SubEx

Body compound · C₄H₉N₃O₂

Creatine

Made in your body, eaten in meat and fish, stored in muscle to reload energy in short hard efforts. Its safety record runs to 685 trials.

Findings
6
Best evidence
★★★
Open questions
2

At a glance

Myth check

Creatine supplementation causes hair loss / baldness by raising DHT.

The only RCT to directly test this (Lak et al. 2025, 12 weeks, resistance-trained males) found no significant difference vs. placebo in DHT, DHT:testosterone ratio, or objective hair-follicle health measures (density, follicular count, thickness).

The myth traces to an earlier, smaller study showing a DHT rise with creatine loading — a hormone-level change, not a measured hair-loss outcome. The one study that has since directly measured hair/follicle outcomes found no effect.

The findingsStrongest first
1↑
Physical & bodyYou gain about 1.14kg more lean mass lifting with creatine

Pooling 12 trials in adults under 50, about 7g of creatine a day alongside resistance training left 1.14kg more lean mass and 0.73kg less fat than placebo.

★★★Well replicated — this finding’s sources average out to meta-analyses, systematic reviews or high-powered trials.The lean-mass figure is the solid one; the fat-loss figure ran anywhere from 1.34kg down to 0.11kg, close enough to nothing at one end that the effect there is unsettled. Everyone pooled here was under 50. In a small share of the trials, how people were assigned or assessed left room for the result to tilt.Click to keep this openBuild strength
2↑
Physical & bodyWith training, creatine made getting out of a chair easier

Pooled across trials in 357 adults averaging 64 years old, creatine plus resistance training beat training alone on strength, fat-free mass and chair rises.

★★★Well replicated — this finding’s sources average out to meta-analyses, systematic reviews or high-powered trials.The pooled training ran about 12.6 weeks on average, so nothing here shows whether the gains hold over a year. The pool of qualifying trials is small, and the authors ask for more work in this age group before the functional gains are treated as durable.Click to keep this openBuild strength
3–
Physical & bodyPeople on creatine reported side effects about as often as on placebo

Across 685 clinical trials, side effects turned up in 13.7% of the creatine groups and 13.2% of the placebo groups, and kidney markers came out no different.

★★★Well replicated — this finding’s sources average out to meta-analyses, systematic reviews or high-powered trials.These trials were built to test performance rather than to hunt for harm, so anything rare or slow enough to slip past them would have slipped past. The adverse-event reports are filed voluntarily, which distorts the count in both directions. Average intake across the pooled trials was about 12.5g of creatine a day.Click to keep this openBuild strength
4↑
Physical & bodyYour bench press gains about 1.43kg more than on placebo

Across 92 trials, lifters taking creatine beat placebo on bench press, squat, jump height and peak power. Handgrip and leg press showed no difference.

★★★Well replicated — this finding’s sources average out to meta-analyses, systematic reviews or high-powered trials.Twenty of the 23 trials in one analysis enrolled only men, and just 40 women appear across its two female-only trials, so the weaker showing in women reflects how little has been measured rather than a settled absence. Gains were most consistent in younger adults. And these are pooled averages, not what any one lifter should expect.Click to keep this openBuild strength
5–
Sexual & reproductiveCreatine did not thin the hair of men who took it for 12 weeks

Over 12 weeks, 5g of creatine a day left resistance-trained men no different from placebo in hair density, follicle count, thickness or DHT.

★☆☆Contested — the evidence disagrees with itself, or the finding carries a caution. A caution or conflict always shows one star, however strong the sources are.Conflicting evidenceTwelve weeks is short against a process that takes years, so a slow thinning could begin after the trial ended. The 38 men who finished were all resistance-trained and aged 18 to 40, which leaves everyone else untested. And this was maintenance dosing at 5g a day; the older study that started the worry ran a 25g loading week first.Click to keep this openBalance hormones
6↕
Mental & cognitiveCreatine may help memory if you are 66 or older, not younger

A pooling of 8 trials reported a memory benefit across healthy adults. Once double-counted scores were fixed, only the benefit in adults aged 66 to 76 held.

★☆☆Contested — the evidence disagrees with itself, or the finding carries a caution. A caution or conflict always shows one star, however strong the sources are.Conflicting evidenceThe corrected reanalysis is the original authors' own reply rather than an independent check. The surviving older-adult effect rests on a small number of trials within those 8. And in younger adults the effect was flat before the correction and flat after it.Click to keep this openFocus and think clearly
Sources9 behind this page

Taken with something else

What the evidence says about combining Creatine with each of these. The marker is how well established the interaction is; a caution is about the hazard, which is a different question.

What we don't know

2 open questions