[amy-petrik-214]

I think to tease this apart you need to know some things about muscle physiology. Which basically work by pushing billions (trillions?) of molecular motors in unison.

Energy wise, it's like... glucose is the coal of the power plant, ATP is the electricity shooting down the wire, and then you got creatine kinda acts like a short term battery or capacitator. So your egerny originates from the power plant (glucose) but is stored locally in the mucscle cell (creatine) So you eat a bunch of creatine, it's like building up your battery stores. Your mucscles got more battery means they got more lasting power.

The answer to your question is creatine increases muscle speed by increasing energy supply (not to do with water) in scenarios where lack of energy might otherwise insufficiently supply and thus slow down muscle contractions.

To the and wavey point of "creatine increases water retention" you have to think of the water retention *inside the cell itself* which is driven a lot by osmotic pressure (if you don't know what this is... git gud and come back). And the long and short of it is, if any funkiness happens water-pressure-wise in a cell (from osmosis typically), the cell either shrivels and dies (hypoosmlolar cell) or swells and eggsplodes (hyperosmolar cell). That is to say, the cell is either loosely iso-osmolar to the surrounding tissue, or it's dead. So taking a bunch of creatine isn't going to dramatically alter the H2O homeostasis of your cells given the need to maintain equilibrium and not die. Lest all the muscle cells die, cause rhabdo, die of kidney failure. I hope this helps. It's ompcomilcated

[beanjuiceII]

What do you mean die of kidney failure?

[unaindz]

Look up Rhabdomyolysis and its effects on the kidneys.