Last Updated on November 9, 2023 by Fasting Planet
You want to go harder and faster at the gym than ever, so you’re thinking of starting a creatine supplement regimen. You don’t think the supplement will be a problem on your vegan diet, but before you begin, you want to double-check. Is creatine vegan?
Creatine supplements are technically vegan despite that this nutrient comes from animal tissue. The supplements themselves are free of animal products and byproducts and instead use cyanamide and sarcosine.
In this article, we’ll discuss creatine in detail, including what this nutrient is, where it comes from, and whether vegans can ingest it. We’ll also talk about the benefits of creatine, so make sure you keep reading!
What Is Creatine?
For those unsure, let’s talk about what creatine is. Discoveries of the nutrient began around 1832. Michel Eugene Chevereul separated basified skeletal muscle water-extract and creatine, which at the time was known as kreas, which is the Greek word for meat. By the 1920s, medical experts had learned that the body could retain creatine once it was ingested. From then on out, its use as a dietary supplement was cemented.
Today, people still use creatine as a supplement. Through generations of research, we’ve learned that creatine can boost one’s physical performance when exercising. You can also increase muscle strength and mass through creatine supplements.
Although Michel Eugene Chevereul helped to put creatine on the map, so to speak, this nutrient is not manmade. Our bodies produce creatine in our kidneys and livers. To do so, the body requires methionine, arginine, and glycine. These are amino acids.
Methionine can safeguard our livers from acetaminophen poisoning, protect us from heavy metal damage through detoxification, and limit ionizing radiation damage. Arginine or L-arginine can treat or reduce the symptoms of a variety of health afflictions, among them pre-eclampsia, erectile dysfunction, high blood pressure, peripheral arterial disease, and angina or chest pain. Glycine can help you maintain muscle, shield the liver from alcohol damage, and improve the quality of your sleep.
As much as five percent of ingested creatine is in your liver, kidneys, and brain. The rest goes to the muscles as phosphocreatine. Sometimes called creatine phosphate, phosphocreatine is a creatine molecule that has been phosphorylated. Phosphocreatine is ready and waiting to recycle more adenosine triphosphate or ATP, which cells use for energy. The more ATP, the more accelerated your physical performance is.
How much creatine you have in your body varies based on your hormones (with IGF-1 and testosterone known to affect creatine levels), the size of your muscle mass, how much you’ve exercised, whether you supplement with creatine, and your diet.
Is Creatine Vegan?
Yes, that’s right, the creatine your body produces is diet-dependent. We mentioned in the last section that your body cannot make creatine without the amino acids methionine, arginine, and glycine. How do you get these amino acids? Through what you eat. Methionine is found in dairy, fish, and meat. To increase levels of arginine, you’d need to consume dairy, fish, poultry, and red meat. Foods that contain glycine include legumes, fish, and dairy.
Since the vegan diet omits all those foods except for legumes, it seems like a pretty open and shut case that creatine isn’t vegan, right? Not exactly. Those amino acids are necessary to make creatine in the body. Since you’re not eating meat, poultry, and fish as a vegan, your liver probably produces less creatine. The same would be true of vegetarians. A 2003 study from the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise said as much.
In the study, 18 participants between the ages of 19 and 55 years old were split into groups. One group ingested creatine and the other was on placebos. Some of the participants were vegetarians and others were meat-eaters. The study found that vegetarians had “significantly lower” levels of total creatine in their bodies.
Yet when you take a creatine supplement, the sources are different than the creatine you make in the body. Manmade creatine is externally produced using cyanamide and sarcosine. The ingredients go into a reactor where they meet catalyst compounds. Everything is then heated up and put under high pressure until creatine crystals develop. Then the creatine goes through a centrifuge and vacuum dryer before it’s milled into a powder and packaged and sold.
Let’s rewind a moment here. What are cyanamide and sarcosine? Cyanamide is a type of organic compound that forms when calcium cyanamide undergoes hydrolysis. Sarcosine is a tissue and muscle amino acid with a sweet flavor. It’s dissolvable when combined with water.
