Research

Hormonal

Acute creatine monohydrate supplementation reduces whole-body protein breakdown and leucine oxidation in men, but does not increase mixed-muscle protein synthesis.

If you are a man, acute creatine loading (20g/day for 5 days) may help preserve muscle protein by reducing breakdown, without necessarily increasing synthesis rates. This effect was not seen in women in this study. Ensure you are well-hydrated and follow a loading protocol if you want to maximize muscle creatine stores.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
CrM supplementation did not increase muscle fractional synthetic rate but reduced leucine oxidation (−19.6%) and plasma leucine rate of appearance (−7.5%, P < 0.05) in men, but not in women.
Gianni Parise et al. · Journal of Applied Physiology · 2001

Why this rating

Double-blind, placebo-controlled, rigorous metabolic ward study with stable isotope tracers, though limited to acute supplementation and small sample size.

Source

Effects of acute creatine monohydrate supplementation on leucine kinetics and mixed-muscle protein synthesis

Gianni Parise et al. · Journal of Applied Physiology · 2001

DOI 10.1152/jappl.2001.91.3.1041

rct · n=27Cited 233×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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