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I have just recently started looking into Creatine and think I will experiment with it a bit.

However, I haven't the slightest idea on how to buy it.

Are there guidelines to selecting Creatine based on goals and whatnot?

Is Creatine like protein powder, in the sense that there's whey, casein, hybrids, etc?

What type of Creatine do you guys use (for those who do use it)?

Just get Creatine Monohydrate. It's pretty common and shouldn't be expensive. You don't need to pay extra for added features.

You may also see Creatine ethyl ester or Creatine hydrochloride. You don't need these.

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Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
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Thanks TimD

How will you "experiment"?

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

Basically try it out and see how my body responds to it.

Creatine is the one supplement that works. Don't fall for any of the loading crap. Just buy you the powder and mix it with gatorade or some sort of sugary drink. 10 g per day should work with no problem. I like Biotest's but really, it doesn't make a difference. You don't need pills, pre-mix or nothing like that. Just get the cheap powder (Biotest's is competitive). Vitamin Shoppe's pure powder is cheap. You'll gain some water weight - could be a lot (10-15lbs) so drink plenty of fluids. Caffeine will counteract any benefits so don't drink coffee with it, but don't fret about it.

Really, get the powder and buy cheap.

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Thanks TimD.

You can get quality creatine almost everywhere. Like they said, creatine monohydrate is your best choise. I would recommend daily doses of 4-7g, unlike Hooses' 10g. Hoose is a big guy tho, he has storages for that kind of amount of creatine. But if you don't want to engage any specific loading phase, 4-7g a day should do the trick.

Check this out, Nick Tumminello and Lou Schuler have made this free e-book, The Creatine report. It should answer all your questions.
http://www.freecreatinereport.com/

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Prove the impossible!

How to buy creatine? Either go to the store or buy it online duh.

Ironmaiden has a post on creatine in the Diet section.

Me and Dub are sympatico. We are only talking about 10g vs 7g. Anything you have beyond what you can take, you'll piss it out.

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Thanks TimD.

Good to know. Thanks for the responses.

I usually click the creatine link, click the "add to cart" button, and then click "checkout".

How much you should take depends partly on how much meat you eat. The avid carnivores probably don't need to take any, and vegetarians a lot (?10-15gm/day?). I take 5.

And, yeah, the cheap monohydrate. Don't fall for the claims of better absorption for the other forms. Once it dissolves in your stomach, it's all the same.

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

I think it depends a lot of your goals. Nobody really needs to supplement creatine. It's just used to many purposes and goals. Maybe if you are a vegan athlete, it could be recommended. But otherwise creatine is just there to improve your performance and sometimes to burn fat. All the positive effects around that are just bonus. Meat doesn't have that much creatine when you really get down with the numbers. You'd have to eat over 1kg (2.2lbs.) of meat every day to get to the 4-7g per day recommendation. 10-20g I think is more suitable for a loading period if one is planning to do that. Most reasearches use the 3-7g daily doses with good results and no specific loading phase, so I like to stick there as well. Of course one can always test and try different amounts and see where that goes.

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Prove the impossible!

I was wondering how long before someone said this