The problem with Protein Powder is that there are so many bogus “studies” that really aren’t studies at all but rather sneaky advertisements by scientific sounding companies to sell you protein. I dug around, did some research, and the most reliable data I found was a roundtable discussion from the American College of Sports Medicine. I’ll do my best to condense the serious 12 page report…

Creatine is a dietary element found in every human being. Just to carry out every day tasks we generally use about 2g of creatine; it is found abundantly in meat and fish. The reason athletes value creatine so highly is because it assists in ATP production which powers all cellular functions in the body. This of course means that athletes who are training very hard or working out regularly to gain muscle need significantly more of it than the average person: thus, supplementation.

There is a lot of confusion on what creatine supplementation can and can not do for your body. So let’s clear that up too.

Creatine supplementation CAN : delay muscle fatigue, significantly improve performance and enhance the ability to produce higher muscular force and/or power.

Creatine supplementation CAN NOT: improve aerobic activity or increase aerobic power of muscle (ie running), improve isometric resistance (using your own body weight for resistance to gain muscle) Improve high intensity resistance (sprint training)

A few last notes. Older subjects do not respond as favorably as young (18-35) subjects to creatine supplementation. Performance can be increased by 5-20% and will be most evident in high power output bouts (weight lifting). The vitamins, minerals, and other additives (L-glutamine, taurine, herbal extracts, etc) add nothing to the supplementation effectiveness. The lower the initial concentration of creatine in a muscle, the greater the the increase in total muscle mass. The larger the muscle to begin with, the less impact creatine supplementation will provide.

Power to the people.