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People over 75 years old Can Take Creatine and Get Strong according to recent medical research–not the fake infomercial kind of research but legitimate scientific double blind studies.

Human aging leads to a reduction in muscle mass and muscle strength that can cause impairment in activities of daily living (just walking around and doing normal tasks). Sarcopenia is a term meaning that there is a degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass that often occurs with aging and this weakness in up to 25% of men and women over 75 years of age.

A study from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, looked at giving older patients Creatine supplements along with a workout regimen to see if this sarcopenia could be treated. Resistance exercise training is an effective way to treat muscle loss in aging and it has numerous other benefits as well. Additional strategies to improve the exercise training effects, were evaluated to increase the  efficacy of strength training.

Creatine monohydrate is a guanidino compound that is produced naturally in meat. The effects of Creatine monohydrate are numerous and complex at the cell level. It is involved in preventing protein breakdown,increasing muscle protein production, and in recruiting cells involved in growing muscle tissues. People in the study were fed either 11grams of creatine monohydrate supplements per day or an identical tasting placebo supplement.

The resistance exercise training program required exercise twice per week for six months by the study participants. Twelve exercises were used to train the major muscle groups of the upper and lower body in a system using weight training machines. People exclude from the study included:  people with evidence of coronary heart disease, congestive heart disease, uncontrolled hypertension, major orthopedic problems, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, Kidney ( renal ) failure, and smokers.

Results showed that resistance exercise training with  creatine monohydrate increased muscle mass more for men ( 2.0 kg increase) than for women.  Both groups showed fat loss and muscle gain. The creatine monohydrate group did even better. They lost more weight and gained  at least twice the muscle mass as the  people that did the exercise alone.  The effect of the creatine on weight loss in women was quite pronounced. They lost twice as much weight from exercise plus creatine monohydrate as from exercise alone.

Risks of creatine monohydrate are relatively minimal although it is probably not good to take creatine monohydrate if you have poor kidney function since some of it is eliminated by the kidneys and supplements may increase the work of the kidney to eliminate the waste products.  Other possible risks are digestive system upset and possible minor muscle cramps. It may be difficult for a consumer to determine how much of the creatine is contained in some brands of supplements so careful label reading is important if you want to take this supplement.

source pubmed,  McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada