Should You Supplement With Creatine?

Creatine is a rare thing in the world of workout supplements: It actually works, plus it’s cheap and safe. (Protein and caffeine are about the only other common supplements you can say that of.) If you’re trying to build muscle or lift the heaviest things around, you might want to get into the habit of taking creatine every day—but there are, of course, some caveats.

What does creatine do?

Creatine supplies quick energy in your muscles for short, intense bursts of power. You may have heard of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which stores energy in our cells. (One main reason you eat food: to be able to make ATP.) When our muscles use ATP, it gets split into ADP and a free phosphate. Creatine can hold onto an extra phosphate, and immediately stick that phosphate onto the ADP so it can become ATP again.

Creatine thus provides a very short-term energy supply, one we can use in the middle of a sprint or a weightlifting set. That means that the more creatine you have in your muscles, the better you’ll be at movements that require a short, intense use of muscles. Lifting weights is the main thing creatine helps with, but in some cases runners may benefit, too.

If you can lift a little more weight, for a few more reps, you’ll ultimately be able to get a little bit stronger. Creatine likely has a few other effects that help muscle growth as well. Bottom line, it can provide a small but non-zero increase in strength and muscle size for most people. For more basic information on creatine, check out this summary of evidence from Examine.com.

Creatine use may also benefit mental health

There’s also evidence that creatine may benefit brain health. So far the research is in its early stages. One pilot study on creatine for Alzheimer’s patients found improvements in working memory and executive function. Another found that it helps cognition in people who have been sleep-deprived. Creatine also seems to help symptoms of depression.

Many of these studies used doses of creatine that are higher than what’s typically used in a muscle-building context: 10, 20, or even 40 grams per day, compared to a regular five-gram dose. The research is also still mixed on many outcomes, like neurodegenerative diseases—some studies find a benefit, while others do not.

Who is creatine for?

Nobody needs to supplement with creatine. You can work out just fine without it, and you won’t be passing up huge gainzzz. It just provides a tiny boost for many of us. If your main sport is cardio, creatine won’t help. If you lift weights or are trying to build muscle through strength training (for example, you’re into bodybuilding), it could help.

How much it helps will depend on how much creatine you already have. Our bodies produce plenty of creatine on their own, and then we also get some through our diet, especially if you eat meat. Vegetarians and vegans are usually lower on creatine to start with, so they stand to benefit more.

And some of us are non-responders. “Some people walk around with (just about) fully topped-off muscle creatine saturation, so they obtain no benefit from creatine supplementation,” sports nutrition researcher and bodybuilder Eric Trexler writes at Stronger by Science. “In reality, being a non-responder is great news. You were genetically pre-selected to win a lifetime supply of free creatine!”

The downsides of creatine use

As supplements go, creatine is pretty safe. There are no scary side effects, and the most common downside people notice is that it can cause gastrointestinal distress, especially in large doses and/or on an empty stomach. Also, any supplement comes with the caveat that nobody at the FDA is verifying that they contain what they say they contain.

In terms of cost, creatine is also one of the cheaper supplements, especially if you buy it in powder form as creatine monohydrate. For example, it’s not too hard to find a package with 100+ servings for under $25. If you prefer your creatine in capsule form, it tends to be a bit more expensive.

One of the biggest concerns you’ll see people raise online is the idea that creatine may cause hair loss in men. This idea is based on research from 2009 that showed that athletes who were given creatine tended to have high levels of dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in their blood. DHT is linked with male-pattern hair loss, and when the research was first published it wasn’t clear whether creatine might have the ability to accelerate hair loss in men who were already susceptible to it.

So the concern was only ever theoretical, and so far no research has shown an actual connection between creatine supplementation and hair loss. A 12-week randomized controlled trial was done in 2025 and found no effect on hair loss or hair follicle health.

How to take creatine

Unlike most drugs, where the effects wear off in a matter of hours, creatine is stored in our muscles for a fairly long period of time. If you start taking the recommended dose of three to five grams per day (larger people should go with the larger dose and vice versa), it will take about a month to fully load up your muscles with creatine. Or you could get the process over with more quickly by using a “loading dose” of, say, 20 grams a day. Some people get GI issues with such a high dose, so you can skip the loading phase if it doesn’t agree with you.

After that, just take the usual dose once a day. Exact timing during the day doesn’t seem to matter, but if you already use a pre-workout drink it’s often convenient to mix it into that. If you want to stop taking creatine, it will probably take a few weeks for your creatine levels to return to normal.

That extra creatine in your body will also cause your muscles to retain more water, making you a few pounds heavier. Physiologically this is fine and may even help contribute to muscle growth. But if you need to worry about weight classes for your sport, or if you psychologically have a hard time watching your weight on the scale inch up, that may feel like a downside. (Athletes who compete in sports with weight classes sometimes stop taking their creatine in the weeks leading up to the competition, in an effort to lose those couple pounds of water weight.) On the bright side, gaining a few pounds when you start creatine is a way you can know that it’s working.

So far creatine has been studied more often in untrained people than in experienced athletes. It’s also been studied more in men than in women, although we don’t have any reason to believe it works differently across genders (sorry to the influencers selling creatine “for women”). We still don’t know exactly how many people are non-responders, and research is still ongoing into the details of all its risks and benefits. But if you want to try one of the rare supplements that actually does what it says it does—usually—consider giving creatine a try.