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If you drink "old school" protein shakes with milk and eggs, you don't have to worry if casein or whey is better on hypercaloric diets ;-)

Creatine, whey and - at least optionally - casein are on the list of "must have" supplements for anyone who has been following a solid workout routine a decent high(er) protein diet for a year or longer. And even though this makes any news study on one of the three potentially interesting for a huge part of the waredownloadsoft readers, the results are often so unsurprising that they are hardly worth an individual waredownloadsoft article...

I mean, let's be honest: You wouldn't be excited if I wrote about study #1023 showing a practically irrelevant acute increase in protein synthesis, let alone totally meaningless increases in mTOR in response to the ingestion of whey protein, would you?

For today's installment of the short news, I will picked two studies that are at least not as simplistic (and useless) as the previously mentioned 1023rd whey protein study.
Study #1 sheds some light onto the intricate differences between the way(s) whey and casein may differently affect our energy balance, gut hormones, glucose metabolism, and taste preference (Pezeshki. 2015), while study #2 is actually a meta-analysis that makes a first attempt to actually quantify the average effect of creatine on leg strength (Lanhers. 2015).

• Whey or casein? The answer to this question probably depends on your goals - That's at least what the complex results of a similarly complex series of experiments from the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases at the University of Calgary appears to suggest (Pezeshki. 2015). In the corresponding study, the researchers determined the effects of dietary whey, casein, and a combination of the 2 on energy balance, hormones, glucose metabolism, and taste preference in rats.
  
  Yes, this does mean that we must not uncritically transfer the results to humans. It does not mean, however, that we cannot use the results of Pezeshki's study, at all. Much of what we know and have later proven in human studies about our metabolism has initially been observed in rodents. Doing the same experiments with humans would not just have been significantly more expensive, it would also have been thwarted by misreported energy intakes and a lack of dietary control. So, if you belong to the "it's a rodent study, so I ignore it, if the results don't fit my world-view" faction, you are free to fast forward to the Lanhers study. If not, here's the elevator pitch on the two experiments the scientists conducted:
  • The hormone / energy expenditure experiment: Obesity Prone CD (OP-CD) rats were fed a high-fat control diet (33% fat energy) for 8 wk, and then randomly assigned to 4 isocaloric dietary treatments (n = 12/group): the control treatment (CO; 14% protein energy from egg white), the whey treatment (WH; 26% whey + 14% egg white), the casein treatment (CA; 26% casein + 14% egg white), or the whey plus casein treatment (WHCA; 13% whey + 13% casein + 14% egg white) for 28 d. Measurements included food intake, energy expenditure, body composition, metabolic hormones, glucose tolerance and key tissue markers of glucose and energy metabolism.
  • The food intake / preference experiment: Naive Obesity Prone CD (OP-CD) rats (not the same rats as in experiment 1) were randomly assigned to 3 groups (n = 8/group). During an 8 d conditioning period, each group received on alternate days either the CO or WH, CO or CA, or CO or WHCA. Subsequently, preferences for the test diets were assessed on 2 consecutive days with food intake measurements at regular intervals.
  If you take a look at my compilation of the most relevant data in Figure 1, you will see significant improvements in glucose management in all groups (Figure 1 | G). You should yet also be able to see that the most significant increase in GLUT-4 expression and thus the muscles ability to take up glucose occurred in the casein and mixed protein groups. In the whey group, on the other hand, where the insulin levels were the highest the increase in GLUT4 receptor expression was negligible and the 60 minutes post value for glucose after the glucose tolerance est was higher, but not significantly higher than in either the mixed protein or casein group.
  

  Figure 1: 0-60 minute hormone, glucose, cytokine and gene response to glucose tolerance test in diet-induced obese rodents fed diets containing either low amounts of protein or high amounts from whey, casein or a combination of whey + casein (Pezeshki. 2015).

  Since you will usually hear that whey is the #1 glucose repartitioner this may seem odd. In view of the fact that insulin can only drive glucose into the cells if they actually "stretch out their glucose "suckers", i.e. the GLUT-4 receptors, it is yet only logical - and that despite the fact that we cannot (yet) explain the differential GLUT-4 response. 

• What remains to be seen, though, is whether this measurable, but not in all details statistically significant difference actually matters. If you look at the food intake and preference data in Figure 3. It would seem as if it didn't. I mean, if we apply "Taubes'ian" logic, here, the high(er insulin levels in the whey group should have made the rats overeat...
  

