Foods & Culinary

What Type of Creatine Should I Use?

Posted by Rachael Thomas in Foods & Culinary | Comments Off

With so many types of creatine to choose from these days, it’s no wonder people are asking questions like “What type of creatine should I use?” or “Whats the best creatine?” or “Whats the most effective creatine?” This article is going to give you some insight on the various types of creatine out there and help you to decide which one is best for you.

To kick things off, we need to first mention creatine monohydrate because its the oldest and most scientifically proven form of creatine and it’s still the standard for creatine. Every other from of creatine, that is not creatine monohydrate, has come into existence much more recently. Some of the most well known and popular forms of creatine include:

Creatine HCL (hydrochloride)
Creatine ethyl ester
Kre-alkalyn
creatine phosphate
creatine pyruvate

Often you will see creatine supplements that that contain a blend of these different forms of creatine. The idea here is that your getting the best attributes of each type of creatine in these blends. Some of the more popular ones include Cell Tech by MuscleTech and CellMass by BSN. Both of these supplements are a bit pricey, but seem to get good reviews from users and are widely used.

The idea behind all of these other (not creatine monohydrate), newer forms of creatine is that at least one of the following is true:

1. They have a better absorption rate than creatine monohydrate
2. They are more stable than creatine monohydrate; meaning less conversion into byproducts
3. They have fewer side effects than creatine monohydrate

Although it would be great if each of these properties were true about every newer form of creatine, it’s not always the case. In fact, studies often prove the exact opposite. Creatine ethyl ester and creatine phosphate have both proved to be less stable than creatine monohydrate. Third party studies do confirm that creatine pyruvate is effective, however it may not be as effective as certain other forms of creatine.

The real question here is “Which form of creatine is the most effective?” Kre-alkalyn and creatine HCL are two of the most popular forms of creatine, outside of creatine monohydrate. Each of these forms of creatine has proven to be effective in third party studies.

Out of these two, it seems that creatine HCL has taken the spot as the front runner in the new creatine game. Thousands of users agree that it causes less bloating than creatine monohydrate and that there are virtually no side effects. Users also report great gains and many says it’s even more effective than creatine monohydrate. Many agree that its the best creatine on the market.

Creatine HCL is the newest development in creatine, patented in 2009, so we really have no long term data or studies to go by. With that being said, it looks like creatine HCL has a promising future. If you’ve never used creatine before, I highly recommended starting with creatine monohydrate. However, those who want to try something new may benefit from the newly discovered creatine HCL.

Overall, I would say stick with either creatine monohydrate, creatine HCL or Kre-alkalyn, as these three have the most positive user results and are the most popular. Creatine monohydrate is, by far, the least expensive form of creatine. So, if your taking cost into consideration you may want to stick with creatine monohydrate.