Creatine saturation in physically active individuals: effective or unnecessary technique?

Abstract

Creatine is a natural nutrient of animal origin found in red meat and fish. It is a supplement that has been studied since the 90's, where he was noticed its frequent use by elite athletes at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. The increase in lean body mass, due to the use of creatine is cause for great discussions, where it is believed that probable adaptation should be simply for the water retention. The firststudies of creatine loading phase suggest that there was a considerable increase in the concentrations of phosphocreatine (PCr) muscle when supplemented 20 g/day for 2-6 days. Current studies show that creatine saturation 20 g/day for 5-7 days also promoted increase in muscle creatine concentrations, and since then started to investigate the effect of supplementation since the resynthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) could elevate the physical and sport performance. The literature review gathered clinical studies in physically active human undergoing physical tests (n = 9) in the databases PubMed, SciELO and DialNet between the years 2000-2012. Studies have shown that creatine saturation showed a positive effect in 85.71% of the subjects analyzed in the revision, of which the period 5 and initial 6 days accounted for 73.72% and 17.31% results from creatine, respectively.