Creatine Part II - Creatine Monohydrate & Creatine Ethyl Ester

[garlick]

Now that you know what Creatine is and what exactly it does for your body, now it's time to pick the right form of Creatine for you.

Creatine comes in 4 available types:

1) Creatine Monohydrate
2) Creatine Ethyl Ester
3) Creatine Malate
4) Kre-Alkalyn

I'm going to cover each form and the correct dosages for using each of these types of Creatine. In this section we'll go over Creatine Monohydrate & Creatine Ethyl Ester.

To preface any usage of Creatine should always be cycled. A normal cycle of Creatine lasts between 8~12 weeks, and the half life of Creatine is 4 weeks. So a break of 4~5 weeks is needed to return your body to normal levels between cycles. This is very important as we will learn later.

1) Creatine Monohydrate is the original form of Creatine. In fact all Creatine is Creatine Monohydrate, just boneded with other chemicals. This form of Creatine, is Creatine bonded to a singular water molecule. When bonded to the singular water molecule, the Creatine acts to inhibit waters liquid qualities, forming a fine white powder.

The bond between Creatine and Water is very unstable, and is easily broken in any substance with an acidic PH level. Water is necessary for Creatine to become PhosphoCreatine in the digestive system. Once that bond between Creatine and Water is broken, Creatine becomes Creatinine, which I covered the negative effects of Creatinine in Part I.

Creatine Monohydrate is therefore, the easiest Creatine form to break down into Creatinine. Since it is so easy to break Creatine down into Creatinine, and any acidic substance will break the bond of Creatine and Water, you have to take a large dose of Creatine to reap the benefits of use. Typical dosages of Creatine Monohydrate are between 10~30G of Creatine Monohydrate per day. This means that your body will also be flushing the most amount of Creatinine through its kidneys during use. If you have a history of kidney problems, it is not recommended to use Creatine Monohydrate regularly.

With Creatine Monohydrate, there is also a "loading phase" that is associated with it's use. Your muscle system needs to build up the proper amount of Creatine in the system before you will see any benefits. Because Creatine lasts 4 weeks once absorbed into the system, once the loading phase is over, you will see results for as long as you maintain the levels in your system.

A loading phase of Creatine Monohydrate consists of 5~7 days of a minimum of 15, up to 25 G of Creatine a day.

Once the load phase is over, only 10~15 G of Creatine are needed to maintain your Creatine levels.

Since Creatine Monohydrate is very suseptible to breaking down in acidic solutions, do not mix Creatine Monohydrate into juices or anything effervescent as it will take just 43 seconds to completely break down to Creatinine.

The safest substance for Creatine Monohydrate to mix into is water, but drink immediately as it will still cause the Creatine to become unstable. Since Coffee has a low level of acidity, if you need caffeine mix Creatine Monohydrate into Coffee or Tea. Drink immediately once mixed, as Creatine will break down completely in 8 minutes or less to Creatinine fully in water.

2) Creatine Ethyl Ester are Creatine Monohydrate bonded to an Ester or Ethane that has been bonded to an acid substance. When Ethane has been bonded to an acid, it becomes attracted to the bond of a water molecule, which Creatine Monohydrate has. Once the Ester bonds with the water molecule it protects it from other Acidic compounds from destroying it's bonds.

That means it's very hard for the stomach acids to break the bond of the Monohydrate with Creatine, forming Creatinine. One of the side benefits of an Ethyl Ester, is that Esters use fat more readily to transport themselves into your blood streams. Meaning they can be absorbed at a higher rate into the muscles in certain circumstances.

Although this may sound good, and definitely is better than Creatine Monohydrate, those with a low percentage of body fat may not benefit from this increased absorption rate.

One thing is certain, that because these Ethyl Esters make Creatine better at absorption, more of the Creatine enters the cell walls, causing more of the water to be retained in the cells per volume of Creatine. This helps with muscle volumization. Also, once the Creatine is seperated from the Ethyl Ester, the Ethyl Ester doesn't break down, but rather attaches to another water molecule making it easier to absorb into other cells. This reduces the risk of water retention by the other cells outside the muscles & helps to minimize "bloat."

CEE comes in capsule form, and because it doesn't break down easily into Creatinine, and is better absorbed into the muscles, the recommended dosage of CEE is greatly reduced from Creatine Monohydrate & there is no "loading phase" associated with CEE.

The recommended dosage is 2250 MG of CEE.

[royalpro]

I thought that creatine was converted to PhosphoCreatine (creatine phosphate) in the muscles. "Once it reaches the muscles, it is converted into phosphocreatine (creatine phosphate)." This is from http://www.muscleandstrength.com/supplements/ingredients/creatine-monohydrate.html.
For a good technical way that creatine turns into creatinine in stomach acid (HCl) can be found here.
And not that wiki is right but according to this CEE is "the addition of the ethyl group to creatine actually reduces acid stability and accelerates its breakdown to creatinine."  This is actually cited, but the server for the citation is dead.

[garlick]

The debate on the validity of CEE as a creatine has been going on for years.

There have been multiple studies that have shown a number of things, ranging from the fact that CEE is actually not possible to manufacture at all, to CEE as the MOST stable creatine form.

