The biggest break through since creatine? Glycocyamine can supercharge your body's own creatine production and help you get more bang from your supplements

Flex, Jan, 2003 by Jim Wright

With its effects on cell energy and hydration, creatine has forever changed bodybuilding nutrition. The story keeps getting better, as scientists have discovered a little-known nutrient that might help creatine exert a more powerful influence than it already does.

Breaking research has revealed that you might be able to get more out of supplemental creatine by using glycocyamine, the primary building block (precursor) of creatine. Better yet, this nutrient might also boost endogenous (the body's own) creatine production, answering the prayers of creatine nonresponders who have been looking for a way to get the incredible effects of creatine monohydrate.

Many creatine users, bodybuilders included, don't realize that creatine is found naturally in the body.

The importance of endogenous creatine has never really been a hot topic in bodybuilding. A compelling new theory proposes that the body's own creatine output is overlooked. This internal pathway of creatine production could hold the key to the future of creatine supplementation. By increasing the body's own creatine production, we could get more effects from supplemental creatine and end up bigger and stronger.

Due to a variety of factors, however, our endogenous creatine production can sometimes be suppressed. Here's why and what we can do about it.

Creatine is part of our evolutionary past. It's now recognized that omnivores, including primitive man, evolved consuming a diet high in protein. Much of this diet was meat, fish and insects--all wild, of course. Wild sources of raw protein contain relatively large amounts of creatine in the form of creatine phosphate. When eaten, this form of natural creatine is taken up by the body and stored, particularly in muscles. Creatine helped primitive man run and perform explosive movements to aid survival and reproduction.

CAVEMEN SHOW US THE WAY AGAIN

Today's high-protein diets do not necessarily ensure high muscle-creatine levels. Cooking meats and other protein foods degrades creatine into a less usable form. Even if your tissue protein (beef and chicken) intake is quite high, the amount of "effective" creatine available and picked up by muscles might be low. Therefore, your muscle creatine stores might be much lower than you'd think. No wonder we get such a kick from supplemental creatine.

That kick could be better, though. The key is to trigger the creatine "multiplier" embedded in our DNA since our caveman past. Triggering the multiplier also could help those bodybuilders who suffer side effects from creatine (i.e., gastrointestinal [GI] distress) and, best of all, provide a creatine boost for those athletes who now don't respond to it.

Modern bodybuilders interested in getting better effects from creatine supplements should aim to prevent the suppression of glycocyamine production in the body. (Glycocyamine should not be confused with glucosamine, which is a supplement used to bolster the strength of connective tissue.)

HERE'S THE KEY: GLYCOCYAMINE

In the early 1950s, researchers began investigating a method to increase muscle creatine. Doctors fed precise formulas and ratios to test subjects and noted greatly increased creatine output in them. Moreover, the subjects felt better and had more energy; that held true for very ill heart patients.

Considering that the body normally produces 2-3 grams (g) of endogenous creatine daily, that could mean the delivery of as much as 6-9 g.

To attain these creatine levels via supplements alone, you might have to take more than 20 g of exogenous creatine, considering many factors, including how our bodies dispose of exogenous creatine in urine. However, taking that much creatine might suppress the natural production of glycocyamine.

In these studies, various ratios of glycocyamine and other nutrients were tested to try to accelerate the process. One formula resulted in a threefold increase in creatine output, with users taking it for 12 straight years. Increasing creatine output threefold would undoubtedly be a monster anabolic multiplier.

Animal studies and preliminary research with bodybuilders in California suggest that providing glycocyamine, with a few other common muscle-building nutrients such as B vitamins and methionine, enables the body to continue creatine formation when it would ordinarily be reduced or even temporarily stopped. The potential for this approach holds real promise.

The glycocyamine formula largely bypasses any adverse GI effects of creatine supplementation, and it offers its own unique advantages, including ease of use. Even creatine nonresponders are likely to benefit significantly from bumping up their own endogenous intramuscular creatine production.

After all, glycocyamine also seems to enhance the effects of consuming ordinary creatine. Research suggests that supplemental creatine suppresses the production of glycocyamine in some people. This might help explain why some respond to high creatine intake when it is derived from whole foods but not from supplements. Theoretically, the killer approach for supplement makers would be to include both glycocyamine and small amounts of high-quality creatine monohydrate (plus other key nutrients) in their formulations.