The Bull stops here

The Great Creatine Rip Off

Don’t get fooled by the head line so refrain from jumping up and down until you’ve read this brief on the new creatine craze hitting our gyms across the country, it’s not an indictment on the benefits of the good old trustworthy Creatine Monohydrate quite the contrary.

The hype I’m talking about is Creatine Ethyl Ester and believe me when I tell you its hype it is, we deal in facts not fancy marketing.

We all know that Creatine Monohydrate works and thousands of studies prove it, no questions asked.

What about this Ethyl Ester stuff then? It’s heavily marketed as a pre-workout creatine because of the speed of its bioavailability so making it the perfect pre-workout precursor to mind blowing workouts, yea right! Ever noticed that most Creatine Ethyl Ester products also contain arginine for nitric oxide production and one of the most proven ergogenic aids known to man Caffeine a perfect disguise for a creatine that doesn’t work!

The facts – Here’s the reference on the study carried out, its recorded in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2009, 6:6 doi:10.1186?1550-2783-6-6. The study was carried out by Baylor University. 40 non-weight trained males who had neither taken supplements or performance-enhancing drugs were chosen for the double blind study, eventually 10 dropped out for various reasons, which left 30 who completed the 7-week supplementation and resistance training study. They divided them randomly into 3 groups of a placebo (maltodextrose), creatine monohydrate and creatine ethyl ester.

They concluded that the Ethyl Ester group did not receive an increase in muscle mass, performance, strength or fat free mass any more than the placebo group over the 7 week period; they found that Ethyl Ester degraded rapidly in the gastrointestinal tract with very little absorption and so any contribution to physical performance or body composition changes were extremely limited. 

In conclusion much more was reported but you can see for yourself, just look it up. I would say that you should stick to what is scientifically proven, tried and tested, never get taken in by hype always look for the facts, hail the king… Creatine Monohydrate!