A man who took a 'super dose' of creatine documented what impact it had on his body once he'd taken it, and there are some genuine health concerns over having too much of the stuff.
Gym-goer Ryan Dabbs decided to see what would happen if he took massive amounts of the gym supplement each day, and kept track of just what it was doing to him.
Creatine supplies energy to the muscles, with many using the supplement to build strength and promote brain health, the Cleveland Clinic explains.
You're supposed to have no more than three to five grams of the stuff per day, but Dabbs 'super dose' involved him doing about five times that much with a 25g amount.
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He said he was 'scraping' by when it came to stomaching the texture of the stuff, but beyond the taste, it did have a major impact on his body and mind.
Dabbs reckoned that he could feel the benefits to his body from taking five times as much creatine as he was supposed to, though he reckoned this might have been something of a 'placebo'.
He also thought it gave him a mental boost and made him more motivated, but he went through some serious downsides too.
The man said it 'messed with how I felt' and left him nursing a 'pretty debilitating headache' which forced him to split up the creatine intake into multiple smaller doses.
He also got really dehydrated and found he was having to 'consume increasing amounts of liquid'.
There's a reason why taking too much creatine isn't recommended, as Healthline warns the reality of going overboard will bring you problems without making a meaningful boost to your body.
Nutritionist Gavin Van De Walle warned that your muscles could get 'fully saturated with creatine' and then everything on top of that was being wasted, so there was little point in going so overboard.
He said you could end up with discomfort in your stomach and bloating from too much creatine if you'd far exceeded the recommended amount.
It turns out that your body will dispose of the excess creatine through your urine stream.
The nutritionist pointed towards a study which found athletes taking 10g of creatine in a single serving suffered from 'diarrhea, stomach upset, and belching' while those who stayed at 5g had no such problems.
Fortunately for Dabbs, he didn't suffer from this bloating and reckoned it had been positive, but he admitted there was probably something of the 'placebo' about it.
The reality is there's only so much creatine your body can handle, and if you have too much of it, you're literally p**sing most of it away while you risk bloating and headaches.
Topics: Health, Science, Food And Drink
Joe Harker