What Happens To Your Body After Taking Creatine For 30 Days?

What exactly does creatine do to your body? How does creatine work? And where does it go? What creatine benefits should you expect to feel, and how soon? Is it safe? And are there any creatine side effects you should know about? Today we’ll cover all that by doing a deep dive into what to expect throughout your first 30 days of taking creatine.

So, first things first: what does creatine do to your body? Creatine is a substance we naturally produce and use up as an indirect energy source to power our muscles through high intensity activities. For this reason, we store most of our creatine in our muscles (95%). But, about 5% of creatine is also stored in the brain. Supplementing with creatine can increase our baseline levels by about 30%. As a result, our muscles have more creatine to power our muscles with, leading to more strength and muscle mass overtime. But approximately 20-30% of individuals naturally walk around with just about fully saturated muscle creatine levels. As a result, they experience little to no benefit from creatine supplementation.

When you first start taking creatine, it takes time for your muscles to become fully saturated with that additional creatine. How long this takes depends on how much creatine you take every day. Using the loading method, it’ll take about 7 days to fully saturate your muscles. The other method is to take a baseline dose of creatine every day and to slowly increase your creatine levels overtime, often taking about 2-3 weeks to reach full saturation.

Both methods get you to the same end destination, but will differ in some of the creatine side effects you may experience. For example, one of the side effects most people experience during this saturation phase is water retention and a small spike in your bodyweight. Another often reported side effect is stomach discomfort. If you experience this, or want to avoid experiencing it in the first place, try splitting up your creatine dose into multiple smaller doses throughout the day if you’re on the loading protocol. If it doesn’t work, stick with the non-loading protocol. In addition to this, avoid taking creatine on an empty stomach or with caffeine as those both scenarios seem to increase the likelihood of an upset stomach. Lastly, when you take your creatine, you can try mixing it with hot water to get it fully dissolved and see if that helps.

Alright so the last side effect you and your doctor should know about has to do with your creatinine levels. Creatinine is a breakdown product of creatine. Since you’re taking more creatine, your creatinine levels will also slightly increase. And since high creatinine levels can indicate impaired kidney function, this can be alarming to see on a blood test if you’re not aware of it. However, creatine has been consistently proven to be a safe supplement for healthy individuals and your health professional should be aware of its effect on creatinine.

Alright so our muscles are now locked and loaded with creatine! What happens now? What creatine benefits can you expect? First off, your strength should start increasing across most of your movements. Note that even just a slight increase in your strength or reps is a very solid return as far as supplements go and can lead to significantly greater muscle mass overtime. In addition to just improving performance however, a study that surveyed 52 NCAA athletes found that 81% of them reported faster recovery from their training as one of the benefits they noticed after taking creatine. So after you reach saturation, pay attention to how fast you recover between your workouts as you may notice an improvement. Lastly, creatine supplementation could consistently improve performance on short-term memory and tests of intelligence, with the benefits becoming even more apparent under stressed states such as sleep deprivation.

So that should give you a very good idea as to how does creatine work, exactly, and what to expect once you start taking creatine. That said guys, creatine or any supplement for that matter, is just the icing on the cake. If you want to truly transform your body and see incredible results then you need to prioritize your training and your nutrition. If you need help in these areas and are looking for a simple yet highly effective science-based program you can trust, that shows you exactly how to train and how to eat to transform your body as efficiently as possible, then simply take our analysis quiz to find the best program for you and your body below:

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[JeremyEthier]

Hope you enjoyed this one! What side effects or benefits have YOU experienced from taking creatine? Comment below! As for the hair loss concerns, this is something I've covered in a past creatine video with the conclusion that it's probably not a concern, but if you want to play it safe and do have a family history of male pattern baldness, then you can consider staying away from it. BUT there still has yet to be any new research (all of this relies heavily on one study), so we don't have a clear answer as of yet!

[darrenwalker]

I took 1 teaspon of creatine for a month with drinking a good amount of water and i see a huge difference in my workouts i can push more weight and not get fatigued as quick. Only problem is i just discoverd i have cancer in my lungs and have to go through chemo so wish me luck and for those who want to use creatine I would say its worth the money. Make sure to drink your water though. I made another comment about an update.

[darrenwalker]

Hopefully you guys can see this comment but I finished chemo a week ago and all the nodules which are the little spots in my lung have either disappeared or stopped growing. I’m getting life and health back together, I thank everyone that prayed for me when I started my treatment. Time went by quick and I’m glad it’s over, god wouldn’t put me through something I couldn’t handle I am forever thankful.

[masterquadbiker]

I’ve been on and off creatine over time and for me personally the difference is night and day, the energy levels I get from it are insane, heavy cardio and weights in the gym followed by a physical 8 hour shift at work and I’m still feeling very active after, brilliant stuff

[alphagaming]

Creatine didn’t agree with my GI tract very well, however I did feel stronger and while I experienced bloating in my stomach it felt like all of my muscles were huge too. My advice would be to drink as much water as possible and be prepared for the worst smelling farts to ever leave a human body.