  Figure 2: Daily food intake during conditioning trials. Rats were fed, on alternate days, a control diet or whey (A), casein (B), or a combination of whey and casein (C). Mean hourly food intakes on 2 consecutive days of preference testing, with access to both control and one of the high protein diets (D, E, F | Pzeshki. 2015).

  ... a brief glimpse at the data in Figure 2, however, tells you that this was clearly not the case. It is thus not surprising that the final lean and fat mass percentages in Figure 3 did not differ significantly between the groups, even though some of you will notice a non-significant lean vs. fat mass advantage for the casein group. 
• Eventually, it would still appear unwarranted to use the study at hand to argue in favor of casein instead of whey protein as your protein supplement of choice. If you are yet already following my suggestion to mix the two (read even more), the results of the study at hand would be another reason to stick to that practice.
  
  Overall, we do yet have to remember that significant treatment effects in response to the increase in protein were observed in all groups. In that, it may be true that the casein group had the highest reduction in food intake (30-43% reduction) and appears to have ended up with a slightly better body composition, but hey, we are talking about non-significant differences in a study that was not just done on rodents, but on obese rodents ... and you know that the weight status obese vs. lean / athletic can make more of a difference in the way people / lab animals react to supplements than the difference between man and mouse.
• Creatine and lower limb strength - what to expect? You are probably asking yourself now: "Why on earth is Adel so interested in this meta-analysis?" Well, the answer is as simple as it is personal: The only body part of mine that appears to to have ever really benefited from creatine supplementation, strength-wise, are my legs. Accordingly, I was attracted to the Lanhers' meta-analysis, because I hoped to find some clues on why this may be the case.
  
  Now, I guess I don't give away too much, when I say that the paper didn't provide me with new insights in this respect. What the scientists' compilation and meta-analysis of the data did do, however, was to confirmation that I am not the only one whose "wheels" respond extremely favorably to creatine supplementation: One of the main results of Lanhers' meta-analysis of 60 (!) studies is after all that the effect of creatine supplementation on leg strength is not just statistically significant in almost every study they reviewed, it is also and maybe even more importantly and astonishingly independent of population characteristics, training protocols, and supplementary doses and duration (reread this - you don't have to superdose it!).
  
  In that, I find it particularly striking that even training for mostly aerobic team sports, like handball, for example, can trigger significant increases in squat performance if the players are consuming 3-5g of creatine before or after their training sessions (Note: In the corresponding study by Izquierdo, the handball players also saw significant increases in bench press performance - It's thus by no means as if creatine was a "leg strength booster", only!).
  

  Figure 4: Meta-analysis on maximal weight lifted (kg) in squat. CI confidence interval, M male, SD standard deviation, T0 baseline, T1 following supplementation (Lanhers. 2015).

  For the total workout volume (not shown in Figure 4), Lanhers et al. report almost identical effect sizes as the researchers determined them based on the absolute increase in squat performance in kg (see Figure 4); and just like the relative strength gains, the relative volume increases did not depend on the training status or age (subjects were 21-69 years old) of the subjects.
  
  In view of these results, there's really no good reason to doubt the scientists' conclusions that (a) "[c]reatine supplementation is effective in lower limb strength performance" and (b) works "for exercise with a duration of less than 3 min". If you also take into account that the average effect size for weight and volume are in the range of ~30% irrespective of the population characteristic, training protocols, and supplementary doses and duration, I hope that you can agree that there's also no reason to doubt my repeatedly voiced recommendation to "take your creatine bros" ... ah, and take it with sodium bicarbonate, obviously ;-)

• Izquierdo, M. I. K. E. L., et al. "Effects of creatine supplementation on muscle power, endurance, and sprint performance." Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 34.2 (2002): 332-343.
• Lanhers, Charlotte, et al. "Creatine Supplementation and Lower Limb Strength Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses." Sports Medicine (2015): 1-10.
• Pezeshki, et al. "Dietary Whey and Casein Differentially Affect Energy Balance, Gut Hormones, Glucose Metabolism, and Taste Preference in Diet-Induced Obese Rats." The Journal of Nutrition. First published ahead of print August 26, 2015.

Will a small cup of coffee ruin the benefits you can derive from creatine supplementation? Sounds impossible, but it's a die-hard rumor with surprising scientific backing. Now, a new study could finally settle the debate.

As topic for the thesis he submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at the Department of Exercise and Sport Science (Exercise Physiology), Eric T. Trexler selected the "Effects of Creatine, Coffee, and Caffeine Anhydrous on Strength and Sprint Performance" (Trexler. 2015).

