Creatine Effects: Creatine EE Vs Creatine Monohydrate

It opens in a new window, so you can easily get back here. You don't have to read it, but it helps you understand the principles I shall be discussing if you are not sure of them. Most of you will know about energy and where creatine figures as a rapid energy source.

In discussing creatine effects - that is the effects of creatine on your body, muscles and general energy availability, it should be understood that there is more than one type of creatine. You have the standard creatine monohydrate, which the most common type, and then you have creatine ethyl ester, or creatine EE, otherwise known as creatine CEE or simply CEE. CLICK HERE for a Guide to Creatine that will tell you most of what you need to know about using creatine to increase your anaerobic energy and build up your muscle bulk.

What is Creatine?

Creatine is a substance that is biosynthesized in your liver from the amino acids L-Arginine, L-Glycine and L-Methionine. It is also contained in small quantities in animal muscle tissue, though a good deal of that is destroyed by cooking. For that reason rare meats will contain more creatine than well done equivalents.

The part it plays in your body is in maintaining a high level of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in relation to ADP (adenosine diphosphate). If you consider ATP as a small biological battery, the ADP is the expended form that has to be recharged to form ATP again by the addition of another phosphate group.

Creatine Effects: Rapid Bursts of Anaerobic Energy

Around 95% of your creatine stores are contained in your skeletal muscles (muscles that move bones such as your arms and legs) and the remainder in the brain and elsewhere. Within your muscles, creatine is phosphorylated by means of an enzyme known as creatine kinase, and under aerobic conditions can donate a phosphate group to ADP to form ATP, and hence energy. This occurs during the initial 2-7 seconds of anaerobic muscular contraction.

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The Importance of 'Recovery' Periods

Phosphorylation can also take place in the liver, but we have no need to dwell on that in order to explain the reasons behind the creatine effects on building muscle bulk and enabling you to rapidly generate energy in the absence of significant breathing.

Creatine can be converted back to phosphocreatine by ATP at a later date, when the ATP molecules are not needed for energy and muscular contraction. This is during your 'recovery' period after intense muscular activity.

The conversion between creatine and phosphocreatine is therefore a reversible reaction. The creatine effects on your muscle tissue relate to their ability to generate a rapid burst of energy, such as required in weightlifting or for the first several seconds off the block in a sprint where a great deal of enregy is expended rapidly (without breathing) to give you a good start that can decide the result of the race.

Creatine Effects: The Raw Material Required

In order for you get the best benefits from these creatine effects on your initial rapid muscular contractions, you must make sure that you have good sources of the necessary amino acids in your diet, or include creatine itself in your diet as a supplement.

High protein foods, such as chicken or lean meats contain high levels of amino acids bound up in the proteins from which they arereleased during digestion. They also contain creatine itself since the muscle tissue of the animals you eat also uses creatine in the same way that you do.

However, the yield of well cooked meats is low, and a creatine supplement is needed for you to receive the benefits of the creating effects on your anaerobic exercise and muscular contractions.

What is Creatine EE or Creatine CEE?

Creatine EE and CEE are one and the same - just different names for creatine ethyl ester. The normal form of creatine you purchase in health stores is actually creatine monohydrate, creatine being hygroscopic and attracting water. That's why muscles built using creatine can often feel softer than regular muscle tissue due to their high water content: good-looking for competition, but without the rock hardness that many believe muscle tissue should have.

The ethyl ester enables the creatine to get to the muscle cells much faster than the monohydrate. It is more bioavailable, and most people that take creatine EE find they experience an energy burst much faster. Some will use nothing else, yet others still find the creatine monohydrate better for them.

Creatine EE enables the powerful creatine effects to be attained much faster due to its greater water solubility, and unlike the monohydrate, doesn't appear to hold water in the same way. Your muscles develop much harder and without the spongy feel that water-bound muscle tissue can often have.

Problems With Fake Creatine EE

Although you would think that creatine EE would therefore be more popular than the regular form, this has not been the case. Many people have shied away from it and there have been reports of it being no better than the monohydrate in spite of its higher price. There is a reason for this, and it is one that may be connected with patents.

Without going too deeply into this issue, which could take up whole pages, the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) that discovered the benefits of creatine EE obtained patent protection for it, although some companies continued to market a form of creatine as CEE that in fact contained none of that form of creatine at all.

These were sold online, and it is highly likely that those disenchanted with the creatine effects provided by their online purchase hadn't been provided with the creatine EE they believed they had purchased, but had received something else.

How Much Should I Take For Maximum Creatine Effects?

Taking 20 grams creatine monohydrate daily for the first 5 or 6 days is a good initial loading phase, although its effects tend to vary widely between people. Not everyone share the same metabolism, and you are likely best to find your own ideal level through trial and error. After initially loading creatine that way, reducing your intake to about 2 grams daily is a good maintenance level, though some use as much as 5 grams.

Recovery is also important, and a relationship exists between performance improvement during maximal exercise periods and the resynthesis of phosphocreatine during recovery periods. By combining creatine supplements with carbohydrates in your diet, you can increase the amount of creatine that is stored in your muscle tissue. This can enable you to get very close to the maximum possible concentration of creatine in your muscle tissue.

So Which is Best for Maximum Creatine Effects: Creatine EE or the Monohydrate?

Assuming that you purchase the pharmaceutical grade of Creatine EE then maximum creatine effects will be attained using that over the monohydrate. However, you must be certain that you are not purchasing ordinary creatine, or even something resembling it, under the label of CEE.

It is becoming less likely for this to be the case since UNMC started chasing those firms selling Creatine EE without a proper license to do so, but there are still likely to be supplies of false CEE on sale on the internet. Make sure that yours is pharmaceutical grade.

That said, the CEE will be less likely to give your muscles that hydrated look caused by water being stored outside the muscle cells, since the effects of genuine creatine EE is to draw all the available water into the cell, bulking it up, and offering the best creatine effects in form of hard, solid muscle tissue.

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