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Comment by the__alchemist | Hacker News Reader

This sort of study is important, given how highly taken creatine is. I will highlight a part that I think may be especially relevant:

> “The people taking the creatine supplement saw changes before they even started exercising, which leads us to believe that it wasn’t actual real muscle growth, but potentially fluid retention,” Dr Hagstrom said.

I think this is well-known, right? People take creatine specifically because it increases water retention in muscles, making them look slightly bigger. I'm not sure if many people think it will help build muscles and strength directly in the way "TRT" does, but maybe I'm wrong!

My understanding of the conventional wisdom:

  - Caffeine and other uppers work from a motivational perspective during workouts
  - "TRT" provides massive gains, and nasty side effects
  - Creatine makes your muscles look slightly bigger
  - Nothing else works

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It also helps with short term energy so maximum performance over a 30-90 second window increases, which fits many sports. It’s less useful for endurance athletes or 1 rep max.

“By taking a creatine supplement, such as creatine monohydrate, you can change the amount of phosphocreatine and creatine in your muscles. The extra creatine can help your muscles make more ATP faster as you use it to fuel your cells during high-intensity exercise.

One reason your body builds more lean muscle tissue when you take creatine is that your muscles will hold more water. The pressure from the water in your cells causes your muscles to swell. This water and swelling can also make cells grow.” https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/creatine

On average it also improves cognitive function slightly etc, but like most supplements individual results vary. “especially as you get older. But studies have not shown a strong effect.”

Curious to see support for the TRT statement - I myself have been on test cyp and anastrazole for the better part of two years with not one side effect. Been in and around steroid users in the strength sport realm for 15. The people with "nasty" side effects are almost always abusers that blast/cruise too often with no AI or PCT e.g dumbasses. Its been a life changing experience for me (going from low 200 ng/dl free T to 800-900 at 32)

I think I screwed up the adjectives there. Gains and side effects are ~ proportional to dose.

Do you really need Anastrazole at that dose?

General marker is x4-6 weekly dose for free test, so I'd wager you're taking somewhere between 150-200mg?

I found that contrary to popular advice, I felt much better without taking an aromatase inhibitor and letting my estradiol float at the higher end of the reference range.

There's some science backing the idea that Test/E2 are meant to exist in terms of a relative ratio to each other, rather than concrete numbers.

IE, if your free test is 1,000ng/dL, you'd want more E2 than if you were sitting at 300ng/dL.

I only take the guidance of my doc as recommendations for AI's have always been all over the place and ive been with him forever - I started at 2x/2weeks and now its once every other week. On top of that my estrogen numbers have always been high so it makes sense. Its been an experiment - I did tank it once and uhh, the side effects were interesting

Fair enough. You likely know this, but my E2 levels are highly sensitive to my bodyfat as well, what with adipose tissue contributing to aromatization.

Could be that at some bodyfat percentages you don't need an AI at all, while at higher levels you do.

Caffeine has impacts beyond motivation. It has been studied on the context of cyclists and boosts ability to ride. So does beet root.

Creatine has been studied to have other small effects too..

What too, the above have effects on muscle endurance, though for resistance training the effects may vary well be small. Further, this study took people that were not trained. 5lbs of muscle is a lot.. these folks might have gone from 50lbs to 55lbs, an extra 0.1lbs due to a supplement would be noise. I think this study needs muscle biopsies to measure creatine levels accurately to tease out those that are getting plenty from their diet vs not. Or.. try to have a large control group that gets zero creatine in their diet.

AFAIK creatine supplementation is something to think about after a year or two of training, for advanced intermediates.

Here are some sources with how caffeine and nitrates help at least endurance performance:

https://www.cptips.com/nitrate.htm

https://www.cptips.com/caff.htm

I thought runners were also using creatine but I can only find discussion around this for amateurs online. I'm not sure if professional runners are using it. It would be interesting to know if professionals are using it because as far as I'm aware it is not a banned substance and presumably if it had a benefit they would be using it. But maybe I'm just bad at googling because I found this article that claimed 80% of athletes at the Atlanta Olympics were using creatine (https://runmrrun.com/creatine-for-running/). Though, this page seems to be trying to sell creatine supplements so maybe should be taken with a bit of skepticism.

Yes, it's well-known. It's also the reason people take it.

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