THE OVRL QUALITY STANDARD
Creatine Should Deliver a Meaningful Dose — Not Just Appear on the Ingredient List
At OVRL, we believe creatine should be evaluated by the amount actually delivered per serving, the quality of the raw material and the transparency of the formulation.
CreaPower provides 3 g of 100% pure creatine monohydrate per serving. This amount sits within the 3–5 g/day maintenance intake referenced by the ISSN for maintaining elevated muscle creatine stores after saturation and reaches the 3 g/day threshold associated with the authorised European health claim for increased physical performance during successive bursts of short-term, high-intensity exercise.
WHAT THE RESEARCH SHOWS
“Creatine, a member of the guanidine phosphagen family, is a naturally occurring non-protein amino acid compound found primarily in red meat and seafood [1, 2, 3, 4]. The majority of creatine is found in skeletal muscle (~95%) with small amounts also found in the brain and testes (~5%) [5, 6]. About two thirds of intramuscular creatine is phosphocreatine (PCr) with the remaining being free creatine. The total creatine pool (PCr + Cr) in the muscle averages about 120 mmol/kg of dry muscle mass for a 70 kg individual [7]. However, the upper limit of creatine storage appears to be about 160 mmol/kg of dry muscle mass in most individuals [7, 8]. About 1–2% of intramuscular creatine is degraded into creatinine (metabolic byproduct) and excreted in the urine [7, 9, 10]. Therefore, the body needs to replenish about 1–3 g of creatine per day to maintain normal (unsupplemented) creatine stores depending on muscle mass. About half of the daily need for creatine is obtained from the diet [11].”
“The primary metabolic role of creatine is to combine with a phosphoryl group (Pi) to form PCr through the enzymatic reaction of creatine kinase (CK). [...] As adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is degraded into adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and Pi to provide free energy for metabolic activity, the free energy released from the hydrolysis of PCr into Cr + Pi can be used as a buffer to resynthesize ATP [24, 25]. This helps maintain ATP availability particularly during maximal effort anaerobic sprint-type exercise.”
THE STUDY
The publication is an International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand reviewing the accumulated scientific evidence on the safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport and medicine.
Rather than reporting the results of one isolated experiment, Kreider and colleagues bring together evidence covering different populations, training contexts, supplementation protocols and health outcomes.
The paper examines, among other areas:
- creatine metabolism and phosphocreatine physiology;
- muscle creatine availability;
- acute exercise capacity;
- repeated high-intensity exercise;
- training adaptations;
- strength and muscle mass;
- different age groups;
- short- and long-term safety.
KEY FINDINGS
Creatine availability and training capacity
The authors conclude:
“A large body of evidence now indicates that creatine supplementation increases muscle availability of creatine and PCr and can therefore enhance acute exercise capacity and training adaptations in adolescents [62, 63, 64, 65, 66], younger adults [61, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77] and older individuals [5, 40, 43, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85].”
More work can support greater adaptation
The authors connect this increased exercise capacity with training quality:
“These adaptations would allow an athlete to do more work over a series of sets or sprints leading to greater gains in strength, muscle mass, and/or performance due to an improvement in the quality of training.”
10–20% improvement in high-intensity or repetitive exercise after loading
The paper reports:
“After creatine loading, performance of high intensity and/or repetitive exercise is generally increased by 10–20% depending on the magnitude of increase in muscle PCr [46].”
Safety evidence across a wide range of populations
The authors also state:
“Available short and long-term studies in healthy and diseased populations, from infants to the elderly, at dosages ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 g/kg/day for up to 5 years have consistently shown that creatine supplementation poses no adverse health risks and may provide a number of health and performance benefits.”
Regarding renal markers, the position stand reports:
“Poortmans and coworkers reported that ingesting 20 g/day of creatine for 5 days [243], and up to 10 g/day from 10 months to 5 years [257] had no effect on creatine clearance, glomerular filtration rate, tubular resorption, or glomerular membrane permeability compared to controls.”
WHY THIS MATTERS
Creatine is not simply an ingredient associated with strength training. Its relevance comes from its role within the creatine kinase/phosphocreatine energy system, which helps maintain ATP availability when energy demand rises rapidly.
That makes the amount of creatine actually consumed important.
The evidence reviewed by Kreider and colleagues connects increased muscle creatine and phosphocreatine availability with a greater capacity to perform high-intensity and repeated exercise. The proposed training advantage is not that creatine replaces training, but that improved exercise capacity can allow an athlete to perform more work across sets or sprints — potentially improving the quality of the training stimulus over time.
HOW OVRL APPLIES THIS STANDARD
3 g of Creatine Monohydrate Per Serving in CreaPower
CreaPower provides:
3 g creatine monohydrate per serving
100% pure creatine monohydrate
This provides a full 3 g daily serving from the product itself and aligns with the dose level used for the authorised European claim concerning increased physical performance in successive bursts of short-term, high-intensity exercise.
By comparison, Explosive Power contains 2 g of creatine per serving. Its creatine content contributes to the overall formulation, but that serving alone does not reach the 3 g/day amount required for the European creatine performance claim.
The distinction reflects a central part of the OVRL Quality Standard: we believe consumers should be able to see not only which ingredients are present, but also how much of them the formula actually delivers.
RESEARCH AT A GLANCE
Lead author: Richard B. Kreider
Institution: Texas A&M University
Publication: Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition
Year: 2017
Article type: International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand
Research area: Creatine supplementation in exercise, sport and medicine
Key topics: Muscle creatine availability, phosphocreatine, ATP regeneration, high-intensity exercise, repeated efforts, training adaptations and safety
Reported performance finding: High-intensity and/or repetitive exercise performance was generally increased by 10–20% after creatine loading, depending on the increase in muscle phosphocreatine.
READ THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH
International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Safety and Efficacy of Creatine Supplementation in Exercise, Sport, and Medicine
Kreider, R. B., Kalman, D. S., Antonio, J., Ziegenfuss, T. N., Wildman, R., Collins, R., Candow, D. G., Kleiner, S. M., Almada, A. L., & Lopez, H. L.
Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 14(1), 18 (2017)
DOI: 10.1186/s12970-017-0173-z
Licence: CC BY 4.0 — Open Access