I was taking this last year, but after a while forgot about it and stopped taking it. Yesterday my muscle ache was intense, and I remembered that I still had plenty of creatine. I took it yesterday(one large teaspoon of the powder in a cup of water, 5 grams or so)and my muscle ache was much less after that. I took it again today, and am again feeling some relief. In case you don't know what creatine is, it is a nitrogenous organic acid that many weight lifters take to enhance muscle function. One website I read said that those with CFS have higher than normal creatine excretion.

"CFS and Fibromyalgia patients have also been found to commonly have abnormal enzymatic processes that affect the sodium?potassium ATPase energy channels(473), which appears to be a major factor in the condition and for which mercury is a known cause(43,288,498). This also has been found to result in inflammatory processes that cause muscle tissue damage and result in higher levels of urinary excretion of creatine , choline, and glycine in CFS, and higher levels of excretion of choline, taurine, citrate, and trimethyl amine oxide in FM(474,593,594). Supplementation of creatine has been found to result in improved muscle mitochondrial function in such patients(502). "

http://www.flcv.com/cfsfm.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatine

Something I supplemented a few times with in my body building days, roughly 10 years ago. It's one of those supplements that works well for some and not others. For me it was amazing as far as weight and strength gains were concerned. I gained 8kg over 4 weeks(about 1/2 of it was water weight) my strength went up 20% on lifts.

I've wondered over the years how it would effect me now, I have border line high blood pressure so it doesnt seem worth risking in any amount. The problem is if i was to risk it and end up getting high blood pressure it's not something you can just wait a few hours to clear your system. It can take over a week to flush out the exessive levels of creatine. You can get creatine in your diet through red meat anyway, obviously nowhere near what you would get from a supplement.

I am a vegetarian. Others who aren't vegetarians may not eat much red meat. While the body can make creatine, creatine levels in vegetarians are much lower than in meat eaters.

In some medical conditions there is excessive creatine excretion.

http://www.flcv.com/cfsfm.html

Aren't you on a low carb diet? How do you manage? Nuts and vegetables only? Sounds boring!

I eat more than that, but it still isn't easy.