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Vitamin C & Creatinine

Jul 13, 2011 | By Owen Bond

Creatine is a natural substance produced from amino acids in your body and used to supply energy to all your cells, especially your muscles. Creatinine is the break-down product of creatine and is excreted in your urine. Measuring creatinine levels in your blood serum and urine can validate suspicion of certain diseases, such as kidney failure and muscle wasting diseases. Vitamin C and certain drugs can alter creatinine levels, usually increasing them, which can lead to misdiagnosis.

Creatine Phosphate

Creatine phosphate is naturally produced in your liver and kidneys from amino acids, specifically arginine, glycine and methionine. Once produced, it is transported in your blood for use by muscles and other tissues. According to "Advanced Nutrition: Macronutrients, Micronutrients and Metabolism," about 95 percent of your body's total creatine is located in skeletal muscle, where it is used to increase the formation of ATP, your body's energy storage molecule. Creatine is regularly recycled and its primary break-down product is creatinine.

Creatinine

Creatinine is produced at a fairly constant rate by your body and is mainly filtered out of the blood by your kidneys. If the filtering mechanism of your kidneys is deficient, creatinine blood levels rise. If you have a muscle wasting disease, such as muscular dystrophy, or have suffered trauma to your muscles, then there will be higher levels of creatine in your urine. Creatinine levels in your blood and urine may be used to calculate your total creatinine clearance. According to the "Textbook of Medical Physiology," men tend to have higher levels of creatinine because they have more skeletal muscle mass than women, although all vegetarians have low levels.

Normal Levels

Measuring serum creatinine is a simple test and it is the most commonly used indicator of renal function. Normal reference ranges for serum creatinine are 0.5 to 1.0 mg/dL for women and 0.8 to 1.4 mg/dL for men, as cited in the text, "Human Biochemistry and Disease." However, a male bodybuilder's baseline serum creatinine may normally be 2.0 mg/dL, whereas an inactive elderly female may have levels a little less than 0.5 mg/dL. Some substances, such as vitamin C, can alter creatinine levels.

Vitamin C and Creatinine

According to "Vitamins: Fundamental Aspects in Nutrition and Health," taking supplemental vitamin C usually elevates your blood serum creatinine levels and clearance creatinine levels, although it is heavily dependent on dosage, lifestyle and health status. A Turkish study published in a 2005 edition of "The Tohoku Journal of Experimental Medicine" found that supplemental vitamin C reduced creatinine levels in rats with kidney disease due to its protective and oxidative effects. Thus, vitamin C may help reduce creatinine levels if you have a kidney disease, but raise the levels if you are relatively healthy.

Other Factors

Many other factors can increase your creatinine levels that don't signify either kidney or muscle disease, such as taking diuretics or antibiotics, eating red meat, strenuous exercise, being in a car accident, dehydration or having gout, according to "Medical Nutrition and Disease."

References

Article reviewed by GlennK Last updated on: Jul 13, 2011

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