Anyone interested in health and fitness, regardless of whether they have ever set foot in a weight room, is likely to have heard of creatine.
Most sportsmen and bodybuilders use this supplement regularly, and you should too if you want to bulk up and increase your strength and endurance.
Some supplements may be unsafe when you’re trying to reduce weight, burn fat, or get the other benefits of fasting on a regular basis. Many supplements can be used safely during a fast, but there are a few that can actually break it by inhibiting autophagy. Creatine, for example, is it one of those?
Here, we explain all you need to know about creatine, including whether or not you should take a creatine supplement while you’re fasting.
Creatine has zero calories and no sugar so it does not break a fast.
Creatine: What Is It and What Does It Do?
Among ergogenic aids for physical performance, creatine is among the most widely used. While not a brand-new supplement, its benefits are increasingly being exploited by sportsmen and fitness buffs.
Creatine has a wide range of benefits, including but not limited to muscular growth, strength gains, power increases, and enhanced performance. Creatine is a naturally occurring non-protein amino acid found in red meat and seafood 1, but it is also a molecule created within the body by the liver and kidneys from the amino acids glycine, arginine, and methionine obtained from the diet.
Creatine is popular among athletes and bodybuilders since it has been shown time and time again in scientific studies to enhance intramuscular creatine concentrations, which in turn explains the observed training performance changes gained with creatine supplementation.
So that you understand, here are the reasons why.
- Skeletal muscles retain the vast majority (95%) of the body’s creatine, with the brain and testicles also containing a negligible amount. The majority of the creatine (95%) in skeletal muscles is present as phosphocreatine (PCr) 1, which accounts for almost two-thirds of the total creatine content.
- Creatine plays a crucial role in the availability of energy and the regeneration of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the major fuel your body uses to function.
- The amount of phosphocreatine (PCr) in the muscles is a major determinant of the fuel available to rephosphorylate ADP into ATP and supply active muscular tissue.
- Lowered energy availability due to insufficient ATP regeneration caused by prolonged intensive activity is a limiting factor in meeting the demands of high-intensity exercise. 2.
- When there isn’t enough substrate for ATP resynthesis, maximal effort drops and power output drops dramatically from where it was before training began.
- Phosphocreatine (Pi-creatine) is a metabolic intermediate formed when creatine binds to a phosphoryl group (Pi). Energy for metabolic processes is generated when ATP is hydrolyzed to form ADP (adenosine diphosphate) and an inorganic phosphate molecule (Pi).
- The resynthesis of ATP makes use of the free energy generated during the hydrolysis of phosphocreatine to creatine + Pi. All of this works together to make sure that there is enough ATP for high-intensity anaerobic exercises. The Positive Effects of Taking Creatine Supplements
- Although creatine has mostly been praised for its role in promoting muscular building, it has other benefits as well.
1. Increases Aerobic Capacity
Creatine supplementation has been proven to improve performance in high-intensity, short-duration anaerobic activity, and may potentially improve performance in aerobic exercise. Two ways in which it accomplishes this are as follows:
- modifying substrate use during sustained aerobic exercise lasting more than 150 seconds
- Low-intensity aerobic activity reduces blood lactate buildup, which may raise the lactate threshold and the ventilatory threshold.
2. Boosts Muscle Growth
It is widely believed that creatine is the best supplement for bodybuilders because of its ability to stimulate muscular growth. Because of the increased availability of phosphocreatine to regenerate ATP, the gains that come with creatine supplementation are often the result of enhanced work capacity.
That means more time and effort spent lifting, which translates to bigger gains in muscle size. 4. That, however, is not the point. Creatine supplementation has been shown to increase levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a protein with strong anabolic effects on skeletal muscle that may also mediate the growth-promoting actions of growth hormone (GH) 5.
3. Enhances Recovery
Creatine may not be the first product that comes to mind when you think about enhancing your recovery, but it should be because it can have a huge impact on your performance.
Because replenishing muscle glycogen stores is such an important part of the recovery puzzle, research suggests that combining creatine and glucose post-workout can improve creatine and carbohydrate retention in muscle 1. This may speed recovery for athletes who burn a lot of glycogen during training.
Muscle damage from intense exercise may be mitigated by creatine’s ability to lower inflammatory indicators such cytokines, prostaglandins, tumour necrosis factor (TNF) alpha, and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) 6, 7.
Can Creatine Be Consumed While Fasting?
Having said that, there are undeniable benefits to taking a creatine supplement, but is it possible to do so without breaking your fast?
Indications from research imply that is possible to.
A supplement’s ability to break a fast depends on its ability to raise blood sugar, which in turn inhibits autophagy and brings you out of a fasted state.
However, because creatine is a single non-proteogenic amino acid and contains no sugar or artificial sweeteners, it does not stimulate insulin release and disrupts a fasting state 8.
Further studies in healthy guys undergoing aerobic training have shown that creatine supplementation can increase glucose tolerance without influencing insulin sensitivity. 9.
In this case, “pure” means that there are no fillers or other ingredients, only creatine. Many creatine supplements have added sugars and flavours, or are combined with other fitness aids that do trigger an insulin response, so taking them during a fast would be counterproductive.
Final Thoughts
To cut a long tale short, creatine has many benefits for both performance and recuperation. Taking a supplement of 100% pure creatine monohydrate while training in a fasted condition will not cause an insulin response, and therefore you will remain in a fasted state.
Creatine gets a resounding recommendation from us if your goal is to bulk up significantly while decreasing your body fat percentage.
