As the title says, apologies if wrong tag was chosen
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Because what counts as “natural” is arbitrary, it’s not a scientific definition but rather a socially constructed category. People have decided that taking creatine is still “natural” through social agreement, essentially, likely because it’s not very dangerous.
The key difference is Creatine is a supplement, your body will generally be breaking it down to provide nutrients and energy.
Testosterone is a hormone. Hormones are signalling molecules that can trigger large scale changes in your body at very small doses. In most healthy individuals your body produces precise amounts of hormones to properly regulate your growth, body functions, and mental state.
If you take testosterone supplements, it sends your body’s natural hormones into chaos. Even at tiny amounts the body starts trying to overcompensate because it can tell your testosterone is going haywire. This has major knock-on effects for all the things hormones regulate in your body.
Creatine exists in humans as a way to recycle adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The phosphate groups are the main way we use energy for pretty much every process in our bodies. These phosphate molecules have a ton of energy in them.
Creatinine helps convert adenosine diphosphate into ATP. Going from two (di) to three (tri) phosphate helps increase the energy that the molecule can provide.
The reason creatine is helpful in exercise is because it puts us in a position to have more ATP available. When we exercise, we basically burn through the ATP we have stored for that purpose in about 1 second. We can only generate it for about 10 seconds via the ATP-CP (creatine phosphate) system.
After that, we have to use different cellular processes via things like lactic acid and aerobic respiration which either aren’t sustainable (lactic acid is ~2 min) or aren’t going to be ideal for getting bigger (aerobic).
So creatine as a supplement basically extends the amount of time you can have using purely stored creatine and that effectively means you can get maybe 1-2 extra reps in an exercise. It’s proven to help with this and is basically the only supplement you can buy that is proven to “work”. It does not make you bigger per se but it does help you get more reps in, which over time means you get bigger and stronger, assuming you’re pushing yourself in the gym. It also works for other anaerobic exercises.
Testosterone on the other hand, is pretty complex but the simple explanation is that it works on receptors that tell your body “we need to divert resources to growing muscle” amongst other things. That is why we get taller in puberty, our voices deepen, we grow body hair etc. Testosterone is a “grow” hormone. Testosterone itself is not doing the work, it’s just the key that turns everything on.
The reason we aren’t all hulking beasts with super high testosterone all the time is because it comes with downsides. It can affect your liver, heart, blood vessels, cholesterol, make your hair fall out etc. It’s one of those “everything in moderation” deals. Constantly having any signal blasting out is generally not good for the body. This can be the case for any hormone so when you take extra, it can mess with things.
Creatine is a resource the body needs. If you don’t have enough of it, you run into trouble. If you take in too much, your body will just get rid of the excess, i.e. you will pee and/or poop it out. It’s a bit like having more bricks than you need to build a house – it won’t change the shape of the house, it just means you have a bunch of bricks you need to get rid of.
Testosterone is a hormone. It’s a molecule your body uses to send signals that provide instructions. If you have too much of it, that changes those instructions. Going back to the building-a-house analogy, having too much testosterone is like the foreman keeps shouting at his workers to put down another layer or bricks, so the result is a taller house than what you wanted.
Well, it’s because of the ending. Creatine is an amino acid with an -ine ending and testosterone is a steroid hormone with a -sterone ending. A hormone is a signaling molecule that conveys orders to cells to do certain things. Creatine is an amino acid that helps your cells get energy faster by donating phosphates. So, testosterone is like going around giving commands, potentially all out of order and without proper coordination and Creatine is standing there handing out cups of Gatorade to anyone who wants one.
Testosterone is a hormone. Hormones are chemicals that affect our bodies in very complex ways. We have many hormones and they often affect each other and balance each other out. They control basically everything in our bodies, from blood sugar and blood pressure, digestion, reproductive functions, growth, sleep, etc., even emotions.
Of course, “natural” is subjective and relative. But when you take hormones, you are in a way changing your body “from within” and you often have to take several other hormones and/or hormone blockers to try to keep balance and prevent various side effects. On the other hand, creatine is relatively harmless meaning it doesn’t affect a lot of stuff in the body the way hormones do.
I’m not an expert and I hope someone will correct me if I got something wrong.
Essentially because you can achieve the same levels of creatine through diet as you can through supplementation (most people won’t do it, because it’s a pain in the arse, but it’s possible) and it really doesn’t make much of a difference anyway.
You can’t do that with testosterone, and it makes a much larger difference.
Simple answer: Creatine is naturally in food, like proteins or vitamins for example. You can just eat more meat to get more creatine but supplements are easier.
One is a hormone that makes muscles bigger and the other is a nutrient that muscles use to contract.
If you were in a go-kart race, creatine is fuel for the go-kart and testosterone is taking out the go-kart engine and replacing it with a Ferrari engine.
The effects of creatine are very minor. Taking extra testosterone will make you stronger and more muscular for the same amount of effort and allow you to recover from even harder workouts. Creatine doesn’t really do any of that
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