Hey guys i've been lifting for about 8 months and I have a couple questions about creatine.
Is it worth it? I've read various stories about how great it is and my friend loves it. However, I've also heard that it accelerates baldness and I was wondering if anyone could give me some insight on that. My irl friend that lifts cycles it but he has a receding hairline...
I've been lifting for a while and it would be cool to kick it into another gear, but I clearly value my hair and long-term health more than gains that I will get regardless.
Thanks :)
Bump pls respond ;(
Breaks with caffeine, forces hair reduction, makes you bloated, messes up your liver
not worth it imo
>>35559318
Damn didn't know about this shit
Just try it out for a month and see what happens. Some people have improved performance with no side effects, some people have no performance improvement with a bunch of side effects, most people will fall in between, leaning towards improvement with minimal side effects.
If you don't train hard (like 90% of people who go to a gym) you wont notice any difference. Also the hair loss thing is a meme.
>>35559318
>>35559366
It does none of this. Also cycling it is the most retarded thing anyone can ever do. It's not synthetic and your body doesn't "get used to it". 5g/day everyday.
>>35559219
I got nothing out of creatine
Really beginning to think it's placebo powder
>>35559657
I think it's more of you have to have a considerable amount of mass to get anything out of it
>>35559219
OP, creatine is just fuel for muscle contractions; your body produces it itself. Supplementing with it just means that you can maybe get a few more reps per set in before failure. The only known side effects are some intra-muscular water retention, and potentially mild upset digestion, which can be prevented by taking with food or at least enough water. There's nothing risky or magical about it. Every time you eat red meat you're getting some creatine. Just try it and see if it makes any difference. A small percentage of people don't see any benefit from creatine supplementation.
>>35559318
>[citation needed]
None of that is really true OP.
Accelerating baldness is not confirmed, it just ups your DHT levels which is correlated male pattern baldness but there's not enough evidence to conclude causation. The most prominent theory is it accelerates baldness only if you are genetically predisposed. So if there's no baldness running in your family you should be completely fine.
It makes you bloated only if you're retaded with the dosage or don't drink enough water with it.
The part about messing up your liver is just downright made up.
Here's a good article on creatine with a little over 700 fucking citations, as opposed to a post with only citation being "my ass" on a Russian carpentry mailing list.
http://examine.com/supplements/Creatine/
Creatine monohydrate is dirt cheap, so IMO there's no reason not to supplement it, unless you're really panically scared about the baldness.
>>35559682
Only mono actually does anything
>>35559685
It's intercellular, causes more ATP production in your cells for use during exercise. Larger muscle fibers don't mean more cells.
>>35559709
>upped DHT levels
oh fuck. My grandad is bald. I've been taking creatine for a week now. Am I permanently fucked? Or do the DHT levels eventually level out
>>35559909
Yeah, if you stop supplementing it your body goes back to your natural creatine production, and consequently your DHT levels will drop.
I mean, I wouldn't get too worried about it, because there's not really much scientific evidence for it, but it's easy for me to say with nobody balding in my family.
