Q:
Is creatine safe?
My son is a bodybuilder, and he insists on taking creatine to bulk up his muscles. I’m not sure this is the healthiest thing to do. What should I tell him?
A: Creatine is most well known as the supplement of choice by bodybuilders (or “body preeners,” as I prefer to call them). But the reality is that creatine is of little or no value to body builders – but it is of tremendous value to the elderly.
Creatine has been used by neurologists for years in high doses for patients with neurodegenerative diseases like ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), Huntington’s, and others.
Creatine supplementation, with moderate weight lifting, adds bulk and strength to wasting muscles. It is therapeutic because it adds water back to dehydrated muscle cells. If you have muscle wasting, from illness or age (you lose 1 percent of body mass yearly after the age of 60), you need creatine supplementation. If you are not 60, or if you’re not suffering from a degenerative disease, you shouldn’t be taking creatine.
When bodybuilders take creatine, they’re over-hydrating muscle cells that were normal to begin with. This continual hyper hydration of cells is, in my view, detrimental in the long run. It may be the reason, or part of it, that muscle builders die young.
Bodybuilding is not a sport. It is an exercise in narcissism. These people are only maintaining the appearance of added muscle. It is only added water, which that will quickly disappear once the exercise/creatine combination is discontinued.
