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Creatine is best known as a supplement for people who hit the gym: Take a scoop of creatine powder every day, and you may find yourself able to work a little harder. But creatine is also being studied for its mental health benefits. Is it worth taking just for those? Maybe.
What is creatine?
Creatine is a natural chemical that our bodies use for energy production in cells. If you remember learning about ATP as an energy source (and how mitochondria, the “powerhouse of the cell,” turn food into ATP), you already know a little bit about this. When ATP is used, creatine phosphate can recharge that ATP (replacing its spent phosphate) for some quick extra energy.
This is why it’s so useful in the gym: if you’ve just done nine bench presses and want to do a tenth, but your muscles are out of energy, having a little extra creatine in your muscle cells might give you just enough oomph to finish that last rep. Over time, you’ll end up doing more work, and thus a person who has a lot of creatine in their muscles will probably end up a little bit stronger than a person who has less.
Our bodies make some creatine, but we also get creatine from the food we eat (especially meat). Creatine supplements, available as powder or pills, can add to our internal creatine stores. That’s why it’s a popular supplement among people who do a lot of strength training.
What brain benefits is creatine known to have?
Muscle cells aren’t the only cells that use creatine—pretty much every cell in our body needs energy, and creatine is part of the system that provides it. So it’s worth asking whether supplementing creatine might help other areas of our health.
This is where the evidence gets a lot less definitive. To give you a sense of the state of the science, I took a look at Examine.com’s database on studies relating to creatine supplementation. It records “A” level evidence for creatine’s benefits to strength and to power (the ability to use strength in quick bursts). Creatine gets a “B” for growing the size of your muscles and for some tests of memory. Many of the other studied outcomes are duds, with lots of “C” and “D” ratings as you scroll down the table. These lower ratings don’t mean that creatine is useless, just that there’s no clear, well-understood benefit that’s been solidly established. Scientists are still working on these questions.
When it comes to cognitive benefits, the evidence is mixed, but many researchers feel it’s promising. Many influencers, biohackers, and wellness enthusiasts take an optimistic view, supplementing creatine themselves (and often recommending or selling it) in hopes the benefits turn out to be real.
A 2024 review of 16 studies found that creatine seems to improve memory, attention, and processing speed. The strength of the evidence wasn’t great, though: the authors write that the evidence for benefits to memory is only “moderate” and for other benefits the evidence is of “low certainty.” Some outcomes that were studied, including overall cognitive performance, didn’t seem to be improved by creatine at all.
A 2025 review highlighted the disappointing results so far, while pointing out that we know creatine supplementation does actually increase brain levels of creatine. In other words, it’s doing something, but we haven’t entirely figured out how these benefits would work, if they in fact do.
Both reviews noted that creatine’s effect on brain performance may depend on who is taking it. People who have less creatine in their body to start with—such as vegetarians, who don’t get much in their diet—might benefit from supplementation even if omnivores don’t. Older adults may benefit more than younger, healthier people, and it’s possible the benefits of creatine show themselves best in people who are stressed.
Sleep deprivation may be a type of stress that creatine can help with. A 2024 study found that a single mega-dose of creatine helped cognitive performance in people who were sleep deprived. That dose was huge, though: the equivalent of 24 grams for a 150-pound person. (A normal dose of creatine is 5 grams each day.) I’m not saying you should take creatine if you’re feeling foggy after a late night, but I’m certainly going to think about it next time that happens to me.
What are the risks of creatine?
Creatine is one of the best-studied consumer supplements out there, and the safety profile is good. That’s why so many people take it: even if you’re not sure it’s working, there’s no significant harm in taking it anyway. Creatine isn’t linked with any serious health issues at normal doses, and it’s pretty affordable. For example, this Nutricost tub works out to 20 cents per daily serving (if you’re taking five grams each day).
The main risk of taking creatine is that it can cause stomach upset, especially in larger doses. That could be a problem if you’re intending to try a 24-gram dose, or one of the other dosing schemes from cognitive studies. People who take creatine for cognitive benefits often aim for 10 grams a day. You can split that into five grams in the morning and five in the evening, if taking 10 at once doesn’t agree with you.
Now, there’s one other risk of creatine that people commonly talk about online, but it doesn’t have any solid evidence behind it. That’s the idea that creatine may accelerate hair loss in people (usually men) who are already prone to what’s sometimes called male pattern baldness. This idea comes from looking at the biochemical pathways involved in creatine metabolism and in hormonal changes related to testosterone, and finding a place where they intersect.
Researchers flagged this as something worth looking into—maybe creatine possibly could accelerate hair loss, but the internet ran with “creatine causes hair loss” as if it were a known fact. In truth, no human study has verified this link, and a study designed to look for it found the opposite. It concluded: “This study was the first to directly assess hair follicle health following creatine supplementation, providing strong evidence against the claim that creatine contributes to hair loss.”
How much creatine should you take, and what kind?
If you’re interested in taking creatine for mental health benefits, the rules are the same as for people who are taking it for muscular benefits—except that you may want a higher dose.
As mentioned, there’s not a specific number of grams we know you need to take for brain benefits (because we aren’t totally sure whether there are brain benefits for the average person). Ten grams per day seems to be a popular choice. Five grams is usually recommended for muscular benefits. For the gym benefits, you want to take your creatine consistently every day (don’t skip taking it on rest days), and it doesn’t matter what time of day. For brain benefits, the same rules of thumb seem reasonable.
Sometimes people take a “loading” dose for their first week or so, taking larger doses (often four times as much as the regular dose) to build up the body’s stores of creatine faster. This is optional: taking a regular dose for a few weeks does the same thing to your body as taking a loading dose for one week. I’d say most people these days probably skip the loading phase, because of the risk of stomach upset with large doses, and because we know the loading phase isn’t necessary.
Finally, people often ask what kind of creatine to get. And the answer is simple: creatine monohydrate is the best-studied and known to be effective. Happily, it is also the cheapest and the easiest to find. I wouldn’t worry about the brand; it’s all the same stuff. Personally I like taking creatine in capsules, since it’s more convenient than mixing powder into a drink, but the powder is cheaper and just as good.
