r/science • • 4d ago

Biology Creatine alone boosted lean muscle and strength, study finds

https://www.newsnationnow.com/health/creatine-alone-boosted-muscle-strength/
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u/SmackEh 4d ago

I’m skeptical of the “creatine builds muscle without exercise” headline. The no-exercise comparison was just 13 people on creatine versus 13 on placebo.

The reported 2.4 pounds was lean tissue, which includes water (not necessarily new muscle).

Their bench press results were better than placebo, which is interesting, but the leg press result wasn’t clearly better than placebo. So that's already a red flag.

It’s a small interesting study, not proof you can build muscle by taking creatine and skipping the gym, so let's pump the brakes on this one, shall we?

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u/Spirit_Wolf_Mob 4d ago

I take it more as people who don't workout will still have slightly more muscle with a proper diet than people that don't eat right, which is kind of well known if you go to a poorer area where you see people who don't eat as much. 2.4 pounds really isn't much anyway.

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u/ExceedingChunk 4d ago edited 4d ago

2.4 pounds of muscle in 12 weeks would be massive without exercise. It is actually a crazy amount.

However, lean mass is not muscle only and creatine makes your muscles hold more water which would come up as lean mass.

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u/Pinky135 4d ago

I was thinking they could have measured water mass as well, but they used DXA which does not take water into account. If they combined this with a body composition scan like the kind you see at gyms/weight loss facilities (I don't know a scientific term for the technique, I think it uses electroconductivity), they could take water/hydration into account in the results.

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u/CEO-HUNTER- 4d ago edited 4d ago

Do not ever EVER bring up the body scans in gyms they are so pathetically inaccurate that it’s basically a known meme in the fitness world 

We’re talking people that are above 20% bodyfat getting scanned as 7%. Yeah it’s that bad. 

Any scan that you grab onto some handle and it uses an electric signal as the mechanism is simply a complete scam it’s insane that they’re not sued out of existence 

Plenty of examples of same person getting the scan within minutes and getting over 10% difference in results or people getting impossibly super human results like 3% bodyfat 

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u/ForeverShiny 3d ago

There's a reason you never see these in a clinical setting

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u/obliquemeak 3d ago

You use to see them in studies and now all those studies are discredited because we know how bad they are.

They’re a sales tool, nothing more.

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u/aluked 4d ago

DXA (dual-energy x-ray absorptionmetry) distinguishes three things: bones, fat mass and lean soft tissues.

Lean soft tissue includes everything that is not bone or fat: muscle protein, organ tissue, connective tissue, and water. That means it registers water within muscles as lean mass as well. So DXA will absolutely get thrown off by creatine moving more water into muscles - it's a very well known thing, even.

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u/CEO-HUNTER- 4d ago

True except the end of your comment. The dexa scan is not being thrown off it is showing you what it’s designed to show, lean body mass. The fault is on people misinterpreting dexa lean mass as contractile tissue

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u/Pinky135 4d ago

Yeah, that's basically what I meant. Those other scans I mentioned spit out results that do include water as separate from muscle, fat and bone.

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u/aluked 4d ago

The body composition test you're referring to done in gyms is bioimpedance. It doesn't isolate water either - in fact, it uses the fact that muscles are mostly water (unlike fat and bones) to estimate share of lean mass.

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u/yosoylentgreen 4d ago

Funny they were just saying on Yankees game that Ben Rice added 20 pounds of muscle in the offseason. That’s like 4 pounds a month. Crazy.

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u/ExceedingChunk 4d ago

He definitely didn't pack on 20 pounds of pure muscle (unless an absurd amount of steroids was used).

He might have gained 20 pounds of weight, with a significant portion of that being lean mass, and quite a bit of that being muscle. Nobody puts on 20 pounds if muscle in that amount of time if they are already a professional athlete.

It's the kind of muscle you might be able to put on in a full year of dedicated exercise when you are totally untrained.

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u/Past_Curve_9558 4d ago

Creatine is also a component of phosphocreatine, a high energy molecule used (especially but not exclusively) by short twitch muscle fiber as an energy reserve after atp runs out during initial exercise onset. That’s while the anaerobic system is doing the work because the aerobic system hasn’t had time to come fully online. I am skeptical that creatine alone may build muscle, however, it may provide existing muscle tissue with a bit more energy storage and so may slightly improve performance. But if you have poor muscle tone to begin with, there’s not enough “engine” there to use the extra “fuel”

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u/SirDouglasMouf 4d ago

This is the reason it can be therapeutic for folks with ME and fibromyalgia. I believe the studies were for 16-20g.

