Is it just hype?
Should I go with regular creatine monohydrate or get the CEE?
Regular monohydrate.
Hype… 
Is there any worry that CEE is ineffective? I picked up some recently (needed to spend a couple bucks to get free amazon shipping). To be honest I haven’t noticed much of a difference, but I’m a noob so there’s not much to notice in the first place.
hype
[quote]EasyRhino wrote:
Is there any worry that CEE is ineffective? I picked up some recently (needed to spend a couple bucks to get free amazon shipping). To be honest I haven’t noticed much of a difference, but I’m a noob so there’s not much to notice in the first place.[/quote]
Yes. I don’t have the source on hand at the moment but there was a write up in a recent ISSN (I think) magazine which discussed a study comparing monohydrate ethyl ester. Monohydrate outperformed ethyl ester. I’ll see if I can’t add some more details later.
Also I think I recall seeing some studies showing that ethyl ester more easily degrades to creatinine in the gut? May wanna check NCBI pubmed for that though.
Get some monohydrate.
[quote]NewDamage wrote:
Yes. I don’t have the source on hand at the moment but there was a write up in a recent ISSN (I think) magazine which discussed a study comparing monohydrate ethyl ester. Monohydrate outperformed ethyl ester. I’ll see if I can’t add some more details later.
[/quote]
Bummer, I’ll have to check around for more info on that. And it will make the placebo effect a lot tougher to take advantage of!
“Creatine ethyl ester did not show any additional benefit to increase muscle strength or performance than creatine monohydrate or maltodextose placebo. Additionally, total body mass, fat mass, fat-free mass, and thigh muscle mass were not significantly enhanced with creatine ethyl ester supplementation compared to placebo or creatine monohydrate groups.”
Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2009, 6:6
[quote]MuscleGeek wrote:
“Creatine ethyl ester did not show any additional benefit to increase muscle strength or performance than creatine monohydrate or maltodextose placebo. Additionally, total body mass, fat mass, fat-free mass, and thigh muscle mass were not significantly enhanced with creatine ethyl ester supplementation compared to placebo or creatine monohydrate groups.”
Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2009, 6:6[/quote]
plus ethyl ester tastes like ass…or at least the kind i tried did.
[quote]MuscleGeek wrote:
“Creatine ethyl ester did not show any additional benefit to increase muscle strength or performance than creatine monohydrate or maltodextose placebo. Additionally, total body mass, fat mass, fat-free mass, and thigh muscle mass were not significantly enhanced with creatine ethyl ester supplementation compared to placebo or creatine monohydrate groups.”
Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2009, 6:6[/quote]
Yikes, this would imply that creatine monohydrate didn’t outperform a placebo, either.
It does not say that nor imply it.
Saying that a thing gave no additional benefit compared to either of two things, one of which did nothing, says nothing about the performance of the remaining thing.
True Bill, I went ahead and read the study:
- none of the groups showed differences in mass or strength (untrained individuals, btw)
- mono showed elevated serum levels of creatine, CEE didn’t (I don’t know if serum levels are good/bad/indifferent)
- both mono and CEE showed increased muscle creatine content, but mono showed more
- CEE showed much increased serum creatinine content, implying that more if it was broken down in the GI tract
The worrisome bit is that nothing showed a size/strength difference, so while it appears that mono did a better job of getting creatine into serum and muscles, nothing was shown about whether or not any of it was worthwhile in the first place. So I’d call the study interesting but a partial failure.
I’m going to go eat my cheerios now.
I still think monohydrate is shit. Let alone Ethyl Ester.
Don’t waste your money on CEE… monohydrate is fine…
creatine pyruvate- i’m still hoping this is the future of creatine. i wanna get me some.