Health Benefits of Creatine
Creatine is a natural supplement used to help boost your athletic performance. Along with being safe, it’s also considered one of the most effective and popular supplements for increasing strength and muscle. While this is true, most people want to know as much as possible about creatine before adding it to their daily regimen. Keep reading to learn more about the potential health benefits it offers.
Increased Body Mass
Taking a creatine supplement is an effective way to enhance your body mass. When you first start taking this supplement, it pulls water into your muscle cells, which increases muscle mass. It also helps increase body weight.
However, as you continue working out, the concentrations of creatine increase, which also increases muscle mass. Some studies have proven that even taking a creatine supplement for a short amount of time can result in some changes in your body composition and increased lean body mass. This is because creatine changes some cellular pathways to help increase protein concentration, which promotes the formation of new muscle fibers.
When you combine creatine supplements and resistance training, you may begin to see additional muscle mass and growth.
Increased Energy in Muscle Cells
Taking creatine supplements increases the phosphocreatine stores in your muscles. The presence of phosphocreatine helps with ATP formation, which is an essential molecule that cells rely on for energy and life functions. When you exercise, ATP is broken down to help produce energy. Your ability to continue performing at max intensity levels is limited by your body’s rate of ATP resynthesis. That’s because your body uses ATP faster than it can be reduced. Taking creatine supplements can help increase phosphocreatine stores, which means your body produces additional ATP energy to help fuel your muscles during any type of high-intensity exercise.
Improved Athletic Performance
Creatine is a supplement that is commonly used by athletes and individuals who participate in various sports activities. It has been proven to improve high-intensity training sessions. With a creatine supplement, you can begin performing at even higher levels during high-intensity training sessions.
Studies have proven that creatine can help to promote endurance, fat-free mass, strength, and enhance your performance while engaging in any type of high-intensity activity (the exception to this is running and swimming).
While creatine may not be beneficial for running, it has been proven to help improve performance for repeated spring runs, which is something that handball players engage in. It also helps to increase muscular performance during repeated sets of jump-squat exercises, bench presses, and arm-flexor training.
Supports Other Muscle Functions
If your goal is to add muscle mass, creatine is an effective and popular supplement to take. It can alter different cell pathways, which then result in new muscle growth. One example is that it helps to boost protein formation responsible for the growth of new muscle fibers.
It will also increase levels of IGF-1, which is a hormone in the body and helps to increase total muscle mass. A creatine supplement will also increase the muscle water content. This is referred to as cell volumization and will help to increase muscle size quickly.
Faster Recovery Post-Workout
Soreness and muscle injuries can occur after any high-intensity workout. Creatine can reduce muscle damage while accelerating muscle recovery in anyone who participates in these activities.
Research has also proven that creatine can support faster recovery from an injury that is caused by certain types of muscle damage and can be beneficial during rehabilitation for tendon overuse in young swimmers.
Adding Creatine to Your Routine
As you can see, creatine offers more than a few potential benefits. Knowing what these are is the best way to ensure that you see these benefits and that they continue to provide you with activity support while working out or engaging in any type of strenuous activity. Being informed is the best way to ensure that you get the benefits designed from a creatine supplement.