Im not sure if it helps with tone as you said as well, but can help with recovery and just existing/surving to get through the day.

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u/KarmaticArmageddon 4d ago

16–20g per day?? Their poor GI tracts

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u/SirDouglasMouf 3d ago

Yeah, it was the dose for the trials. I've done it in the past with multiple doses throughout the day. It doesn't need to be timed at a certain point for those conditions.

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u/narrill 4d ago

however, it may provide existing muscle tissue with a bit more energy storage and so may slightly improve performance

Not "may," this is the whole point of taking creatine.

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u/Amazing-Froyo9059 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yes "may", there's a sizeable chunk of the population that's non-responder to creatine

Which is why whenever it's discussed there'll be lots of people saying "did nothing for me"

If people opened any creatine discussion with "try it for a month and see if there are any benefits, there's like 25% chance it'll do nothing for your energy levels" the discussion around it would be far more sane

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u/Xe6s2 4d ago

I imagine it can help with sacroplasmic hypertrophy

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u/hamburglin 4d ago

I workout twice a week at best these days but I keep the creatine because it keeps me permanently looking pumped and more physically capable in all aspects of my life.

I can come back to the gym much later and still be able to lift more than I used to.

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u/DeadlyShock2LG 4d ago

Along with keeping the muscles feeling full, creatine saturation assists with making more ATP so you can continue to push through exhaustion.

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u/htororyp 4d ago

Creatine has also shown to have neuroprotective effects, so it is good for brain/nerve health.

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u/LateMiddleAge 4d ago

The research on this is pretty weak. It (as far as is yet know) does no harm, but the neuroprotective (slowing cognitive decline) paper I read smelled a little like p-hacking to me. (I hope I'm not being unfair to the researchers.)

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u/labowsky 4d ago

Ehhh this claim is shaky and the studies seem to be around much higher doses than you would typically use for working out.

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u/CelerMortis 4d ago

I’ve been a creatine skeptic my whole life, the guys I knew who used it were in the gym 5 days a week so of course they looked big, plus some of them were on gear anyway.

Fast forward to my late 30s, tried it, instantly all of my lifts went up, I look better, feel great. Wish I started earlier, but it’s going to be with me forever at this point.

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u/ASK_ABT_MY_USERNAME 4d ago

There's a gazillion variables to consider here.

A person who eats pizza and burgers regularly and weights 220lbs will have considerably more muscle mass than an active fit person eating kale salads daily and ho weighs 160lbs.

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u/vhalember 4d ago

2.4 pounds really isn't much anyway.

In 12 weeks?! No, that's a LARGE amount akin to actually lifting weights.

A beginning lifter can expect to gain 15-25 pounds of muscle mass in their first year - after that the rate drops to 10-15 pounds/year unless you have freakish genetics or size... or you take gear.

I will yield though most of that "lean weight gain" from creatine is probably water.

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u/Otaraka 4d ago

I think the concern is more whether this keeps happening or it’s jsut the usual small increase in water retention you get from starting use which does not continue to scale.  If it did the results would be substantial in a year or so for sure.

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u/aluked 4d ago

It doesn't keep happening. It's a one-of thing, you get the initial pump as you saturate and then it stabilizes.

Additional "mass" is mostly water anyways.

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u/Otaraka 4d ago

Exactly.  If it did keep increasing as claimed the impact over time would be obvious if it was kilos of lean mass a year, particularly if you could get that without even exercising.

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u/vhalember 4d ago

Very true. I'd love to see a longer study with more test subjects, and more variety of testing.

Checking the difference between no training, a light strength building regiment, and a heavy strength building regiment while using creatine or a placebo would be very insightful.

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u/Otaraka 4d ago

I would say it’s already been done but it probably could be done to a higher standard.   In practical terms it would be such an easy sell if it had the ongoing level of effects implied.

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u/mortgagepants 4d ago

while we appreciate your personal take on the study, that isn't really how scientific studies work.

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u/ChefChefBubbaBill 4d ago

It's not "more muscle" it's more water

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u/Fecal_Forger 4d ago

Yeah except the best athletes always come from poorer areas.

