People hoping to build muscle with the support of a creatine supplement might be disappointed by new research which shows it has little to no effect when taken at the recommended level.
People who take the popular sports supplement creatine and lift weights do not build muscle any faster than those who do resistance training without the supplement, new research shows.
A UNSW-led clinical trial that put 54 people through a 12-week resistance training program found no difference between those who took the supplement at the recommended dose and those who did not, the research published in Nutrients shows.
Both groups in the randomised control trial put on an average of two kilograms of lean body mass during the program, which involved three supervised resistance training sessions per week.
“We’ve shown that taking five grams of creatine supplement per day does not make any difference to the amount of lean muscle mass people put on while resistance training,” said senior author Dr Mandy Hagstrom, from UNSW’s School of Health Sciences.
“The benefits of creatine may have been overestimated in the past, due to methodological problems with previous studies,” she added.
Creatine is a naturally occurring compound which supplies energy to muscles. It is produced by the liver, pancreas and kidneys, and found in protein-rich foods. Previous research shows creatine supplements help build muscles, enhance athletic performance, and may even have cognitive benefits.
However, previous trials have started supplementation and exercise programs on the same day, making it difficult to separate the effect of each on muscle gains, Dr Hagstrom said. They’ve also overlooked the potential for creatine to cause water retention, though more research was needed to confirm this.
So, in this trial, those in the supplement group started on creatine one week before the exercise program began, taking five grams per day, which is at the upper end of the recommended maintenance dose of three to five grams.
“We had what we call a wash-in phase, where half of the participants started taking the supplement, without changing anything else in their daily life, to give their body a chance to stabilise in terms of its response to the supplement,” Dr Hagstrom said.