This is, as some of you will immediately recognize, at least in parts, a variation of the age-old question, whether the purported diuretic effects of caffeine would impair the proven ergogenic effects of creatine. In that, it's a variation, because the domain of concern is not - as it is for most bros - solely restricted to resistance training, but extends beyond the investigated one-rep max on the leg press and into the realms of sprint performance. But let's tackle things one after the other.
As Trexel points out, the study at hand "sought to directly compare effects of caffeine-matched (300 mg) doses of caffeine anhydrous [CAF | that's basically the same stuff you will have in your pre-workout] and coffee [COF | that's ~3 cups of the beverage that many of you will be drinking on a daily basis] on strength and sprint performance, and to determine if CAF or COF intake modulate the effects of creatine (CRE) loading" (Trexel. 2015 | my emphasis).

Now, you propably don't need a PhD to be able to tell that creatine and caffeine are currently among the most popular and best proven nutritional ergogenic aids. What is odd, though, is that supplement companies have made a habit of packing both into one product, even though there's the long-standing suspicion that caffeine may blunt the effects of creatine.

Figure 1: Caffeine blunts the beneficial effects of creatine loading on dynamic torque production (Vandenberghe. 1996).

And there are in fact a handful of people who still believe this was a huge mistake - mostly, because early studies into the concomitant administration of both agents like a Vandenberghe et al. (1996) clearly indicate that "caffeine counteracts the ergogenic action of muscle creatine loading" by (in this particular study) blunting the increase in dynamic torque production. This study, as well as a study by Hespel et al. who observed opposing effects of creatine and caffeine on the relaxation time of skeletal muscle (creatine decreases it, while caffeine increases it), are reason enough for skeptics like Tarnpolsky et al. (2010) to say that "there is no rationale for their simultaneous use" even though they have to admit that evidence is inconclusive:

"Although there is little rationale for taking both caffeine and creatine simultaneously as ergogenic aids, some have reported that the acute consumption of both negated the ergogenic benefits." (Tarnpolksy. 2010).

• When is the best time to take your creatine supplement? Before or after your workouts? Learn more in this waredownloadsoft Classic: "Lean Mass Advantage of Post- vs. Pre-Workout Creatine Supplementation Confirmed. Older Trainees Benefit Most" | more.

  the short term creatine loading protocol used in Vandenberghe's study is no longer recommended and the assumption that caffeine + creatine won't mix in the long-run would require studies that investigate that in the long run,
• the study cross-over design of Vandenberghe's study in which the subjects received all three treatments in random order incorporated a 3-week washout period that was as follow up studies on the long-lasting effects of creatine supplementation suggest probably insufficient for the creatine levels to return to normal; after all, the minimal washout period for creatine is estimated to be ~4 weeks (Hultman. 1996)
• the Vandenberghe study used only one exercise to test the effects and does therefore hardly reflect the effects on real-world athletic performance, 
• lastly, many researchers have dismissed a potential interaction between creatine and chronic caffeine ingestion, because some of the early creatine studies with highly beneficial results have administered it dissolved in coffee/tea (Greenhaff. 1993; Birch. 1994); so have more recent studies that in which the effects of one of the previously mentioned nutraceuticals were tested (Smith. 2010; Lowery. 2013)

Against that background and in view of the fact that none of the long(er) term creatine supplementation studies that dominate the scientific landscape of the late 20th and early 21st century reports that coffee connaisseurs wouldn't let alone couldn't benefit from creatine supplements (Fukuda. 2010; Smith. 2010), the results of Vandenberghe's study would have to be reproduced even if there was no contradictory evidence from a 1998 study by Vanakosk et al. who observed no interaction between creatine and caffeine in their crossover study (Vanakosk 1998).
To eventually find out if thousands of athletes competing in both aerobic and anaerobic sports are making a mistake, when they're pounding commercially prepared or self-made creatine + caffeine concussions, the initially mentioned study by Trexel was designed to find out if chronic coffee or caffeine anhydrous consumption blunts the ergogenic effect of creatine loading on strength and sprint performance outcomes.

Using subjects with previous resistance training experience, Trexel determined if caffeine (CAF) or coffeee (COF - both at 300mg caffeine per serving) intake modulates the effects of creatine (CRE) loading with 20 g/day, split between 4 servings by conducting the same battery of strength and sprint performance tests before and after the acute and chronic supplementation with coffee, creatine or caffeine or a combination of both (CRE + CAF or CRE + COF).

Unfortunately, the results of the by all means well-designed study are not clear enough to settle the debate once and for all even though, no inhibitory effects of caffeine or coffee on the ergogenic effects of creatine were observed. Personally, I'd say, though, that the total evidence would suggest that if there is an inteference, it's probably negligible in the long run.

