Saturday, October 31, 2015

For maximum rage, take creatine

I honestly can't believe I am sitting here writing this.

I really can't.

However because of the fact that the media coverage of some cop slinging a young girl around in a classroom has become a major news story, I am annoyed enough to do so.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, apparently a policeman was called into a classroom to remove an unruly student with a cell phone.  He lost his shit on her, and ended up slinging her all over the place in order to remove her.

I'm not getting into the debate about his behavior.  The issue now, that the media is running with, is that his rage was caused, or possibly caused, by creatine.

And here we fucking go again.

This reminds me of the witch hunt done with ephedrine years ago.

In case you don't remember why or when it was banned, there was a similar kick off (pun intended here) due to the death of an NFL player named Korey Stringer.  Who died of heatstroke after practice.

Linkage.

Ephedrine was found in his locker, but actually wasn't in his system when the autopsy was done.  These facts of course, did not keep the media from their ensuing witch hunt to make it appear as if taking ephedrine was right on par with free basing cocaine in regards to your health.

Completely ignoring the fact that at that time, millions of people took ephedrine for weight loss without any serious health issues.  Me being one of them.

Stringer died in 2003.  Ephedrine was banned in 2004 after the media ramrodded us with story after story of teens basically taking ephedrine and making it appear as if they all suddenly dropped dead faster than a Cambodian villager captured by the Khmer Rouge.

Never fucking mind that ephedrine was used for thousands of years by the Chinese.  However this didn't stop the New England Journal of Medicine to essentially declare ephedrine unsafe based on a total of...brace yourselves...10 deaths related to it over a two years span.

Ten.  Over two years.

Do you know how many die each year from a vending machine falling on top of them?

Around 10-13.

About 11 people die each year from firework accidents.

Can someone tell me why people are still allowed to get Skittles from the vending machine at work, but can't run down to the GNC and grab some old school Ripped Fuel?  Because this confuses me.

For anyone who says the media doesn't have power in regards to our freedom, you are either willfully ignorant or flat out stupid.  They are the driving force in most cases behind how and why OTC supplements end up being off the counter supplements.

But fuck that, let's really shed some light on things.

"It has been estimated conservatively that 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur among patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis every year in the United States. This figure is similar to the number of deaths from the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and considerably greater than the number of deaths from multiple myeloma, asthma, cervical cancer, or Hodgkin’s disease. If deaths from gastrointestinal toxic effects from NSAIDs were tabulated separately in the National Vital Statistics reports, these effects would constitute the 15th most common cause of death in the United States. Yet these toxic effects remain mainly a “silent epidemic,” with many physicians and most patients unaware of the magnitude of the problem. Furthermore the mortality statistics do not include deaths ascribed to the use of over-the-counter NSAIDS." (Wolfe M. MD, Lichtenstein D. MD, and Singh Gurkirpal, MD, “Gastrointestinal Toxicity of Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs”, The New England Journal of Medicine,a June 17, 1999, Vol. 340, No. 24, pp. 1888-1889.)
16,500 deaths.  Related to NSAID drugs.

No witch hunt.

10 deaths over 2 years from ephedrine...a drug used for thousands of years in a safe and effective manner.  Completely unsafe and kills teens faster than Jason does at Camp Crystal Lake.

Seems legit.

Now, and don't take this lightly, there will be another long hard look at creatine.  Because this is how our politicians should be using out time and money.  To look at supplements that have been proven through countless studies to be safe and effective, and determine if they should remove them off the shelves.

And they would be doing so because why?

Creatine rage.

Sit down, take a deep breath, exhale, and let that sink in for a minute.

Creatine...fucking...rage.

I don't want to get too sciency here but let's look at what creatine is, or does in your body when you take it.

Creatine, once ingested (I assume he hadn't gone full creatine injection route and was shooting it up...that's sarcasm) arrives at the muscle cells and gets converted into creatine phosphate.  Creatine phosphate then gets broken down into ATP which is used during short, explosive muscular contractions.

Once ATP is depleted, your body will then convert glycogen stored in the muscle to make more ATP.
The conversion of glycogen to ATP is much longer than that of creatine phosphate to ATP.  This is why using creatine, which creates a larger pool of creatine phosphate to be created to ATP, works so well in regards to increasing strength.

Creatine is nothing more than a supplement that gets converted into a fuel used by the body for contractile power.

That's it.

The chance of someone having "rage" from taking creatine is the same as someone having rage from carb loading from eating too many doughnuts.  There is literally no physiological link between creatine and it having the ability to make people angry.

Gotta get that creatine fix by any means necessary 


We're talking creatine here, people.  Not halotestin.  Not PCP.

This of course won't stop people from using "I did a creatine load the night before I killed my family" excuse to justify or rationalize their actions and behaviors.  And of course, if this ever reaches congress due to the media having nothing better to do than cover the Kardashians, then it is possible that just like in the death of Stringer, it could get pulled off the shelves due to it possibly having the potential to cause good cops to beat up high school students, and people to go on homicidal rampages.  Nevermind the fact that millions of people use creatine every year without beating the shit out of their family or roommates.   That won't matter.  What will matter is people will need an excuse for their shitty behavior and a scapegoat will be found for it.

In the meantime, people won't actually take the time out to look at the fact that creatine is the most studied OTC supplement of all time, and that it's never once been found to be anything but safe and effective at what it's supposed to do.  No, what they will do is see this cop yanking around a kid in school and go "Johnnie, you can't take creatine.  It causes rage and homicidal behavior."

I wish that was a scenario made up in my head, but that conversation is going to happen at sometime, somewhere in a GNC store in the near future.

FML.

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5 comments:

  1. Big Brother is watching...

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  2. Hilarious and frightening at the same time ....

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  3. I think creatine's safe from a witch hunt, because of recent neonatal research in preventing both muscular and neural disorders.
    The review article is open access and can be found here:
    http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/14/150

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  4. It seems like humanity hasn't really moved forward since the middle ages,where here in the UK we appointed "Witch finder generals" to hunt down and execute suspected witches based on the fact the said witch administered a clove of garlic to someone to help relieve a cold.
    When i hear stories like the "Creatine cop" and its ensuing possible effects,i lose hope for mankind and our system i general.

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  5. Jesus christ man. What an article. I can't fucking believe this is even a thing. Insanity.

    ReplyDelete