Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/03/sports-supplement-creatine-makes-no-difference-to-muscle-gains-trial-finds

by geox • 1 year ago

167 171 1 year ago

unsw.edu.au

chank5• 1 year ago

Over the years through my own involvement in sports and physically demaning jobs with trying a lot of different supplementation, I've come to the conclusion that most (if not all) supplements provide little to no value beyond a good diet. If they do, they're either illigal as non-perscription and/or require regular physician monitoring use correctly.

arresin2• 1 year ago

I don’t want to be rude but your anecdote (and all anecdotes like this on anything to do with health) is uninteresting and useless.

hnuser123456• 1 year ago

I support their anecdote. Any "supplements" that have significant effects are highly regulated and somewhat risky. Worrying about things that will make a 1-2% difference isn't worth the time, just workout one more rep.

Johanx643• 1 year ago

Unironically, I trust anecdotes more than any random nutrition study.

The more I personally know the person, or the more connectedness I have, the more his anecdote is worth listening to.

This study is a collection of mere 54 random anecdotes (!), random people of the street.

Anecdote of a random min-maxing turbo nerd on hackernews >= 54 random people from the street.

chank5• 1 year ago

I don't want to be rude, but your off-topic anecdote about my uninteresting and useless anecdote is also... uninteresting and useless.

iamacyborg3• 1 year ago

There are plenty of well researched performance enhancers which are legal, for example beta-alanine for middle distance runners.

econ4• 1 year ago

36 raw eggs per day seems the funny example here

chank5• 1 year ago

The meaningfull context here was "good diet". If middle distance runners ate for middle distance running would they need to take beta alanine? E.g. ate more organ meat which contains high levels of beta alanine.

tekla5• 1 year ago

Every second thinking about what supplements you should take is probably better spent in the gym.

the__alchemist3• 1 year ago

This sort of study is important, given how highly taken creatine is. I will highlight a part that I think may be especially relevant:

“The people taking the creatine supplement saw changes before they even started exercising, which leads us to believe that it wasn’t actual real muscle growth, but potentially fluid retention,” Dr Hagstrom said.

I think this is well-known, right? People take creatine specifically because it increases water retention in muscles, making them look slightly bigger. I'm not sure if many people think it will help build muscles and strength directly in the way "TRT" does, but maybe I'm wrong!

My understanding of the conventional wisdom:

  - Caffeine and other uppers work from a motivational perspective during workouts
  - "TRT" provides massive gains, and nasty side effects
  - Creatine makes your muscles look slightly bigger
  - Nothing else works

Retric• 1 year ago

It also helps with short term energy so maximum performance over a 30-90 second window increases, which fits many sports. It’s less useful for endurance athletes or 1 rep max.

“By taking a creatine supplement, such as creatine monohydrate, you can change the amount of phosphocreatine and creatine in your muscles. The extra creatine can help your muscles make more ATP faster as you use it to fuel your cells during high-intensity exercise.

One reason your body builds more lean muscle tissue when you take creatine is that your muscles will hold more water. The pressure from the water in your cells causes your muscles to swell. This water and swelling can also make cells grow.” https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/creatine

On average it also improves cognitive function slightly etc, but like most supplements individual results vary. “especially as you get older. But studies have not shown a strong effect.”

LostMyLogin4• 1 year ago

Yes, it's well-known. It's also the reason people take it.

notesinthefield2• 1 year ago

Curious to see support for the TRT statement - I myself have been on test cyp and anastrazole for the better part of two years with not one side effect. Been in and around steroid users in the strength sport realm for 15. The people with "nasty" side effects are almost always abusers that blast/cruise too often with no AI or PCT e.g dumbasses. Its been a life changing experience for me (going from low 200 ng/dl free T to 800-900 at 32)

the__alchemist3• 1 year ago

I think I screwed up the adjectives there. Gains and side effects are ~ proportional to dose.

gavinray3• 1 year ago

Do you really need Anastrazole at that dose?

General marker is x4-6 weekly dose for free test, so I'd wager you're taking somewhere between 150-200mg?

I found that contrary to popular advice, I felt much better without taking an aromatase inhibitor and letting my estradiol float at the higher end of the reference range.

There's some science backing the idea that Test/E2 are meant to exist in terms of a relative ratio to each other, rather than concrete numbers.

