Creatine was discovered in 1835 when a French scientist named Chevreul discovered a component of skeletal muscle that he later named creatine after the Greek word for flesh, or Kreas. Therefore, although creatine may seem like something new, the scientific community has recognized it as a natural constituent of muscle for nearly two centuries.
Our first indication that muscle creatine content is necessary for muscular activity came with the observation that wild animals contain disproportionately more (about 10-times more) creatine than animals kept in captivity. Near the turn of the century the first studies examining the effects of creatine feeding were conducted. It was noticed that not all the creatine fed to subjects could be recovered in the urine, indicating that the body, i.e. skeletal muscle, was retaining some of the ingested creatine. In fact, skeletal muscle, as well as being the largest sink for dietary creatine, is also the richest natural source of the nutrient. Thus, whenever we take a bite of steak (skeletal muscle) creatine is made available to our muscles for absorption. It is now estimated that most of non-vegetarians receive approximately one gram of creatine each day in our diets.
The most commonly used form of synthetic creatine is the monohydrate salt, creatine monohydrate. Creatine monohydrate is simply a molecule of creatine accompanied by a molecule of water. The first study that clearly demonstrated an effect of creatine monohydrate in humans was conducted in the lab of Dr. Eric Hultman of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. This study found that ingesting 20 grams of creatine monohydrate daily for 4-5 days increased muscle creatine content by approximately 20%. An increase in muscle creatine content of this magnitude is more than sufficient to notice an enhancement in exercise performance during explosive bouts of exercise. Therefore, exercise tasks that benefit most from creatine supplementation are sprinting events of less than 10 seconds duration and repetitive maximal effort movements. Oh, by the way, the year this pivotal study appeared was 1992, the same year creatine made its controversial public debut in the Barcelona Summer Olympics. During these games the success of the British track team was allegedly partially due to the use of creatine; partly scandal and partly truth.
