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21.03.2018

Creatine has more effect on upper body muscles than on lower body muscles

Not all muscle groups respond equally well to creatine. During a creatine cycle the muscles of the upper body grow a lot more than the muscles of the lower body. Brazilian exercise scientists at Londrina State University reported this in Nutrition & Health.

Study
The Brazilians experimented with two groups of two dozen men each. All men had experience in weight training.

For 8 weeks the researchers gave one group a placebo every day, and the other creatine. The researchers used creatine in the traditional way: they first gave their test subjects 20-25 grams of creatine a day each week, spread over 4 intakes per day. Then they gave the subjects 3 grams of creatine every day for 7 weeks.

All subjects trained in the same way during the experiment: four times a week, with a schedule in which they worked on the most important muscle groups twice a week with basic exercises.

Results
Both the creatine group and the placebo group gained lean body mass, but the creatine group gained significantly more than the placebo group. The placebo group acquired 0.3 kg of lean body mass, the creatine group 1.4 kg.

The scans also showed that the subjects in the creatine group had acquired significantly more lean body mass on their upper body than elsewhere. The researchers were not able to determine to what extent this new lean body mass consisted of muscle or fluid.

Conclusion
"Our results suggest that creatine supplementation in combination with regimented resistance training elicits greater muscular hypertrophy in young adult resistance-trained men, and that results are more specific to the upper limbs given that the increase in lean soft tissue for the creatine group was significantly greater in this region than in the lower limbs and trunk", write the researchers.

Source:
Nutr Health. 2017 Dec;23(4):223-9.

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