But let's get back to the study at hand and what it tells or rather doesn't tell us about a possible interference: As you can see in Figure 2, Trexel's study does not suffer from the same problems as the previously cited study by Vandenberghe. It's not a cross-over study, so too little washout time is not a problem. On the other hand, the number of subjects (13-14 in each group) is not exactly high enough to make sure that the differences you're expecting will be significant if you happen to have selected a few creatine non- or hyper-responders that mess with your data.

Figure 2: Overview of the study design for the chronic supplementation study (Trexel. 2015)

An additional problem is the total length of the study. With only 5 days, we are - once again - not in the practically more relevant longer-term chronic supplementation time-frame that would mimic the way most of you are probably using their creatine products. Yes, previous studies have shown significant effects even in a time-frame as short as that, but you will also know that creatine is not only one of the few supplements where the effects may accumulate over weeks, but also one of the few where long-lasting effects of previous (even way beyond the previously cited wash-out period) can be safely excluded. Against that background one could (I know you're always smarter after you've done a study, so no smart-assing here) argue that it may not have been enough to pick subjects that had not taken creatine in the last three moths, but were not necessarily creatine naive.
Yes, I know, being "creatine naive" does not sound like it could be important, but but in view of the anecdotal evidence that no "creatine cycle is as effective as the first one" as well as the scientific evidence that one's baseline creatine levels have a significant effect on whether you "respond" or "don't respond" to supplementation (Syrotuik. 2004 | see red box, as well), it could at least partly explain why the results of the study are somewhat inconclusive.

Figure 3: If we go by serum creatine levels it would seem as if caffeine wasn't a problem - specifically if it comes from coffee. Unfortunately, serum creatine is pretty irrelevant and the performance data in form of changes in total work and the number of reptitions on the leg press and bench showed no signifant intergroup difference. Now this would suggest that it's not problem to take creatine with coffee or caffeine, but convincing evidence that caffeine does not impair the beneficial effects of creatine would require these beneficial effects to show (data after chronic suppl. from Teaxel. 2015).

And with "inconclusive" I am attributing the data in Figure 3 which tells you - more than anything else - that neither creatine nor caffeine produced a significant performance increase in any of the relevant parameters over the five-day study period.

Only the increase in plasma creatine was statistically significant. That's nice, because it shows that mixing your creatine into instant coffee, which is what the guys in the coffee + creatine group were told to do, appears to rather boost than hamper the intestinal absorption of creatine. Eventually, however, this information is irrelevant, because it is the increase in intramuscular phosphocreatine stores that's driving the (not observed) performance benefits - not an increases in serum creatine.
References:

• Astorino, Todd A., and Daniel W. Roberson. "Efficacy of acute caffeine ingestion for short-term high-intensity exercise performance: a systematic review." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 24.1 (2010): 257-265.
• Birch, R., D. Noble, and P. L. Greenhaff. "The influence of dietary creatine supplementation on performance during repeated bouts of maximal isokinetic cycling in man." European journal of applied physiology and occupational physiology 69.3 (1994): 268-270.
• Fukuda, David H., et al. "The possible combinatory effects of acute consumption of caffeine, creatine, and amino acids on the improvement of anaerobic running performance in humans." Nutrition research 30.9 (2010): 607-614.
• Greenhaff, Paul L., et al. "Influence of oral creatine supplementation of muscle torque during repeated bouts of maximal voluntary exercise in man." Clinical Science 84 (1993): 565-565.
• Hespel, Peter, B. Op‘t Eijnde, and Marc Van Leemputte. "Opposite actions of caffeine and creatine on muscle relaxation time in humans." Journal of Applied Physiology 92.2 (2002): 513-518.
• Hultman, E., et al. "Muscle creatine loading in men." Journal of applied physiology 81.1 (1996): 232-237.
• Lowery, Ryan P., et al. "Effects of 8 weeks of Xpand® 2X pre workout supplementation on skeletal muscle hypertrophy, lean body mass, and strength in resistance trained males." J Int Soc Sports Nutr 10.1 (2013): 44.
• Smith, Abbie E., et al. "The effects of a pre-workout supplement containing caffeine, creatine, and amino acids during three weeks of high-intensity exercise on aerobic and anaerobic performance." J Int Soc Sports Nutr 7.10 (2010): 10-1186.
• Syrotuik, Daniel G., And Gordon J. Bell. "Acute Creatine Monohydrate Supplementation: Adescriptive Physiological Profile Of Responders Vs. Nonresponders." The Journal Of Strength & Conditioning Research 18.3 (2004): 610-617.
• Tarnopolsky, Mark A. "Caffeine and creatine use in sport." Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism 57.Suppl. 2 (2010): 1-8.
• Trexler, Eric T. Effects of creatine, coffee, and caffeine anhydrous on strength and sprint performance. Diss. THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL, 2015.
• Vanakoski, Jyrki, et al. "Creatine and caffeine in anaerobic and aerobic exercise: effects on physical performance and pharmacokinetic considerations." International journal of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics 36.5 (1998): 258-262.
• Vandenberghe, K., et al. "Caffeine counteracts the ergogenic action of muscle creatine loading." Journal of applied physiology 80.2 (1996): 452-457.

