Science Library

Creatine

Strong evidence

Creatine monohydrate

StrengthMuscleRecoveryHealth

Dose

3–5 g / day

Timing

Doesn't matter

Brain dose

10 g+, unsettled

Side effects

Minimal

Does it work?

-Yes — for strength and power it is still the best-supported supplement in sports nutrition, with an excellent safety record across decades of trials. Two things have moved recently. A 2025 randomized trial found that once you subtract the water creatine pulls into muscle during the first week, 5 g/day added no extra lean mass over 12 weeks of training. And the brain research has shifted to much higher doses — 10 g/day and up — where the results are genuinely interesting but nowhere near settled.

How much · when

-Take 3–5 g of creatine monohydrate every day, including rest days — consistency is what fills muscle stores.
-A loading phase (≈20 g/day for 5 days) only fills stores faster; the end result is identical, so it's optional.
-Time of day doesn't matter. Mix it with water, juice, or your protein shake.
-Stick with plain monohydrate powder. The fancier forms have no proven advantage, and gummies have repeatedly failed independent potency testing.
-If you're chasing the brain effects rather than the gym ones, the trials use 10 g/day and up — creatine crosses into the brain far more slowly than it does into muscle.

The catch

-The strength case is stronger than the size case. In a 2025 randomized trial, 5 g/day added about 0.5 kg of lean mass in the first week — water drawn into muscle — and then produced no additional lean mass at all across the next 12 weeks of training compared with training alone.
-The brain story is promising but unsettled. Six weeks at 10 g/day improved reaction time mainly when it was paired with guanidinoacetic acid, and an earlier dose-response trial at 10 and 20 g/day found no cognitive change whatsoever in rested young adults. The clearer signals come from stressed brains — a single large dose measurably improved cognition during sleep deprivation — and from perimenopausal and menopausal women, whose frontal-cortex creatine rose about 16% on a low-dose protocol that also improved reaction time.
-Gummies are the current weak point. Independent potency testing through 2024–2025 repeatedly found creatine gummies far below label, several containing essentially none — a mix of under-dosing and creatine degrading into creatinine on the shelf. Powder is the form the research was actually done on.

Safety

-Safe for long-term daily use in healthy adults at 3–5 g/day.
-A small early bump on the scale is water inside the muscle, not fat.
-The 10 g/day used in the cognition trials was well tolerated over six weeks, but long-term data at that dose is far thinner than for the classic 3–5 g.
-Stay hydrated, and check with a doctor first if you have kidney disease.

Key research

Supplements

Whey proteinStrong Protein intakeStrong

Exercises

Barbell Bench Press

Horizontal press

Back Squat

Squat

Educational information, not medical advice. Talk to a healthcare professional before starting a supplement — especially if you're pregnant, nursing, or managing a health condition.