IE, if your free test is 1,000ng/dL, you'd want more E2 than if you were sitting at 300ng/dL.

benmmurphy• 1 year ago

I thought runners were also using creatine but I can only find discussion around this for amateurs online. I'm not sure if professional runners are using it. It would be interesting to know if professionals are using it because as far as I'm aware it is not a banned substance and presumably if it had a benefit they would be using it. But maybe I'm just bad at googling because I found this article that claimed 80% of athletes at the Atlanta Olympics were using creatine (https://runmrrun.com/creatine-for-running/). Though, this page seems to be trying to sell creatine supplements so maybe should be taken with a bit of skepticism.

seadan835• 1 year ago

Caffeine has impacts beyond motivation. It has been studied on the context of cyclists and boosts ability to ride. So does beet root.

Creatine has been studied to have other small effects too..

What too, the above have effects on muscle endurance, though for resistance training the effects may vary well be small. Further, this study took people that were not trained. 5lbs of muscle is a lot.. these folks might have gone from 50lbs to 55lbs, an extra 0.1lbs due to a supplement would be noise. I think this study needs muscle biopsies to measure creatine levels accurately to tease out those that are getting plenty from their diet vs not. Or.. try to have a large control group that gets zero creatine in their diet.

AFAIK creatine supplementation is something to think about after a year or two of training, for advanced intermediates.

Here are some sources with how caffeine and nitrates help at least endurance performance:

https://www.cptips.com/nitrate.htm

https://www.cptips.com/caff.htm

laszlojamf2• 1 year ago

The way I understood it creatine by itself doesn't promote muscle gain all that much. It's the fact that you can potentially do one to three more reps which does. But that still means you have to do the reps. https://leangains.com/supplements-you-might-actually-find-us...

xiande04• 1 year ago

Exactly. As ATP is broken down to adenosine and phosphate to produce energy, creatine re-phosphorolates adenosine.

So it gives you more energy at molecular level. But as you said, you have to actually use that energy.

Frost1x2• 1 year ago

And not even just use that energy, use that in a way that promotes hypertrophy. There’s lots of ways that energy could be used that doesn’t ultimately get you any muscle growth.

For example, you could be using it in athletics, running, etc and it’s not inherently going to give you growth.

The effects have been known to be small. You get a little extra energy that might push you a little further in a set going to failure or with one or two reps in reserve. Maybe you slide in some lengthened partial that you go a bit more through the range of motion that you would have had energy to do otherwise.

And that happens again and again over the course of years and you get a tiny bit extra from it, probably. I’m not sure this study design disproves that at all.

cratermoon• 1 year ago

This is correct. There are two main biological activities involving creatine, a combination of amino acids: 1. it facilitates recycling of ADP back to ATP, obviously more ATP means more energy, meaning ability to do more reps 2. it acts as a pH buffer, countering the fatigue effects of lactic acid buildup.

So no, taking creatine without doing the work probably won't make a difference (except to your wallet), but use in conjunction with consistent and effective exercise, the effect is real.

One thing though: don't bother with the creatine loading phase, it's a marketing scheme to sell more product.

DataDaoDe• 1 year ago

Agreed. If memory serves, most studies have shown marginal effects ~ 5%, particularly for strength. The benefit of creatine it seems at least partially, is the marginal benefit of being able to squeeze out a few extra reps per week

maerF0x03• 1 year ago

I would add 3. There's an aesthetic change too. (Obviously a preference/eye of the beholder thing).

ChatGPT: "This process, known as cell volumization, contributes to muscle size gains."

So there's also that reason to take it :)

wqweto• 1 year ago

taking creatine without doing the work probably won't make a difference (except to your wallet)

Creatine is dirt cheap. Anything expensive is probably a scam.

kjkjadksj4• 1 year ago

Assuming your body doesn’t form a dependency to it somehow and becomes sluggish weening off of it.

dgfitz3• 1 year ago

This has been known for ~15 years. I'm not sure what this study thought it was debunking.

ahoy• 1 year ago

There is value in studying things that are "settled" science. You can reinforce or deepen the existing understanding, or uncover nuance that wasn't widely understood before.

Note that this link is not the study! The published paper makes much more specific claims.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/6/1081

ActivePattern3• 1 year ago

If you read the study, you can see that they controlled for training intensity. All exercises were done to repetition maximum.

TomHenderson312• 1 year ago

Wait, are you saying that they didn't have the creatine arm of the study work as hard as the control arm? I'm really confused by this comment.

parthdesai• 1 year ago

Yeah, that's also the case when people scoff at pro bodybuilders due to steroids. Steroids don't magically give you the gains, you still have to put the work in. You just get rewarded more, and quicker at cost of other side effects.

graeme• 1 year ago

I don't know if you mean steroids specifically or also testosterone, but exogenous testosterone actually does raise muscle mass.

