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As it was mentioned elsewhere it might make existing cancers worse, and decrease survivability. Cancer seems to love it.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25601461/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.009

More accessible video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcMgHncZVIw

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Not risks but sideeffects that might affect you. I just decided to cut creatine out during summer months, as I sweat significantly more when on creatine (and pee of course, but that is manageable). Now I already sweat more than average joe based on my genetics (yes, I had that checked out by a doctor) but on creatine it became really annoying during hot season. Since creatine definitely allows me to lift heavier and progress, I will just plan around that and put cutting/maintenance phases into the hot season off-creatine, and go back to supplementing it the rest of the year.
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If you have kidney problems, it's very dangerous. My friend's son took creatine to build muscles, but got Berger disease. Be careful!
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Anecdotally, it makes me feel like crap and significantly increased hair shedding. I've seen attestations of both side effects online as well. No idea how or why it could cause either, and the crumminess at least significantly improved very quickly after stopping it. Neither side effect seems to be especially common though.
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Generally no, it's expensively studied and has had daily consumption to be safe for upto 5 years at least (studies haven't generally gone longer).

That being said some people do have adverse effects to supplementation, e.g. excessive water retention, bloating, stomach discomfort, &c.

So try it, if you have a bad reaction stop.

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I get severe cramping from it (reproducible). All I can find are papers about this being a myth and some reddit threads about other people having this.
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I get it too if I don't drink a lot more water. So did many people on my sports team.

Creatine binds to water (making less water available to your muscles) and allows your muscles to work harder (which makes them need more water). So if you're not drinking a lot more water when you're taking creatine, you will get cramps from either dehydration and/or muscle overuse.

But once you're past the loading phase for creatine and getting sufficient hydration, it's supposed to lessen cramps because the water bound to creatine also becomes available for use again as the creatine is used by the body.

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Yeah, of course I tried to drink more water. I also tried to ramp up the dose slower.

But the cramps are really debilitating, as in random back muscle locks up debilitating, so I thought it best to just give up on this.

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I don't think dosing affects much, as long as you have excess creatine, the extra water requirements are determined by your muscle mass.
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How much water can 3g of creatine bind to? Is it like orbeez?
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My understanding is it's a bit of a bind and release process that moves the water from outside of the muscle cell to inside of it until the cell is saturated or the creatine is consumed.

So the amount of creatine changes the rate as which water is loaded into the cell, but the total amount of water needed is calculated based on your muscle mass. The figures I've seen is 2L extra water (spread evenly, not all at once) for a normally recommended 5g daily creatine intake during loading (which typically takes a month at 5g/day dosage).

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I get this unless I drink a lot of water. About 48 fl oz seems to be the right amount for 10g creatine. Sometimes this needs to be combined with a light snack, like a handful of nuts.
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Did you try different sources I do not trust some of the stuff out there and often wonder if these supplements aren’t just generic white powder…
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That would be an argument against trying a different source
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Essentially none. Creatine supplementation is a good idea for most people, especially vegans/vegetarians.
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Why especially those?
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Your body can synthesize creatine, so it's not essential, but meat is a source of exogenous creatine and eating it results in higher stored creatine levels, which is slightly good for muscle power endurance in the ~5-15 second effort range. Supplementing produces slightly higher relative improvements in creatine levels in vegetarians and vegans than it does in people who eat meat.
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Because they lack all kinds of substances that meateaters get plenty of.
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I'm a vegan, and I'm surprised this is downvoted, because it's true. There are plenty of things that you need to be careful to not become deficient in on a vegan diet: protein (in appropriate amino acid balances), creatine, b12, the good Omega 3s (from algae preferably; flax is missing DHA entirely), calcium, iron, to name a few.

You're fine if you take daily algae oil, multivitamin, iron supplement, calcium, and creatine (without going overboard on any of it) and making sure to get lots of protein from balanced sources (eating a ton of soy is actually not a bad idea, because it's a balanced protein), but I wouldn't recommend somebody who doesn't want to have to worry about their nutrition to go vegan. Enough omnivores are already deficient in vitamins and minerals, and veganism only makes it harder.

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Nobody gets fired for supplementing vegans.
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Because meat is the best source of creatine from diet.
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Well, if vegetarians and those of the Vegan religion don't get enough creatine it is most likely related to them not partaking of an important source of the substance: meat.
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Not vouching for creatine, but in general, humans get some vital nutrients from animal consumption. Vegans have to take some B-vitamins for best health due to what they don't get from meat. I assume creatine is the same.
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Where do those animals get their B12 from, do you think? (Hint: they don't synthesize it either, they get it from their diet)

Today, because our food / water are so sterilized (good thing!), we don't typically get much bacterial B12 from unclean root vegetables, drinking from streams, etc. So yes, we need to supplement today. Because of advances in cleanliness.

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It can make you hold more water weight so you should drink more water in response.
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i personally have problems with tinnitus and hearing loss, and creatine use tends to trigger it due to water retention so i stay off the stuff.
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Interesting, I wonder how that is related? Do you believe you are getting hearing loss because you are retaining more water, or because you are dehydrated from retaining more water elsewhere in the body with the same intake rate? Does this go away if you were taking creatine and drinking more water? Or does it come up if you simply drink more water?
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Potentially lots poopies.
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Worse beach looks
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Creatine causes intramuscular water increases, not subcutaneous. Doesn't actually have a negative impact here.
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Excessively large doses make your stomach and perhaps your kidneys unhappy and supplements being lightly regulated there may be purity issues where the risk is what else is in it.

But it's pretty safe at recommended doses.

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None
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