Best creatines out?????

[Emerald City Rolla]

Creatine monohydrate is the "best" creatine to use. All those other fancy creatines, i.e. the chealated, esterized, malate, ect. are gimmicky and lack the over 4 decades of study which monohydrate does. New research is actually indicating that CEE ceatine ethyl ester is actually less efficiently absorbed by the body and is more taxing on the liver. As for creatine tolerance, there is no such thing. What you're most likely experiencing is the placebo "high" wearing off. Supplement companies utilize this physical/psychological reaction all the time to push products and I would think twice before attributing any results of a supplement to the actual ingredients in it without trying to find at least one study (NOT a company sponsored study) that can show evidence of effectiveness. My advice is to get yourself a bunch of monohydrate as you can get a kilo of that stuff for cheaper than one tub of jack3d and follow a loading phase to fully saturate your body with creatine. You can find how to approach a loading phase online easily and its not difficult to follow, though you may experience some bubble gut the first week. Also, its good to remember that it can take up to 2-3 months before creatine levels peak in the muscle tissue so its important to remain consistent with dosing. Also, creatine is not, nor wll it ever be a wonder drug that will cause you to blow up along the lines of anabolic steroids so tempered expectations will help keep you returning to the gym if your not seeing the progress you may have wished.

Basically fux the hype these companies are throwing your way an buy bulk creatine mono. You'll save alot of money and you won't compromise effectiveness.

 

[Will Munny]

Yo how many grams should I take on days and days I don't lift, and what's the deal with this bubble gut?

 

[Emerald City Rolla]

Some people have stomach pain when they first start loading creatine, since you normally wouldn't get as much creatine from nature unless you're eating 5 lbs of red meat like bodybuilders did back in the 70's. You should take 10 grams of creatine per day after the loading phase and the same amount of creatine on lifting and non-lifiting days. The loading phase consists of taking double the necessary dose, so 20 grams/day for the first week, evenly spread out over the day as either two 10 gram servings or 4 5 grams servings. After that its maintenance of 10 grams/day. There is an on-going debate as to the necessity of the loading phase and the data show that it probably isn't necessary. However, I recommend it still because it significantly shortens the time it takes to reach total saturation in the muscles from several weeks to a month depending. Plus, you're really only sacrificing 7 doses when a kilo of monohydrate costs $20 for 100 doses. On lifting days, take it within 30 mins of working out mixed with some protein power and a quickly absorbing carbohydrate. Dextrose is the cheapest method, but its pretty much straight sugar, so I have used gatorade (flavored dextrose basically) to help with taste. The reason for this is that the simple sugars 1.) help replenish the glycogen stores you just burned so you don't get super lethargic after your workout and 2.) they cause an insulin spike in the blood stream which helps shuttle the creatine more efficiently to the muscle fibers. This is necessary because after you work out your body has about a 1 hour "anabolic" window where it is very sensitive and efficient with the nutrients you feed it because it is craving them in order to repair the damage you've done in the gym. Also, as this window closes, there is a catabolic response (catabolic meaning muscle wasting, a no-no if your in the gym) where your body will break down muscle to feed itself if you decide for whatever reason to not replenish it with outside sources.

Adding sugar for your non-workout days is unnecessary because there isn't the same urgency to get the creatine to the muscle within that anabolic window after working out. Its still absorbed by your body, just not nearly as quickly, but the point of taking it on off days is to maintain muscle creatine levels so that they don't drop. On off days, I add mine to my breakfast shake so that my body absorbs it throughout the day at its leisure. You also want to cycle your creatine. This means you want to stop taking it for a few weeks after a period of time, usually around the 12 week mark. This is because your body will become tolerant of the new, higher levels of creatine and it will lose its effectiveness. Cycling it keeps the body guessing and allows for continued overall use without sacrificing effectiveness.

Babel, I suspect that your jack3d may have stopped being effective because you probably didn't cycle it. If thats the case, a break from it for two weeks and then coming back would certainly revive its potency.

 

[chred04]

FWIW, I've always used AST's Micronized Creatine Monohydrate and been really happy with the results.