Edit: I switched brands and have no negative side effects whatsoever. Quality supplements are worth it.

[SaniBravo]

The primary side effect that I experienced was massive gains

[synyzal]

Something to note for newer lifters who maybe just use whatever protein powder their local shop has or just started using protein powder and haven't looked too closely at what's in them - many protein powder blends include creatine, usually 1.5g-3g/scoop. It's something to take into account if you're considering starting to use creatine - you might already be taking 3g/day. I know when I first started going to the gym, completely new to all of it, I tried a lot of different powders and didn't even take into account which ones had creatine.

[robinwagner]

I started taking creatine about 3 weeks ago. Honestly it's the best thing I could've ever done. I'm extremely skinny naturally but lately my body has started to take shape. I never realised how big I was actually getting when I compared myself to some people at gym. You don't get tired as quickly and finish all your sets. So it's a good investment to make

[Sweet-T-vv]

I have started taking creatine and i was shocked at my strength and my recovery time... my muscles feel fuller and i have more energy.. creatine is the future

[alanduncan]

One thing to note is the huge and sudden gains you can make with creatine can cause you to over reach your abilities. I was making big gains and went for more reps on my bench press than I normally did and tore a tendon in my elbow. Was unable to train for about 18 months. The muscle strength can surpass the tendon and bone strength.

[darrenwalker]

I would like to add that the creatine does not give you cancer. My percentage of getting this type of cancer osteosarcoma a bone cancer was very rare. No one in my family has cancer which makes it even more rare but the doctors said with how it looks it’s a cureative. It hasn’t got bad yet and I started chemo last week it’s going pretty good so far. Thank you everyone for the prayers

[rachelcarr]

As a over weight 41 year old woman. I decided to row 100k in June for MND, as it had been a year since my dad passed away. I started taking creatine before and after my workouts. As going from zero fitness was brutal. It's been 3 weeks and I've noticed a drastic improvement in my recovery times, from day one. I have definitely put on weight in muscle mass but I'm a lot stronger. Could barely row 80pm without dying. Now I'm up to 7k. Really impressed.

[JohnnyNowhere]

I only train to increase strength and endurance (as opposed to seeking mass) because I'm a cyclist. After several years off of the bike due to illness, I overcame the illness, and decided it was time to get back into the game. By now I was 65. I began taking Creatine with my protein isolate. It doesn't bother my stomach, but I can tell that the stuff works because I'm riding like I did when I was 50. I'm a proponent. Kudos.

[DrSwole]

That clip of the bodybuilder flexing in the security camera never fails to make me grin

[Dkaizen]

I see a lot of comments on here regarding Creatine loading and I wanted to say that the loading phase is no longer necessary, not because it doesn't work, but because a study was finally done on creatine loading vs single dosing at 5g daily. For the first three weeks, the loading groups' muscles were more saturated, but at the three-week mark, the daily creatine groups' muscles were saturated evenly with the loading group. And both groups continued to stay evenly saturated after when measured. Also, it didn't matter when creatine was taken i.e. before or after workouts or any time of day as the muscles were still saturated.

Simply taking a daily dose is so much easier than loading!

[SG-jqvt]

I’m just finishing the 5th day of the loading phase. I was skeptical about it at first because there is so much misinformation in fitness - but it became really clear really quickly how good Creatine is. It helps with everything I needed help with, and I’m excited to keep taking it and see how it effects my life.

[brianharder]

I remember jumping on creatine in the mid-90's. I was a skinny endurance athlete but enjoyed weight training. I did a loading phase. I remember the utter amazement of doing 90lb dumbell bench presses. I was typically squeaking out 5 reps or so but within 5 days of supplementing, I added 3-5 reps each set. I remember literally giggling as each additional rep went up so easily. Very effective for me.

[turkishexpress]

One other thing to mention about creatine is age. I started using creatine when it first came out and it did little for me and over the years I experimented with it with no improvements in performance. I started taking it again recently but I'm now in my mid 40s and I feel that it's now helping my recovery greatly.

[irishmystery]

I started taking creatine towards the end of last year, and didnt think much of it. I noticed myself getting stronger and looking bigger but i also started going to the gym more often and training harder so that made sense. The crazy thing was though, I noticed while studying for this year's summer exams in college that the information is getting held in my brain effortlessly, compared to other years where i needed flash cards and tons of repetition. I would consider myself a good student anyway but it was usually due to try-harding and all-nighters revising, but this year was different. It all just stuck first time. I didnt really have a reason for this in my head until watching this video.

This is my first exam session on creatine and i can 100% confirm the short term memory is noticably improved.
And no it's not placebo, I realized the improvment first, then found the cause.

[MelissaBackwoods]

Im a girl and was always afraid of taking creatine. Now that I’ve recently got into lifting and I’m not afraid to get a little thicker during winter, I’m super excited to try out the supplement!