Creatine is, and always has been, a natural component of skeletal muscle. The only reason that creatine may seem like something new is a recent boom in scientific research in the area since the early 1990s. In a sense, creatine was rediscovered when world-class athletes became wise to the option of utilizing it to enhance their physical performance.

n truth, however, creatine was identified as an indispensable part of skeletal muscle some time ago. Nearly two centuries ago (1835) a French scientist and philosopher named Michel-Eugène Chevreul isolated a component from skeletal muscle that he gave the name Creatine after the Greek word for flesh, or Kreas. A few years later (1847) a German scientist named Justus von Liebig proposed that creatine is necessary to support muscular activity when he observed that wild (active) foxes contain more intramuscular creatine than foxes kept in captivity. Liebig later went as far as lending his name to a commercial extract of meat that he asserted More >