How Much Creatine Should I Take?

How much creatine should I take? A good maintenance dosage is about 3 to 5 grams of creatine daily. What most people don’t know is that creatine is produced in the kidneys, liver, pancreas and in the body. Research studies on an average that your body makes about 1 to 2 grams of creatine per day which is stored primarily in your skeletal muscles.

How much creatine should I take? iStock- photo credit: Liudmila Chernetska

If you are following an animal diet that consists of fish, beef, chicken, steak it will produce about 1 to 2 grams of creatine compounds in your body per day. Vegetarians have lower creatine stores in their body and muscles because they don’t consume any meat.

And for people that want to increase the amount of creatine in the body you can purchase creatine in a powder or pill supplementation form. The reason why creatine is so popular is that research studies show that it can enhance athletic performance when it comes to strength, power, and an increase in lean muscle mass.

One of the more common ways to take creatine is start off with creatine loading which is consuming 20 to 25 grams of creatine for about 5 to 7 days. After the loading phase then you would take about 3 to 5 grams of creatine per day to help maintain your muscle stores of creatine.

The main benefit of creatine loading is saturate the muscles cells with creatine quicker so you can experience the benefits quicker. And the only way to experience it quicker is to saturate the muscles with loading for about 5 to 7 days.

One of the negative side effects of creatine loading is bloating. The creatine loading at times can cause an unnecessary amount of water retention in the body. One of the best ways to minimize bloating is to skip the loading phase and go straight to the creatine maintenance phase.

Also taking too much creatine at one time can cause diarrhea, upset stomach, etc. There was a study that showed that people who took 10 grams of creatine per serving experienced stomach discomfort and diarrhea.

Studies have shown that taking 3 to 5 grams of creatine daily will help to maintain your muscles stores.

The Bottom Line is the recommendation on an average in terms of how much creatine you should take to maintain creatine stores in your muscles daily is 3 to 5 grams.

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