Creatine

Douglas Hunter wrote: If you do take it, use the older form of Creatine Monohydrate and follow the procedures used in most of the clinical studies, which is 1 week of loading by taking 20g per day (5g at a time 4 times per day), and then in week 2 drop down to 5g per day. After that you do not need to take it, as the PC levels will stay elevated for several weeks.

This got me motivated to look up some studies, as I never did do a loading phase BITD.

As far as I can tell, most protocols use 4 doses of 5 gm every day for 5 days, then a maintenance dose of 5 gm day. Some studies suggested that 4x5gm for 2 days worked as well. Another protocol uses 1gm every 30 minutes for 10 hours (ie the same 20 gm/day) for 5 days and is reported to be more effective. Other studies suggest that a simple maintenance dose without a loading phase works too, but takes 21-28 days to show an effect (I took it for a couple of months I believe.)

Here's the url of a recent review which seems to be freely available online. It's pretty rah-rah, but apparently peer reviewed.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl…