Creatine : Why it's one of the most important supplements you'll ever need .

When you decide to start taking supplements , and decide to do a little research , you're bombarded all sorts of supplements from all sorts of companies for all sorts of benefits which will most likely leave your head spinning with no idea where to begin . Well , you should not buy into the hype of all of the crazy stuff on the market . Majority of the time , you can get most of the things marketed from your diet as is . Hence , your essentially would only want to spend money on supplements which your diet cannot provide . Which is surprisingly little . One of them would definitely be creatine .

What is Creatine ?
Creatine is a natural substance that turns into creatine phosphate in the body. The body produces some of the creatine it uses. It also comes from protein-rich foods such as meat or fish.  Creatine supplements are athletic aids used to increase high-intensity athletic performance. Researchers have known of the use of creatine as an energy source by skeletal muscles since the beginning of the 20th century. Creatine is naturally produced in the human body from amino acids primarily in the kidney and liver. It is transported in the blood for use by muscles.

Creatine is a supplement you should definitely not skip out on regardless if your aim is muscle building or fat loss . Creatine has no negative side-effects except for maybe water retention (which isn't really a bad thing ).

How does creatine help me when working out ?

Creatine doesn’t come into effect until we have used up all of our energy, but once it does, it gives us that edge to keep going. This is why athletes have begun supplementing with Creatine. Numerous double blind studies have shown that Creatine enhance muscle energy reserves and therefore improves performance in high intensity exercise.

Creatine enhances the body's capacity to perform high intensity work which assists in greater muscle size and performance gains as a result . Creatine phosphate is used to supply the type 11b muscle fibers with an immediate dose of energy ensuring that these muscles do not fatigue prematurely . This strengthens muscular contraction of these fibers which helps you to do more reps , sprint at a faster rate , or engage more forcefully in whatever sport or type of exercise they partake in . Supplementing your muscles with creatine allows the muscle to store more high-energy molecules to provide greater gains of strength and muscle . In fact , the absence of creatine , energy production during high-intensity bouts of exercise would not be possible . Supplemental creatine has been shown to further enhance this process . For people looking to build muscle , creatine is even more significant as it feeds explosive type 11b fibers , thereby increasing power output and subsequently , muscle size .

Certain people encounter slight discomfort in the form of feeling bloated when supplementing with creatine . This is actually a positive effect of creatine as what the bloating actually is ,  is that creatine allows your muscles to retain excess water to flush out byproducts and wastes from the breakdown of muscle (which naturally happens when you exercise ) . This , in turn helps improve recovery of your muscles . In a long term perspective, the quicker our muscles can recover, the faster they can grow and improve their efficiency in us exercising. What this means is more fat loss as our metabolism is increased from greater muscle density (that’s right , muscle uses up fat for energy!).

 Another important benefit for bodybuilders and strength athletes is creatine's muscle volumizing effect . Creatine has a property that cause muscle cells to inflate , which produces a more heavily muscled physique  , more importantly , serves as a stimulus for protein synthesis . Up to 6 pounds of add body weight is expected for the first few weeks of supplementing your body with creatine is common found and should be noted that the added weight is generally water . So do not get worked up if you suddenly gain a few pounds and think you're either seeing massive muscle gains or be demotivated thinking that you've put on extra weight .

Creatine might assist with the combating of diabetes , as it has been shown to improve glucose tolerance . Derave and co-researchers showed that supplemental creatine increased glucose transporter (glut-4) expression and muscle glycogen content while improving glucose tolerance in a previously immobilized limb . Since the study was conducted , it appears the reasons for the improvements in glucose tolerance were due to the increased expression of glucose transporter type 4 . It seems the expression of this transporter was actually induced by IGF-1 and IGF-2 , which are induced by regular intake of creatine . This means that even for people just looking a way to keep their diabetes in check , creatine seems the way to go .

Alas , this is but the tip of the iceberg as the full effects of creatine are not stated in this post as it would be too long . So now that you have decided that creatine might be something you would be interested in , there are still tons of different types of creatine in the market to choose from . So ,

Which creatine should I choose ?
I would recommend that you first look up my post on Type of Creatines before making and informed decision as to which type of creatine supplement you would choose .