Are there any certified nutritionists, personal trainers, doctors, nurses, etc out there who use creatine with your workouts? I've recently started using it, and discovered a surprising benefit from it's use as a diabetic. It allows me to take in my recovery shake, which has 50g of dextrose carbs, with no insulin! Less insulin in your system is good for all kinds of reasons. I get a short spike just over 200, but 4 hours later my blood sugar is perfect. If I only take 30g carbs in my shake, it doesn't spike over 200. Since discovering this, I've been reading everything I can find and have discovered a few formal studies about creatine reducing blood sugar after exercise. The odd thing is, it doesn't do this for me without exercise.
My question is, creatine naturally raises your creatinine levels in your kidneys, which is what an endo uses to detect kidney disease. I can't find any answers yet, to whether using creatine is going to cause me problems BECAUSE of my diabetes. Everything so far just says higher creatinine levels won't hurt you if your kidneys are healthy. Well, mine are still healthy, but . . . ?
I'm 44 years old, dx1970, I do weight lifting workouts.
Rich, are you saying it lowers your post-shake sugar even though it has a little carb in it? I'm a vegetarian and I've been adding it sometimes to shakes after workouts but I'd love to make it a more regular thing.
As long as you are controlling your blood sugar then it is perfectly fine to continue the use of creatine. Unless you already have an underlying kidney disease there is no danger in gaining on from supplementing creatine, however if your glucose readings are not in control, that will lead to the kidney issues. Ive been in the weight lifting and supplement world for the past three years now and I know exactly what you are referring to, only for me I don't even need to take creatine. The workout alone reduces my blood sugar.
Creatine is produced in your kidneys and liver for use by muscles to jump start muscle contractions. In other words, it's the first thing burned by muscles for energy so the more of it you have, hypothetically speaking, the better your muscle dependent performance will be. Fast twitch performance, especially, is thought to depend on creatine availability. So, no surpise it's been sold as an exercise supplement for as long as it's been known to be positively associated, physiologically, with athletic performance.
There's no reason to think that a person with diabetes, necessarily, shouldn't take creatine as a supplement. The problem with creatine is that the use of it as a supplement is thought to have lead to kidney damage in some cases. It's not recommended for use by people who already have damaged kidneys. The story is similar with liver damage. So, as diabetics who are already susceptible to kidney damage and abnormal liver function, it might be something to think about.
Creatinine, on the other hand, is a metabolic waste product. It's actually cleared through the kidneys and doesn't really contribute to kidney damage at all. The fact that it is cleared through the kidneys, with negligible reabsorption, means that it can be used to estimate Glomerular Filtration Rate, which is a direct measure of how well your kidneys are functioning.
The absolute amount of creatinine cleared by your kidneys is going to fluctuate a lot, even though Glomerular Filtration Rate should remain fairly constant, and I wouldn't be surprised if people taking creatine show higher amounts of creatinine clearance.
Unless I've missed something in my biochemistry, though, I don't think there has to be a connection between higher amounts of creatinine being cleared, due to creatine supplementation, and kidney damage.
Yes Laura, it lowers my blood sugar for many hours after my workout, so if I didn't have carbs in my post workout shake, I'd be in big trouble. :) Exercise does this too, so the creatine combined with the workout really reduces blood sugar it seems. Be careful if you experiment though.
