What Happens After Stopping Creatine

Learn exactly what happens when you stop taking creatine. If you're wondering what happens to your muscles on creatine and what happens when you stop using creatine watch this video. You'll discover if quitting creatine causes muscle loss and strength losses. You'll also learn the best ways to avoid any side effects.
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Creatine can help make you bigger stronger and faster but what happens when you stop?  Do you lose all that mass, strength, and gains or are there steps you can take to actually retain your results? Will your body naturally continue to produce creatine at the same levels that it was before you started using it or will natural creatine production become suppressed from supplementing with it for a certain amount weeks or months. And will there be any potential health consequences, so how will your organs, your cells, and your body react after stopping creatine. I'm going to answer all of these questions and more in today's video as we take a deep dive inside your body to find out what exactly will happen.
 
Now one of the first things that people will complain about after cutting out creatine supplementation is that their muscles look flat. Looking flat refers to muscles that appear less full, less pumped, and less defined than usual. This is due to one of the most immediate effects of stopping creatine supplementation which is a decrease in muscle water content. You see creatine increases intracellular water retention, which is the accumulation of water within your cells, specifically, here we're talking about muscle cells. This water retention makes your muscles look fuller and larger.

The issue is when you stop taking creatine, this water is gradually lost, leading to a slight decrease in muscle volume. So yes your muscles will look less full and less pumped however, it’s important to realize that this is not actual muscle loss but rather it's just water weight that you're losing. This effect will usually be more noticeable in individuals who have been taking creatine for an extended period of time at least 4 to 6 weeks or longer. So that the visual change can be discouraging, because you might feel like you're right back to where you were before you took the creatine, but it’s essential to understand that the actual muscle mass that you gained is still there, it's just the water retention that's gone. 
So obviously another thing that is going to happen is that you'll lose a small amount of weight on the scale. Usually, this will range from 1 to 3 pounds of water weight lost in the first week after stopping, but it can go up higher all the way up to 5 to 7 pounds. The amount of water weight you lose depends on how long you've been using creatine, and how much water your body typically retains which is influenced by other factors such as how much water you drink daily and how much you usually sweat. 
Now after stopping creatine your muscle creatine stores don't just rapidly drop to 0. First of all your body naturally produces creatine in the liver, kidneys, and pancreas by synthesizing it from the amino acids glycine, arginine, and methionine.

On top of that the average person consumes about 1 to 2 grams of creatine per day from food primarily from animal-based sources like red meat, chicken, and fish. This is still much less than the amount of creatine you'll be taking in while supplementing, but this is why it's a gradual process usually taking anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks for your muscles to return to baseline creatine levels. One of the downsides of returning to baseline is that you're likely to experience a slight reduction in strength and power output. This is because creatine helps regenerate ATP which is crucial for high-intensity, short-duration activities. Adenosine Triphosphate provides a lot of energy, but your body can only store a very small amount, just enough for a few seconds of intense activity. Creatine helps regenerate ATP faster, allowing for improved performance in short bursts of activity, such as weightlifting or sprinting. When you stop taking creatine, your body’s ability to quickly replenish ATP goes down, leading to a potential decrease in strength and power output. This reduction won't be noticeable in your day-to-day activities, but you might notice it during more intense activities. Most likely you'll experience more fatigue during your lifts when coming off of creatine because the ATP regeneration that creatine provides helps reduce both physical and mental fatigue. So for example, if you normally lift 225 pounds on the bench press for 9 reps while taking creatine, you might drop to 7 or 8 reps after stopping. So the change should be small and over time, as your body readjusts to lower creatine levels, your performance levels should stabilize, at a slightly lower level than when you were supplementing.