Creatine, miraculous business

1999/08/29 Kortabarria Olabarria, Beñardo - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Biokimika

The latest research on creatine has corroborated existing convictions, an essential supplement for athletes. At least creatine supporters say this and sell it. According to these food experts, creatine is the miraculous product sought. This product, in addition to improving muscle strength and speed, unlike anabolic steroids, has no harmful effects on the body. Despite the years, creatine does not harm the body. The American Journal of Sports Medicine has recently published an article on the use of creatine based on clinical trials with athletes. Several football players have been given 15 grams of creatine for a long time and daily. During the duration of the investigation and subsequent studies no damage has been detected, except for some muscle calamity.

From the point of view of sports legislation, creatine can be a great manga for athletes. Due to its origin in proteins, creatine is considered as an animal food or an additive that improves sports performance against an adequate diet enriched with amino acids, vitamins and minerals.

How does it affect?

The body produces creatine spontaneously in the liver and kidneys. Therefore, the muscle itself does not produce creatine. The main sources of creatine feed are found in red meats and fish. However, creatine is very sensitive to heat and in food processing the number of creatines decreases considerably. In normal body metabolism, binding with phosphoric acid produces creatine phosphates. When doing sports, especially in short sessions, you lose speed at the end. In fact, creatine phosphate stores and ATP (adenosintriphosphate) are the main sources of energy for high-power sports. When both substances begin to deplete, muscle contraction begins to fail. The use of creatine has begun to increase among athletes because it concentrates on muscle and delays the depletion of creatine phosphates by practicing high intensity sports. Starting to use creatine separates the loading phase from the daily phase. The loading phase has an average duration of five days and in this phase 20 grams of creatine are consumed per day. From there, once the workouts are finished it is enough with a daily dose of five grams, which is the maintenance phase.

Some of the advantages of using creatine have already been mentioned above, but there are others. CreatinePure product vendors put creatine on their website (http://ink.yahoo.com/bin/query_es?p=creatin) the following advantages:

• Growing resistance.
• Increasing potential of all work.
• Increased muscle speed.
• Larger muscles.
• Increased instant energy, reduced feeling of muscle fatigue, rapid muscle development and increased muscle contraction capacity.

For example, a sport that requires a lot of sudden effort refers to that of weight lifters. Weight lifters who take creatine do longer workouts, use higher weights in workouts and have larger muscles.

But isn't it doping?

The advantages of creatine are so obvious that, of course, it has also generated debate. In the same way that for some, like the doctor of the Italian football team, creatine is only a food additive, for others, like the coach of the football team Naples, creatine and amino acids should be banned.

In Euskal Herria, the topic has also been addressed in depth. Iñigo Mujika, a PhD in Physical Education and a PhD in Muscle Exercise Biology from the University of Saint Etienne in France, presented in the Department of Physiology of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry of the University of the Basque Country his doctoral thesis entitled Supplement of oral creatine as a spiritual support to the performance of highly trained athletes recently. The thesis carried out by Pamplona could be interesting to translate it into these lines, but, due to local problems, only the conclusions should be fixed. Along the same lines, Iñigo Mujika and Sabino Padilla have written some article about creatine, trying to answer at least two questions: creatine increases sports performance? is it doping? As for the first question, both experts say that the research carried out so far does not allow clarification, but that it is clear that if it is to influence those who practice sport often and not those who do so sporadically. Therefore, although American research qualifies it as miraculous, creatine will not help athletes set impossible records or break all performance limits.

On the other hand, in the case of doping no doping, they are positioned in favor of the negative and consider it a food additive. "In the broader definition of doping, if it is considered a substance used in excessive amounts to increase performance artificially, doping can be considered. But this does not make sense, with the same argument should be included in the list of doping supplements of vitamins, drinks and energy foods, as well as water and spaghetti, since both substances are consumed in large quantities and undoubtedly improve sports performance and can cause health damage. That is, taking too many carbohydrates can cause serious digestive problems and drinking too much water in long-time sports can even lead to death." So don't use substances with a miraculous surname, because in this life there are no miracles."

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