When I wrote The Creatine Graveyard, per comments in THIS recent vid, creatine ethyl ester (CEE) was all the rage and the “high tech” creatine that was gonna show itself to be “9,372,401 X better absorbed & superior to monohydrate blah blah blah” and so the marketing hype machine claimed. CEE, like every “superior” form of creatine before it (e.g., liquid creatines, serum creatine, etc, etc) dropped off the radar after numerous studies showed it was not only not superior to monohydrate, but clearly inferior. To those who know a thing about creatine, none of that came as any surprise but we had to wait patiently while studies were done to confirm what we knew. See article linked for that info on CEE if interested.

So fast forward to 2012. Although “buffered” creatine (BC) existed at the time (see list) it was not as popular as it came to be (after the fall of CEE there was less competition of course) and made steady increases in popularity. Me, I had it firmly in the graveyard for reasons outlined in the article. As of writing the article I’d say it had “one foot in the graveyard” as they say, and as of now, both feet firmly planted.

A recent study done at Texas A&M  examined the claims made my makers of buffered creatine (Kre-Alkayn®) to test it’s claims of being  superior to monohydrate and found it was neither more effective than good old monohydrate nor had an improved safety profile over CM.

When looking at whether BC was superior to CM for increasing tissue levels of creatine, strength, and LBM, the study concluded “Neither manufacturers recommended doses or equivalent loading doses of KA promoted greater changes in muscle creatine content, body composition, strength, or anaerobic capacity than CrM.   These findings do not support claims that KA is a more efficacious form of creatine.”

If one looks at the graph, one can see CM actually had a slight edge over BC in terms of actual muscle creatine content…

On the issue of whether or not BC has a superior safety profile over CM, the study authors concluded “Neither manufacturers recommended doses or equivalent loading doses of KA compared to CrM resulted in any negative side-effects or health outcomes.  Additionally, there was no evidence that CrM supplementation experienced a greater degradation to creatinine.   These findings suggest that KA is just as safe to consume as CrM with minimal side-effects.”

Color me not the least bit surprised…People can read the study poster session and abstract – “Kre-Alkalyn® supplementation does not promote greater changes in muscle creatine content, body composition, or training adaptations in comparison to creatine monohydrate” & “Kre-Alkalyn® supplementation does not exhibit a safer clinical profile or have less side effects in comparison to creatine monohydrate” – on the Texas A&M web site HERE if interested and hopefully it’s submitted for publication as a full length paper.