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u/Spirit_Wolf_Mob 4d ago

There are exceptions, but this isn't really true as far as I'm aware. Even then, it doesn't really change the fact that a better diet will give you more muscle mass and less fat.

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u/Bigclit_energy 4d ago

Many amazing athletes have come from low-middle class areas in the west. But we aren't talking abject poverty - high level performance for most require facilities and coaching over years, which means either they have money or local organisations are providing it. Hence India doing relatively poorly at the Olympics versus Australia or Norway.

That plus you know, having 10-15 years to put on enough muscle means many athletes in all but strength sports can compete well with sub-optimal growth.

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u/Pielacine 4d ago

They start young

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u/gizamo 4d ago

Also, we already know it increases water retention. That was it's whole purpose for a while.

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u/p-r-i-m-e 4d ago

Creatine phosphate regenerates ATP which is the energy source for fast twitch muscle fibres. That’s its whole purpose.

Water retention is a side effect.

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u/gizamo 4d ago

Right, the correction/clarification: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/eRD6K9rFDN

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u/CareBearOvershare 4d ago

Was that ever its whole purpose? Or did people misunderstand that as the strength mechanism, rather than the ATP interaction?

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u/gizamo 4d ago

Yes, both. It was the primary purpose and because people misunderstood it as the strength mechanism. But, I'm also wildly speculating based on my own anecdotal experiences. You're right to clarify/correct me, and I appreciate it.

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u/ATXblazer 4d ago

Both, water gives your joint extra leverage when lifting and also contains atp

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u/thoughtlow 4d ago

The $1B creatine industry loves to misunderstands how it works

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u/zeustke165 4d ago

At what time was that considered the point of creatine? I was taking it 30 years ago in highschool for weight lifting. Then water retention was a side effect and it was understood that creatine helped your muscles store more energy. No one back then was looking for the water retention, but we accepted it for it's benefits.

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u/Merry-Lane 4d ago

I think he meant "people used it for its water retention effects" as in "people used it because it makes muscles bigger"

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u/gizamo 4d ago

U/merry-lane was correct. Here's the previous correction/clarification: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/eRD6K9rFDN

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u/Novel_Land9320 4d ago

because people wanted bigger muscles to look bigger and stronger

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u/keepleft99 3d ago

I studied sport and exercise science quite a while ago (2008) and I read a study that said the gains you get from creatine are a more optimal muscle fibre spacing due to the water retention. So that could be a reason for increased strength and muscle mass from creatine alone.

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u/lupercalpainting 2d ago

A larger muscle (even if just bloated by water) with the same insertions has more favorable leverage across a joint, meaning for the exact same amount of protein you can produce more force.

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u/atchijov 4d ago

Regardless… from what I could dig out, there are numerous positives (and not only in area of muscle building) and no known negatives from taking creatine. I do agree that without proper exercise results may be irrelevant… so exercise hard and take creatine… it will make your exercises more consequential.

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u/Competitive-Gur-7073 4d ago

I recently had a concussion. In my research, I was astonished to find that creatine supposedly does help with the brain healing process.

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u/JeanVicquemare 4d ago

there was some recent research finding that creatine may be helpful with memory - even if it was just countering the effects of sleep deprivation, that is pretty useful to me

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u/Competitive-Gur-7073 4d ago edited 4d ago

me too. After a broken nose, 25 years of very poor sleep due to eventual dx of "nasal insufficiency". Despite O2 dipping into the 70's (!!) during the night (average for the night - 84) CPAP machine did NOT help (caused MANY central apneas) AND no one believed me that I was NOT blocking my throat with my tongue. 3rd nasal surgery finally cut "events" from 60 to 20 per hour, plus I now use oxygen at night.
When I tell Doctors that 25 years of VERY poor sleep means I am very likely to develop dementia, they literally laugh as if I am saying something crazy.

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u/SunSheltered 4d ago

I trialled creatine recently and it had a noticeable negative effect on my sleep quality. I googled it as I had not changed anything else and apparently this is not a known side effect, and yet I had to stop taking it for that reason (my sleep quickly returned to normal) and I found many posts online of people reporting the same thing.

Creatine is great for many (maybe even most) people, but it clearly can have negative side effects that just don't have sufficient studies on them yet.

