Creatine Supplement Reviews – 1

The History of this highly effective muscle building and fat loss bodybuilding supplement

Creatine is currently the most popular bodybuilding supplement and millions of bodybuilders, athletes, both professional and amateur, and teenagers use creatine supplements for muscle building and fat loss, to increase strength, and for improving sports performance.

History of Creatine

Creatine was first discovered in 1835 when a French scientist noticed a compound in skeletal muscle that he later named creatine from the Greek word Kreas, meaning “flesh”. So although creatine may be promoted by supplement manufacturers as something new, the scientific community has recognized it as a normal constituent of muscle for nearly two hundred years. 

One of the best pieces of information to confirm that creatine levels are tied to muscular activity comes from studies comparing wild with captive animals. Wild animals contain about 10-times more creatine in their muscles than captive animals.

Around the turn of the 20^th century the first serious studies examining the effects of creatine were conducted. It was noticed that not all the creatine administered to test subjects could be recovered in the urine. This suggested that the body, particularly the skeletal muscles were retaining much of the ingested creatine. Despite being a hundred years old, these studies have important implications for modern bodybuilders and athletes as they show that while muscles are the greatest absorbers of creatine in the body, they are also the richest sources of creatine. Whenever we take a bite of steak – which is after all skeletal muscle – a rich source of creatine is made available to our muscles. For those individuals who regularly eat meat or chicken it is estimated that approximately one gram of creatine is made available for muscle building and fat burning.

The most common supplemental form of creatine is creatine monohydrate; a white crystalline powder. Creatine monohydrate is simply a molecule of creatine accompanied by a molecule of water. It is generally accepted that the first study that clearly demonstrated the effects of creatine in humans was conducted by Dr. Eric Hultman of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. This study found that by taking 20 grams of creatine every day for four to five days, boosted muscle creatine levels by approximately 20%. As any exercise physiologist will tell you, an increase in muscle creatine content of this amount will produce a definite  improvement in exercise performance, especially during short bouts of explosive exercise. The types of exercise that seem to benefit the most from creatine supplementation include sprinting events of less than 10 seconds duration, bodybuilding, and such sports as football, hockey, and rugby.

Once the results of this groundbreaking study became known to supplement manufacturers, the floodgates opened. New creatine products were being released on an almost weekly basis. The 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics. Became known as the creatine games and it is suggested that the success of the British track team was allegedly partially due to the use of creatine.