Effects of Creatine

The Effects of Creatine Creatine has been used in sports throughout time. Athletes have always had a fascination with being excellent at what they do. With the banning of steroids from competitive sports and the implementation of random drug testing in most sports, most athletes are still somehow hoping to gain an edge on their competition. This edge that they are using is creatine. In order to understand how creatine works, we must discover what creatine is. Creatine is an energy producing nutrient found in our bodies. It is synthesized from three amino acids arginine, glycine and methionine. These amino acids are primarily found in the liver, pancreas, and kidneys. It is also consumed in our everyday diets from fish, meat and other animal products. Creatine is not considered an essential nutrient in our diets.
In general, we consume approximately one gram of creatine per day in our diets (www.healthlink.mcw.edu). Creatine helps provide the energy our muscles need to move, especially movements that are quick and explosive. Approximately ninety five percent of the body's creatine supply is found in the skeletal muscles (www.pacific-nutrition.com). The other five percent is spread throughout the body, but mainly found in the heart, brain and testes. Creatine is easily absorbed from the intestinal tract into the blood stream. Creatine was first discovered in 1832 by a French scientist, Cevreul. In 1847, it was noticed that the meat from foxes killed in the wild had ten times more creatine than meat from inactive foxes. The conclusion from this was that creatine accumulates in muscles due to physical activity. It was discovered in the early twentieth century that not all creatine consumed was excreted in the urine, but in fact, stored in the body. In 1912, researchers found that ingesting creatine can dramatically boost the creatine content of muscle. Fiske and Subbarow discovered creatine phosphate in 1927, and determined that creatine is a