When you're running on a treadmill it obviously takes more than one serving of Red Bull or other commercial energy drinks to kickstart your workout performance | learn more below.

Initially I wanted to cherry pick only the most interesting study results that were presented in form of of poster presentations at the Twelfth International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) Conference and Expo in 2015. After looking at the research that is - as of now - only available in form of (albeit often detailed) abstracts, I decided that there are way too many interesting studies to cover only three of them in depth or all of them only cursory. Accordingly, I decided to start a waredownloadsoft Mini Special with this being the first out of 3-4 issues in which I will briefly discuss the most significant results of those of the roughly two dozen studies, I (a) believe are of greatest interest to you and (b) feel comfortable talking about without having all the details in form of the still to be published full texts.

• The latest research on Vitargo(TM) -- The mere fact that the latest study on Vitargo(TM) was presented in "three servings", on the latest ISSN meeting, i.e. (1) on the glucose and insulin response (Almada. 2015), (2) on the incretin response (Anzalone. 2015) and (3) on the power output during a subsequent bout of resistance exercise (Van Eck. 2015), could raise some concerns about the objectivity of the results, but is as Patrick Jacobs kindly reminded me common scientific practice.. So, let's put the skepticism aside and take a look at the study design and results.
  
  

  Post-Workout Glycogen Repletion | Read the my overview article.

  Sixteen resistance trained men participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized crossover study, which consisted of three testing sessions, each separated by one week. In sessions 1-3, subjects completed a glycogen depleting cycling bout of 60 minutes at 70% VO2 max, followed by six, one-minute sprints at 120% VO2 max.
  
  Immediately post-exercise subjects ingested a placebo (PLA), or a low molecular (LMW) or high molecular weight (HMW) CHO (=Vitargo(TM)) solution (10%) providing 1.2g/kg body weight CHO; assigned randomly. Blood samples were taken prior to ingestion and every ten minutes for 2h.
  
  For the "first" and "second" serving of the study this was enough. These mini-presentations dealt with the insulin, glucose and incretin response to the two supplements, only. For the "third serving", however, the scientists included performance data from a subsequent bout of exercise, during which the participants did 5 sets of 10 repetitions of back squats (75% 1RM) "as explosively as possible" (if subjects paused for more than 2 seconds or were unable to complete a rep, resistance was lowered by 13.6 kg | Van Eck. 2015).
  

  Figure 1: Overview of the most relevant results (LMW = low molecular weight CHO vs. HMW = Vitargo (TM) high molecular weight CHO) from Almada (2015), Anzalone (2015) and Van Eck (2015).

  As you can see in my overview of the most relevant results, the scientists did not find practically meaningful differences in study I-II. In study III, which compared the effects of low to high molecular weight carbohydrates (LMW vs. HMW) on squat performance 2h after the glycogen-depleting workout, this was slightly different:

  "HMW conferred a likely beneficial effect in Sets 4 and 5 (92.5% and 88.7% likelihood, respectively), compared to PLA; while ingestion of LMW conferred only a possibly beneficial effect (68.7%) and likely beneficial effect (83.9%) in Sets 4 and 5, respectively" (Van Eck. 2015).

  And still, if you read the conclusion, "the ingestion of a HMW CHO solution providing 1.2 g/kg CHO may allow athletes to sustain power output in a subsequent resistance training session when time between training sessions is limited" (Van Eck. 2015), carefully, you will notice the words "likely" and "possibly" which signify the putative nature of the effect. What may be even more relevant than that, is yet that few of you will do glycogen-depleting exercises at 4:00 pm and hit the gym again for an intense leg workout at 6:00 pm. Accordingly, the practical relevance of the "sustained power output" Van Eck et al. observed is probably restricted to a small group of professional athletes. For people who fall into this category or strength athletes training twice a day, though, using Vitargo (TM) may in fact offer significant benefits.
• Beef and whey support lean mass gains similarly effectively -- If you are asking yourself if beef isolate protein is a good or at least decent replacement for whey, the post-workout protein supplementation "gold standard" some people can't use due to its (albeit low) lactose content, a recent study from the University of Tampa (Sharp. 2015) has the answer you are looking for.
  