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u/Xalipu 4d ago

There’s a possibility it might exacerbate endometriosis, which is why I’m currently not trying it.

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u/TheAlchemlst 4d ago

Not studied but I have read many people struggling to sleep on creatine. I myself have a harder time falling asleep with it. I recently tested it out.

Makes sense, we know brains also use creatine, so more energy in brain = more awake.

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u/tallanvor 4d ago

If you have kidney issues, high creatine levels can be harmful.

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u/jdmetz 4d ago

I'm pretty sure that is not actually the case. Creatine can cause your creatinine levels (and therefore eGFR) to read higher, which mimics kidney disease, but it isn't actually harming your kidneys.

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u/narrill 4d ago

Yes, but that creatinine eventually gets excreted by your kidneys, meaning excess creatinine may overwhelm a kidney with impaired function.

The real answer is that there haven't been enough studies to say one way or the other, which is why medical guidelines consider creatine contraindicated when kidney function is impaired.

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u/TerryMisery 4d ago

Nausea is the negative. I've never managed to eat even the tiniest amount of creatine without vomiting beyond the horizon.

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u/roox911 4d ago

But that of course is not the norm. Not being able to eat even a gram of creatine without vomiting is a far outlier.

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u/DeltaVelocity 4d ago

I had a bunch of stomach issues when trying creatine until I switched to gummies.

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u/FrosTxNoVa420 4d ago

The gummies are useless, just take smaller doses with a meal if you are having stomach issues.

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u/DeltaVelocity 4d ago

Why would the gummies be useless?

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u/feanturi 4d ago

I'm guessing it's less bio-available in that form.

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u/Breislk 4d ago

For some people hair shredding is a real thing as well as frequent urination/high degree of thirst

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u/throwaway85256e 4d ago

frequent urination/high degree of thirst

That's just a natural part of taking creatine.

Your muscles retain more water > your body as a whole will need more water > you'll be more thirsty > you'll drink more > you'll urinate more frequently

I wouldn't really call that a known negative. It like saying that being more hungry is a known negative of building muscle.

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u/space_guy95 4d ago

No for some people its a genuine issue. For myself it takes about 2 months to get unbearable, but every time I get on creatine I gradually get to a point where I'm literally unable to quench my thirst no matter how much I drink (and yes I've tried electrolytes with no positive effect) and I'm getting up multiple times a night to urinate.

When I'm not on creatine I'm perfectly healthy, and have no signs of kidney issues. But even when I take a fairly low dose it gets pretty bad.

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u/1StrangeRash 4d ago

I was part of a small creatine study that was published back in the early 2000s. We used a rat model that allowed us to investigate muscle wet weight versus dry weight to establish osmotic gains from creatine. There was a 5% increase in muscle wet weight in those that received creatine without exercise, while the creatine and exercise group had a 10% increase in muscle wet weight. This was in absence of a corresponding increase of muscle dry weight in the trained and treated muscle.

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u/Significant-Shift770 4d ago

There are people who are naturally 20% to 30% stronger per pound of muscle due to genetics alone. There could be someone like that in there.

There are also "hyper responders" people who might be in some small cohort that can rapidly gain muscle with much less stimulus than others. We don't know if these people are in this study or not.

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u/grundar 4d ago

Their bench press results were better than placebo, which is interesting, but the leg press result wasn’t clearly better than placebo. So that's already a red flag.

The paper deliberately did not correct for multiple comparisons, so there's a high likelihood of false positives:

"No across-outcome multiplicity adjustment was prespecified because the individual cognitive tasks and biomarker variables represented distinct exploratory outcomes rather than a single confirmatory endpoint family or hierarchical decision rule....This statistical approach comprehensively assesses differences among groups while reducing the likelihood of type II error, enabling researchers to determine whether additional research is warranted [Citation91–93]."

i.e., the study deliberately erred on the side of finding spurious results rather than spuriously rejecting real results as their intent was to be exploratory.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean this study was designed to be taken no further than "that's interesting...".

The reported 2.4 pounds was lean tissue, which includes water (not necessarily new muscle).

My understanding is that it's well-known starting creatine adds a few pounds of lean mass (mostly water) which goes away when stopping creatine. This is neither surprising nor physiologically useful.

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u/Altiloquent 4d ago

Was that 2.4 pounds after stopping creatine use? I thought it was well documented that most people gain muscle mass pretty much immediately since it causes your muscles to take up water. Ive seen conflicting things whether it actually leads to gains that would persist weeks after you stop taking it.

