Dr. Darren Candow

Now, after a while, the water is now going into our muscle.

It's a lot bigger compared to a deflated balloon or muscle that didn't have any water.

So creatine is osmotic.

Water likes to follow creatine.

So by taking it into the muscle, it gets a lot bigger.

And that's good because a swollen muscle stimulates protein synthesis to get bigger and stronger.

Synthesis, yeah.

So when you have water coming in, that's a really good thing.

And creatine does that, and that's one of the main mechanisms why it works.

That is potentially the factor because when you're having or trapping water, it turns on all these signaling pathways that are involved in protein synthesis.

And one of the biggest robust evidence is that creatine increases lean tissue mass and regional muscle thickness with weight training over time.

The interesting thing there is if you take smaller, more micro dosing, there's hardly any effect.

And this might come surprising, but if you did a six-week study pre and post after creatine, you only increased mass by 0.86 kilograms.

And the majority of that is lean mass.

So at the end of the day, you know, a pound and a half is not a lot.

Lean mass?

Lean mass, yeah.

We think of lean mass, most people think of it as muscle, but lean mass in our body, that includes water, connective tissue, organs, as well as skeletal muscle.

And about 50% of our lean mass is muscle.

Okay, that's great.