Starting Creatine Cycle

[navyseal2101]

Ok, so I just bought Whey Gold Standard and Pure Creatine Monohydrate. The monohydrate i have to take with sweet drinks, and i'm in the loading phase as you would all know. My first question is how many grams of sugar should I be taking per 5g of creatine? Second is how much creatine a day should I be taking in in my loading phase at 150lbs?

 

[a123]

Ok, its gonna be a long post, it might help alot of other people too.

What is creatine?
Creatine is C10 H16 N5 O13 P3.
Creatine is a mix of arginine, glycine, methionine, 95%-98% of the creatine in our body is in our muscles, and 2%-5% is in our heart,brain and testicles. Creatine is based in meat, 200gram of meet is 1gram of creatine thats why you should take it as a supplement, because its impossible to eat 1000gram of meat a day. Normally our muscles got 120-130Millimole to every 1KG of muscle, after loading creatine the maximum we can go is 155Millimole to every 1KG of muscle.

How does it work?
Creatine is inside the muscle cell as phospohcretine and his job is to give the muscle energy. Creatine also make our muscles gain water and make our muscle heavier. Creatine in our body transform to Creatine Phosphate (CP). The CP job is to make ATP (adenosine triphospate). ATP is an energy we have in our muscles that we use to lift something.

How to take it?
You should take 4 spoons of 5 grams 5 times a day - totally 20 grams a day for 5 days in a row. After that take only one spoon of creatine once a day, in days you work out take a spoon of 5 grams of creatine before/after the workout.
You should drink alot of water, and you are going to run to the toilet all the time, on every 5gram of creatine you should drink 1000ml of water.
After 8 weeks you should stop with the creatine for 1-2 months until starting again.

With sugar or not?
Some people recommand you take creatine with sugar because they say the insulin 'push' the creatine to the muscles, but thats not true, sugar doesn't help at all in this case.
There been two studies about this subject (taking it with sugar or not):
Study 1 - Results = Insulin doesn't help at all.
Study 2 - Results = Insulin does help alittle bit, but if you want it to help alittle bit you have to take ALOT ALOT ALOT of sugar in your body, so much sugar so its physicaly impossible to be done natural.
Mix it with water and drink it, it tastes bad, sugar is unnececery.

If you have kidney problems, you should ask a doctors before starting to use creatine.

THAT WAS A LONG POST.

 

[eastenders]

Useful post a123.

A question if I may -

the 1-2 month break you should take after 6 weeks of creatine - is the six weeks and the one-two weeks dependent on your weight as the instructions on the creatine I have at the moment (Body Fortress) says you should take it for five days of loading, followed by 11 weeks of regular intake, then a rest period after for four weeks.

 

[a123]

I edited my post and corrected myself:
1) You should take creatine for 8 weeks and then 1-2 months break.
2) After the loading stage you should take only 5grams of creatine a day. Its unnececery to take more, because after the loading time of creatine, when your muscles full or creatine - any extra gram of creatine you will just pee out.

Loading for 1 week, and then 5 gram a day before the workout for 7 weeks.

You should cycle creating (cycle = take it for X weeks and then don't take it for Y weeks). Why you should take it in a cycle? Because you want to allow your body to make creatine by himself so he wont "forget" how. You can read the study :
'Guerrero-Ontiveros ML, Wallimann T.
Creatine supplementation in health and disease. Effects of chronic creatine ingestion in vivo: down-regulation of the expression of creatine transporter isoforms in skeletal muscle.'
Taking creatine for 3 months is unnececery and there are alot of studies proving it.


In few lines:
1 week = loading, 5gram of creatine (take it with water!) 4 times a day for a week.

THEN

7 weeks = Taking 5 grams of creatine a day (more then 5gram of creatine a day in this time - you gonna just pee it).

THEN

1-2 months without creatine.

THEN

Do it again. Thats how you cycle.

 

[navyseal2101]

ok thanks alot, and your sure I dont need to take it with sugar b/c the lady at gnc said I did so idk.

 

[Throttle]

i'm not saying that everyone at GNC is clueless, i'm just saying I would take whatever advice their clerks gave me, and do the opposite.

 

[a123]

Thats my pleasure.

Sugar doesn't help. This lady studied nutrition or physiology? I guess not..

