| By Amber Davis
When the NCAA was created in 1950, their mission was to make
collegiate sports safe and uniform across the board. Throughout
the past 40 years the NCAA has taken steps to ban substances which
could or have been proven to cause ill effects in athletes or
give them added performance compared to their counterparts who
did not take supplements. Currently, there are approximately 88
banned substances that have been deemed unfair and/or unsafe.
When the 1999 list of banned substances come out, there is one more substance that should be added to it. This is the newest supplement fad in athletics, creatine monohydrate. It should be banned due its drug like physical addictiveness, its toll on the body in excess, and the unfair advantage it gives to those athletes who choose to use it.
Creatine is a naturally occurring nutrient in the human body and many other animals. 95% of it is found in skeletal muscle with the remaining 5% scattered throughout the rest of the body. The highest concentration is in the brain, heart, and testes of the male (Sahelin 1998). The body acquires the creatine it needs mainly from food. If enough is not garnered from dietary intake then a limited amount can be made from the amino acids, arginine, glycine, and methionine (Sahelin 1998).
The important roll of creatine is in the contraction of skeletal muscle. Once ATP has been exhausted, it is creatine that comes to the rescue and continues the contraction needed from the muscle. This intervention by creatine allows the ATP to regenerate itself. Along with this, creatine has been purported to have many other miracle effects. It has been said that creatine allows the amount of lactic acid to be decreased therefore allowing someone to exercise longer. It has also been thought that creatine can help the body's ability to make proteins, but nothing conclusive has been documented at this point in time.
So, creatine sounds like the greatest thing to ever be discovered in the human body right? Wrong. There are several problems with supplementing the human body with any of the creatine forms and specifically the popular creatine monohydrate. The first problem arises with the possibility of supplemented creatine acting like a drug in the body. Creatine is a very vital substance. If an athlete loads on creatine continually, then it is possible and probable that the body will eventually quit making it on its own. Once this occurs, the body has a physical dependence to the supplemented creatine, much like any other physical dependence that is associated with drugs (NutritionalSupplements 1999). Once an athlete has this physical dependence, they may find themselves needing an increasing quantity to reach their goals.
As anyone versed in drugs or psychology can tell you, when you have a physical dependence you must have a withdrawal syndrome. Once an athlete quits taking the supplement, the body is shocked to no longer have its supply of creatine available. The body must then learn once again how to make it. The body will rely solely on ATP to contract the muscle, therefore, becoming tired quicker then it had been. The three amino acids that can be used to synthesize creatine will be greatly depleted in the body's attempt to right itself to homeostasis. If the body cannot right itself quick enough to return to creating creatine, a disastrous effects could occur, even death.
Drug dependency is not the only problem with creatine supplementation in athletes. Creatine has the ability to do major damage to structures within the body, both visceral and muscular. Creatine supplementation promotes a rapid growth of muscle size. Therefore, it is no surprise that there have been many stories about muscles tearing in odd ways and in a extreme number of fibers. The bones and tendons are overloaded and not given enough time to compensate for the increased mass that they must now support.
A bodybuilder told a story of a complete bicep muscle tear that had to be surgically repaired. Prior to starting creatine, the bodybuilder had never suffered from an extreme muscle pull let alone a severe muscle tear (NutritionalSupplements 1999). Another story came from a hockey player who had started taking creatine to increase energy and stamina while on the ice. During a hockey game, this gentleman was checked and tore his pectoral muscle. As many in the medical field will know, a complete muscle tear in the pectoral region is not that common of an injury (NutritionalSupplements 1999).
Aside from the muscle strain, there is a more serious consequence of long term creatine use. This is the effect that creatine has on the kidneys and liver. The kidneys and liver are responsible for filtering the blood and all substances that we ingest into our bodies. The high amounts that the athletes are ingesting have the capability of overloading the kidneys and liver and causing severe damage down the road. One of the biggest cases that points to evidence of this is the story a 25 year old man who had a pre-existing kidney disease that was being treated. Several years into his treatment his doctors noticed that his renal function was deteriorating. This deterioration was in direct correlation with his training for the upcoming soccer season. Upon further investigation, the doctors found that the young man had been taking creatine. When he quit taking the creatine his renal function improved dramatically (Sahelin 1998). This is not a surprise to clinicians who have been studying creatine in the United States. One of the major side effects of creatine is an increase of urinary creatine excretion, which is usually a huge indicator of abnormal kidney function. Clinicians speculate that as further testing goes on, creatine will show to have many more long-term effects that greatly outweigh the short-term effects.
The least dangerous of the effects of creatine may also be the
one with the most ethical dilemma involved. This is the unfair
advantage that is given to those athletes who choose the quick
way out and take creatine. Creatine users put on muscle much more
rapidly then those who use diet and good, hard work to get where
they want to be. The NCAA has, in the past, banned other practices
that give an unfair advantage. In the end, it comes down to what
is best for the athletes who play collegiate sports. Cornell Athletic
Trainer, Mr. DePalma, says it best when he says that, "At
Cornell, we've decided that no athletics personnel will endorse
or distribute any supplement, including creatine… We're erring
on the side of protecting the student-athlete," DePalma said.
"Who's to say that they won't discover that creatine's long-term
side effects link it with heart disease or something? Why take
that kind of a risk with a young athlete?"(NCAA 1999). The
easiest way to make this uniform across the system is to ban the
drug all together.
Creatine has shown the potential to have too many harmful side effects for it to be allowed in collegiate sports. These athletes should be having fun and looking towards a future of hope, not one that may include kidney disease, liver failure or incapacitation due to a torn muscle that did not heal properly. The NCAA should not even let these things become a possibility of reality. With the addition of creatine monohydrate to the 1999 banned substance list, the NCAA is ensuring that collegiate sports will remain wholesome and safe just like they intended for them to be.
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