  Figure 2: Relative improvements in muscle size (hypertrophy) and body fat (fat loss) in response to beef isolate or whey protein supplementation; expressed relative to maltodextrin placebo (Sharp. 2015).

  As the data in Figure 2 tells you, it will make a good replacement! If we go by the average increase in lean mass and loss of fat mass, the beef isolate that was consumed in amounts of 2x20g per day either immediately after each of the 5 weekly workouts (3 resistance training, 2 cardio; 8 weeks total, daily undulating periodization) or at a similar time in the day, you may even argue that the beef protein had the overhand over its "milky" competitor. If we take the individual variations into account, though, the 1% lean mass and almost 3% fat loss advantage (DXA values) of the beef protein turns out to be statistically non-singifican.
  
  The same goes for differences in strength gains, of which the researchers found that they were identical not just in the two supplement, but also in the supplement and control groups. The lack of additional power during the bench press test may, as the researchers point out, be ascribed to both increases in neural and morphological adaptations" (Sharp. 2015) which would "negate" (ibid.), or as I would phrase it, 'override' potential additive effects of any of the protein supplements (whey and beef, alike).
• Energy drinks a waste of money on the treadmill? At first sight, the results of the latest study by Sanders et al. (2015) do in fact suggest that energy drinks were a total waste of money for those of you who are consuming them before a regular cardio workout on the treadmill. After all, none of the tested drinks lead to statistically significant improvements in either perceived treadmill exercise performance or running economy assessed via oxygen consumption at 70% treadmill exercise.

• Now, some of you may argue that all you care about when you buy an energy drink is that it makes it easier for you to hit your target time on the treadmill. Well, I can understand that, but in view of the fact that neither of the caffeine laden 8.4 oz. Red Bull®, 16 oz. Monster Energy ®, 2 oz. 5-hour ENERGY® drinks affected the subjects subjective rates of perceived exertion, it does appear questionable that these drinks can actually help you.
  
  It does thus stand to reason that Sanders et al. conclude that the "results [of their latest study] do not support manufacturers' claims regarding their product's ability to boost performance" (Sanders. 2015). The scientists are yet also right that it would be necessary to find out whether time trial or time to exhaustion sprint and endurance performance benefit, as respective studies may be better suited to reliably "assess if these energy drinks can, in fact, improve exercise performance" (ibid.) - and in view of the fact that previous studies with corresponding outcomes yielded conflicting results (see blue box above), I can fully subscribe to that: We need more (non-sponsored) quality studies ;-)
• More evidence that creatine loading is not the way to go -- In Gann et al.'s latest study, fourteen (Cr = 7, Pl = 7) non-resistance-trained (i.e. < thrice weekly, 1 year prior) men between the ages of 18-30 were randomly assigned by age and body weight to orally ingest a powdered dextrose placebo or creatine monohydrate (Gann. 2015).
  
  After baseline strength and body composition testing procedures, participants ingested creatine or placebo at a dose of 0.3g/kg lean body mass/day (≈ 20-25g/day) for a 5 day loading phase immediately followed by a 42-day maintenance phase at a dose of 0.075g/kg lean body mass/day (≈ 5-7g/day). The participants followed a periodized 4 day per week resistance-training program split into two upper body and two lower body workouts per week, for a total of 7 weeks. Blood and muscle samples were obtained at Day 0, 6, 27, and 48. Statistical analyses were performed utilizing separate two-way ANOVA for each criterion variable employing a probability level of ≤ 0.05.
  

  Figure 3: Don't be fooled by shiny ads! While there is evidence that some forms of creatine will be faster absorbed than creatine monohydrate, only the addition of dextrose (and ALA or baking soda) have actually been shown to increase the muscular retention of creatine in experiments (Jäger. 2011)

  As you'd expect, the addition of creatine lead to significant increments in total body mass (p = 0.03) and lean body mass (p = 0.01). What creatine did not do, though, was to affect the amount of body fat the subjects were carrying around. The latter decreased to a similar extent in both groups in response to resistance training, alone (p = 0.001) - without any effect of creatine supplementation. Much to my personal surprise, the same was the case for the subjects' muscle strength, which was - likewise - increased to the same extent in both groups.
  
