from game. The amino acids that help make up creatine can be found in vegetarian sources of food such as soybeans and chick peas.
What does creatine do and how is it supposed to work?
In terms of sports performance, the claims attributed to creatine intake include increased muscle size, increased performance in short term high intensity exercise and quicker recovery rates post-exercise.
Essentially, it is not clear how creatine works to give the benefits mentioned above. Studies have postulated that it makes our energy stores recover quicker so we can do intensive exercises more easily; it has been thought to directly stimulate muscle synthesis and also it acts as an antioxidant and therefore "mops up" the muscle-damaging free radicals that are produced after exercise.
But does it actually work?
Because of its increasing use as a supplement, there has been a fair amount of work on creatine's benefits to aid sports performance.
Unfortunately, a lot of the studies use very small numbers of participants and often when there is a benefit shown to using creatine, it is often relatively small.
Read more: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge-GP-Ajay-Kumar-discusses-Creatine-myth/story-28339491-detail/story.html#ixzz3w6v2FLVS
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