Note: Most of the information in this blog has been taken from Martin MacDonald’s site. If I include information from other sources, I will include links to those sites.
When I hear about creatine, most people think of guys and gals who go to the gym, lift weights, and look in the mirror to see if they have any abdominal muscles.
You may be a little surprised to hear that there are other benefits to this supplement.
I’ll add a list of benefits soon, but for now, I’ll list the ideal dosages, as I picked them up from Martin MacDonald’s podcast.
Naturally, the human body uses about 0.025 grams of creatine per kilogram of body weight.
The recommended maintenance dose in the literature is 0.03 g / kg.
In other words, if you weigh 80 kg, you will take 2.4 grams of creatine per day, which is a relatively small amount.
Another example: For a 50kg person, the daily dose is about 1.5 grams.
Simple: if you have never taken creatinine before, you can start with this dose and keep it forever without any problems.
Many fitness specialists recommend a phase of “loading” with creatine, where in the first 7 days a higher dose is consumed, after which it is passed to the maintenance dose of 0.03 grams per kilogram.
There are several studies that show that athletes who took the loading dose for a week and went back to maintenance, after 30 days had the same concentration of creatine as those who started directly with the maintenance dose.
In other words, all you need to do is take your daily dose in order to reap the benfits.
Let’s talk about benefits.
First of all, there are cognitive benefits!
In a study published in December 2010, it was found that vegetarians who consumed creatine had an improvement in memory capacity compared to those who consumed a placebo. The slightly more disappointing part of this result is that the participants in the non-vegetarian group did not benefit from the supplementation with creatine.
In the same study, there was an improvement in the stability of the reaction rate in those who took creatine compared to the placebo group. So the reaction rate did not improve in itself, but the results of various tests were more consistent among those who consumed creatine. There were no differences between vegetarians and non-vegetarians.