Holla Pinto

6 Pages 1387 Words

Supplement Use By Athletes
Concentration On Creatine


Throughout time, humans have had a fascination with being excellent at what they do, and athletics have been no exception. Many substances exist, and many have been criticized and analyzed for their safety, legality, and morality for athletes. With the banning of steroids from competitive sports, and the implementation of random drug testing in most sports, most athletes, professional, recreational, and would-be professionals are hoping to gain an edge. More recently, one such edge has been discovered, and it has found itself in locker rooms across the country, in the hands of these athletes, and all the while, and probably more importantly, in the media's direct line of fire. Although legal, creatine has its proponents and its opponents, through this paper; I'll discuss some of the factors that make creatine such a hot topic in sports and the health industry.
To understand why people use creatine, we must first understand what it is. Creatine is a naturally occurring nutrient that is found in the body. It is also found in meat and fish, usually at a concentration of about 4 grams of creatine per kilogram (Sahelian). As a general fact, we consume around 1 gram per day from our daily diet. To apply creatine to the muscle building process, we must understand what it does. When we use our muscle everyday for any activity, we use oxygen to make energy. This energy is created by breaking down a chemical that exists in our body known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP), into another chemical, adenosine diphosphate (ADP), but using oxygen to make energy is a very slow process (Sahelian). This is the part of the process where creatine makes itself known. Current studies show that creatine supplementation can increase the amount of creatine in muscles, which in turn, speeds up the ATP refueling process (Murphy). This enhances performance by producing more energy for brief, high-intensit...