Please bear with me while I put on a nutrition-bro hat and mansplain creatine

What is creatine?

An organic compound that looks as follows:

Creatine Structure

I studied some organic chemistry in high school and can identify this as an amino acid. I remember those wretched single bonded NH2s and double bonded NHs and that this little OH's H is gonna poof away to give an O- ion ready to mingle with other compounds....

Long ago scientists observed that bodies consuming large amounts of creatine do not excrete it, hence, the body must be storing it somewhere thereby making it a good candidate for a possibly good dietary supplement. That must've been kind of a attention-is-all-you-need moment for nutrition science; sparking a long chain of research. Fast forward over a century later, we have exhaustively experimentally proven many benefits of consuming this little amino acid. It's one of the most scientifically studied supplements.

Benefits of creatine:

Mechanism: How does it work?

I will talk in detail about the following benefit: Enhanced Muscle Function

ATP-ADP & Muscle Contractions

Someone curios (probably an unrecognized intern) was somehow observing the change in concentration of different compounds in skeletal muscles during their contractions. That person discovered the ADP-ATP thing we hear in all those Andrew huberman-like podcasts. To quote this article:

When a muscle contracts it uses the hydrolysis of a phosphoanhydride bond from an adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecule to release energy. The hydrolysis of the ATP molecule yields an adenosine diphosphate (ADP) molecule.

We have an exothermic reaction within our muscles to release energy! Such vain little heat dissipating chemical reactions are our physical actions.

The concentration of ATP is a good measure of stored energy in our bodies. While hydrolysis of ATP yields energy and ADP, at the same time, ATP is re-synthesized back from ADP! And this is where creatine comes in. Look at the following reaction:

Creatine Diagram

(If, like me, you're wondering how come breaking bonds (that should require energy) is producing energy, read more here. It's the hidden water-- hydrolysis! Classic energy releasing reaction, happens in our tummy too. All that anxiety in your stomach is probably some god damn hydrolysis.)

Elevated concentration of phosphocreatine boosts ADP to ATP synthesis. This is because of Le Châtelier's Principle (fancy word for chemistry's law on inertia: system wants to resist change). It goes something like this:

A system at equilibrium will adjust to counteract an applied stress (change in concentration, pressure, or temperature).

We need phosphocreatine to convert ADP to ATP. Experimentally, someone observed that consuming creatine increases the concentration of phosphocreatine in muscles. You might think "Eating creatine will increase phosphocreatine in muscles" sounds obvious but I am sure it happens because of some extremely complicated metabolic pathway which I am not willing to explore, therefore, I trust our experimentalists. I mean, look at the following metabolic pathways chart:

Metabolic Pathways Chart

Shudders

Elevated concentration of phosphocreatine makes the reaction stress towards reducing it (Le Châtelier) and thereby converting ADP back to ATP which is ready to get consumed to help me curl that 5 lbs dumbbell rather magnanimously.

Thus, to summarize, it goes something like this:

  1. Muscles produce energy by hydrolysis of ATP to ADP.
  2. Consuming creatine (as observed experimentally) increases the concentration of phosphocreatine in muscles.
  3. Elevated phosphocreatine concentration, by Le Châtelier's Principle, shifts the reaction to produce ATP back from ADP.
  4. We got extra ATP to produce extra energy in our muscles. Now we can lift more, run faster, jump higher, type faster to finish this boring part of the blog.
  5. It also increases the water mass of muscles, making them look bigger (ADP to ATP produces water too, for hydrolysis!).

What we buy creatine as off-the-shelf creatine supplement is creatine monohydrate (creatine molecule with extra water). Experimentally, this compound (as opposed to creatine ethyl ester or creatine hydrochloride etc.) was observed to be absorbed the best.

Creatine and brain: If you didn't know, chess players burn massive amounts of calories during their battles. This is because even our brain is constantly dancing the ATP-ADP dance to produce energy and do computations. Creatine does help here too, it makes you smarter!

If someone asks me why I take creatine I will respond with:

                Creatine makes more ATP, more ATP make more energy! Creatine good.
                Creatine makes more ATP, more ATP make more energy! Creatine good.
                Creatine makes more ATP, more ATP make more energy! Creatine good.
                Creatine makes more ATP, more ATP make more energy! Creatine good.
                Creatine makes more ATP, more ATP make more energy! Creatine good.
                Creatine makes more ATP, more ATP make more energy! Creatine good.

What was ATP again?

Why am I Writing about Creatine?

A few days ago I had the following conversation:

Friend: "Why do you have a box of creatine on your shelf?"

Me: "It's a supplement good for your muscle growth, brain, and stuff."

Friend: "How do you know that?"

Me: "I read about it a while ago, yeah it's safe and one of the most well-researched supplements out there."

Friend: "Yeah? How does it work?"

Me: "I don't know, some ADP-ATP thing, as I said, I read about it a while ago (blanked out)."

Friend: "You don't even know how it works and are stuffing your body with it?"

Me: "Umm..."

I read a lot of stuff every day, many (rarely) in great detail too. However, I have a poor memory and tend to forget the specifics of what I read, though I retain the overarching conclusions or general impressions (vibes). This is similar to how I read books: I can't recall all the events from Pride and Prejudice, but I remember feeling inspired by Mr. Darcy's honest chivalry and attraction to Elizabeth's outspoken wits. This definitely pulls some invisible subconscious strings in my daily interactions and behaviour.

I like to observe how my brain might work -- it has some sort of conclusive representations of the stuff I read that live in my upper subconscious. Meanwhile, the finer details likely reside in my deeper subconscious, inaccessible when someone quizzes me about them. A bad memory enables me to quickly understand more things (lower congitive overhead), read more, and in turn improve my intuitions.

I am a vibes man, not a facts man.