The Creatine-Hormone Connection

- George L. Redmon

“Creatine also helps muscle cells grow by increasing the amount of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), a hormone crucial for muscle growth in muscle cells. New research has found that when subjects boost their muscle creatine levels via supplementation, they also increase genetic expression of IGF-1. So it appears that creatine may enhance muscle growth by influencing critical genes in cells that regulate this growth.” —Jim Stoppani, PhD

Over the last two decades, creatine has become one of the most widely researched and utilized sports nutritional supplements of all time.

Biologically formed from the amino acids glycine, arginine, and methionine, 95 percent of all creatine is found in skeletal muscle with the remaining five percent found within the heart, brain, and testes. What makes creatine so popular is its ability to assist in the regeneration of the high energy molecule creatine phosphate. As we now know, creatine phosphate is the compound that serves as a rapid source of energy for muscle fibers to contract, which essentially improves the muscle’s workload capacity and recovery. Creatine also gained notoriety for its ability to upregulate a process researchers refer to as cell volumization. This process drives water and nutrients into the muscle causing it to swell. This substantially increases the muscle’s ability to house larger amounts of additional water and nutrients. From a physiological standpoint, this causes the muscle to signal the cells that it has grown and to accelerate protein synthesis (the creation of new proteins). Despite the accumulated data concerning creatinine’s anabolic and muscle-energizing abilities, researchers are still unraveling some of its unknown physiological attributes.