RE: weight training--creatine study

[Guest guest]

Another possible downside to creatine in my experience is that it tends to hype up your appetite... Creatine is quite useful when you're stuck trying to break through some threshold in your weight training but counter productive for reducing caloric intake. In fact Creatine has calories so they must be counted along with your food.

FWIW creatine was also part of a popular "age reversing mix" with alc and ala and coQ10, but at only 3G a day so it wasn't that significant.

I agree with Suz, you should lift weights until you can't. The most obvious difference between a young person and an older person is muscle mass. While this is primarily due to reduced growth hormone, CR will also tend to reduce muscle... Weight training isn't just about bulk... keep as much as you can of what you've already got.

JR

-----Original Message-----From: Suzanne Cart [mailto:massuz@...]Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 6:11 PMCR Support GroupSubject: [ ] weight training--creatine study

Adam asked, "Also, I've been working out with weights for a while now, and I take protein and creatine supplements. What can be said about the compatibility of CRON with this kind of exercise routine?"

Hi Adam, I'd say lifting weights is mandatory, especially if you're doing CR. If nothing else, lifting weights will help prevent osteoporosis and sarcopenia, two problems of the general population which are NOT solved by CR. I use a little whey or soy protein now and then, and eat fish, chicken or egg whites daily, but I don't "supplement" with huge amounts of protein as is recommended in "Muscle & Fiction Magazine." Enough protein is enough and more isn't better.

The same goes for CR in general. Enough is enough and more isn't better. From my rereadings of Dr. Walford's book, I'm hearing that the longest lived lab animals are somewhat underweight, but not extremely so. This is where I try to ride the line in my own CR, and in this condition, I have not found it particularly difficult to gain muscle. Obviously I gain muscle more easily when I eat more, but for most of us, muscle is ALSO like anything else--enough is enough and more isn't better. (If you want to be an Olympic Weightlifter, forget about CR for now.)

Regarding creatine, if you are a biology major you would appreciate a study entitled, "Effect of Creatine Supplementation During High Resistance Training on Mass, Strength, and Fatigue Resistance in Rat Skeletal Muscle", which was just published in the "Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research" of the NSCA, August 2002. Here are the concluding "Practical Applications" from that article:

"Our results demonstate that any potential anabolic effect of creatine during high resistance training relies on its ability to allow a subject to train muscles at a higher intensity. It would therefore only be beneficial to highly motivated individuals working to the point of fatigue. The results from our treatment and training model also indicate that creatine-treated muscles undergoing high resistance training do not recover from fatigue as well as untreated trained muscles. Any potential benefit of delaying fatigue with increased pools of muscle creatine and creatine phosphate may be countered by producing a muscle less capable of recovering from fatigue once the elevated pool of muscle creatine and creatine phosphate is expended."

As always

Suz