So it's fundamentally different from the creatine mechanism above.

For example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5989848/

Here's one on steroids with a no exercise group, they saw gains: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8637535/

maerF0x03• 1 year ago

Steroids don't magically give you the gains, you still have to put the work in.

That's not an entirely fair description of the situation actually.

Imagine the 4 groups from the cross product of WorksOut?(Yes/No) cross Steroids?(Y/N).

It's intuitive, obvious, and supported by the data that The WorksOut(Y) + Steroids(Y) Group reliably gains more muscle over time than other groups. And similarly that the WorksOut(N) + Steroids(N) group gains the least (including losses too!) .

The interesting groups are WorksOut without Steroids, vs Steroids without WorksOut.

The sad truth is those on steroids, though sedentary, gain more muscle than those who workout without steroids.

Here's the source of what I'm talking about from Jeff Nippard's Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD9p9tEP9RE around 4:05

And it's important we educate folks about who is likely on them and what's realistic naturally. Because many young people are innudated with drug enhanced bodies on social media and think that's possible without steroids (and their negative sideeffects). It's particularly troublesome in the case of sexual selection and competition, for example using the hetero normative pairings, when young women are attracted to the steroidal bodies and when young men are pressured to take damaging gear to compete with peers who are. (There's the equivalent analogues for other sexual pairings/preferences).

RamRodification• 1 year ago

I regularly see people pointing out that this is a myth. That even with no work being put in, there are serious gains when using steroids. I have absolutely zero sources though (like you).

kibwen• 1 year ago

This too is oversimplification. For example, due to differences in testosterone levels, a woman would need to put in significantly more effort than a man in order to approach similar strength levels.

rblatz• 1 year ago

Studies show that sedentary men on steroids gain more muscle mass than active men that aren’t on steroids.

So you don’t always have to work for them, especially if you used a steroid like Tren which is 5x more anabolic than testosterone.

rpsw• 1 year ago

There was a paper[1] that showed taking a 600 mg of testosterone lead with no-exercise lead to more gains in strength and muscle size than a control group who did exercise and took a placebo. So some gains may just be "magic", but of course you won't look like Arnold.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8637535/

iambateman• 1 year ago

For what it’s worth, I didn’t know this and I suspect a lot of people don’t. Thanks for this!

aNapierkowski• 1 year ago

yeah I took a look at the methodology here, it seemed like this should have been accounted for in the plan though maybe I'm missing something. That said this is just one study and will play into meta-analyses at some point which are more interesting

After the 7-day wash-in, both groups followed the same RT program that comprising 3 full-body sessions a week for 12 weeks (Supplementary Materials, Table S1). All sessions were supervised by tertiary qualified exercise physiologists and commenced with a standardised warm-up of dynamic flexibility exercises. Each session consisted of 5 exercises: 2 compound movements each for the upper and lower body, and 1 isolation movement for the upper body. Four sets were prescribed for all movements to ensure an adequate weekly training volume for hypertrophy [32]. Training intensities were 6 to 12 repetition maximums (RM) with 60 and 120 s of rest between sets and exercises, respectively. To adhere to the prescribed RM, an individual’s rating of perceived exertion (RPE) on a Likert scale of 1–10 was recorded. RPE corresponds to the number of repetitions an individual perceives they will be able to perform after the set is complete, where an RPE 5 equates to 5 reps more, RPE 6 is 4 reps more, RPE 7 is 3 reps more, and so on [33]. When a RPE of 8 or lower was recorded, the external load (kg) was adjusted on successive sets to ensure that subjects achieved the target RM. The RM method was used to ensure that training intensities were relative to the individual’s abilities while also standardising the training intensity across all participants [34].

svnt2• 1 year ago

Their methodology does seem to potentially capture what is at question here, by use of perceived exertion to adjust weight for repetition maximums.

It is possible it doesn’t capture everything, because they don’t say anything here about setting the initial load, or adjusting the load up for low perceived exertion, only down for high perceived exertion.

beezle2• 1 year ago

A few things -

1/ on this RPE stuff, it sounds like they are trying to keep two reps in the tank which is fine but..when? the first set? The last set?

2/ perhaps I'm misreading the supplemental data but the error bars are pretty huge when it comes to changes in LBM, not sure how any conclusions can be drawn

3/ 12 weeks is a short program and it sounds like they chose people who were generally not in shape/beginners. Anyone who has lifted in their life can tell you initial gains are almost always mostly in strength, not mass.

