The Creatine Revolution

Researchers estimate that women naturally carry lower creatine stores than men, and hormonal shifts during perimenopause and menopause can reduce them further. That lower starting point means supplementation may close a bigger gap. Some trials report that women see equal or even greater relative performance gains than men, though results vary by study and the size of the advantage is still being worked out.

Background: creatine researchers including Kreider et al.; women-focused trials reviewed in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. Our full breakdown: Creatine for Women.

French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul first identified creatine in meat extracts in 1832. It took more than a century before athletes at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics brought it mainstream, and three more decades of research before scientists started taking its brain and healthy-aging potential seriously.

Historical record: Chevreul, 1832; Olympic-era popularization documented in sports nutrition literature of the 1990s.

In 2025, Kreider and colleagues analyzed 685 clinical trials of creatine supplementation, covering nearly 13,000 participants, plus 652 placebo-controlled comparisons. Their finding: no significant difference in the overall rate of side effects between creatine and placebo groups, including markers of kidney and liver health. Slightly more studies reported mild stomach upset with creatine, but the difference vanished when total participant numbers were compared.

Kreider et al., "Safety of creatine supplementation," Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2025.

The entire "creatine causes hair loss" fear rested on one small 2009 study of rugby players that found a DHT bump during a heavy loading phase. It never measured a single hair. In 2025, researchers ran the trial everyone had been waiting for: 45 resistance-trained men took 5 g of creatine or a placebo daily for 12 weeks while scientists tracked testosterone, DHT, hair density, follicle count, and hair thickness. Result: no differences between the groups on any measure.

Forbes et al., randomized controlled trial, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2025 (38 participants completed).

Creatine breaks down into creatinine, which is also the marker doctors use to estimate kidney function. That coincidence fueled decades of worry. But across the 685-trial safety analysis, researchers found no significant differences in kidney function markers between creatine and placebo groups in healthy people. One caveat: if you already have kidney disease, this does not apply to you, so talk to your doctor first.

Kreider et al., Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2025.

Your brain is about 2% of your body weight but burns roughly 20% of your energy. Research suggests creatine can support memory, attention, and processing speed, with the clearest signals in people under stress, the sleep-deprived, vegetarians, and older adults. On mood: in a 2012 trial of 52 women with depression, 5 g of creatine added to an SSRI for 8 weeks produced a 79.7% drop in depression scores versus 62.5% on placebo. Promising, but newer trials show mixed results, benefits appear when creatine is added to existing treatment rather than replacing it, and it should never be used as a DIY mental health treatment.

Lyoo et al., American Journal of Psychiatry, 2012; 2025 meta-analyses of creatine and cognition; mixed 2025-2026 depression trials summarized via PsyPost.

Because meat and fish are the main dietary sources of creatine, people eating plant-based diets typically have lower muscle and brain creatine levels. Studies consistently show they respond strongly to supplementation, often reaching higher total creatine levels than omnivores after supplementing. And since all creatine monohydrate is synthesized in a lab, every powder on this page is inherently vegan.

Systematic reviews of vegetarian athletes and creatine response; Kreider et al. on dietary creatine intake.