ANyone had any experiences with getting the runs from taking creatine? Any way to avoid this?
I didn’t get the runs, but when I would take it by itself mixed in water, I’d get nauseous as hell. I haven’t taken it in two years.
It’s pretty common. How much are you taking in one sitting? I’d imagine if you took the normal 5 and split it up into 2 maybe even 3 servings it wouldn’t happen.
Make sure you’ve got it all dissolved, that will help.
As I think Cy suggested mix it into some warm drink like green tea.
Well i don’t believe that its common place to get runs when taking creatine.
When you ingest creatine, it is held in the stomach for a while. Although the various stomach enzymes have little effect on creatine, hydrochloric acid, which activates the enzymes, causes a minor chemical reaction.
Im suggestion is to load for 5 days, 30gms, with plenty of water, then 5-10 gms after workouts.
Some of the creatine is converted into inactive metabolite creatinine. And your body has wonderful metabolic processes to get rid of its creatinine.
One of the simplest was to improve creatine absorbtion and not turning into creatinine is to dilute the stomach acid by drinking some extra water with your creatine.
The next step is to lower the stomach acid by using an alkaline substance. The obvious one is sodium bicarbonate found in Alka-Seltzer. Drop one in your power drive in the morning with 5 gms creatine as raising the pH level of the stomach speeds gastric emptying.
So for creatine, I’d recommend 3 Alka-Seltzer tablets in 16oz water with your power drive.
I’m strongly under the impression that loading is a marketing scheme and won’t make much of a difference at all as your body can’t absorb more than somewhere around 5 grams of creatine a day anyway. It varies depending on your weight.
[quote]Wideguy wrote:
I’m strongly under the impression that loading is a marketing scheme and won’t make much of a difference at all as your body can’t absorb more than somewhere around 5 grams of creatine a day anyway. It varies depending on your weight.[/quote]
Those comments go along with the protein myth of the body can’t digest more than 30 grams per meal.
Creatine gives you more anaerobic power and strength, it increases muscle cell volume hardening up the muscle tissue and increasing size. It also gives the muscle more energy to use in recovery situations. You need to load with creatine for at least 5 days; if you are a bigger person it may take 7 days before you feel a difference in power.
Generally, you need about 0.3g of creatine per kg bodyweight to load with. This means that a 70kg person should be taking 21 g of creatine a 100kg person 30 g of creatine per day. Daily doses higher than these are not recommended by me unless you are a professional athlete.
Some people do experience a loss of power when they cycle-off creatine. When you stop taking it, it will take 4 weeks to drain out your muscles completely. After the loading period you can normally maintain on 5 grams if you are about 80 kg and 10 grams if you are about 100kg and train hard; 5g is normally enough.
Normally most people’s muscles are saturated after a week of creatine loading and don’t need, and aren’t able to absorb any more.
Some professional cyclists at the Institute of Sport in Australia who were training 8 hours a day were experimenting on massive doses of creatine at one stage. This not the sort of situation most of the public are in, and so i don’t normally recommend it.
Some big bodybuilders have their own system of using large amounts like this; they may take it for 3 to 4 weeks then have a week off then start again.
Generally the rule is: take what your body needs.
The loss of condition from cycling off creatine will depend on how much of the size gain was actually retained fluid rather than muscle gain. Some people really blow up when they load and seem to lose it when they go off it. The lost weight is not muscle tissue itself; as long as you have an adequate intake of protein you should be ok. If someone relies on creatine purely for the sizing effects and doesn’t train enough, they could lose alot of size.
Combining creatine with a high glycaemic carbohydrate will promote an insulin release - otherwise known as a spike effect. The faster a carbohydrate enters the bloodstream the quicker the insulin response and the more insulin is released.
Insulin helps the creatine enter the muscle cell more easily. Powdered glucose is the best type of sugar to use because it affects insulin the most, and it?s really cheap to buy. You can use a Creatine that already has glucose in it, or you can have it with a sweet juice like grape juice. Fruit juices are also okay, apple juice is good.
Water will not affect absorption, but it may not help the effect as much.
Divided dose means to separate the daily dosage into equal parts and take it over the course of the day.
The reason for this is your body can’t digest and absorb too much of anything at once. It is like eating all your daily protein of steak, ham, chicken, and eggs in one meal. You would never do that!
Alot of the confusion comes from the fact people are used to taking large amounts of protein powders at once, often in 60g serves. They think that taking creatine is like this.
Creatine is a highly concentrated substance; the average 70kg person only makes inside their bodies about 2g per day. You need teaspoon size doses.
Basically you need to take the 20 -30g per day in divided rounded teaspoon doses (5g), this means one teaspoon 4 to 6 times a day for a period of 5 to 7 days depending on bodyweight.
Sometimes people have consumed the entire 25g standard dose at once and had some unpleasant bowel experiences, or stomach aches.
[quote]Alphaboy wrote:
Those comments go along with the protein myth of the body can’t digest more than 30 grams per meal.
[/quote]
no, the reason that creatine does not need to be loaded is becuse even taken at 5g/day it gets to maximal capacity, just a little slower. The only time you need ot load is when you want to max out stores quickly
[quote]Alphaboy wrote:
Wideguy wrote:
I’m strongly under the impression that loading is a marketing scheme and won’t make much of a difference at all as your body can’t absorb more than somewhere around 5 grams of creatine a day anyway. It varies depending on your weight.
Those comments go along with the protein myth of the body can’t digest more than 30 grams per meal.
…
[/quote]
For all the mythbusting I didn’t see any references or anything else convincing to back any of that up.
I found this article in the archives, which is very thourough and suggests you don’t need more than a few grams a day.
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459369
Nick
The only time I get the runs from creatine is if I eat hamburger meat in my post workout meal. My stomach will hurt, then I have to go to the pot.