In the wide world of nutritional supplements, creatine has been hailed time and time again for its ability to help give a boost to your athletic performance. Among many of its benefits such as increasing muscle mass, endurance and strength, more recent study has indicated that creatine also has protective benefits. In particular slowing down the progression of neurological diseases.
Deciding whether to include supplements into your exercise regime can be tricky, and the opinion bag can be mixed. So here are 3 things you didn’t know about creatine.
Creatine is in fact a naturally occurring substance in your body. 95% of your body’s natural supply is stored within our muscle cells in the form of phosphocreatine. The remaining 5% is found in other places such as kidney, liver and brain.
Many factors influence naturally occurring creatine stores such as hormones, meat intake, amount of muscle mass and how much exercise we get.
Supplementation of creatine helps to fill any voids, ultimately allowing your body to produce more ATP aka the bodies energy currency. The more ATP within your body, the better your performance in the gym will be.
Adding creatine helps to keep your endurance up so that your 10th rep, is just as easy as your first rep!
No matter if you’re a seasoned gym junkie or a ‘once in a while’ gym goer creatine can benefit you. Creatine helps to improve your bodies muscles mass providing both short and long-term muscle fibre growth. Increasing your muscle mass is beneficial for a variety of individuals from elite athletes to older sedentary adults.
Among other things, creatine helps to prevent muscle breakdown and improve signalling between cells so that muscle repair and growth is more effective.
Like every other muscle in the body, your brain requires ATP to function at its best. More research is needed in this area, but early research shows creatine helps to slow down the progression of neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease as well as improving memory and brain function in older adults.
When it comes down to it, creatine is a useful and effective supplement providing a range of health benefits for your athletic performance as well as your overall health.
You can find out more about our Athletic Sport Creatine here!
