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How concerned should I be about having high levels of creatinine? Is it common for athletes or people who lift and train hard to have higher levels of creatinine?
My blood test results for creatinine showed 1.15 in last November and 1.3 now in this month. GFR: 75 and A/G: 1.99.
I do take creatine, eat healthy and train hard 5-6 days a week. I'm 27 yrs old, 5ft 9" and about 175 Lbs.
Who told you to be concerned about elevated creatinine levels? What has your own research revealed?
I think it's fine. I searched this forum about this topic AFTER making this post, and Jordan mentioned that creatinine is directly related to muscle mass. But my parents think that my kidneys are gonna fail.
My in-laws think that balancing on one foot while doing dishes is better strength training for your ankles than a set of heavy squats. So weeding out bullshit is a valuable life skill.
1.3 is a level that may (needlessly) raise concern in your doctor, if they don’t see a lot of patients who carry a lot of lean body mass.Quote:
Originally Posted by pvchan
In short, serum (blood) creatinine is used to indirectly measure kidney function, because creatinine (from muscle turnover) is removed from the blood by the kidneys, and generally, the more/better filtering the kidneys are doing, the lower the serum creatinine will be. The confusion arises when people train and have more lean body mass than average, which leads to more creatinine being dumped into the serum by muscles. Plus, creatine taken as a supplement gets converted into creatinine in the blood as well. Both of these things increase the level of creatinine in your blood WITHOUT affecting your kidneys.
This has been studied perhaps more than almost anything in ex-phys: neither taking creatine nor eating protein, in normal amounts like you read about around here, will harm your kidneys. But the number your doctor uses to assess kidney function will be artificially increased, which might cause concern to the uninformed.
Instead of just testing serum creatinine, the more accurate test of kidney function is to test the ratio of creatinine in your urine vs your serum.
If your doctor or you are concerned about your kidney function: say you have to take a medication that can sometimes damage kidneys or you have a strong family history of kidney disease, or your are sick and appear to have poor kidney function based on other signs, you can either:
—come to an agreement with your doctor that 1.3 is your normal baseline serum creatinine, and not to worry unless it increases beyond that.
—request that they test serum/urine creatinine ratio rather than rely on the serum creatinine alone. This requires 24-hour urine collection, which is why it is not done routinely.
—stop taking creatine for a couple weeks, and skip 2-3 days of training and hydrate well before a blood draw to retest serum creatinine
What are your parent's professions? What did they study and what licensing do they have? Unless they happen to be doctors, I think 27 is a age where one should start making their own opinions and stop taking unsubstantiated advice from their parents.Quote:
Originally Posted by pvchan
My doctor freaked out because my creatinine was .02 higher than the reference range. Also my ALP was slightly elevated. He also thought that I should weigh 165 lbs and be running 7 days a week. I found a new doctor.
The thing about doctors (and parents) is that when you're a grownup, you're allowed ignore them when they're uninformed.