  So what? Well, in contrast to the uncommon lack of effect on muscle strength, the lack of effect on body fat is sad, but had to be expected. Both findings are yet not why this study made the waredownloadsoft Cut. That is or rather was Gann's observation that the loading phase lead to significant increases in of urinary creatine (p = 0.036), and urinary creatinine (p = 0.01) in the creatine group compared to placebo. This "excess amounts of serum and urinary creatine and urinary creatinine content" (Gann. 2015) provides further evidence that the (still common) practice of creatine loading is useless and 100% safe certainly only in the short term. In the long term, however, I'd highly suggest that you avoid super-dosing on creatine - I mean, why would you want to use 20g per day, when 3-5 g per day is enough (Wilder. 2001) and more than will "lose" once the creatine levels of your muscles are saturated (the exact washout time is unknown, but studies indicate it may be >40 days of consuming no creatine at all | Deldicque. 2008)?

As a waredownloadsoft reader you already know of the post-workout creatine advantage.

I am sure you will remember Jose Antonio's 2013 study on the effect of creatine timing in 19 male recreational bodybuilders (reread the waredownloadsoft article). The results indicated quite conclusively that taking creatine after the workout is a bit more effective than taking the same amount immediately before the workout.

In view of the fact that the effect did not reach statistical significance and an advantage was only "possible" or "likely", though, the debate about the importance or non-significance of creatine timing is far from being settled.
The latest evidence that creatine timing counts comes from the University of Regina, where Darren Candow, Emelie Vogt, Sarah Johannsmeyer, Scott Forbes, and Jonathan P. Farthing conducted a
double-blind study that involved older adults (50-71 yrs) who were randomized to one of three groups:

• Creatine-Before (CR-B: n=15; creatine [0.1g/kg] immediately before resistance training and placebo [0.1g∙kg-1 corn-starch maltodextrin] immediately after resistance training), 
• Creatine-After (CR-A: n=12; placebo immediately before resistance training and creatine immediately after resistance training) or 
• Placebo (PLA: n=12; placebo immediately before and immediately after resistance training)

The subjects remained on the respective protocol for 32 weeks. Prior to and following the study, body composition (lean tissue, fat mass; dual energy x-ray absorptiometry) and muscle strength (1-repetition maximum leg press and chest press) were assessed. The habitual dietary intake was evaluated by the means of 3-day dietary records during the first and final week of resistance training and supplementation, but significant and potentially relevant differences were not obeserved.

If you haven't already done so, review the results of J. Antonio's previous creatine timing study in "Creatine Before or After the Workout? Finally the Answer is Here! Study Says: Better Take it After for Mass & Strength" | read more

"Participants followed the same supervised whole-body resistance training program for 32 weeks in the same private laboratory. Training sessions were supervised as previous research has demonstrated greater gains compared to unsupervised training (Mazzetti et al. 2000). Prior to training sessions, but after the supplement was consumed, each participant performed a 5-minute stationary cycling warm-up at a self- selected intensity. Participants completed 3 sets of 10 repetitions to muscle fatigue with 1-2 minutes rest between sets for each exercise at an intensity corresponding to their 10- repetition maximum for each exercise. 

[...The machine-based program included the following exercises] leg press, chest press, lat pull-down, shoulder press, leg extension, leg curl, triceps extension, biceps curl, calf press, back extension and abdominal curl [all were performed in the given order]" (Candow. 2015). 

The participants had to maintain daily training logs where the load, number of sets and repetitions
were recorded. Resistance was increased by 2-10 kg once a participant could complete 3 sets of 10 repetitions to muscle fatigue for an exercise. Once the resistance was increased, participants maintained this load until a subsequent 3 sets of 10 repetitions to fatigue were completed.
References:

• Antonio J, Ciccone V. The effects of pre versus post workout supplementation of creatine monohydrate on body composition and strength. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2013 Aug 6;10(1):36. [Epub ahead of print]
• Candow, Darren, et al. "Strategic ingestion of creatine supplementation and resistance training in healthy older adults." Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism ja.

Not just for women who are always afraid of an increase in water retention, loading protocols may not exactly be the best way of taking creatine monohydrate.

Let's be clear, here: I do not doubt that using 20g of creatine per day for 1-2 weeks aka "creatine loading" is the fastest way to supercompensate one's intra-muscular phosphocreatine and thus short-term energy stores.

