FIZZING Out

The major problem with effervescent delivery of creatine’aside from a metallic aftertaste’wasn’t a flaw in the way it delivered creatine to your system but something much more fundamental: its cost. When 100 grams of a creatine product cost the same as 1,000 grams of regular creatine monohydrate, price became a major issue. Large numbers of athletes chose to take regular creatine and accept the side effects.

Since true effervescent creatine wasn’t always easy to find, many people had bad experiences with inferior products that fizzed but didn’t dissolve creatine. They saw neither an increase in performance nor a lessening of side effects. They did see a major reduction in their bank accounts.

Titrated creatine, such as Creatine Titrate from IDS and CreaSol from Muscle-Link, eliminates those problems. It achieves the same chemical reaction as effervescent creatine; the result is free-ionized, soluble creatine. Technology has made it possible to dissolve creatine without the expense of an effervescent reaction and the manufacturing costs associated with it. Titrated creatine achieves that goal by titrating, or changing, the pH of the water when it’s stirred in. The altered pH enables more than 95 percent of the creatine to go into solution, so you get dissolved creatine.

Remember, it isn’t the fizz that increases your strength or eliminates the side effects; it’s the dissolved creatine. And that’s what you get with titrated creatine, ready to be used by your muscles.