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Consequences of Using Creatine

Jul 12, 2011 | By Christa Miller
Consequences of Using Creatine
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Creatine, a compound that naturally occurs in your body, helps energize your muscles. Athletes widely began using creatine supplements in the 1990s hoping to build more lean muscle and enhance their performance, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. However, using creatine can come with some serious consequences. Talk to your doctor before you try creatine or any other dietary supplement to reduce your risk of potential side effects.

Considerations

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers creatine a dietary supplement and thus doesn't require its manufacturers to meet the same standards as drug manufacturers must follow. Using a contaminated product or a product that mislabels its dosages could cause a wide variety of health effects. However, using a pure creatine product at doses recommended by its manufacturers appears to not cause serious health problems in most adults, according to MayoClinic.com.

Dosage

The typical initial dose for adult athletes 19 and over is about 5 g four times per day for one week and the maintenance dose is about 2 to 5 g per day. Adults who take it as treatment for high cholesterol usually take an initial dose of about 20 to 25 g per day for five days and follow it up with 5 to 10 g per day, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. However, creatine's safety and effectiveness haven't been determined for people under age 19 and therefore it isn't recommended for them. Creatine's long-term effects are also not well-known.

Decreased Athletic Performance

Although some evidence indicates that creatine can offer small, short-terms power bursts from the body, no evidence proves that creatine can enhance performance in endurance or aerobic activities, according to MayoClinic.com. In some instances, taking creatine may actually decrease your athletic performance. Some possible side effects that may reduce your athletic performance when taking creatine include muscle and stomach cramping, diarrhea, nausea and weight gain.

Dehydration

Prolonged creatine use can result in weight gain, which you pay perceive as beneficial if you're trying to bulk up or move up a weight class. However, the effect is most likely from water retention. When you take creatine supplements, water travels from other areas of your body and enters your skeletal muscle alongside the creatine. This may deprive other tissues in your body of fluid, causing excessive dehydration, particularly if you're exercising in a hot environment. Dehydration may cause symptoms such as lightheadedness and lethargy, but, if left untreated, severe dehydration could lead to serious problems such as seizures and permanent brain damage, according to MedlinePlus.

Kidney Damage

Taking a standardly used dosage of creatine may cause your urinary concentrations to be 90 times higher than they normally would be, according to SportsMed Web. This could lead to kidney damaging events such as painful kidney stones and toxicity in the tubes that form urine. Taking higher doses of creatine or taking creatine with other types of medication, such as anti-inflammatories, can increase your chances of sustaining kidney damage.

Stroke Risk

You may be at higher stroke risk if you combine creatine in combination with other supplements and drugs. In one instance, reported in a 2000 issue of "Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry," a 33-year-old male athlete had a stroke after he consumed a daily concoction of 6 g of creatine, 400 to 600 mg of caffeine, 40 to 60 mg of ephedra and other supplements for six weeks. Get permission from your doctor if you're interested in using creatine in addition to other products.

References

Article reviewed by Jenna Marie Last updated on: Jul 12, 2011

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