What are the side affects of creatin protein ?!
Answers:
Wow, everyone is 100% incorrect so far.
First of all, creatine is not a protein. If you're going to supplement for bodybuilding, you're going to take creatine and protein separately because they ARE two separate things. Creatine is made in your body as well in order to make your muscles work...so for the first person who said it would give you "baby dick syndrome," that person obviously has no idea how the muscles work or how bodies work. Creatine is, for some reason, often confused by the very ignorant with steroids. Creatine is NOT a steroid, technically or "casually."
The way creatine works is like this.
Your muscles work on three different fuels: creatine, sugar (in the form of glycogen) and oxygen. If you're doing any activity for longer than 2 minutes at a time, you use more oxygen and sugar. If you're doing an activity for less than 2 minutes at a time, you're using more creatine than sugar and oxygen. More than 2 minutes of sustained activity, like running or dancing, is called "aerobic" activity because of the high oxygen use. Less than 2 minutes of sustained activity, like weight lifting or walking up a flight of stairs, is called "anaerobic" activity because of the relative lack of oxygen consumption.
So you can see that your body must make its own creatine so we can do things like sit up in bed, brush our teeth, walk into the kitchen, and so forth. These basic, under-2-minutes of activity are things we do all the time, so we need to be able to make our own creatine. However, we only make enough creatine to push ourselves at 100% for 30 seconds...when you supplement with creatine, you can increase that to 60 second of max effort. That means you don't get as fatigued as quickly if you're lifting weights, for example.
This is very different from protein, which is the building block of cells. Protein is consumed and broken into its component parts (amino acids), which are then "folded" a special way to become the appropriate tissue for whatever is repairing. That's why skin tissue looks different from bone cells which are different from muscle cells...even though all of those cells are made of amino acids. Think about it like a soft taco, a burrito, and a hard taco: even though the basic ingredients are the same, they can be changed around to make different meals.
Creatine also is not found to cause water retention...but some people claim to experience it and there is a reason why they may. The most common form of creatine is creatine monohydrate. For creatine to be stable enough to sit on the shelves, it has to be mixed with something and apparently "monohydrate" is the easiest thing to mix it with. Creatine monohydrate is a creatine molecule attached to a salt, and salt has been associated with water retention. However, if you do not over-consume sodium (eat no processed foods and add only a little salt to your meals, if any), then you won't have this problem. Other forms of creatine, like creatine ethyl-ester, creatine hydrochloride, and more are not attached to a salt. However, creatine monohydrate is the cheapest and is just as effective.
Some who take creatine do notice an odor when urinating, stinkier farts and poop, and may notice some nausea when taking creatine monohydrate. If you want to avoid those, then just take another form of creatine.
More questions? Look on my profile for my email address.
vegan bodybuilder and personal trainer
Creatine causes water retention so you'll look pretty bloated from time to time
Turds the consistency of half-set concrete.
Baby dick syndrome