What I seriously doubt, though, is that more than 0.1% of the waredownloadsoft readers have a good reason to make sure that they achieve maximal creatine levels in the shortest period of time. Rather than that, most of you are probably interested in augmenting their size and strength gains in the long(er) run and that's exactly where an older 10-week study shows that increased creatine dosages and / or loading are neither necessary nor beneficial for well-trained athletes.
The study was designed to compare the effects of low doses of creatine (3g/day) and creatine loading (20g/day for 7 days + 5g/day thereafter) on strength, urinary creatinine concentration, and percentage of body fat. To this ends, Wilder et al. recruited 25 "highly trained" division IA collegiate football players who took creatine monohydrate for 10 weeks during a sport-specific, periodized, off-season strength and conditioning program. Onerepetition maximum (1-RM) squat, urinary creatinine concentrations, and %-age of body fat were analyzed. As previously pointed out, the subjects were

"randomly placed 25 subjects into 1 of 3 groups: (1) creatine supplementation of 3 g·d21; (2) creatine supplemen tation of 20 g·d21 for 7 days, followed by creatine supplementation of 5 g·d21 for the remainder of the study; or (3) a placebo group" (Wilder. 2001).

Creatine supplementation took place in a single-blind fashion, with each subject receiving a high or low dose of creatine or the placebo. Each creatine tablet (Createam Chewables, NutraSense Co, Shawnee Mission, KS) contained 1 g of creatine and 1.4 g of dextrose. The placebo tablet (Nutrasense) contained 2.4 g of dextrose.

"For the first week (loading phase), ingestion occurred 4 times per day. High-dose creatine (5 cre atine tablets), low-dose creatine (3 creatine tablets and 2 placebo tablets), or placebo (5 placebo tablets) was taken when the subjects awoke, before and after the workout session, and in the evening before bed. For the subsequent 9 weeks, the high or low dose of creatine or the placebo dose was ingested once per day after workouts and at the same time on off days" (Wilder. 2001).

During the 10-week supplementation period, all subjects participated only in the University’s off-season conditioning program, which consisted of periodized resistance and agility workouts. More specifically, the program consisted of 4 h/week of heavy resistance training and 4 h/week of conditioning. Weight training and conditioning were performed on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

• Strength program: The primary exercises in the strength program were the front squat, back squat, hang clean, power clean, overhead press, bench press, single-arm dumbbell press, 1-arm rows, straight-leg dead lift, power shrugs, upright rows, chin-ups, dips, medicine ball plyometrics, and bumper-plate push-ups. 
• Periodization scheme: The periodization protocol was a 5-week base hypertrophy phase (4 to 6 sets at 50% to 80% 1-RM), followed by a 2-week power phase (3 to 5 sets at 80% to 88%). After this 7- week period, a 2-week strength phase (1 to 3 sets at 90% to 95%) was implemented, followed by a 1-week peak strength phase (1 to 3 sets at 95% to 100%). 

All sessions (strength and conditioning) were supervised by the strength and conditioning staff, athletic trainers, and football coaches.

Figure 1: Changes in strength and lean mass gains over the course of the 10-week study (Wilder. 2001).

If you look exclusively at the statistically significant study outcomes that are based on blood analyses as well as the results of the standardized performance tests, there are two surprising and one obvious results:

• Creatine loading + high dose supplementation did not produce significantly different effects on strength, urinary creatinine, or percentage of body fat than training, alone.
• There were no significant inter-group differences for loading + high dose vs. low dose supplementation over the course of the 10-week study.
• Significant side effects weren't observed in any of the three study groups.

Now, I could probably stop right here and cite the authors' conclusion that their data suggest "that creatine monohydrate in any amount does not have any beneficial ergogenic effects in highly trained collegiate football players," (Wilder. 2001), but that's not what I am going to do.

Figure 2: Pre- / post changes in body fat (%) - Note: The differences didn't reach statistical significance due to inter-individual differences (Wilder. 2001)

If we discard the criteria of statistical significance (which was low, because of large inter-individual variations), there are inter-group differences that may even matter.

If you review the data in Figures 1+2, you can easily see that the low dose supplementation group saw (on average) the greatest improvements in strength and lean mass; and that in the absence of the albeit non-significant, but still measurable unwanted fat gain of 0.96% in the loading and 0.78% in the placebo group (vs. -0.39% body fat loss in the low dose group).
References:

• Kim, Hyo Jeong, et al. "Studies on the safety of creatine supplementation." Amino Acids 40.5 (2011): 1409-1418.
• Wilder, Nathan, et al. "The effects of low-dose creatine supplementation versus creatine loading in collegiate football players." Journal of athletic training 36.2 (2001): 124.