I’m about do a loading phase of creatine, and for one of my doses it will be impossible to mix it up on the spot, as i’ll be in school. If I put 5g of pure monohydrate in Gatorade, or another such drink, at about 7am, would it still be entirely intact by around 1pm? I’ve heard creatine can degenerate into creatinine if its in solution too long, but im hoping this period of about 6 hours wont harm it too much. Thanks in advance for your responces.
Unfortunately, within 15 minutes, most of the creatine that actually dissolved will have degraded to creatinine, which will do you no good. On the other hand, creatine does not dissolve in water that well, so maybe the undissolved granules laying at the bottom of your gatorade bottle might slowly go into solution during the morning, leaving you a little bit by 1pm, but I wouldn’t count on it.
I think I read that it’ll last 2 or 3 hours. Can’t remember where though.
The conversion is a slow process and even all day would be no problem.
The solubility of creatine is pretty reasonable: you can get 5 grams into 16 ounces
or a little less, but it may take some time
for the dissolution to occur. Using a blender helps.
I read of some tests on an effervescent brand of creatine (goes into solution immediately due to ph manipulation) which showed near 100% degradation to creatinine within 5 to 15 minutes. I suppose that the tests could have been flawed in some way, but to get 6 hours I would think that you would have to rely upon the undissolved creatine monohydrate gradually going into solution as the hours pass.
Suggestion: put some creatine in a ziploc and then mix it in the gatorade (or other liquid) when necessary.
poor kid, 4 different awnswers. who you gonna listen to?
The stability of creatine in aqueous solution depends on pH. I would suppose this is why the effervescent brand broke down quickly. In neutral water creatine is stable for days.
Now, I have always concerned myself with the
issue of mixing creatine with a MRP. Here, the solution is close to neutral and there is no stability problem.
However, you’re using Gatorade. I just recalled that a previous graduate student here, for some bizarre reason, decided to measure the pH of Gatorade, so I just went and checked her lab notebook to get the value. It has a pH of 2.65 (or at least, the particular flavor of Gatorade she used had that value.)
This is very acidic and indeed creatine might not be stable in that.
So if you want to mix creatine in water, don’t use Gatorade.
Maybe try the creatine capsules manufactured by some companies. Although it tends to be alot of pills to carry around, it seems more convienent in some cases.
I don’t think its a good idea to carry around baggies of Creatine.
Thanks for the responses…I’ve decided the logical way to do it would be to carry two water bottles w/ me for the day…One with just water to drink all day as usual and another with just dry gatorade mix and creatine premeasured. I’ll just pour water in in when its time to drink it to avoid any problems. Normally something like this would be a no-brainer, but one of my friends was hauled down to the deans office after a security guard spotted him with a ziplock bag full of white powder…the funniest part was when he tried to explain how it was just creatine the dean gave him a talk about abusing steroids.
I just drop a teaspoon full of Creatine on my tongue and wash it down with some gatorade or crystal light. Creatine is tasteless, so you’re not gonna yack.
Thanks for the info Bill, it makes sense that the ph would be the difference. Any idea how creatine would hold up dissolved in hot coffee or tea? On the subject of testing, I saw some results on the Creatine Serum that is being sold at retailers, very little creatine was actually present in the product, it had already degraded to creatinine, at least in the test samples.
If the coffee or tea is near neutral, I certainly wouldn’t think it would be a problem for the creatine to be in there for a few minutes. After all, it can survive an hour
in your stomach (or enough of it does) and
that is pH 2 or so. pH 2 at room temperature
should be worse than say 140 F pH 7.
On the other hand, for all I know your coffee
or tea may be pH 5, and hot pH 5 might not be
good. The simplest thing I guess is to add
only shortly before use, and not to worry about
dissolving it all… drinking a little undissolved “sand”
is fine and it will work just as well that way.
The problem of commercial products being
degraded to creatinine I think has to do with
a considerable amount of time elapsing between
manufacture and your receipt of the product.