4/ Their choice of lifts for this population also looks unusual.

I'm sure they have the data but I could not find any evaluation of relative strength gains between the two groups. Even if their hypothesis that the LBM gain is identical, strength gains may not be.

Nifty3929• 1 year ago

From the actual study:

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/6/10812.3.4. Resistance Training Program

I'm not quite sure this is clear enough for me, though it does somehow suggest that they were pushing the participants to do as much as they could. But like I say, unclear.

Small N as well - only a few dozen people.

n4r92• 1 year ago

it does somehow suggest that they were pushing the participants to do as much as they could

I have the same impression. Possibly it could be made less subjective by literally repping to failure, but I'd guess that has potential ethical implications.

leereeves• 1 year ago

When a RPE of 8 or lower was recorded, the external load (kg) was adjusted on successive sets to ensure that subjects achieved the target RM.

The wording is a little technical. They're saying that, if the subject thought they could do at least 2 more reps at the end of this set, they increased the weight on the next set. So if creatine does allow people to do more reps at a given weight, subjects on creatine should have lifted heavier weights. (To me, that doesn't seem like the right way to adjust for creatine, which is thought to provide extra energy, not the ability to lift heavier.)

laszlojamf2• 1 year ago

So they were asking beginner lifters to rate how many they would have left in the tank? I've been lifting for maybe half a year and I still find it pretty hard to estimate >.<

It's good that it's studied, but it does sound that they've "conclusively" proven something, and I'm not so sure. Small sample size too, like you said.

ActivePattern3• 1 year ago

The study seems to have controlled for training intensity -- all exercises were done to repetition maximum.

LostMyLogin4• 1 year ago

I've been lifting five to six days a week since 2012, with some de-loading periods between, and have had my nutrition and sleep locked in for the majority of that time. Anecdotal of course, but I will still sit here and say that creatine is the only supplement that has actually worked over all those years - in fact, it's the only one I currently take.

I recover so much better when on roughly 5mg of Creatine for an extended period of time versus when I am not taking any. I also very clearly notice added water weight. That recovery leads to better training sessions which in turn leads to increased muscle and strength.

The difference in water retention and recovery is measurable whether doing a PPL or something like Tactical Barbell blocks.. call me crazy.

EDIT: 5g not 5mg

world2vec• 1 year ago

Totally agree with your personal experience.

I'm able to do a few more reps and recover a bit faster between sets and from one session to the next. That will definitely have a positive impact on muscle mass in the medium/long term.

dmbche• 1 year ago

I know nothing about this, but in the article they mention that their trial was for 5g a day, but I see you mention 5mg - was that a typo? It's interesting either way - not meant as a jab.

WXLCKNO• 1 year ago

Definitely a typo

LostMyLogin4• 1 year ago

Sorry, yes - typo! I take ~5g.

d0mine• 1 year ago

The dose is 5g, not 5mg

LostMyLogin4• 1 year ago

Was a typo on my part. Too early to be on HN haha.

vanillax• 1 year ago

This.. These articles are fake news.

markdog12• 1 year ago

Similar experience here. Started taking it around a month ago. The strength gains I've had in that short amount of time have been nothing short of shocking to me.

lowqualityworld2• 1 year ago

I've had the exact same experience, it took a while for creatine to start truly having an effect but I could see the extra water retention in the mirror and feel it in the gym.

I think this study may have been too flawed to reach a strong conclusion.

After the 7-day wash-in, both groups followed the same RT program that comprising 3 full-body sessions a week for 12 weeks...
For all assessments, participants reported to the Exercise Physiology Research Lab (UNSW Sydney, Australia) at the same time of day between 8 h and 9 h following an 8-h fast which included refraining from all liquids except water...

So extra stamina isn't rewarded due to the same workout plan and conventional wisdom on insulin and its effect on muscle absorption of creatine is completely ignored due to the 8 hour fasting period.

This study seems to paint creatine as a magic muscle bullet where it seems to be common knowledge in the fitness community that it aids recovery and stamina. I have my doubts.

