There’s over 17 main forms of creatine on the market today – Creatine Monohydrate, Creatine Phosphate, Creatine Ethyl Ester, Creatine Ethyl Ester Malate, Creatine Alpha Ketogluterate, Tri-Creatine Malate, Creatine Gluconate, Di-Creatine Malate, Tri-Creatine Malate, Creatinol O Phosphate, Buffered Creatine, Creatine Pyruvate, Creatine Citrate, Creatine Hydrochloride, Creatine Nitrate, Magnesium Creatine Chelate, Creatine Anhydrous, and Free Acid Creatine!
That’s a lot of choice . . .
So which one is best?
Each one of these forms of creatine carries different marketing claims – mostly around how it’s superior for muscle growth, strength, and power – but does the scientific evidence exist to back-up these marketing claims?
In short – no. They don’t.
And this was brought to light in a recent 2022 study titled the ‘Analysis of the efficacy, safety, and cost of alternative forms of creatine available for purchase on Amazon.com: are label claims supported by science?’
This study took the 175 different brands and formulations of creatine from Amazon.com and assessed the marketing claims against published scientific evidence – and it basically found that the only form substantiated by significant clinical evidence was Creatine Monohydrate, and in particular, the trademarked version of Creatine Monohydrate called Creapure, which is proven to have 99.9% purity – is commonly the basis of such studies.
So, it seems, aside from the Gold Standard of Creatine Monohydrate, Creapure, the claims made around other forms of creatine are made on very thin grounds (if any ground at all).
And there’s no regulation around the boundaries of these products – meaning, the gold-standard trademarked version of Creatine Monohydrate, Creapure, could have been used in studies – then a brand, using a cheap version of Creatine Monohydrate, manufactured in China and filled with contaminants, could advertise those same scientific findings on its packaging because it’s effectively still Creatine Monohydrate, right? It does the same things doesn’t it?
Wrong!
This is borderline – if not outright – lying, and you need to be aware of this when choosing your creatine supplement.
Let’s just step back a moment and look at what creatine is.
Creatine has recently been proposed to be a conditionally essential nutrient for humans due to the need to obtain this nutrient from the diet for normal growth, development, and health.
Roughly half of the daily creatine requirements for an average person are produced in the kidneys, liver, pancreas, and brain. However, the remaining creatine content must be supplied by the diet from foods such as meat, beef, and fish or from dietary creatine supplementation.
Research on creatine has also shown the potential benefits of supplementation on injury prevention, improved exercise recovery, enhanced tolerance to exercise in the heat, improved rehabilitation outcomes, brain and spinal cord neuroprotection, ischemic heart disease, aging, and other health conditions. As a result, it’s been reported that Americans consume over four million kilograms of creatine per year, with the worldwide use being significantly higher.
So, it’s a popular supplement – and it’s only increasing in popularity over time as more and more studies support its use for sports applications and general health.
And when something starts to become more popular, that’s when it attracts the wrong attention – and we start to see new brands pop-up that claim to be superior to the last one, which probably explains why there’s so many different forms of creatine on the marketplace right now.
Reverting back to the study I referenced earlier that tested creatine products from Amazon.com, the alternative forms of creatine in this study cost ∼116% more than other effective forms of Creatine Monohydrate. Despite the higher prices, ∼88% of alternative creatine products found in this study have been classified as having limited to no evidence to support bioavailability, efficacy, and safety.
While none of the forms of creatine in this investigation have current support to show that they are more effective at increasing tissue creatine content as compared to regular old Creatine Monohydrate, some forms of creatine such as creatine salts (for example, creatine HCL) are superior to Creatine Monohydrate in terms of solubility when mixed in a beverage.
So, in summary, it seems like Creatine Monohydrate is the most reliable, most studied, and most effective form of creatine supplementation.
However, even with this in-mind, only 9% of Creatine Monohydrate supplements had some form of third-party accreditation/verification, and those that did, generally only carried Informed Sport as their certification mark – which is focused primarily on ensuring the supplement is not contaminated with substances that are banned in regulated, competitive sports – rather than verifying the efficacy, purity (in terms of environmental contaminants), and strength of the substance.