Creatine Supplements
Athletes should be allowed to take creatine to enhance performance. The only cons that have any link with creatine is stomach pain, nausea, diarrhea, and muscle cramping, but these effects are known to happen with other medications. Dehydration is another known effect of creatine, but water helps with the problem just fine. The other cons lack sufficient evidence to link them with creatine supplements is that they have potential to harm kidney, liver, or heart function from high doses and that it has the potential to raise the chance of having a stroke as well as pigmented purpuric dermatosis, a skin condition.In addition to increasing athletic performance, creatine is used for congestive heart failure, depression, bipolar disorder, Parkinson’s disease, diseases of the muscles and nerves, an eye disease called gyrate atrophy, and high cholesterol. It is also used to slow the worsening of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, McArdle’s disease, and for muscular dystrophies. Professional sports have not banned creatine supplements due to creatine being common in everyday foods and the lack of sufficient evidence to support the idea that they are harmful. The argument that it should not be banned outweighs the argument that it should be banned. There’s simply a lack of evidence for creatine causing any real harm when there’s evidence that it can help such as the study by Arciero that shows that creatine can help increase strength by 40% over a period of four weeks or the study by Rawson and Volek that found that the lifting and strength performance was 8-14% greater in the creatine group than the placebo and control group. Overall, athletes should be able to use creatine if they want to.