School - Creatine Report

Diet and Nutrition
1

Hi everyone,

We have to do a report in our graduating class this year which has to be about 20 pages long.
I chose to do my report in my major field of study - biology.

I signed up for the topic creatine and supplementation in sport.
The focus should be on the scientific area - I don’t want to talk much about products etc…

I have to do practice work too inside this report…
I’m currently thinking about this:

Checking Creatinine levels in urine in following cases:

  1. Placebo
  2. Creatine only
  3. Creatine + few carbs
  4. Creatine + many carbs
  5. Creatine + few protein
  6. Creatine + much protein

So… how can I test the creatinine levels in urine at home? Is there something like a test strip?

Besides that, can you think of something really important, impressive or whatever I should include by all means?

thank you very much

2

So you are just going to check the creatinine levels of people you give equal amounts of creatine? My first guess would lead me to think that every subject’s creatinine levels will be the same. I don’t know that high/low carbs or high/low protein will affect creatinine levels. I would think that once creatine is in your bloodstream, it will produce the same amount of creatinine regardless of other variables.

Hell, who knows, maybe I am wrong.

Chris

3

i’m actually betting levels will vary depending from person to person, just dependant upon how efficient their body is in synth endogenous creatine, and a function of their physical activity.

As far as easily quantitatively measuring creatinine in the urine, no idea dude. The only method i know which would be “easy” is using a spectrophotometer. One “blank” to calibrate with everything urine related in it but creatinine, and one with your urine + creatinine.

you’ll have an absorbance maximum before you actually start measurements. But assuming you have a little bit of free pure creatinine present, this is not as difficult as obtaining a urine sample devoid of creatinine.

if you had access to HPLC or even a basic Column you could purify quite a bit of creatinine. but that’s probably out of the question.

4

thank you for the answers so far…

what do you mean by HPLC?

My idea on this creatinine level measurement was this:

Unused Creatine or creatine out of the muscel cells which has been used converts into creatinine and shows up in urine measurements.
So you could derive from the creatinine levels in your urine how much of the supplemented creatine was actually used (stored in muscle)… right?
I know there are many factors, like kidney function and physical activity.

But I only want to compare the results in relation to each other…
Like: using creatine with high carb gets about 2x less creatine levels, so a greater amount of creatine must have been used in muscle…

what do you think of this?
Totally absurd???

Are there any other possibilities for doing something scientifical with creatine coming into your mind? I’m also thinking of a survey… but this should be the last option…

thank you very much…

5

[quote]summon wrote:
thank you for the answers so far…

what do you mean by HPLC?

My idea on this creatinine level measurement was this:

Unused Creatine or creatine out of the muscel cells which has been used converts into creatinine and shows up in urine measurements.
So you could derive from the creatinine levels in your urine how much of the supplemented creatine was actually used (stored in muscle)… right?
I know there are many factors, like kidney function and physical activity.

But I only want to compare the results in relation to each other…
Like: using creatine with high carb gets about 2x less creatine levels, so a greater amount of creatine must have been used in muscle…

what do you think of this?
Totally absurd???

Are there any other possibilities for doing something scientifical with creatine coming into your mind? I’m also thinking of a survey… but this should be the last option…

thank you very much…[/quote]

forget i mentioned HPLC it would be too difficult and troublesome to get your hands on that type of apparatus, “High pressure Liquid Chromatography” it’s just a purification method, it seperates out individual compounds if you have a mixture.

Obviously to measure the effect of supplemented creatine you would require a control, due to the body making it’s own creatine would show up in urine as well.

This is where it would be difficult somewhat, unless you did all the different measurements on the same subjects instead of dividing people into groups. I have read that creatine synthesis is markedly different between individuals. So in effect you would have to administer placebo, measure urinary creatinine with that individual, probably in g/ml if the numbers are logical to do so. Then you administer supplemental creatine with high carbs for instance, and then measure urinary creatine.

This is another thing you have to think about: lets say backround creatinine concentration in the urine is 5 micrograms/ml. You supplement creatine and suddenly you see it jumps to 50micrograms/ml creatinine. This does not neccessarily mean all 45 micrograms/ml increase was due to muscle tissue substrate phosphorylation.

A question to think about here. Is when creatine is cyclically condensed to creatinine in the stomach, can creatinine be absorbed into the blood as well as creatine? or is creatinine excreted and only creatine absorbed.

Something tells me some creatinine is absorbed and will effect your urinary results. You cannot postulate that the total increase in urinary creatinine was due to active phosphorylation.

I’m really interested in this study, maybe it could be simplified somewhat, and i will think about how. feel free to PM me at any time if you feel like i could help.

apparently they do make creatinine test strips, so hopefully the range they test for will coincide with your tests.

I would like to test the following on 1 individual:
making sure to keep diet completely consistent:
backround creatinine concentration(placebo)
backround creatinine concentration(placebo)+ weight training
supplemented creatine and resulting creatinine concentration
supplemented creatine and resulting creatinine concentration after weight training.

This would allow you to figure out how much was used during weight training, as i’m sure after a couple hours of supplementation, creatinine produced through metabolic condensation would be gone.

6

oh yea obviously the other reasons for doing all tests on the same individual: it’s also dependant upon body mass.