What Creatine Does to the Body

have you ever wondered about taking creatine and if it even works the first time i heard about creatine i was back in high school and it actually had a negative stigma attached to it there's this group of guys that were getting bigger and stronger and people were like whispering behind their backs they're on the creatine like it was some negative drug or anabolic steroid that they were taking so we need to clear all this up and in today's video we're going to do that by talking about what creatine does inside of your body what organs

and tissues get involved do you need to supplement it can you get it from your diet and is it safe and of course we'll talk about does it increase athletic performance does it make you bigger faster stronger kind of like the best superhero of all time which we clearly all know is superman regardless of what anyone tells you but we can argue about superheroes in the comments later because for now we need to talk about what creatine does inside of you so let's jump right into this creatine is a nitrogen-containing compound similar to protein it's

made up of three amino acids called arginine glycine and methionine now you may have heard of amino acids in the past maybe you've had discussions around essential amino acids versus non-essential amino acids the reader's digest version of that is that the essential amino acids we have to consume in our diet because we can't synthesize those on our own like we can the non-essential amino acids which brings us to a very nice video quiz question of the day of the three amino acids that i mentioned that build up creatine glycine arginine and methionine which one of

those are considered essential versus non-essential amino acids go ahead and post that answer in the comments below and we'll pin the correct answer at the top of the comments but coming back to creatine we're going to find that creatine is an important energy source especially for these amazing structures that we refer to as the skeletal muscles but we have to figure out how do we get it is creatine one of those things that only avid gym goers get through supplementation and the answer is no we can actually get creatine through certain sources or food sources

specifically things like beef and fishes so those who consume those types of meat can get anywhere from like one to two grams of creatine per day however say we're dealing with somebody who's a non-meaty dirt maybe vegan or vegetarian in those cases they'll get negligible amounts almost none at all so that would possibly beg the question could you even develop say like a creatine deficiency and be missing out on that potential energy source and luckily no because remember we said it's built up of those three amino acids and as long as you're consuming those amino

acids in other words getting adequate protein intake from other sources there's certain organs throughout the body that can synthesize creatine two main ones one of which being this amazing liver that you can see right here as well as these cool little structures or organs we should say the kidneys that we have on the tray here these can also help synthesize the creatine now whether you consume the creatine in your diet or it's synthesized in the liver or the kidneys that creatine will then be transported throughout the bloodstream and taken up by or at least the

majority of which will be taken up by again these skeletal muscles and i want you to think about as the creatine's going into the skeletal muscles it's kind of filling them up like it's a little gas tank of creatine and a third of that creatine going into the skeletal muscle will just stay as regular old creatine but about two-thirds of it will get phosphorylated and become something called creatine phosphate also referred to by some as phosphocreatine that's going to be really important in just a second but i do want to go back to this discussion

about meat-eaters versus non-meat-eaters and comparing the creatine levels in their skeletal muscles a lot of the research is pretty consistent in showing that those who do not consume meat although they wouldn't be like deficient in creatine they still tend to have lower amounts lower overall amounts of creatine in the skeletal muscle as compared to those who do consume meat but luckily if you choose not to consume meat you can get creatine through other sources like through supplementation and isn't that kind of one of the main points of this video to discuss does it make sense

to increase the creatine levels more than what you could get naturally in your diet through the use of a supplement and speaking of supplementing things in our diet it can often be challenging to get every vitamin mineral and nutrient just from the foods that you consume and so often it makes sense to get those ingredients from other sources and that's why i'm excited to talk about ag-1 by athletic greens ag-1 contains 75 whole food-sourced ingredients and contains vitamins minerals superfoods adaptogens and probiotics i've been taking this for months now and has really helped simplify my

health routine i hate opening multiple pill bottles every morning so since taking ag-1 i've been able to shrink this down into two things every morning i get my one scoop of ag-1 by athletic greens and i also use my one scoop of 5 grams of creatine which is great for this video and we'll talk about that a little bit later but with that one scoop of ag-1 by athletic greens i put it in my 8 ounces of water shake it up drink it down and i'm good to go what's also cool about ag-1 is that

it's nsf certified which means what's written on the label you can be assured is actually found in the product and some of my favorite benefits of ag-1 is one it can help boost energy levels i'm not a big coffee drinker so anything that can help increase energy levels throughout the day is definitely a benefit for me it also can help with performance during exercise and aid in recovery between workouts was it which is extremely important to me because i love exercise and i'm trying to actually train for a spartan race which is an obstacle course

