I’ve been in the fitness industry for near 20 years now, and I’ve seen lots of supplements come and go. And then come back again – more than once. When supplements disappear, it’s usually because they simply aren’t that efficacious. When they come back – it’s usually because someone has found a new way to pretend they are.
Creatine has never really faded out, but it’s also never really had a ‘big moment’ before. If anything, I think for a lot of people it feels too good and too cheap to be true. People almost take creatine for granted. It’s one of the most research-backed, powerful supplements for building strength and size – but I often think it’s so cheap and innocuous that people assume it just can’t be worth it. Not when there are so many other fancy supplements with powerful branding and huge ad spend behind them.
But creatine really does do what it says on the tin.
What Is Creatine Super-Dosing?
You’d be forgiven for thinking something’s changed recently, though. Creatine seems to have taken over the limelight on every single health podcast going, and even broken into the mainstream. The one thing that’s different from the classic ‘take 5g and call it a day’ advice that creatine has always been known for is that now people are talking about super-dosing creatine. We ourselves recently gave our man a month-long experiment of smashing the white stuff.
But to be fair, even that isn’t really new. In the old days, a creatine loading phase was always recommended – seven days of a high dose, usually 20 to 25 grams per day, to help saturate your muscle stores with creatine, essentially getting you to peak effects more quickly.
But now there’s emerging research suggesting that the cognitive benefits of creatine – think brain more than brawn – might be found at higher dosages, again somewhere around that 20-25 gram range.
And everyone seems to be talking about it. So should you be super-dosing? What does the science actually say?
Why Creatine Works
For starters, creatine has always been good for the brain, because of the mechanism by which creatine works. Inside your cells – particularly in muscle and brain tissue – energy is used in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). When your body uses ATP for energy, it loses one of its phosphate groups and becomes ADP (adenosine diphosphate).
Creatine helps recycle this energy. Stored creatine in the body donates phosphate back to ADP, rapidly regenerating ATP. This allows cells to continue producing energy quickly during periods of high demand.
In simple terms, creatine acts as a rapid energy buffer, helping maintain energy supply in tissues that require large amounts of energy – particularly muscles and the brain. Because the brain is such an energy-hungry organ, having adequate supplies of creatine may support processes such as memory, attention and cognitive performance, particularly during periods of stress or fatigue.
What the Research Actually Shows
There are some studies showing that higher dosages of creatine may enhance these cognitive effects, particularly in individuals who may already be somewhat deficient. A number of studies examining cognitive performance have found improvements in things like short-term memory and reasoning ability following creatine supplementation.
However much of this research still leaves a lot to be desired. Many of the studies are conducted in populations such as:
- Older adults
- Individuals with neurological conditions
- People with low baseline creatine levels (for example, vegetarians)
So while the results are promising, this isn’t a silver bullet for cognition yet. You’re not going to be getting the Limitless drug Bradley Cooper got rich off of in your post-workout shake.
For many healthy adults, 5-10g per day may well still be sufficient. On that note, there is evidence suggesting that dosing relative to body weight may make more sense. Some research recommends around 0.1 grams of creatine per kilogram of body weight per day, which would place an 80kg person closer to 8 grams daily rather than the traditional flat 5-gram scoop.
But most of us have simply become locked into that 5-grams-per-day heuristic.
Where High-Dose Creatine Actually Looks Promising
The most promising bit of evidence – and for me the most compelling use case for higher doses – comes from studies around sleep deprivation. Sleep loss places enormous metabolic demand on the brain. Because creatine helps maintain cellular energy availability, researchers have explored whether higher doses might help blunt the cognitive decline that comes with poor sleep.
One frequently cited study found that participants who supplemented with creatine before a period of sleep deprivation experienced reduced declines in cognitive performance, including reaction time and mood disturbance.
The study administered doses equivalent to roughly 0.3-0.35g per kilogram of bodyweight – which for many people lands right around that 25-gram mark. Participants receiving creatine in these studies showed improvements in cognitive processing speed and brain energy metabolism compared with placebo.
Should You Super-Dose Creatine?
For me, this is the scenario where higher doses are genuinely worth exploring. If I know I’m doing something that’s going to mean a very low amount of sleep – maybe I’m travelling, working late, or I’ve got to get up very early – I make sure to get 20-25 grams of creatine the day or night before. Anecdotally, I actually find this pretty effective.
Now, the caveat that’s hiding in plain sight here is that many of these studies rely on creatine being taken before the sleep deprivation occurs. So if sleep loss creeps up on you – an unexpected late night or woefully early alarm – taking creatine the next day might not have exactly the same effect. But given the cost of creatine – it’s incredibly cheap – I’d still say it’s worth chucking 20-25 grams in alongside your morning coffee if you’ve slept less than five hours.
(A small caveat here to say that this is provided you don’t struggle with the gastrointestinal distress that some people experience with large doses…)
My Takeaway
Do I think everyone should be super-dosing creatine? No. The evidence is still limited. But creatine is incredibly cheap, it has a very strong safety record in healthy individuals, and the downside risk appears low for most people.
So this is one of those areas where, yes, the evidence coming out of the laboratory is promising, and we should absolutely wait for more.
But it’s cheap. It doesn’t seem to have many side effects for the majority of people. And there don’t appear to be many meaningful drawbacks. So perhaps the best laboratory to test this one in is the laboratory of your own life.
Give it three weeks. Chuck it in after a sleepless night. Play around with the dosages. At the end of the day, the only ‘results’ that matter, are your own.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.