question about CREATINE??? - Exercise & Fitness Message Board

preciouskitty · 02-06-2003, 08:09 PM

Hi! I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice. I'm a 22 yr old female and weight 114pds. I used to be really active in sports, but I've been slacking off for a couple of yrs now and just took for granted my body being fit. I'm back at the gym now and it just seems really hard to gain muscle so I was interested in taking creatine. Can anyone tell me the pros and cons of creatine? Side effects? Thks

safahasa · 02-06-2003, 08:39 PM

creatine does build muscle faster.... but it can enlarge the heart if you do aerobic exercises while using it... it also can cause massive dehydration
that's all i know

evil316 · 02-06-2003, 08:44 PM

It will cause you to grow hair on your back and give you horrible acne. Otherwise the stuff is great!

I'm kidding. Seriously the only known side effect is the possibility of muscle cramps which usually will only occur in those that do a lot of endurance type stuff like distance runners and only occurs in those that don't drink enough water. You see creatine puts more water into your muscles thus making you stronger and giving your muscles a more "full" or "pumped" look especially right after and during working out.

So the pro would be increased strength and more strength means lifting more means building more muscle thus weightlifters use it quite a bit. The pump look is an obvious pro to most men but I don't know if a woman would consider that a plus or not. It's not like it will blow you up like a balloon but it will make the muscles look fuller.

Really in like 20 years of studies on creatine there have been no adverse side effects other than the cramping in a very few cases of people that don't drink enough water and do lots of endurance stuff.

Also in men 3 months of creatine will usually help a guy pack on 10 pounds of muscle. If it does that for a woman or to a different extent I really don't know.

Cutebeagle2 · 02-07-2003, 08:35 AM

Look it up in a search engine such as Yahoo,
and you'll get all the info you need, happy
reading!

Endorphin Junky · 02-07-2003, 09:13 AM

I've been using it for ages and haven't had any bad effects. No cramping, no water retention, nothing. Gave me a bit of a stomach ache for a few days when I started but once my digestive system got used to it, there were not problems there either.

As a side note, has anyone tried San Nutrition V12? I've just bought some and it's supposed to be very good stuff. It contains Tricreatine Malate, which is supposedly mych better taken up by the body, and glucosyamine, which is supposed to boost the effects of creatine, plus a few other things ("NitroArginine" (similar to NO2 I believe), N-Acetyl-L-Glutamine (supposedly more stable than L-Glutaime), and Taurine). Kind of like super creatine by the sound of it and by what I've heard. Also supposedly gets results in people previously unable to get any through creatine supplementation, due to the glucosyamine. I believe there was an article on glucosyamine in last months Flex (not sure if the UK edition is different to the US) which highly recomended it. Costs about £40 over here for 1 months worth. Probably less in the US.