race coming up and i have to destroy jeremy during the next race he cannot win for those who don't know jeremy is he founded the lab with me years ago he's behind the scenes he's also my brother-in-law married my sister so even more of a nemesis because of that but he doesn't get any ag-1 we're not giving him any he doesn't get the benefits of energy he doesn't get the benefits of increased performance or recovery none of that until after the race we don't care if he shrivels up from a vitamin deficiency prior to the

race that sounds extreme but we're competitive but for all of you we want great and good things for your health and wellness so if you're interested in all these benefits of aging one by athletic greens and outperforming jeremy go to athleticgreens.com human anatomy and they'll give our community a free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin d as well as five free travel packets the link is in the description below so how does creatine work and how does it help provide energy for our cells again with that focus being on our skeletal muscle cells also known

as our skeletal muscle fibers now when our skeletal muscle fibers contract they utilize or burn through the energy currency of our cells called atp or adenosine triphosphate again that phosphate is going to be important now atp is only stored in limited amounts in your muscle tissue and so when we're exercising we're burning through it like crazy and only having limited amounts it would make sense that our bodies great ways to synthesize more of this atp and there's actually three ways that our bodies do it or in other words three energy systems the first is referred

to as the creatine phosphate energy system the second is glycolysis often referred to as anaerobic glycolysis because oxygen is not necessary for that process and also we have the third oxidative phosphorylation which oxidative refers to utilizing oxygen and you may have heard of things like the krebs cycle or the citric acid cycle and the mitochondria and those last two glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation we'll save those for later because as the first one's name implied the creatine phosphate energy system that's where we're going to live for this video it's also even referred to as the atp

phosphocreatine system but it's the same thing and this energy system the creatine phosphate energy system is best suited for very high intensity exercise things that last like five to ten seconds so think of like a full-fledged sprint max vertical jumping or really high intensity weight training like high high weight low repetition and so when we're talking about this and you're contracting your muscles during the sprinting or the weight lifting you're going to start burning through that atp and as the atp burns off what happens is you break off a phosphate and when a phosphate breaks

off that adenosine triphosphate it releases the energy necessary but that atp then becomes adp which is adenosine diphosphate and this is where the creatine gets involved and it's amazing so amazing in fact that we're going to use the whiteboard for this welcome to the whiteboard session everyone as you can see we've got a nice little graph here that we're going to go over in just a second and an ever so accurate anatomical rendition of trunk anatomy you can see the big old pectoralis major muscles the six-pack muscle that we call the rectus abdominis and of

course a belly button for a frame of reference and let's use the pectoralis major or a bench press as an example or the quads and the hamstrings that you might use during a sprint like if we're bench pressing high weight low repetitions regardless either one of these high intensity muscle contractions we're going to utilize the atp by breaking off one of those phosphate bonds and releasing energy poof we've released the energy for the muscle contraction and then we're left with adp or adenosine diphosphate now remember earlier i mentioned creatine as it's stored in the muscles

about a third of it's stored as regular old creatine but about two-thirds of it is stored as creatine phosphate and that's what the crp stands for here now with the help of an enzyme called creatine kinase that creatine phosphate that phosphate's going to break off and then re-phosphorylate adp in other words think of it as donating its phosphate to adp to create more atp and that's an extremely fast process it's a one-step chemical reaction so really convenient for high intensity muscle contractions and obviously once we burn off that phosphate from the creatine phosphate we'd be

left with creatine but there's limitations yes it's extremely fast process that we can replenish atp but it only lasts about five to ten seconds because we only have so much creatine phosphate stored in the muscle tissue and you might think well how do we get more of that creatine phosphate how do we restore that well after you go for a sprint or high intensity weight training or high intensity exercise you tend to rest between sets and so you're breathing heavy during those rest periods and you're utilizing oxidative phosphorylation another energy system that when we utilize

oxygen it's really efficient in replenishing atp and utilizing energy to re-phosphorylate creatine back into creatine phosphate so you're ready for that next sprint session or that next you know weight lifting set after you know resting one to two minutes and that's about how long it takes to replenish that is one to two minutes now this next chart or graph right here kind of helps gives us another idea or it helps drive this point home further they did a test on sprinters in this so this is pulled from a research study the green is representing creatine