ActivePattern3• 1 year ago

Wouldn't the extra stamina have been rewarded, assuming creatine allowed you to perform extra repetitions? All exercises were done to repetition maximum.

globular-toast4• 1 year ago

I've never really understood what people mean when they talk about recovery. Is this something you can feel? Or does it mean you couldn't lift the same weights the very next day or something? I lifted consistently for years, no supplements, 1RM around 65kg OHP, 115kg BP, 140kg squat, 200kg DL and apart from immediately after the gym I never felt like I needed to recover. Maybe my volume wasn't high enough? I was very much a 3x5 compound lifts then out kind of guy rather than spending hours in there doing 10 rep sets and accessories etc.

jdhendrickson• 1 year ago

Yes, if you were not experiencing a need for recovery, you were not providing enough stimulus. I was a powerlifter. there were times when I couldn't walk the next day. recovery is a major factor.

tekla5• 1 year ago

I mean your 1RM for any of those lifts isn't particularly interesting if you're around a young man 180-220lbs or so.

You weren't loading enough. At my max weights (600lbs Deadlift, 400lbs Squat, 340 Bench) , I needed to take 2-3 days off minimum

sollewitt• 1 year ago

Generally it’s the time it takes for you to get back to physiological baseline.

If you do a lot of activity, the amount of exertion can be measured in EPOC - how much extra oxygen your body needs for the extra metabolism to support repair (this is when any gains happen, growth, endurance, efficiency). When that’s back to baseline your body has done repairing, you’ve “recovered”.

If you aren’t recovered, your body still hasn’t repaired the damage you’ve done to it in the previous round, and you probably won’t be able to repeat the effort, whichever discipline. You’re digging yourself deeper in a hole. If you keep doing this, that’s overtraining, and you can get worse.

If you never experienced this, congratulations, you were operating inside your body’s natural limits! You may have good genes, and having good sleep and nutrition is probably more important than supplements.

Kirby64• 1 year ago

I've never really understood what people mean when they talk about recovery. Is this something you can feel? Or does it mean you couldn't lift the same weights the very next day or something?

If you've never felt like your body was beat up for 1-2 days afterwards, then I'd suggest you've never pushed your exertion level high enough. You can certainly make good progress relatively far away from failure up to a certain point, but eventually that won't be good enough. I'd suggest your overall volume on the muscle you're hitting probably wasn't high enough. If you're just sticking to 3x5 with a simple progression, then that's pretty limiting.

kjkjadksj4• 1 year ago

Recovery means you can’t walk up stairs after a leg day

ddorian43• 1 year ago

But isn't it like 1kg more water retention? How did you notice it?

TomHenderson312• 1 year ago

According to this paper, yes, the 1kg could very well just be water retention, or the increase in lean body mass during the loading period.

joncrocks• 1 year ago

I've been lifting a similar period of time (although only 3 days a week, with some breaks during COVID etc.) and would concur. I have improved intra-workout endurance when taking creatine, i.e. I can do more reps/the last reps feel easier.

Anecdotally I do also notice a cognitive impact when taking it, e.g. I seem to have improved concentration. Or more that when I have stopped taking it I have decreased concentration. Anecdata 1 of 1.

skadamat• 1 year ago

I've had the pleasure of working with a personal trainer who has a broad educational training background. She emphasized that creatine "kind of helped" but it was really only that last mile 5% benefit. And the effect would mostly be long-term (1-2 years of dedicated training). She just told me to focus on trying to get 1 gram of high quality protein daily for pound of body weight.

This study is just one study, but to me just highlights her same observation even more.

itsoktocry• 1 year ago

She just told me to focus on trying to get 1 gram of high quality protein daily for pound of body weight.

You hear this a lot, but it is incredibly difficult to eat eg 175g of protein every day. That's 4 chicken breasts, every day.

elbows• 1 year ago

I don't think it's that difficult if you're training a lot and eating accordingly. For someone eating 3000 calories a day, that's less than 25% of calories from protein, which is pretty reasonable.

It's harder if you're not eating a lot overall, but still doable with some planning and the occasional protein shake.

kjkjadksj4• 1 year ago

Thats basically how all my lifting friends eat. In college it was chicken breast and white rice and franks red hot sauce to make that otherwise unseasoned food palatable every dinner and lunch. Copious protein shakes. You can imagine the farts from my roommates during bulking…

DontchaKnowit• 1 year ago

Its really not that hard. I mean sure it takes some planning and avoiding excess fat=carbs but lots of the following will get you there easily - - eggs - beans - yogurt - beef - chicken - some kinds of cheese

rd11235• 1 year ago

I don’t understand the trend of individual studies making it to the top of HN, while metaanalyses are ignored, despite examining 10s or 100s of such individual studies in aggregate to reduce noise.

