2) Take 7 Grams of Creatine Every Day, for 7 Days (Loading Phase). While these are some possible side effects of creatine, they’re not experienced by all users or even a lot of creatine users. While there are rumors of creatine increasing testosterone, or even lowering your libido, there is no evidence proving that creatine affects you sexually in any way. A maintenance dose is fine, but it’ll take you longer to see results from your creatine supplementation. While these are relatively minor side effects, there’s always the potential of more serious side effects from creatine. And then you ingest 3-5 grams a day after that to maintain the elevated creatine stores. Phase 1: For a week, consume 20 grams of creatine every day. This dose is typically divided into four 5-gram servings throughout the day. If you take creatine in high doses for a long period of time, you could incur damage to your liver, kidneys, and heart. Not only that, but when you take creatine orally as a supplement, it elevates your body’s creatine levels far more effectively than diet and natural production alone. Creatine plays an important role in energy production in the body. This can happen for a variety of reasons, mainly the fact that your muscle cells are physically larger due to the increased water. Nausea 3. You have the option of doing a loading phase, where you take more starting off, which makes creatine effective a lot more quickly but isn’t necessary. Can You Take creatine As A Beginner. Water retention 9. If you’re short on money, I’d recommend not doing a loading phase. I don't think I've ever seen a study where people took creatine for a few weeks or months and then went off it for a period of time, only to go back to it again. You can "load" for the first 5-7 days to help saturate your cells, but beyond that there's no benefit to taking large amounts. Below, I’ll go over these factors more in-depth. Although a loading phase will allow you to experience the full benefits of creatine within a slightly shorter time frame, 2-3 weeks at the standard 3-5 gram per day dose will still get you to the exact same point regardless. Kre-Alkalyn Dosage. For loading you should be taking 20-25 grams per day split up into 2-4 servings, for the first 4-7 days of using a creatine supplement. This creatine is used up, for energy, every day before it’s restored again. If you choose not to do a creatine loading phase the only benefit you’ll be losing out on is faster results. Instead, creatine will take optimum effect if you spread the 20 grams to 4 servings of 5grams and drink them within a day. Creatine is usually taken as a powder dissolved in water. Some brands of creatine might claim that their type will kick in faster, and start working right away. You shouldn’t have any further confusion on the matter But if you do, just ask below. Otherwise, creatine loading is great, but you should only do it for about a week, before going to a lower dose of 5 grams per day. This can happen for a variety of reasons but can happen when taking any supplement your body isn’t used to. Once you start taking creatine, you can take it normally, or do a loading phase, where you take a lot more than you normally would before you go down to a “maintenance dose”. Before taking creatine, or any other supplement, talk to your doctor and make sure you’re in a good enough of a condition. If you choose not to do a loading phase, you’ll start with the maintenance phase, which will take around 28 days to fill your creatine reserves. Read my article on every type of creatine if you want to learn more about what all the different types actually do! While creatine has many possible side effects that I listed above, there are some that are much more common than others. If it makes you feel sick taking it early in the morning try it some other time. For normal use, you should take around 5 grams per day of creatine. If you didn’t know, animal meat contains creatine, so if you eat a lot of meat, you’ll have more creatine in your system already than someone that eats less meat. check out my article on every type of creatine. Stopping the use of creatine will not make you see results from creatine any faster. If you do do a loading phase, you’ll see results much faster than if you only do a maintenance phase. Healthy kidneys filter creatinine and other waste products from your blood. Creatine cycling is nothing but a myth pushed by supplement companies to get you to buy more creatine because if you do a cycle, you’ll need to go through another loading phase, where you’ll use four times the normal about of creatine. A combination of daily dosage and term of administration dictate whether someone is in a “loading” phase or “maintenance” phase. 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