So what does all this tell us? Vegans and vegetarians will not produce creatine in their own bodies as readily as non-vegans since the amino acids in creatine come from animal products and byproducts. However, creatine supplements themselves are not sourced from these animal products and byproducts, but cyanamide and sarcosine. Thus, creatine supplements are vegan.
The Benefits of Creatine
Whether you’re a vegan, a vegetarian, or a meat-eater, creatine can benefit your health in a myriad of ways. Let’s discuss the perks of this supplement now.
Builds Muscle
How exactly does creatine build bigger muscles, you ask? In all sorts of ways. One of these is by reducing levels of myostatin, a protein that determines how big your muscles are when you’re just an embryo and then throughout the rest of your life. When myostatin levels are too high, your muscles are smaller for it. This 2010 report from the journal Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology notes that creatine can bring myostatin levels down.
The supplement can also stop your muscles from breaking down as frequently, says a classic report from the Journal of Applied Physiology. Creatine can send more water to muscle cells too, which increases cell volume for larger muscles per this 2010 report from The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Taking creatine supplements can also increase anabolic hormones in the body. Although creatine is not a steroid, anabolic hormones can work like anabolic steroids in that they encourage the muscles to grow. That’s according to this 2008 publication of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Further, creatine can communicate with cells, signaling to them that your muscles need repairing so they can grow even larger, notes this 2000 study from the International Journal of Sports Medicine. Finally, creatine can increase muscle volume and function for growth over the long run according to the same study.
Increases Performance
Your workouts will go further with creatine supplements due to how your body can make more ATP or cell energy when on creatine. Without supplementing, the ATP you produce is depleted in as little as 10 seconds of intense exercise. As your body increases its ATP production, you get more time before the cell energy vanishes, says this classic report from the American Journal of Physiology.
Boosts Strength
Do you want to be stronger? Creatine supplements can help you achieve that goal. Acta Physiologica, in a classic report, wrote about the effects of creatine when consumed by a group of strength athletes. They took the supplement for 28 days. By the time the study wrapped, they could bench press six percent more.
The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in 2003 published similar findings. Their research reviewed more than 20 studies, one of which reported that its participants had a 43-percent increase in bench press one-reps, a 14-percent boost in weightlifting strength, and an eight-percent spike in strength through taking creatine supplements.
Could Prevent or Reduce Severity of Neurological Diseases
A whole host of data on the subject has reported that creatine supplementing might make you less likely to develop neurological diseases and/or reduce symptom severity. Two such studies are this 1999 report from the American Journal of Physiology and a 2000 publication of Acta Physiologica.
Those neurological diseases include motor neuron disease, spinal cord and brain injuries, epilepsy, ischemic stroke, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Do keep in mind that for now, the bulk of data about creatine’s ability to limit neurological disease is based on animal studies, so whether those effects extend to people is as yet unknown.
Does Taking Creatine Supplements Have Any Side Effects?
Like with any type of dietary supplement, creatine may have side effects. That said, people have incorrectly attributed many side effects to creatine that aren’t caused by the supplement. For example, some have said that they have cramps and dehydration from taking creatine, but that’s unlikely. Data such as this 2003 report from Molecular and Cellular Biology states that the supplement can lessen dehydration and cramps if you’re doing endurance exercises in hot temperatures.
Taking a creatine supplement can certainly lead to bloating. Whether creatine can damage your liver isn’t completely understood, but as of this writing, it seems improbable. The same applies to kidney damage, including kidney stones. Should you have a kidney or liver condition though, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor before you start a creatine supplement.
The best way to avoid unwanted side effects is to take creatine properly. You can load with this supplement over five or seven days by consuming 20 grams every day. Don’t do this all at once, but five grams four times daily morning through night. If your accompanying meal is heavy in protein and/or carbs, you might be able to absorb creatine better. When you’re done loading creatine, then every day from then on out, take five grams of the stuff.
Conclusion
Creatine is made from amino acids that are sourced from animal products and byproducts such as fish, red meat, poultry, and dairy. Manmade creatine supplements don’t include those amino acids and are thus vegan-safe. Although creatine isn’t a key nutrient, it’s a good idea for vegans and vegetarians to supplement with it since they’ve been scientifically proven to make less creatine due to their plant-based diets.