> I don’t know. Maybe a little.

is not the right way to interpret the null result (insufficient evidence to reject null hypothesis that it has no effect) because the prior for supplements that people are trying to sell you is so low. In the absence of clear, strong evidence, you should assume the the whole thing is just an example of motivated reasoning. People want nootropics to be real, and other people really want to sell you readily available powders by claiming they have nootropic properties. In that environment, they were always going to trying to concoct a similar narrative about some supplement, and it just happened to be creatine. Those efforts were always going to result in a handful of "positive" studies that turn out to be non-reproducible, maybe because of p-hacking, maybe because of publication bias, maybe because of outright fraud. This is what the literature always looks like for stuff that just doesn't work. If it did work - if the effect size was large enough that you could personally detect it in your own life - then the papers would be trying to put error bars around the effect size, not trying (and failing) to barely distinguish it from a placebo.

“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” - Ernest Rutherford

No noticeable cognitive difference/improvement. And the more I've researched creatine the less convinced I am that there are reliable conclusions about cognitive impacts.

Significant physical changes! But other than the pure aesthetics, it's hard to say that my strength increases are tied to creatine or instead a solid routine, plan, diet, and progressive overload. Probably some all of above.

I also take whey protein isolate (20-25g at least once a day)

The Nootropic space fascinates me. A few observations:

- Not sure if caffeine is considered nootropic. Caffeine definitely makes a difference.

- Unclear if placebo effect or real, L-theanine seems to help with calm and focus.

- Otherwise, when it comes to what I'm sure alters my state/body/etc. - drugs! And I'm not suggesting anything specific but my point is the effects are obvious/real/etc. vs. much of the supplement space that suffers from very murky conclusions (imo).

Each 2-ounce rollmop contains about a gram or two of creatine, sometimes more. Steak is about a gram per 8 ounces.

If you can afford it, it's way nicer than choking down that powder in water getting all crunchy in your teeth and stuff.

It's decent pre-workout food although not for everyone as mentioned elsewhere in the comments here (Something like 20% of people don't see any workout endurance benefits)

If I know I'm only going to get a few hours of sleep, I'll take 5–10 g of creatine, drink plenty of water, and go to bed. The next morning, I usually don't wake up with a headache.

If I skip the creatine under the same conditions, I'm much more likely to wake up with a headache after a short night's sleep.

Now it's become a habit, I automatically take creatine whenever I know my sleep duration is going to be much shorter than usual.

[0] https://gwern.net/creatine

this is wrong [0] , it's just hard to measure.

[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32314956/

Also search for 'sleep' in this comment section, seems many see similar improvements!

If the cognitive effects are real, they aren’t noticeable to me without placebo effect. Meaning, I hadn’t heard any notion of creatine impacting cognitive function and I’ve been taking it on and off for years, and never noticed anything.

Thinking back, maybe an uptick in mood and a mental performance while tired? Purely unscientific, though.

I’ve researched it quite a bit and found that others do experience it as well, but the usual advice of “just drink more water” (which yes, I have tried) is about the extent of info I find on it. Then, the “it causes your body to retain more water” idea which doesn’t seem to be accurate as what I’ve understood is that it causes your muscles to store more water…

The cited paper in Wikipedia might be accurate and the author is just expecting "at rest" to mean awake but mostly idle. I'd wager that during sleep, we use less than 100W. For the sake of argument if you take out 8 hours (asleep time) from a 24 hour period, you end up with a rate of ~0.8681 grams per second, much closer to 1g/s. Anyway, just a little fun with numbers.

Like being tired, stressed, etc...

They missed a zero behind the comma, didn't they?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346947

Up to 50 Cal extra over ~2 hours of intense thinking IS significant given brains consume 240-400 Cal over 24 hours.

> Start thinking hard, and watch as your heart rate does not increase.

And yet you soon get tired and slow down. Now try the opposite. Stretch or punch the air a few times to get the heart rate going. You'll sustain brain performance for longer. Try it.

Perhaps the problem is that higher brain activity SHOULD trigger heart rate increase, but doesn't due to one of many design defects of the human body.

Well, yes. It is well known that you must eat fish, beef, i.e., animal protein, to get close to optimal levels of creatine.

It could be underlying genetic predisposition to hair loss, but I do believe the creatine had an accelerating effect. When I stopped taking creatine, the rate of hair loss noticeably slowed down throughout the rest of my 20s.

Is creatine safe to supplement for children?

The vegan/vegetarian is a big spectrum. A vegetarian eating plenty of dairy products and eggs should in theory be much better creatine-equipped than a poor vegan student feeding on noodles and ketchup pastas. A lot of pseudo-meat for vegans are full of processed shit.

Confusion will be even higher if you include fish in the vegetarian diet, which is odd but some people do that.

Could the cognitive effect works in the case of creatine deficiency (vegan) and not in the case a vegetarian (low creatine but not deficient) ?

Why is "gains" spelled this way? I found myself suddenly trusting the whole thing a little less. But maybe I'm missing something. Is this jargon in the body building world or something? Author being cheeky?

I never ended up doing it because you had to cycle it, and it was just one more thing to track

Is it the same case in 2026? Is there a simple pill I can take?

exits stage left

I'll be here all week folks!

if you truly want fuel for the brain nothing beats keto

> Does creatine make you smarter?

> I don’t know. Maybe a little.

The one thing this misses is many supplements are tainted, which skews the popular perception of both upsides and risks. This was especially true in the US prior to 2005 or so when prohormones were still legal over the counter. Anything branded that wasn't just pure creatine was extremely likely to actually be a low-dose oral steroid, which really can make you lose hair and will increase strength quite a bit more than any dietary supplement.

This also misses caffeine as the other a-tier supplement that consistently shows strength increases in RCTs, though of course, caffeine is more frought than creatine because you build tolerance and it can disturb sleep.

It safely builds muscle and boosts cognition.