Really, there's no consensus here, and I was just pointing out information that seemed the most highly published. I could reference all of it on here, but since there's no general consensus, I wanted to just site the marketing so when people hear that, they can know what is being stated, and not start a debate.

As for the Creatine Monohydrate to PhosphoCreatine, the actual bonding of Creatine to Phosphate molecule can occur at many steps in the process, and not just in the muscle.

That article that you reference from Muscle and Strength is good, and as I've done here, omits the process by which Creatine becomes PhosphoCreatine, and that process could occur at any point in the blood stream, digestive tract, or the muscle fibers themselves. Again, writing something so everyone could understand was more the point, than being the most technically correct.

[yos90]

Hey how about 'Creatine hydrochloride' thats found in amp 189
any info on that ?

Thanks,,,yosef

[garlick]

It's a PH buffer. Different that Kre-Alkalyn in that it uses Hydro-chloride to buffer the Creatine, rather than alkalides.

It's similar but just different in the execution.

[ThePump]

Ive been of monohydrate (muscletech's cell-tech hardcore for 2 years) and then CEE(BSN Cellmass for 2years) but ive moved on to Gaspari Size on and has Creatine Gluconate and monohydrate and creatine alpha-keto-glutarate, what is the difference and their pro's and cons? Ive read your post on monohydrate but what about the other 2?
cheers

[garlick]

Alpha-ketoglutarate is the cheapest substance that's used to bond chemicals and buffer them. This is just an easy way for the company to say the creatine won't breakdown because the Alpha-Ketoglutarate is attached, which blocks the acids from attacking the monohydrate.

For Creatine, alpha-ketoglutarate is actually not the most ideal way to bond Creatine, as it has a stronger bond than if you were to just buffer with Alkalides or even Hydrochlorides. This means the keto-glutarate molecule may not detach once it enters the system, making it useless in the system. Typical Alpha-Ketoglutarate bonds are to compounds like L-Arginine or other single amino acids, because you can take a much higher dose without negative effects, so if the bonds don't break down, it's OK. Creatine doesn't work quite that way.

As for Creatine Gluconate, I don't like the idea of this, because Glucose by nature is an acid, which means if you bind the two, when they break down, they take molecules with them. In my opinion, and this is just an arm chair chemist talking here, that would cause the creatine gluconate to split into Creatinine directly, which is bad, rather than converting to Creatine Monohydrate first.

So as you can see, these two types of Creatine probably aren't ideal.

[AnabolicAdam]

More knowledge garlick. Rep given.

[ThePump]

maybe the other ingridients will help?
Ok gaspari size-on :-
Gaspari proprietary Oligosaccharide Polyisometric Growth matrix which contains bio-engineered hypertrophy inducing formula 6 glucose polysaccharide analog,creatine gluconate,maltodextrin,amylose,fibersol 2.

Gaspari celludriver energy matrix which contains drive 2 Mitochondrial energy factor,glucose,creatine monohydate,malic acid,creatione alpha-keto-glutarate,glycerol,gylcerol-monostearate,di-sodium adenosine,tri-phosphate, 2-deoxy-ribose,calcium gluconate,L-Citrulline,L-tuarine

Gaspari Electrolytic delivery system containing 4-hydroxy-isoleucine,magnesium oxide and aspartate,zinc oxide and aspartate,pottasium gluconate,folic acid,alpha lipoic acid,corosolic acid and coenzyme q-10

[ThePump]

removed by moderator for content

[garlick]

maybe the other ingridients will help?
Ok gaspari size-on :-
Gaspari proprietary Oligosaccharide Polyisometric Growth matrix which contains bio-engineered hypertrophy inducing formula 6 glucose polysaccharide ***og,creatine gluconate,maltodextrin,amylose,fibersol 2.

Gaspari celludriver energy matrix which contains drive 2 Mitochondrial energy factor,glucose,creatine monohydate,malic acid,creatione alpha-keto-glutarate,glycerol,gylcerol-monostearate,di-sodium adenosine,tri-phosphate, 2-deoxy-ribose,calcium gluconate,L-Citrulline,L-tuarine

Gaspari Electrolytic delivery system containing 4-hydroxy-isoleucine,magnesium oxide and aspartate,zinc oxide and aspartate,pottasium gluconate,folic acid,alpha lipoic acid,corosolic acid and coenzyme q-10

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

I know what's in the product, all the substances. You asked specifically what those two forms of Creatine were, and the pro's and con's. I didn't really list them, but they're buffered substances meaning they won't break down as quickly as Monohydrate, but they're also not that stable, or too stable, or have other faults.

So what will having the list of other substances help??

Sorry for the confusion.

**And please don't insult the website. It's not it's fault, the owner of the site set up a filter for words to be blocked, we were attacked by someone young at one point who was obsessed with mens butts, so we had a-n-a-l filtered because he used it too often.**

[AnabolicAdam]

ha ha ha! He strikes again from the grave!

[coldgreedy]

Try BIG C through Magnum nautraceeuticals inc it has a magnum stack of 4 types of creatine


CREATINE ETHYL ESTER HCL
CREATINE ETHYL ESTER MALATE
CREATINE AKG1:1
TRI-CREATINE MALATE

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