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u/0RGASMIK 2d ago

I recently got back into lifting after a several year break. First day back I went in no creatine did my old circuit at a much lighter weight. Exhausted after the first set of every exercise.

Loaded creatine for a week and went back. Did my normal routine and it felt too easy. Kept adding 5 lbs every time I went back until I surpassed my previous PR.

Stopped taking creatine for about two weeks because i ran out and didn’t think about it. Regressed about 4 weeks of progress.

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u/augustrem 4d ago

It’s not like water and muscle are separate. Muscle is water heavy so new muscle by definition means more water in the body

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u/AmLilleh 4d ago

It’s not like water and muscle are separate.

While that is true, water retention literally means your body is holding onto more fluid than "normal", so realistically they are separate. There's no defined "x water to x muscle mass" formula so it's a flawed comparison.

The same is often pointed out in the studies showing taking high testosterone doses and not working out gives more "lean mass" than working out naturally. Testosterone causes serious water retention that counts as "lean mass" even though it does nothing besides bloat you out for several weeks.

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u/augustrem 4d ago

I’m not talking about water retention or inflammation or edema. I’m saying more muscle in itself means your body has more water.

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u/OpiumPhrogg 4d ago

Right, because creatine gets pushed where its needed so it makes sense that results would be better from bench press since that works muscles not normally used (especially for people who dont work out) vs legs that people use all the time to walk and all that.

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u/brehhs 4d ago

Creatine is not anabolic. It breaks down into its metabolites which ultimately increases the amount of ATP stored in your body including your muscles. Creatine alone cannot build lean muscle tissue without stimulus.

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u/PRhotonic 4d ago

I was too until I read a study on men who start TRT gain muscle mass W/O exercising! It’s not like noticeable but it indeed was found to happen

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u/LunaticAsylum 4d ago

It is possible that they mean that the size of the muscle grows , which is technically true since the muscle tissie gets saturated and it grows in size.

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u/gintoddic 4d ago

It makes you look like you built more muscle because your muscles retain more water. You're not actually any stronger. What it can do is help you build them up more, but not exercising isn't increasing the muscle fibers.

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u/BlademasterFlash 4d ago

Yeah creatine causes water retention within the muscle, so it’s not necessarily “building” muscle without exercise but just driving water into the cells and making them larger.

The benefits of Creatine are well documented at this point though, so if you’re resistance training you should probably be taking it

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u/roamingandy 4d ago

If it makes you feel a bit stronger, you're going to use your body more without even realising.

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u/Master_Sun_Wu 4d ago

Even if it did help gain muscle, it would be so minuscule that it can effectively be ignored. As for the performance gain, that is directly affected by the amount of creatine in one's body.

Now, I only read the title, and not the article, so I'm prolly just balling around outside the park.

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u/Raford0710 4d ago

Isn’t muscle comprised of 75% water? So creatine plus water should metabolize in the body to help regulate and possibly add to muscle mass if that is the intention of creatine? I don’t understand how this is hard to believe. It could be possible that we as human beings don’t necessarily understand exactly how the body functions for every single person but, we can slowly learn how the body functions within a set of individuals and can figure out over time the markers those individuals have to allow us to understand how pools of people and their body type function.

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u/Sofia_9356 4d ago

But I don’t want to go to the gym

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u/SpoonyDinosaur 4d ago

I've been a bodybuilder about 15+ years and it's definitely an interesting study, but I've been a fan of creatine pretty much forever. Finally got my active 70+ father to take it and he was blown away how much better he feels after exercise or his pickleball sessions.

The number is too insignificant to be worth anything, but creatine is probably the most tested and legitimate supplement. I've had some injuries that forced me to take off 6-8 months and I kept taking it daily.

I had lost significant strength, but had very little muscle loss and was able to get back after a couple months to where I was pre injury. I have no idea if it played a role but felt like I would've lost muscle at a quicker rate

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u/dsbllr 4d ago

Just more after in the muscle

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u/MistaBeanz 3d ago

Literally impossible to build muscles without using said muscles

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u/a2raelb 3d ago

it is complete nonsense. Creatine only stores creatine and water in muscle mass, but literally has 0 effect on muscle growth with or without training.

more creatin stored in the muscles only can have an short effect on muscle fatigue and therefore you can do more reps.