There are we-are-human reasons, but are there any logical reasons?

damnitbuilds• 1 year ago

Thank you for reminding people of this.

NotGMan• 1 year ago

Because if studies are trash the meta-result is also trash.

This is what is happening in all nutrition science, where most studies are trash.

That is why you can prove any hypothesis you want by picking (meta) studies in nutrition science.

Fredkin• 1 year ago

It's like the CDO of science.

epistasis2• 1 year ago

If by "logical" you mean "practical" then the reason is that the study which cost a lot of money to do, the constituent studies that generate data, are more likely to get a press release, and that is how non-specialists learn about new studies. Logically, from the perspective of the university, being able to point out the result of spending a lot of money to contribute to human knowledge is important, so they publicize these expensive studies. The metaanalysis is cheap, and takes a few people's time for doing the analysis, no new expensive data involved.

jmull• 1 year ago

I wouldn't necessarily assume people's interest in science is limited to what meta analyses tell us.

A single study probably can't answer the high-level questions (like, "does creatine help build muscle?") but can nevertheless be pretty interesting to read and discuss. (Personally, I found this discussion interesting, and I don't care about the high-level question at all.)

kjkjadksj4• 1 year ago

Individual studies don’t exist in a vacuum. They can cite tens to hundreds of papers just like a meta analysis. The difference is in addition to the literature review they had to do anyway to develop their research question, they also contributed novel data to the field and tried to put it into context. Meta analysis don’t get published in big journals like Nature, novel data do.

adrian_b2• 1 year ago

I do not understand why would anyone believe that creatine can influence muscle gains.

Muscle gains require an adequate protein intake, but creatine has no relationship with that.

Creatine, as phosphocreatine, provides energy storage for short-time anaerobic effort. After the available phosphocreatine is exhausted, only a lower power can be sustained, at the level that can be supported by the conversion of glucose into lactic acid. For even longer times, the power that can be sustained must drop to the level supported by aerobic metabolism.

It is known that the daily capacity of creatine synthesis in humans is usually limited to less than the optimal requirement for intense exercise, so some creatine must be provided by food, for the best results.

I take a little creatine, because I eat vegan food, which does not contain creatine. For someone who eats meat, it is very unlikely that a creatine supplement can be useful, because meat should contain enough additional creatine, besides the creatine that is synthesized internally.

However, I am grateful to the sport fans who may have taken creatine without any good reasons, because that has ensured the widespread availability at modest prices of creatine supplements, which are useful for vegans like myself.

I agree with another poster, who says that while creatine cannot have a direct effect on muscle gains, it can have an indirect effect on someone who trains regularly, by allowing more exercise repetitions, which may stimulate muscle gains.

Obviously, such an indirect effect is conditioned by actually training regularly and really doing more intense trainings than when not taking the supplement.

bluedino• 1 year ago

I do not understand why would anyone believe that creatine can influence muscle gains.

This is the entire fitness/supplement industry.

econ4• 1 year ago

The effect is dramatically different for different people. I have something around 30-60% more endurance with creatine which is insane. From what little I understand it helps move fluids though muscles. I can't imagine muscle growth doesn't benefit from that specially in seemingly poorly hydrated dry muscles like mine.

adrian_b2• 1 year ago

For myself, after switching to vegan food, taking a creatine supplement had very noticeably improved the endurance for things like weight lifting or short sprints at maximum speed.

However, that has just restored the level of performance from when eating non-vegan food.

The effects of creatine should vary both between humans, because they may have different capacities for internal creatine synthesis, and depending on the kind of food that they eat, i.e. whether it is naturally rich in creatine, or not.

globular-toast4• 1 year ago

Steroids increase muscle growth despite having no relationship with adequate protein intake.

ff133• 1 year ago

What's the source?

How can you build muscle without amino acids, the building blocks of protein, which muscles need to grow?

SuperNinKenDo5• 1 year ago

I do not understand why would anyone believe that creatine can influence muscle gains.

Simple. Being able to work out harder and longer, assuming proper sleep and nutrition, leads to greater muscle gain. There's no mystery.

waynenilsen• 1 year ago

Apparently healthy individuals (18 to 50 years), with a body mass index of ≤30 kg/m2 and *not meeting current physical activity guidelines* of at least 150 min of moderate-intensity exercise were included.

