Creatine does not increase muscle tissue as contractile protein = no muscle gain

[Guest guest]

This is an example of how someone can have an MD or PhD and not know more

than is in a tunnel under a bridge. In other words, tunnel vision and myopic

schooling allowed them to say " creatine increases muscle mass " when they

should have said " creatine increases water in muscles which makes muscles

weigh more. " It doesn't increase strength because it didn't increase

contractive protein, also called " MUSCLE. " If it would have actually

increased the protein in muscle that makes better muscle contraction happen,

it would have shown up as more strength.

This study was basically a waste of money, slightly misleading in being

titled the way it was, and another exercise in confusing the public AND

medical people who won't understand the subtleties.

Another thought - if the study was actually conducted by people who are into

weight-training OR if they had seriously interviewed people who know this

topic, like athletes who lift weight, they might not have made these

blunders. I have seen this numerous times: book-learned people who have no

real world experience studying something they know too little about.

I am criticizing the waste of money and what misleads people.

Mooney

www.michaelmooney.net

www.medibolics.com

www.powerusa.org

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Message: 3

Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 03:22:16 EST

From: PoWeRTX@...

Subject: Creatine increases muscle mass, but not strength, in HIV-positive

men

Creatine increases muscle mass, but not strength, in HIV-positive men

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Alcorn, Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Creatine, a supplement frequently promoted for building muscle mass, can

increases lean body mass in HIV-positive men, but does not increase

strength when used with resistance exercise (weight training), US and Greek

researchers reported on Monday at the Seventh International Workshop on

Adverse Drug Reactions and Lipodystrophy in HIV, in Dublin, Ireland.

Furthermore the increase in body mass is likely to be caused by fluid

retention and is highly unlikely to produce any long-term survival benefit.

Despite the success of antiretroviral therapy in prolonging life and

controlling HIV infection, people with HIV still continue to experience loss

of lean body mass whether they are receiving treatment or not.

An American study involving _over 500 antiretroviral-treated individuals_

(http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/dcfe7b93-aa0b-472c-8a3c-feef556c88d1.asp)

established that a loss of just 3% of body weight from baseline was

predictive of a poorer prognosis. What's more, a recent study found that

_over 50% of patients starting HIV therapy experienced a fall in their

weight_

(http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/253f1e5a-12e9-467a-a406-a60cf4b1ff02.asp)

and that the risk of the loss of 5% or more of body weight has actually

increased since effective anti-HIV therapy became available. Poverty, a low

baseline CD4 cell count, and/or high viral load and opportunistic

infections have all been identified as risk factors for unintended weight

loss in patients taking HIV therapy.

Thus, therapies or interventions which can maintain and increase body mass

are of critical importance to people with HIV, but many treatments

currently in use are untested and their use is driven by anecdotal

evidence.

Creatine has been promoted to athletes and body builders as a supplement

that can provide extra energy to muscles, so building greater endurance and

greater strength. It also draws water into muscle fibres, increasing their

volume, and may enhance protein synthesis, leading to growth of muscle

tissue.

The supplement is widely available, but its use is controversial in sports

circles; many regard its use as a means of bulking muscles with water, and

see little convincing evidence that it improves performance except in

activities that require a short burst of energy.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted a

randomised placebo-controlled study of creatine supplementation in a group

of 40 HIV-positive men who underwent a 14 week course of supervised

resistance exercise, three times a week. Participants received creatine or

placebo for two weeks before beginning resistance exercise.

Creatine was dosed at 20mg a day for the first five days in order to `load`

the muscle tissue with creatine, and thereafter dosed at 4.8g a day for six

weeks. The cycle of loading and maintenance was then repeated.

Strength was assessed by measuring the 1 repetition maximum for eight

different muscles (the 1RpM is the maximum amount of weight that can be

lifted in a particular exercise, and resistance exercises generally aim to

use weights that are 70-75% of the 1RpM for a particular exercise).

Men in the creatine group gained approximately 2.3kg in lean body mass

compared with 0.9kg in the exercise only group, and this difference was

statistically significant (p=0.01) but there was no difference in strength

as assessed by 1RpM at the end of the study. In both groups strength

increased by approximately 40%. No difference in metabolites could be

detected in muscle tissue between the creatine group and placebo group.

" Creatine was increasing muscle mass by fluid retention in the muscle and

there is no evidence that this sort of change will have any long-term

benefit for survival in people with HIV " , Giorgo Sakkas of the University

of Thessaly, principal investigator on the study, told aidsmap.

" Creatine is not a long-term solution to improving lean body mass in people

with HIV, and the lean body mass increase required in order to improve

survival is a long-term increase that can only be achieved through improved

dietary intake of protein and consistent resistance exercise. "

He speculated that the lack of improvement in strength in the creatine

group may be due to inefficient use of the energy generated by creatine as

a result of mitochondrial damage, but the numbers involved in the study were

too small to compare the characteristics of responders and non-responders.

People with HIV also need to be aware of the risk of long-term toxicity

with creatine supplementation, Giorgo Sakkas told aidsmap. Apart from

causing muscle pain and cramping in the shorter term, creatine may also

cause kidney damage with longer term use, especially if the dose is too

high or the user is suffering from renal insufficiency. There may be a

particular risk in those patients taking tenofovir or other drugs

associated with raised creatine levels.

Reference

Sakkas GK et al. Creatine supplementation fails to augment the benefits

derived from resistance exercise training in patients with HIV infection.

Antiviral Therapy 10: L6, 2005.