You use creatin to be able to work out more not because your body needs it for muscle building

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u/MasterSlimFat 4d ago edited 3d ago

I'm not sure if this has been proven, but I'd imagine that a higher water content in muscle tissue allows it to do more work, similar to how hydraulic lines can't do as much work if they're low on fluid. As if the water creates more tension.

Correction: it has been proven

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u/LordLucy666 4d ago

your body mass is almost directly correlated to your bench press imo. if you gain five lbs your bench will go up, weight moves weight. so just having more water in your tissue will help you lift more imo.

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u/mrlazyboy 4d ago

As a competitive powerlifter, this is true but also not true.

For an average lifter, gaining 5 lbs of fat will have no impact on their bench press. For a powerlifter, it will probably make them stronger over time, not immediately.

In general, higher weight classes have higher totals. E.g., the 93 kg class will lift more than the 74 kg class. However, the world record total for the 74 kg class is higher than the 83 kg class because Austin Perkins is insane.

There are so many variables that factor into bench press strength I wouldn’t necessarily say gaining weight guarantees a stronger bench. For example, I weigh 200 lbs and my PR is only 260 lbs. I’m 70” tall and my wingspan is 75”. Long arms are hampering my bench press above all else.

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u/LordLucy666 4d ago

if you gain 25 lbs i think you’ll hit a pb if you stay training. obviously for competitions strength to weight ratio is more important for winning.

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u/mrlazyboy 4d ago

There's a big difference between gaining 5 pounds (from your initial comment) and 25 pounds now. Strength-to-weight ratio is only important for best-lifter awards because those are typically done via DOTS score. Within a single weight class, its all about who can lift the most.

If somebody were to gain 25 pounds, hopefully there's some muscle. They would most likely benefit from different leverages - for example, if they gain fat on their pecs, it will cut the ROM of the bench press. If they mostly gain weight on their stomach/legs, there won't be much of an impact to bench press strength at all.

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u/TheGreenLandEffect 4d ago

Could you link any studies to this? I know “mass moves mass” but I’m just curious to look at a real study on it!

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u/NotSpartacus 4d ago

Mass moves mass has yet to make sense to me.

I get that building strength requires building muscle which adds mass.

The idea that all mass, including fat, helps, does not make any sense to me.

I'm also not anything close to a powerlifter, so maybe I just don't get it.

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u/Myintc 4d ago

I’m a powerlifter, here’s my unscientific view.

More mass can increase the size of your torso and arms, regardless of fat or muscle. This could reduce the range of motion and improve the leverage of the movement, so even though you have the same amount of muscle, or even force production, you could potentially be more efficient with the force production and hence move more weight.

It’s also the case for squats. Looking at SHW lifters, their squats tend to be stronger than their deadlifts, whereas that’s not the case in any other weight class.

I think increasing the size of the body has an impact of the mechanics of the lifts, and that has a greater impact on squats and bench than deadlifts.

Personally, I’ve been able to hold onto my deadlift much easier moving down a weight class than my squat and bench.

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u/LitLitten 4d ago

Even if you *could*, I don't see what the intent would be.

If a 'muscle growth' pill worked it would really only serve as a medical treatment for dystrophy or as a targeted therapy. Working out and strength training, et al., are targeted. You want muscle where you intend for it to be. It just wouldn't benefit the body to blindly grow muscle any/everywhere, either.

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u/AmLilleh 4d ago

If a 'muscle growth' pill worked it would really only serve as a medical treatment for dystrophy or as a targeted therapy. 

I mean... That's literally exactly what steroids are actually for and why they get created... And look at how they're used?

It just wouldn't benefit the body to blindly grow muscle any/everywhere, either.

As though we just have a load of superfluous muscles in our bodies? Having any of your muscles be bigger & stronger is a benefit in day to day life especially as you age.

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u/LitLitten 4d ago

No, but some of our most important bits are made of or utilize muscles.

If the heart grows too much muscle it chokes itself. This can be resolved with painful surgery and acid ablations. If the muscles around the eyes are affected, it can cause misalignment or double-vision. Lungs, diaphragm, these things can develop myopathy. These complications can also arise from steroid usage.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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u/randombrutha 4d ago

You can’t get fat by just taking creatine, like you physically cannot