Necessity of Insulin Spike for Creatine?

Diet and Nutrition
1

A few questions in regards to creatine. I’m using Biotest micronized creatine mono.

  1. Is it really needed to take creatine with grape juice or another insulin spiking agent? I follow leangains IF and if I wanted to take creatine in the a.m. or as a loading phase (I know not needed)…I’d really only be able to mix with water or another calorie free beverage in order to maintain my fasted stated. Would this drastically reduce the effectiveness? Is it still absorbed well if just mixed with water?

  2. I tend to have solid food post workout…I don’t really drink post workout shakes anymore. I train…then eat a meal consisting of around 100gs of carbs in it…typically from white potatoes or another “pure” starch source. Could I just mix the creatine in with water alongside this meal as PWO?

  3. I use BCAAs prior to fasted training…Perhaps BCAAs are insulin stimulating enough to help with the uptake of creatine? Perhaps, I could do half serving BCAA pre with 5gs creatine…and a half serving post with 5gs creatine?

2

Long story short. I have seen no major difference. Juice, shake, morning, night , afternoon.

I take it with what I’m having. Never tried water though.

And for every person that says you “have” to take it a certain way, I’ll find you research that says otherwise. Yeah, I got tired of reading the articles. I just take it now and not sweat the small stuff.

3

Really appreciate the response…I figured such. In the end…you are supplementing it and it should level out as to whether it’s pre or post etc… Thanks.

4

[quote]JFG wrote:
Long story short. I have seen no major difference. Juice, shake, morning, night , afternoon.

I take it with what I’m having. Never tried water though.

And for every person that says you “have” to take it a certain way, I’ll find you research that says otherwise. Yeah, I got tired of reading the articles. I just take it now and not sweat the small stuff. [/quote]

X2

5

Anytime you eat ANYTHING you get an insulin response. I know the original writings about creatine were all obsessed with ‘spiking’ the hell out of insulin levels for maximum uptake, but as we’ve seen over the last few years, a lot of our initial over-zealous approaches weren’t as necessary as we thought.

S