Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Creatine monohydrate beats fancy forms
Other forms of creatine
Creatine hydrochloride is more soluble, and the claim is that less is needed, but only a couple of studies exist on it and it costs more. Creatine ethyl ester has been shown to be worse than monohydrate, and buffered creatine is as good or worse at a much higher price.
What creatine does
Creatine raises phosphocreatine content, which improves exercise performance, and it appears to improve recovery. It increases lean mass, much of it through bringing water into muscle cells, which are mostly water anyway. Strength rises, body fat percentage tends to fall, and a few studies show fat mass falling too. Creatine isn't a fat burner: people probably train harder and build more lean tissue. More recent work has found some cognitive benefits.
The hair loss claim
The one knock is hair loss, from a single 2009 study that found increased DHT without effects on other sex hormones and without measuring hair loss directly. It looked at a mechanism rather than an outcome and has not been replicated as far as is known. Kidney and liver concerns have been debunked, with no evidence of harm to healthy kidneys or livers.
How does creatine power short bursts?
Muscle cells keep a small reserve of phosphocreatine. When ATP is spent during a sprint or a heavy lift, phosphocreatine donates a phosphate to regenerate it within a fraction of a second. The reserve runs low after about ten seconds of all-out effort. Taking creatine raises the size of that reserve.
Where does the body get its creatine?
The body makes about one gram a day from the amino acids arginine, glycine, and methionine, mainly in the kidneys, liver, and pancreas. Meat and fish add roughly another gram a day in omnivores. About 95 percent of the body's creatine is stored in skeletal muscle. A fraction of it breaks down daily into creatinine, which the kidneys excrete.
When was creatine supplementation first shown to work?
In 1992, Roger Harris, Eric Hultman, and colleagues published a study in Clinical Science showing that oral creatine raised creatine levels in human muscle. Many athletes started using it that year. Hundreds of studies have followed since.
More from Andrew Huberman
