Whether you’ve stepped foot in a weight room or not, chances are if you’re into health and fitness in any capacity, you’ve heard a thing or two about creatine.
It’s a staple supplement for most athletes and bodybuilders, and if you’re looking for serious muscle growth and enhanced work capacity, it should probably be for you, too.
But when you’re trying to shed fat, lose weight, or achieve any other benefit associated with regular fasting, some supplements can tread into risky territory. While most are safe to take during a fast, certain supplements can stop autophagy and therefore break your fast. Is creatine one?
We’re breaking down what you need to know about creatine and if knocking back your creatine supplement during a fast is a good or bad idea.
What Is Creatine And What Does It Do?
Creatine is perhaps one of the most popular ergogenic aids in the fitness market. While not a new supplement by any means, athletes and fitness enthusiasts are cashing in on the benefits it has to offer.
Whether you want to build muscle, increase strength, boost power, or improve overall performance, creatine can do it. And while we’re used to seeing creatine as a pure white powder or part of a pre-workout formula, creatine is actually a molecule produced within the body by the liver and kidneys from diet-derived amino acids glycine, arginine, and methionine, but is also a naturally occurring non-protein amino acid found in red meat and seafood 1.
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Athletes and bodybuilders flock to this stuff because research consistently shows that exogenous creatine supplementation can increase intramuscular creatine concentrations, which explains the observed training performance adaptations achieved with creatine supplementation.
Here’s why.
Roughly 95% of creatine found in the body is stored in skeletal muscles, with small amounts also found in the brain and testes. And of the 95% creatine found within skeletal muscles, about 2/3 of it comes in the form of phosphocreatine (PCr) 1.
In order for your body to run, it needs a constant supply of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), its primary fuel—and creatine plays a significant role in energy availability and the regeneration of ATP.
The fuel needed to rephosphorylate ADP into ATP to supply active muscle tissue largely depends on the amount of phosphocreatine (PCr) in the muscles.
As phosphocreatine levels become depleted with prolonged intense activity, energy availability declines because of a lack of ATP regeneration needed to meet the demands of high-intensity exercise 2.
When the body doesn’t have enough substrate to regenerate ATP, maximal effort declines, and your power output isn’t nearly as high as it was when you started training.
Simply put, the primary metabolic role of creatine is to combine with a phosphoryl group (Pi) to form phosphocreatine. During energy production, ATP is degraded into ADP (adenosine diphosphate) and an inorganic phosphate molecule (Pi), which provides energy to fuel metabolic activities.
The free energy released from the hydrolysis of phosphocreatine to creatine + Pi is used as a buffer in the resynthesis of ATP. This entire process ensures sufficient ATP availability during maximal effort anaerobic activities 1.
The Benefits Of Supplementing Creatine
While creatine has typically just been touted for its role in muscle growth, that’s not the only thing it has to offer.
1. Increases Aerobic Capacity
Several studies have shown that creatine supplementation is beneficial for high intensity, short-duration anaerobic exercise, but it may also benefit aerobic exercise. It does so in two ways 3:
- Altering substrate utilization during aerobic activity lasting more than 150 seconds
- Decreasing blood lactate accumulation with low-intensity aerobic activity, which may improve lactate threshold and ventilatory threshold
2. Boosts Muscle Growth
Creatine is touted as the gold standard for bodybuilders because it has major benefits for muscle growth. That’s because the gains accompanying creatine supplementation are often the result of increased work capacity due to the increased availability of phosphocreatine to regenerate ATP.
As a result, you can work harder for longer, which ultimately allows for greater increases in muscular hypertrophy 4. But that’s not it. Research also shows that creatine supplementation can boost levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which has potent anabolic effects on skeletal muscle, and may further enhance muscle growth by mediating the growth-promoting effects of growth hormone (GH) 5.
3. Enhances Recovery
Recovery is a significant part of performance, and while several supplements can boost recovery efforts, creatine isn’t one you typically think of—but it should be.
Research suggests that combining creatine and glucose post-workout can improve creatine and carbohydrate retention in muscle 1, and since replenishing muscle glycogen stores is such a critical piece of the recovery puzzle, it may accelerate recovery for athletes that burn large amounts of glycogen during training.
What’s more, creatine may also reduce the extent of muscle damage caused by high-intensity exercise by reducing markers of inflammation such as cytokines, prostaglandins, tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha, and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) 6, 7.
Can You Take Creatine During A Fast?
With all of that said, there are obvious benefits to supplementing creatine, but can you do it while fasting without breaking your fast?
Studies suggest you can.
In order for a supplement to break a fast, it has to elicit an insulin response, which subsequently causes blood sugar to rise and will halt autophagy and kick you out of a fasted state.
However, because creatine does not contain any sugar or artificial sweeteners and is only a single non-proteogenic amino acid, it doesn’t provoke insulin release and thus doesn’t interfere with a fasted state 8.
Similarly, other research suggests that creatine supplementation can improve glucose tolerance but does not affect insulin sensitivity in healthy males undergoing aerobic training 9.
With that said, we’re talking about pure creatine supplements that don’t contain any additives. The problem is that many creatine supplements are sweetened and flavored, or added into other fitness supplements that do cause an insulin response, which means that consuming them would break your fast.
Related Post: Does Prebiotic Fiber Break a Fast? - A Complete Guide
Final Thoughts
Long story short, creatine has a lot to offer for both performance and recovery. If you’re training in a fasted state, taking a 100% pure creatine monohydrate supplementation is not likely to elicit any sort of insulin response; therefore, it will keep you in a fasted state.
So, if you’re down to make some major muscle gains while torching up some body fat, there’s a big thumbs up with creatine.
References
- RB Kreider, DS Kalman, J Antonio, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017 Jun; 14(18).
- TW Buford, RB Kreider, JR Stout, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: creatine supplementation and exercise.J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2007; 4: 6.
- JD Branch. Effect of creatine supplementation on body composition and performance: a meta-analysis. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2003 Jun; 13(2): 198-226.
- TW Buford, RB Kreider, JR Stout, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: creatine supplementation and exercise.J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2007; 4: 6.
- GR Adams. Insulin-like growth factor in muscle growth and its potential abuse by athletes. West J Med. 2001; 175(1): 7-9.
- MB Cooke, E Rybalka, AD Williams, PJ Cribb, A Hayes. Creatine supplementation enhances muscle force recovery after eccentrically-induced muscle damage in healthy individuals. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2009 Jun 2; 6: 13.
- RV Santos, RA Bassit, EC Caperuto, LF Costa Rosa. The effect of creatine supplementation upon inflammatory and muscle soreness markers after a 30km race. Life Sci. 2004 Sep 3; 75(16): 1917-24.
- KB Rooney, JM Bryson, AL Digney, CD Rae, CH Thompson. Creatine supplementation affects glucose homeostasis but not insulin secretion in humans.Ann Nutr Metab. 2003;47(1):11-15.
- B Gualano, RB Novaes, GG Artioli, et al. Effects of creatine supplementation on glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in sedentary healthy males undergoing aerobic training.Amino Acids. 2008;34(2):245-250.