phosphate levels in the muscle and the atps of the blues representing the atp levels in muscle tissue and for you chemistry geeks they measured it in millimoles per kilogram and they did it at various different distances 20 40 60 all the way up to 100 meter sprint and so at zero obviously you're seeing the resting levels and as expected as the sprint started and continued the atp levels would decline but at about 60 meters you could see we got a little blip and we can think thank that creatine phosphate energy system for replenishing some of

that atp and at least helping maintain some of those levels for five to ten seconds but as you can see that creatine phosphate really drops initially and then continues to go down and down and down and down and eventually we'll run out of that and we won't be able to maintain that level of exercise intensity and so that begs a really interesting question what if we could start with a higher level of resting creatine phosphate if we could increase the amount that was stored in the muscle tissue could that improve athletic performance well let's find

out so answering this big question can we pack more creatine into the skeletal muscle tissue in the form of creatine phosphate in order to improve athletic performance and the data pretty clearly shows that the answer is yes most of the data shows that people can increase their creatine muscle storage from anywhere of about 10 to 40 percent of an increase now i do have to say some people don't respond much to creatine but the majority of people can get those increases of 10 to 40 percent now how much would you have to consume to increase

it that amount and it's about five grams per day and some people will ask well can i get that from my diet remember where we got creatine from in the diet mostly in beefs and fish so you'd have to consume a ton of beef or fish in order to get five grams and when you compare that to how easy it is just take a little scoop mix it in your water and drink it down it's a lot more feasible to take it in the supplement you just have to take so much meat in in order

to get the five grams and especially when you compare that to say like creatine loading creatine loading is when people take about 20 grams per day for about five to seven days and then they'll maintain with five grams after that and the idea behind that is to hurry and increase the levels maybe they're a little impatient they don't want to wait for it to build up over time but that can increase the levels a little bit more quickly but again the most important part is being consistent with that five grams per day to maintain those

levels now once the levels are increased what does that mean for us does it magically increase your max bench press or your max squat does it make you a faster sprinter that doesn't really that's not really how creatine works you're not just going to magically go in and say your max bench press is 225 and then it just jumps up to 245 with taking creatine because the creatine phosphate system was all about replenishing atp so that high intensity activity could last five to ten seconds but now maybe you can maintain that intensity a little bit

longer maybe you could sprint at that intensity for a couple seconds longer maybe there's this weight that you could only do with six reps maybe you're curling and you could only do a certain weight for six repetitions but now on creatine you might be able to do it eight or nine repetitions and so you can see that you're increasing your workload per session at that higher intensity and over time that's going to pay dividends in your muscular adaptations it's going to increase strength levels more efficiently over time because again your workload's increased as compared to

when you're not using creatine finally is creatine safe and are there any potential side effects that we need to consider when increasing creatine intake well there have been some reported side effects things like weight gain and that's likely due to creatine increasing the intracellular water content or in other words the cells retaining a little bit more water that's generally pretty insignificant for most people but something to consider on an individual basis there's also been claims that creatine could be linked linked to muscle cramps but that data is pretty weak and most people don't experience cramping

in their muscles due to creatine also reports of things like nausea and upset stomach again variable from person to person and things that you'll have to decide on an individual basis if it's worth it or not but there's plenty of people who don't really have any gi side effects but coming back to this overall idea is it actually safe and the organs that tend to come up in these safety discussions are the kidneys which we saw a little bit earlier but we can see on the tray again here now creatine gets converted to another compound

that sounds very similar called creatinine and the creatinine will actually go in through the bloodstream through the blood vessels in the kidney here and make it out into the cortex of the kidney called the renal cortex where it will be get filtered out of the blood into these pyramids called collecting tubules that are within the pyramids and then they'll go into the urinary tubules and eventually out the toilet now creatinine levels are often looked at in clinical settings because creatinine levels are kind of this assessment of kidney health and kidney function and so this idea

was if we increase our creatine are we also going to increase our creatinine and is that going to have a problem on the kit with the kidneys but when you look at the data people who take creatine their creatinine levels are still within the normal limits and there's been no data up to this point that has shown taking creatine as a supplement or increasing those levels has any major long-term or adverse effects on kidney health thanks for watching the video everyone hopefully you learned some cool new stuff about creatine and if you're interested be sure

to check out ag-1 by athletic greens that link is in the description below and if you feel the need like subscribe leave some comments we've got that video quiz question that you can comment on you can also comment on future videos you'd like to see in the future as well as talk about why superman is such a better superhero than batman justin thinks batman's better it doesn't make any sense jeffrey and i are on the superman bandwagon which is the right bandwagon so you have full permission to flame justin over his batman beliefs and we'll

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