Should you’re not taking creatine, you are missing out on serious results. At SET FOR SET, we imagine that each one athletes and lifters should take creatine because it’s among the finest supplements available on the market.
Should you’ve been within the fitness world for any length of time, you most likely have a baseline understanding of creatine’s importance. But what you could not know is precisely the best way to optimize your creatine supplementation strategy, and among the finest ways to do this is with timing.
So, this leads us to the questions: Why does taking creatine at different times matter, and the way can it affect your adaptations? Let’s discover.
Table of Contents:
- What Is Creatine?
- Why Do We Take Creatine?
- Can You Take Creatine Before Bed?
- When Is The Best Time To Take Creatine?
- Advantages Of Taking Creatine Before Bed
- Side Effects
- How To Take Creatine
- What Are The Best Forms of Creatine?
- FAQs
What Is Creatine?
Before we will understand if we should always take creatine at night, we want to grasp what creatine does and the way supplementation helps performance.
Creatine is a non-proteinogenic amino acid. Internally, it’s produced within the liver and kidney by synthesizing three other amino acids: arginine, glycine, and methionine.
We also can devour creatine through our food regimen. Large amounts of creatine are present in various animal products, especially pork and fatty fish. Due to this fact, diets wealthy in these foods could have higher creatine stores. No matter your stores, roughly 95% of the body’s creatine is stored within the muscles, while the opposite 5% is situated within the brain and testes.
Resulting from its role in our physiology, our body continuously uses creatine, so we want to maintain our stores stocked.
One in every of its major roles is within the phosphagen energy system, or ATP-CP system. This technique supplies ATP (adenosine triphosphate), our body’s energy source, for high-intensity activities comparable to sprinting or jumping. These explosive activities require energy as fast as possible, and creatine phosphate is the proper source.
When we want that kind of fast-paced energy, a phosphate group breaks away from ATP, producing energy plus ADP (adenosine diphosphate). Your phosphagen system will then take a phosphate group from the available creatine phosphate and add it back to ADP, producing ATP again.
You may learn much more about what creatine is in our article: What Are The Different Forms of Creatine?
Why Do We Take Creatine?
If our bodies already contain creatine, why do we want a complement?
As mentioned above, our body’s stores are continuously getting used and replenished again, nevertheless it’s rare for anyone’s stores to be completely full. This is very true in energetic populations or those that devour an inadequate amount of their food regimen. For instance, it’s known that the typical creatine store of a vegan is significantly lower than that of omnivores.
As a way to fill our stores and keep them full, we will complement with exogenous creatine. Doing so ultimately provides more creatine for the replenishment of ATP so that you could produce more work at higher intensities.
Within the gym, this ends in more intense workouts with high volume, which ends up in adaptations comparable to greater muscle growth, more muscular strength, higher muscle recovery, and improved performance. Regarding performance-based advantages, latest users can expect a 5-10% increase over the primary month.
Researchers are finding that creatine has many other uses as well, comparable to enhanced recovery, improved tolerance to heat, brain and spinal cord neuroprotection, and improved cognition1.
We are able to expect to see much more robust evidence as research increases. For this reason we are saying that almost all people should take this complement, as it should likely profit them one way or the other. Creatine is so vital that we have even included it in our round-up of the 7 Supplements For Men Over 40.
Can You Take Creatine Before Bed?
Now let’s take a look at some more specific questions regarding creatine supplementation: Can you’re taking creatine before bed? To completely answer this query, we want to reply it from two angles:
- Can you’re taking creatine before bed?
- Should you’re taking creatine before bed?
The primary query regarding creatine timing before bed is simple to reply: Yes, you may take creatine before bed! By this, I mean there isn’t any reason why you mustn’t. It is not going to affect your sleep, and you will still receive the advantages of creatine without experiencing any hostile effects.
Many other supplements, like caffeine, affect us immediately, so timing matters rather a lot more. But caffeine is a stimulant, and creatine shouldn’t be. Now, in the event you were to take a preworkout with creatine, timing would matter way more, as those will contain stimulants that shouldn’t be taken before bed.
But, circling back to creatine only, do not forget that we’re merely topping off our creatine stores when supplementing with it. The advantages you receive from creatine come from chronic consumption, so no matter while you take it, you are not going to “feel” any immediate effects.
The speed of this process is why most individuals start with a loading phase. Higher initial doses help it “kick in” faster, nevertheless it’ll still take days to weeks for any noticeable effect. Once this phase is finished, continuous supplementation with smaller doses maintains your supply.
It’s creatine’s consistent supplementation that works, not a lot the precise timing, so studies on creatine and timing are limited. Further, existing studies differ significantly in protocols, so it’s difficult to check them.
For instance, a review from 2021 that examined this very issue concluded:
“More well-controlled studies determining whether the timing of Cr supplementation around training truly influences the increases in intramuscular Cr content and its ergogenic effects are required to substantiate any such claims (that timing of creatine matters)2.”
This leads us to the second a part of the query: you’re taking creatine before bed? From a physiological or performance standpoint, no evidence exists that this can provide any support or profit.
As we saw above, there are too few studies on creatine timing to say it matters in any respect, let alone at night. Even the studies that do exist on creatine timing, in addition to interest, are concerned with consumption around training.
The one reason we could consider to take creatine at night may simply be because that is while you take your supplements. Perhaps taking creatine right now can enable you remember.
One more reason could also be attributable to your food regimen. Creatine monohydrate must be taken with complex and easy carbs to assist optimize absorption. Should you follow a fasting food regimen or OMAD, you could only eat at night. In this case, you must take creatine at night to make use of it with carbs.