I'm curious what the same study would say about athletes of various disciplines. It makes sense to me that creatine does not make a difference for these folks.

econ4• 1 year ago

If they don't train, difference in what are they even on about?

smileysteve• 1 year ago

If (as in this study) the athletes stuck to their same level of resistance training (ie weight + reps) I would expect the study to hold with the exception of finely measured muscle teardown.

As other commenters have posted, the popular suggested use of creatine use it to either increase resistance (extra reps at a greater weight) or decrease downtime (lack of atp / lactic acid buildup that breaks down muscles)

reedf1• 1 year ago

    Participants were instructed to maintain their current 
    dietary habits and physical activity levels for the 
    duration of the study.

My understanding is that creatine increases the amount of available energy for muscles to use (hence increases sports performance, training performance, and recovery) - not increase muscle growth alone. That said - it is an interesting study which helps decompose the effect, this shows that creatine likely provides no other additional benefits.

lawlessone• 1 year ago

I've found it gives me a lot more mental energy too. Like I can think better with creatine.

jonwachob91• 1 year ago

>> more mental energy too

Is that the creatine, or the caffeine added to virtually ALL creatine supplements?

yza• 1 year ago

Title is slightly misleading. Turns out, sex-disaggregated analysis showed that the supplement group, only in females, gained 0.59 ± 1.61 kg more lean body mass than the controls (p = 0.04)

Direct link to this study: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/6/1081

julianeon• 1 year ago

That's an important clarification! So for half the population, creatine works.

TomHenderson312• 1 year ago

So you know, they are misunderstanding the paper.

TomHenderson312• 1 year ago

"There were no group differences in lean body mass growth following resistance training in females (p = 0.10) or males (p = 0.35)"

achillesheels• 1 year ago

This isn’t a good study. First, aren’t researchers passed treating all muscle randomly? Don’t genetics play a role, particularly with adenosine triphosphate synthesizing? And second, shouldn’t creatine have results for those working out 5+ times a week? I’d like to see a study of one ethnic group weight training 7 days a week for 12 weeks and one half taking the supplement and the other not.

epistasis2• 1 year ago

A UNSW-led clinical trial that put 54 people through a 12-week resistance training program found no difference between those who took the supplement at the recommended dose and those who did not,

Small studies like this are usually combined with others in order to get a better picture. Given the huge variety of ways to run a resistance training program, a single protocol study is unlikely to explore the space very well. So lots of small studies trying things different ways is going to be a more effective exploration of the space (in addition to matching the amount of funding that any researcher is able to get).

Unfortunately lots of little studies does not make for good press releases, nor does it fit the news media cycle very well.

vegancap• 1 year ago

That's one slightly gross drink less for the gym then

tekla5• 1 year ago

This has been known for quite a while? Even /fit/ makes fun of people who claim that creatine makes you bigger faster.

kkzz99• 1 year ago

No? There are a lot of studies showing positive benefits: >The primary benefit of creatine is an improvement in strength and power output during resistance exercise. Creatine is well-researched for this purpose, and its effects are quite notable for a supplement, both in the general population,[6][7][8][9] and specifically in older adults.[10][11][12] When used in conjunction with resistance exercise, creatine may modestly increase lean mass.[7][12][11][13] In trained athletes, creatine has been reported to reduce body fat and improve some measures of anaerobic exercise performance, strength, and power output.

https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/?show_conditions=tr...

And as a general rule of thumb: Don't take anything from 4chan seriously.

tekla5• 1 year ago

And yet the OP study claims otherwise.

Also hell, your own damn link says that elite athletes seem to get no benefit from creatine vs younger ones, meaning that its not really increasing muscle mass, just a combination of placebo, water retention, and maybe a burst of energy in the early stages of getting fit.

aoeusnth1• 1 year ago

One more N=54 trial makes absolutely no difference to the mountain of evidence in favor of creatine. The news article should reference meta studies, not chasing headlines from the drip drip drip of meaningless small studies

TomHenderson312• 1 year ago

It actually does if the other studies failed to control for the gains just during the loading period, which is what the study is claiming may be happening.

markkat• 1 year ago

Those error bars suggest this was underpowered, and it did find a significant increase in females:

https://www.mdpi.com/nutrients/nutrients-17-01081/article_de...

Poor interpretation of the study.

TomHenderson312• 1 year ago

You are misinterpreting the study. They are interested in the change in lean body mass wash-in to post RT because that is the lean body mass that can be attributed to more than just the initial increase from simply taking creatine. The increase in females that you cite is including that initial increase, which is not interesting.

