Creatine still kicking in

New research suggests how creatine can keep your muscles pumped without even having to train.

 

GLUT4, a glucose-transporting protein critical for volumising the muscle cells, commonly diminishes when the muscle relaxes after training. Now a team of Belgian scientists have found that supplementing with creatine not only offsets this decline, it also increases your muscle's GLUT4 content while you're lounging around as well as while you're training.

 

In reaching their findings, the researchers put the right leg of 22 healthy men in a cast for two weeks, then put them on a heavy resistance training program three times a week for ten weeks, focusing on the knee-extensor muscle.

 

Half the subjects received creatine monohydrate supplements: 20g daily during the immobilisation period, 15g during the first three weeks of training then 5g during the remaining seven. The remaining subjects took maltodextrin as a placebo.

 

Needle biopsy samples were taken before and after immobilisation, then after the training program. They revealed that when the muscles were kept still, GLUT4 decreased by 20% in the placebo group and increased by 9% in the creatine group - before weight training had even started.

 

During training, GLUT4 returned to normal in the placebo group but increased by 40% when taking creatine. Muscle glycogen and total creatine levels were higher in the creatine group after three weeks of training, but no further increase was evident after ten weeks.