What is creatine?

A landmark study of 20 Alzheimer's patients taking 20 grams of creatine daily for 8 weeks increased brain creatine levels by 11% and significantly improved cognitive test scores.

“A landmark study of 20 Alzheimer's patients found that taking 20 grams of creatine daily for 8 weeks increased brain creatine levels by 11% and significantly improved the cognitive test scores they showed.”

Creatine produces no bone benefits without concurrent exercise, meaning supplementation alone is insufficient for skeletal protection.

“If you do not exercise, there's never been a study ever shown to have bone benefits.”

Creatine supplementation increases lean mass by approximately 1.2 to 2 kg, but only roughly half of that gain is skeletal muscle.

“You get an increase in lean mass by about 1.2 kg. But as I said previously, remember only half of that is skeletal muscle.”

Consumer testing found that almost all creatine gummies sold on store shelves contained no measurable creatine.

“People went and got a lot of different creatine gummies off the shelf and then measured how much creatine was in them. And essentially almost all of them had none.”

Young athletes taking 5 grams of creatine daily slept an average of 1 hour longer on training days.

“Young athletes who took five grams of creatine daily slept an average of 1 hour longer on training days.”

The effective dose range for creatine bone benefits runs from 8 grams (lowest ever shown) up to 12 grams per day.

“The lowest dose ever been shown to have bone benefits is 8 g all the way up to 12.”

A healthy brain likely does not need creatine supplementation, but a stressed or injured brain does, with 20 grams per day appearing to be the most viable dose for stressed brain states.

“A healthy brain likely doesn't need any creatine, but a stressed brain likely does. And the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come into play. There's a lot of nuances with the brain. Obviously, we just show different regions, which we don't have a lot of information, but overall, it seems that 20 gram seems to be the most viable dose.”

Creatine's water retention effect on muscle is beneficial rather than cosmetic because a swollen muscle cell directly stimulates protein synthesis, driving size and strength gains.

“A swollen muscle stimulates protein synthesis to get bigger and stronger.”

After stopping creatine, elevated skeletal muscle levels take about one month to return to baseline, while elevated brain levels are speculated to take five weeks to three months.

“In skeletal muscle, it takes about a month for those elevated levels to come back down. In the brain, we don't have a lot of evidence, but it's speculated it takes about anywhere between five weeks to about three months for those elevations to come back.”

A higher creatine dose of 10g on poor-sleep days may improve cognition and alertness because creatine crosses the blood-brain barrier less efficiently than muscle tissue, requiring a larger dose.

“There are nights where I don't sleep taking a higher dose of creatine that day will help with your cognition, your awareness, and your alertness. So, something like a 10-g dose because it's a little bit harder to get if my understanding of it is it's harder to get across the blood-brain barrier, so you need a higher dose in order to facilitate that.”