Trying to look up good studies done on CEE, by someone other than the supplement companies trying to sell them.
I managed to find a few studies citing CEE as ineffective, but would like to see any studies that have a differing opinion. Most notably in actual application, and not a lab type study where they try to simulate absorbtion in the lab.
Anyways, if any of you guys have some links to good reads I would appreciate it. Thanks!
There’s not a single thing that can be found on either Medline (PubMed) or Google Scholar. Other than of course patent claims of the inventor, methods of manufacture, and that sort of thing.
It seems to me to be an attempted answer to a non-problem. Creatine doesn’t have a bioavailability problem.
The only sometimes-actual problem that it could be an answer to is for those that get stomach upset from creatine. However there’s another answer that’s simple enough: just divide for example a 5 g total daily dosage across the day and then the individual doses are not enough to cause the stomach problem. It’s not an issue for most anyway.
Is there anything that benefits from the being estherized? I remember awhile ago hearing all the hype about Arginine Ethyl Esther as opposed to AAkG. Just curious is all.
If you mean ethyl esterified, of the batch of amino acids and so forth that have fairly recently been launched that way, IMO more as a fad than anything else, I don’t know of any cases of proven benefit but that does not mean there cannot be one.
Generally speaking though, benefit other than possible masking of taste is not especially likely because:
One of the main areas of possible benefit to prodrug derivatization (which this is) is improved solubility characteristics. This is generally irrelevant or in fact worsened in the case of the ethyl esters being discussed.
Another main area of possible benefit is improved duration of action by being absorbed intact and being protected against metabolic inactivation and elimination while intact. This is unlikely to be the case with these ethyl esters, as they most likely are cleaved in the GI tract and absorbed as the unesterified parent compounds. In other words no difference except for having been different briefly while still unabsorbed in the GI tract.
Other possible benefits include for example crossing the blood-brain barrier better, but again as these ethyl esters are probably cleaved before absorption, if that is the case then there is going to be no difference in crossing the blood-brain barrier, either.
On the other hand, esters such as of L-carnitine modified to acetyl-L-carnitine, or tyrosine modifed to acetyl-L-tyrosine, or the parent compound of A7-E modified to A7-E, etc do give actual benefit.
So it’s not as simple as whether esters always give benefit or never do. There are cases where they do and cases where they don’t.
It does seem it is often done these days for no reason other than to be different, to be new, and to have a marketing angle. That probably is the case with at least most of the amino acid ethyl esters, and perhaps all of them.
I stick with tried and true monohydrate.
Theyve been coming out with new creatines for years and Ive never seen anything to support their outrageous claims.
Mono has been proven over and over and over for years.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Generally speaking though, benefit other than possible masking of taste is not especially likely because:
[/quote]
Monohydrate is already tasteless and the addition of the ester group in this case actually makes the powder more bitter so I don’t think that was one of the goals for its creation 
Yes, in reference to taste masking, that was to the general case of benefits that esters can have. For sure, that doesn’t apply to creatine.
Neither does the frequent though not really problematic complaint about solubility: creatine ethyl ester, while I haven’t measured its water solubility, virtually certainly has poorer water solubility than the monohydrate.
(As to why “not really problematic” for the solubility of the monohydrate: its solubility allows 5 grams per 16 ounces water or even a little less water. If any “can’t dissolve” that amount, the problem is not shaking enough, actually having more than 5 grams, not allowing enough time (not that much is required), or perhaps another cause could be using cold instead of room temperature water which, I don’t know, may dissolve less.)