As I said, awhile ago people said that creatine is better if you take sugar with it because then your insulin level goes up - and makes more precent of the creatine to get inside your muscles. But now there are alot of studied that show that insulin won't 'push' the creatine to the muscle.

Creatine should be taken with water, water helps.

 

[navyseal2101]

ok thanks, also on the 5th day i messed up and only took 10g of creatine for loading phase. Other days I took in 15-20g. The 6th day I took 10g to make up for it. Should I re-do my loading phase or am I probably fine?

 

[I Am Sam]

isn't creatine bad for you?
my friend cam took creatine and he got pretty big, but then his muscles got all flabby and gross...
i thought if youre gonna take a suppliment, you should take whey

 

[emelec]

can i take creatine while on accutane?

 

[navyseal2101]

I take 100% whey gold standard also, but my friend did a creatine cycle, you just have to train hard coming off of it otherwise, as your friend did, your muscles will basicly go away.

 

[a123]

Creatine WONT make you gain muscle and WONT make you use muscle.
So what it does? when using creatine your ATP energy recover faster, you get stronger and can lift bigger weights, lifting bigger weights + good nutrition = gain muscles.

Navyseal2101, I think its fine.

emelc, creatine dry your body and makes you lose alot of water. and accutane do the same. If you taking Creatine and Accutane you should be drinking alot of water, like a camel. My advice to you is to ask your doctor, maybe mixing creatine and accutane is bad for your liver, ask him and tell me what he said, I would like to know..

 

[king0fhearts59]

ok the first misconception here is that recent studies show that you dont even need to LOAD with creatine, its always in your body just in small amounts.. if you load 20 grams a day for 5 days (typical loading phase length) youll just piss most of it out, you can only store a certain amount in your muscles. second, its not bad for and wont make you break if you drink sufficient amounts of water with it (even then it rarely does). reccomendations of creatine consumption are just simply 5-10 grams post workout and maybe 5 gs half hour pre workout if you can stomach it

 

[Master Bates]

bump

^ is it true that you don't really need to load when starting out on creatine? I just got a jar of it and will be starting tomorrow. I don't want to waste any.

 

[Omen]

bump

^ is it true that you don't really need to load when starting out on creatine? I just got a jar of it and will be starting tomorrow. I don't want to waste any.

What the reason behind loading is, is to saturate the pools in the body of creatine. In fact, you can load like that, max out the stores, and then really take about 2g per day and that will make sure levels are always at what they are supposed to be.

Short-term supplementation with 15 to 25 g creatine for five days elevates the total creatine content in the muscles by 15-30% and the phosphocreatine stores by 10-40%

20g total for 5 days will put the levels at about 140 mmol/kg dm This is MAX. Then to maintain that you use like I said about 2g to keep it at that number.

 

[Omen]

Creatine WONT make you gain muscle and WONT make you use muscle.
So what it does? when using creatine your ATP energy recover faster, you get stronger and can lift bigger weights, lifting bigger weights + good nutrition = gain muscles.

You kind of contradicted yourself here. You said it WONT make you gain muscle, but then you say what it does below, and your = says... GAIN MUSCLES.

I'll answer the question... It WILL make you gain muscle. That whole process and the way it works helps you gain muscle. Better, faster recovery, stronger, and all of that stuff equates into gaining muscle. Yeah your nutrition has to be there, and if you ate a piece of bread the whole day and took it, it would be useless, but your statement should be changed.

 

[Ramas28]

hey guys, i've been taking creatine for about 4-5 weeks (1 week of loading, 3-4 weeks of maintanance), and then had to stop for a week. Since I haven't finished the normal 8 weeks cycle, should i start taking it again or do i still have to wait 1-2months?

 

[Alle_Gory]

hey guys, i've been taking creatine for about 4-5 weeks (1 week of loading, 3-4 weeks of maintanance), and then had to stop for a week. Since I haven't finished the normal 8 weeks cycle, should i start taking it again or do i still have to wait 1-2months?

Seriously uninformed. Creatine is NOT a drug, creatine is NOT a hormone and does NOT affect your hormones. It's like a vitamin almost.

It does not need to be cycled.

 

[azrael]

when they say a lot of water while on creatine it is the 8 glasses you are suppose to be drinking or more .??

 

[Alle_Gory]

when they say a lot of water while on creatine it is the 8 glasses you are suppose to be drinking or more .??

When you're thirsty drink something.