21/09/2026
Highly recommend including creatine the personal benefits are most definitely beyond energy production and muscle, cognitive effects and quite profound!
My experience but also many others share these results.
Creatine Keeps Getting Harder to Ignore. Let’s review a new paper even for those who don’t exercise
I’m generally skeptical of supplements. Most promise far more than they deliver, and if you are looking for the next pill or powder that will meaningfully change how you age, the list supported by decent evidence is remarkably short. Creatine may be one of the exceptions.
A new randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study included 64 adults aged 45 to 65 who completed a 12-week intervention. Participants received either placebo or 10 grams of creatine monohydrate per day, and some also participated in a structured exercise and weight-loss program. The researchers measured far more than muscle: DXA body composition, strength, muscular endurance, blood markers, and a battery of cognitive and memory tests.
The results were interesting. Even among participants who weren't in the structured exercise program, creatine increased lean tissue mass and improved strength and muscular endurance.
When creatine was combined with exercise and a weight-loss diet, participants gained lean tissue while losing a greater percentage of body fat. That is particularly relevant as we age because losing weight without paying attention to muscle can mean losing some of the tissue we are desperately trying to preserve.
There were also hints of benefits beyond muscle. Some measures of HbA1c and blood lipids improved, and several measures of cognition and memory favored creatine. But... The cognitive results were inconsistent across the many tests performed, and the authors specifically characterize these findings as exploratory.
This study provides interesting evidence that creatine may have effects beyond muscle and that its muscle effects partially extend to non-exercisers. It is not evidence that taking creatine prevents cognitive decline or dementia.
Creatine helps maintain the phosphocreatine system that rapidly regenerates ATP, our cells' immediate energy currency. We usually discuss that in relation to skeletal muscle, but the brain is an extraordinarily energy-demanding organ too. Brain creatine can increase with supplementation, which provides a plausible mechanism for some of the cognitive findings. But… Mechanistic plausibility is not proof.
There are plenty of reasons not to overinterpret this study. It was small, lasted only 12 weeks, exercise participation was self-selected rather than randomized, and many of the cognitive and metabolic outcomes were exploratory without adjustment across the many outcomes tested.
Still, creatine continues to accumulate something most supplements don’t: reasonably good human evidence, biological plausibility, a long safety record, and benefits that are relevant to aging.
It should go without saying: It shouldn’t replace resistance training, adequate protein, aerobic fitness, sleep, and a healthy diet. But as an adjunct to those things, creatine is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss.
