CREATINE SUPER FEATURE – An Introduction

This Creatine Online Super Feature Article was written to help clear-up the misinformation surrounding this important bodybuilding and strength athlete sports nutrition product ingredient. In other words, there is a lot of BS about creatine in the ads and magazine articles, which makes it difficult for many people to determine if they need to take creatine, and if so what type, how much and for how long.

To accomplish this education goal, this Super Feature Article is presented in the following Parts.

To get the most out of this information, I encourage you to read all these Parts as they include a diversity of extra information you will find useful for understanding the anatomy, physiology, and bio-energetics of muscles, in addition to being the most comprehensive review article every written about creatine. In addition to the massive amount of information for you to read, I also created two very useful summary tables:

The Summary of Beneficial Effects of Creatine Monohydrate Supplementation table. This table includes a summary of the major conclusions about how creatine supplementation improves body composition, physiology, physical performance and athletic performance. It also reports on which sports creatine works best for.

The Creatine Dosing & Use Guide Summary table contains information on using creatine based on what the research studies concluded.

I encourage you to spread the good word about creatine, and let your friends and athletic associates know about this article. And most importantly, I hope you enjoy this unique learning experience.

Part 1:
Introduction

Sitting back in my sports nutrition ivory tower, I frequently get outraged by the nonsense I encounter (non-science, that is) when it comes to the misinformation surrounding the various sports nutrition ingredients backed by science, but maligned by marketers and authors working with incomplete information. What people seem to forget, or put aside, is that what was proven to work in the past still works today. This is ever so true for creatine monohydrate supplements.

However, it seems that what should be the simplest and most straight forward of sports nutrition supplements, has become surrounded by a quagmire of misinformation, controversy, and in some instances, outright lies. Not by the scientific community, but from superficial information found in the media and even some ads for products.

Multiple Studies

The scientific community is onboard with recognizing the benefits athletes can experience from taking a creatine monohydrate supplement. In fact, creatine monohydrate has received more attention and has been subjected to more research studies than any other sports supplement being sold.

Over 200 clinical studies have been conducted using creatine monohydrate in just over a decade. Not bad when you consider that the majority of the research was conducted at universities, without the mega-dollars from the pharmaceutical industry.

By now, I think creatine monohydrate has as much research behind it as most of the billion dollar drugs.

When you take a look at the science behind creatine monohydrate, there is little room for controversy. But somewhere along the way since creatine's debut as a muscle building sports supplement, more controversy and confusion has arisen in the popular press, then has clarity of creatine's purpose and proper use.

From a sports scientist's standpoint this is strange, because when you look at the trend in the scientific journals that have been reporting on the beneficial results of numerous research studies for over a decade, evidence is mounting to support the effectiveness of creatine monohydrate.

Scientific Proof

By now you may have noticed I have been stating that creatine monohydrate has the scientific proof behind it. And it does.

Sure, there are other forms of creatine, and I will be reviewing information about them for you later in this special report. However, even though science concludes that creatine monohydrate is effective, most people want to learn more about it, learn why it works, who it works best for, who it does not work for, how much to take for best results, and why even think about creating other forms of creatine in the first place.

So, when you read through this super feature article, you will discover it is part educational, part scientific review and part use guide. I wanted it to suit the needs of many. In my work I have found that there are some people who just want the at-a-glance use information, and there are others who want to learn and get insights about the research, how the body works, and the about science of why creatine monohydrate works.

Some Of The Creatine Facts You Will Learn About Include:

• Why creatine works?

• What creatine really does in the body?

• Which athletes will benefit most from taking a creatine supplement?

• Do you need to take creatine forever?

• Does creatine works for men and women?

• Does creatine work for the young and old?

• Does creatine have other beneficial health effects?

• What is the science behind creatine?

• How do scientists take the studies and reach conclusions from them?

• Are there really any harmful side effects from taking a creatine monohydrate supplement?

What may surprise you is that the effects creatine has in the body is much more than the cell volumizing effects it was first touted for. For example, in addition to the findings of other research I review herein, one of the most recent research studies concluded that the research subjects supplemented with creatine monohydrate experienced an increase in the levels of mRNA for IGF-1 and IGF-2.

What To Expect In The Future Parts Of This Article

Part 2 provides an overview about creatine to help give you the big Creatine picture.

Then, due to the fact that creatine works best for certain types of athletes, with certain types of muscle fiber development (primarily strength athletes), I included a section about muscle fiber anatomy and physiology. If this subject matter is new to you, you may have to read it a few times to catch on.

The time spent will be worth it, because this knowledge will benefit your training and nutrition program in other ways, in addition to understanding what creatine works best for, and besides the muscle building benefits, what research studies discovered creatine can help significantly improve athletic performance.

Yes, depending on the bio-energetic nature of your sport, you can improve your athletic performance starting in just a week or two of taking a creatine monohydrate supplement, and experience increasingly more benefits with continued creatine use.

For the extremely inquisitive /scientific reader, I included research overview parts that contain key findings of the most recent creatine scientific research studies.

So, in addition to a long list of references, I will take you through the highlights of these research studies, so you can get a glimpse in to how the scientific process works.

Finally, after reading through all of this information, there is a part that contains information about what the numerous research studies support the best way to take creatine, and what sports creatine is good for improving athletic performance for, in addition to creatine's well know effects in improving the rate of muscle growth and strength in association with a resistance training program.