Apparently Creatine isnâ??t supposed to do anything special. You may gain five to 10 pounds, you may get a little faster and you may gain a little more muscle.

It seems like good old-fashioned weight room fanatics just aren“t cutting it for some and something has to speed up the process of getting some chiseled guns.

The other day I was watching E! or Discovery or some amazing channel like Animal Planet and a show came on that I had to watch. It was unbelievably captivating.

The show was titled “The Man Whose Arms Exploded.” With that fantastic title came a picture of a guy whose arms were tan, greased up and probably had a four-foot circumference.

The story goes that this guy was juicing up daily and one of his arms got infected and he tried to do a little at-home surgery on this giant puss ball that“s sitting on top of his arm. Well, it“s permanent now and one half of him looks like a mutant Popeye.

Whatever happened to him got me thinking about what starts this all. Why do we need to be stronger and faster than nature limits us to be?

It could be possible that it starts with an innocent chemical our body produces naturally, and has been cooked up, pressed into powder and sold in jars.

Creatine has been dominating high school and college locker rooms lately and with the sudden rise comes questions and concerns: Is this good for the body in the long run? Is it worth it?

After I looked at a lot of Web sites that were Creatine-sponsored, it seemed that it was God“s gift to scrawny people. I decided, however, that maybe I should expand my research beyond the Internet, so I was put into contact with Mark W. Niedfeldt, a sports medicine specialist and associate professor of family and community medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Apparently Creatine isn“t supposed to do anything special. You may gain five to 10 pounds, you may get a little faster and you may gain a little more muscle. The recommended daily dosage is about 2 to 3 grams, but according to Niedfeldt, athletes tend to get into the habit of taking about 20 grams daily.

Those who do so are basically wasting their money because their body can“t handle that amount of Creatine, Niedfeldt said. It doesn“t know what to do with it so it will just flush it out of that person“s system.

Also, for those who like to pop an energy pill, drink a Coke or slam a Red Bull before you work out, caffeine counteracts and neutralizes the Creatine substance, Niedfeldt said.

Of course there have been the rare cases of athletes who have been taking 20-plus grams of Creatine a day for longer than three months and playing in the south of Florida while not drinking any water and renal explain. failure happened, so be smart and stay hydrated.

Don“t waste your money with using too much at a time, and don“t expect to be Hulk Hogan by the end of the week.

> Comments