When Is The Best Time To Take Creatine?
Interestingly, I cannot conclusively say that a “best time” even exists for taking creatine supplements, let alone when that point is. As we now have stated before, creatine supplementation works by maintaining creatine stores relatively than having a direct, acute effect.
With that in mind, if I needed to guess, I might recommend that you simply take creatine monohydrate post-workout for several reasons:
- You could have just depleted a great amount attributable to your intense exercise.
- It’ll help replenish glycogen in your muscle cells.
- It’ll ensure you’ve got creatine stores for the recovery process.
I would like to reiterate that that is most speculative, and we should not claiming post-workout to be the most effective time. As a substitute, I’m taking a look at the limited information available to make an informed guess.
At the identical time, taking creatine before bed will almost certainly be just as effective for things like constructing lean muscle mass as taking it after waking or mid-day.
Advantages Of Taking Creatine Before Bed
In relation to its muscle-building advantages and improving exercise performance, taking creatine before bed doesn’t necessarily provide any form of advantage over taking it with a morning shake. Creatine uptake and its effect on constructing muscle and muscle recovery don’t appear to be affected by the point of day.
That said, taking creatine at night could possibly be a profit if it gets you on a schedule. Consuming creatine as a part of your nightly routine could make sure you don’t miss a dose.
Regardless, you may expect the identical advantages as above by taking creatine at any point within the day. A very powerful thing is that you are taking it.
Side Effects
A vital aspect of creatine is that though there are claims of dangerous unwanted side effects, creatine monohydrate is usually protected for all individuals to take, other than a number of groups. There have been quite a few studies, each short and long-term, which have shown this.
That said, there may be a likelihood you could suffer from a number of more minor unwanted side effects. Probably the most commonly reported effects are gastric distress and bloating.
I should mention that these often occur throughout the loading phase as an individual is taking a considerable amount of creatine. This could easily be diverted by skipping a loading phase and taking smaller amounts of creatine throughout the day. It’ll take you longer to see any advantages, as increase your stores takes longer, but it might probably help avoid unwanted side effects.
Even when taking your maintenance dosage, you may still divide it into smaller doses. Keep in mind that the advantages come from the buildup of consuming creatine relatively than a dose.
How To Take Creatine
So far as the best way to take creatine, while you first begin taking creatine, many start with what’s often known as a loading phase. During this initial period, you wish to quickly replenish your stores to the utmost. It would be best to take around 0.3g of creatine per kg of body weight day by day to do that, which could be divided into 4-6 smaller doses3.
After this era, your creatine stores will likely be full. You may now lower the dosage and enter your maintenance stage, taking around 0.03g/kg of creatine/body weight day by day.
To optimize your creatine supplementation, you want to devour your creatine monohydrate with carbs. When co-ingested, creatine may additionally enhance glycogen resynthesis, providing mutual profit to each carb and creatine absorption. Either will positively affect athletic performance in the event you’re an athlete or lifter.
Aim to take each dose with a mix of around 50-70g of straightforward and complicated carbs. There may additionally be some profit to taking creatine supplements with protein, which is why adding creatine to a post-workout shake is so popular. Not only do you get the addition of each protein and carbs, creatine can further aid with post-workout recovery as it might enhance your glycogen.
What Are The Best Types of Creatine?
To start out, a standard discussion is whether or not to take creatine pills or powder. Each will work, and it’s largely a private alternative based on several aspects. To find out which is correct for you, take a look at our article: Creatine Pills vs Creatine Powder: Which Is Higher?
No matter your alternative, creatine monohydrate is the gold standard of creatine supplements. Creatine monohydrate delivers consistent results and must be on the highest of your complement wish list.
My top pick for creatine monohydrate is Optimum Nutrition Micronized Creatine Monohydrate attributable to the brand’s quality control and third-party testing.
For more great options, take a look at our article on the 8 Best Creatine Supplements.
FAQs
Still have some questions? We selected a few of the more common questions and answered them below.
Does creatine keep you awake?
Does creatine affect sleep? The reply isn’t any! Creatine may very well help with the results of sleep deprivation, so it’d make you are feeling more like yourself after a nasty night’s sleep.
What if I take creatine without figuring out?
You’ll still replenish your creatine stores. As well as, you could experience a few of the non-performance advantages in addition to maintain lean muscle mass.
Can you’re taking creatine 2 times a day?
Yes. In reality, taking creatine twice a day may help those that are sensitive to gastric distress because it allows for smaller doses.
Should I take creatine while attempting to lose belly fat?
Should you are shedding weight, creatine won’t impede this and will help by mitigating muscle mass loss and improving recovery. Claims of water weight gain have been misunderstood, and for more information, I highly recommend reading our article: Should You Take Creatine While Cutting?
Is it OK to take creatine without protein?
Yes, taking creatine alone will still offer you its advantages. Nevertheless, you must take creatine with carbs and protein in the event you can.
How long does creatine take to work?
The loading phase for creatine will take about one month. This tends to be while you start seeing noticeable results.
Can You Take Creatine Before Bed? The Results
Every serious lifter or athlete must be taking creatine or at the very least have looked into taking a creatine complement. Should you’re doing that, every part else could have a comparatively small effect on its effects, including taking creatine before bed.
Due to this fact, whatever time works for you is awesome. After lunch? Go for it! Every single day at 4:37 PM sharp? Absolutely! Do whatever works best for you, because the more vital thing is keeping your creatine stores topped off!
