Science Discovers

CREATINE IS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT FOR BUILDING MUSCLE THAN EVERYBODY ALREADY THOUGHT

Q) I’m a full time firefighter at 38. I do a lot of heavy cross training. I take some extra protein, but does science and experience support extra creatine at my age?

A) First, firefighters are amazing as how many people will (or can) carry 80 pounds on their back and risk their life every day for my family? Creatine supplements have now been around for 20 years. Aging has been around a lot longer! Indeed, beyond physical bone and muscle maturation at about 18, aging is ‘accumulating damage’ upon our body. It is a slow natural set of processes compounded by environmental, nutritional and activity realities. With age, testosterone, growth hormone, IGF-1, myostatin, insulin and other hormones decline (or their effect is lessened).

For example, with age and fat acquisition, some insulin-related type 2 diabetes occurs where you may still produce insulin, but your body cells become less sensitive to it (insulin resistance). With age, (likewise), natural creatine phosphate production declines. A study done (believe it or not, in Iran (1) looked at creatine and resistance training over 8 weeks. Observed aspects included muscle strength, lean body mass, serum levels of myostatin, (a factor influencing muscle growth) and a growth associated serum protein called GASP-1. It included 27 disease-free (healthy) male subjects at an average of 23.4.

The study was a double blind design (basically this means that neither the subjects nor examiner know who get what) with three groups (a control group - CON, resistance training + placebo group - (RT+PL) and a resistance training + creatine supplementation group - (RT+CR). The resistance training program was 3 days per week with each session at 3 sets of 8-10 repetitions, at sixty-five percent of each subject’s one repetition maximum on each exercise. Myostatin is a catabolic regulator of skeletal muscle mass. GASP-1 inhibits the biological activity of myostatin, sort of like a master CPA making sure you are IRS compliant. It just figures that as we age, we produce more myostatin. This study showed:

A. The control group (CON) increased myostatin by about 4% with an increase in GASP-1 of about 2.5%.

B. The resistance training + placebo group (RT+PL) had an 8% decrease in myostatin and increase in GASP-1 of 16% beyond the control group.

C. The resistance training + creatine group (RT+CR) had a decrease in myostatin of 18% and increase in GASP-1 of only 4%, (half that of the RT+ PL group).

So, resistance training caused a significant decrease in myostatin and increase in GASP-1 (both good things!) Creatine supplementation in conjunction with resistance training showed a greater decrease in myostatin (statistical significance level at <0.05), without any additional effect on GASP-1 (statistical significance level at >0.05). The effects of resistance training on serum levels of myostatin and GASP- 1 may help explain how muscle mass increases more with creatine supplementation!

In another study, (sports scientists at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada) (2) validated and expanded upon the results of some prior studies (3), (4) done in Belgium, on creatine supplements and hormones. In this study, researchers had subjects do a resistance training program where 50% got creatine and half a neutral placebo. After eight weeks, the IGF-1 in muscle went up by 54 percent in the neutral group, but went up 78 percent in the creatine group. IGF-1 is an important growth factor your body makes from growth hormone (GH). IGF-1 is important in muscle production and is influenced by training, amino acids and creatine.

The effect of creatine upon training and IGF- 1 production is significant. At about 3 hours after training, your muscles are well into a nuanced and detailed recovery process, and the production of IGF-1 goes up more, if you use creatine. The Belgian studies had previously demonstrated that creatine activates anabolic signaling molecules in muscle cells (stuff called 4E-BP1 and p70-S6K). They noted, "creatine supplementation could act to stimulate muscle growth, but not by a rapidly responding control system as observed after exercise plus feeding, but rather by a lateresponse enhancement of the anabolic status of the cell involving IGF". Thus, creatine, (at any age, but especially as you get older), has long term positive muscle-building benefits. References on request.