SuperNinKenDo5• 1 year ago

People who know better shouldn't publish misleading and damaging headlines like this.

seydor• 1 year ago

I read the comments and now i m going to start it

aubanel• 1 year ago

As a total noob in this domain, general evidence of increased sleep and muscle recovery with creating points me towards taking some, just to be more efficient at work: any counterarguments ?

deadbabe2• 1 year ago

There are cognitive benefits to creatine, so don’t stop taking it. Especially if you’re old as fuck (50+, etc)

SuperNinKenDo5• 1 year ago

Or if you're vegetarian.

I didn't even know about the cognitive benefits until I felt them so strongly that I did a search to see if it was a common thing people experienced.

deadbabe2• 1 year ago

What did you do experience?

unionjack22• 1 year ago

This adds nothing to the conversation but seeing the lively discussion here on hn about lifting, exercise, and studies is quite rewarding. Good to see technical folks passionate about their health and fitness.

sebastiennight• 1 year ago

This reminds me of watching the original infomercials for P90X and Insanity and thinking that their testimonials seemed to include a disproportionate number of tech geeks... Maybe we're the real prime market for this after all

meltyness• 1 year ago

Participants completed a 3-day food log for the 3 days prior to each assessment (baseline, post seven-day wash-in phase, and post 12-week RT intervention) to provide an estimate of their typical total kilocalorie (kcal/day) and macronutrient (g/day of carbohydrate, fat, and protein) intake

That's a lot of extrapolation, Marmite-flavored protein powder, no doubt?

that comprising 3 full-body sessions a week for 12 weeks (Supplementary Materials, Table S1) [Table S1 describes 3 different bro-splits, comprised of 45 different assistance exercises and no planned progression in intensity, excepting "To failure"]

Ah yes, I see they've confused resistance exercise with resistance training, indeed a mistake.

Granted, it does seem like a fine time to avoid "fitness powders" in light of "The Rhisotope Project" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40819617

andrewmcwatters• 1 year ago

I tried creatine. Taking it in powder form mixed with my protein shake made me feel awful.

Not worth it. Seemingly does nothing.

beezle2• 1 year ago

Don't take it on an empty stomach. Don't do the overload the first 10 days, instead stick to just 5g daily. It will take a little longer to get the full effect of the loading stage but with far less risk of stomach upset.

y-c-o-m-b• 1 year ago

I have more issues with it when there's food in my stomach vs when there's not. In fact if I eat anything within 15 minutes (in either direction) of consuming creatine, I will for certain have diarrhea. I have zero issues with it on an empty stomach. These days I just make sure not to eat anything within an hour of the creatine and I'm good.

Agreed on the loading phase. It's not worth it.

EDIT: should add that I've been taking creatine for several years

reverendsteveii• 1 year ago

I'm just here to remind everyone that the results of a single trial can fall anywhere on the bell curve. Below I've linked a meta-analysis of 10 studies that shows evidence for "a very small effect favoring creatine supplementation when combined with RT[resistance training] compared to RT and a placebo".

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10180745/

cjbenedikt• 1 year ago

Effects of Creatine Supplementation and Resistance Training on Muscle Strength Gains in Adults <50 Years of Age: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/16/21/3665#:~:text=In%20the%2... and Creatine Supplementation for Muscle Growth: A Scoping Review of Randomized Clinical Trials from 2012 to 2021 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8949037/

seadan835• 1 year ago

Junk science. Some people get enough creatine already in their diets. Some people respond to creatine, others do not. Creatine response is also a function of age. The cohorts should have had their creatine levels measured, broken up by age, and perhaps be done on non-beginners.

Compare this study vs this: https://www.cptips.com/creatine.htm, cites multiple studies and later concluded that most likely older vegetarians are likely to see a benefit, everyone else maybe will see a benefit or nothing at all. Given that, without knowing creatine levels of the participants, I find it no surprise the study found no significant results. I do not think this study actually even measured creatine impact.

amai• 1 year ago

Creatine makes me quite a bit slower in 5k runs.

thecatvoid• 1 year ago

Bullshit. It's like saying protein powder doesn't increase muscle on Ronnie Coleman or Arnold or anyone who is at their protein limit.

Some people have high creatine by themselves from meat sources or from own body, or some already have muscles saturated with it.

Creatine slightly boosts pure lean muscle growth. But most importantly it saturated muscle with creatine and increases its mass, ofcourse the increase isn't muscle tissue but water and resources bond to it. People usually count sarcoplasmic hypertrophy from glycogen as "muscle gains" even when they are short term and goes away after low carbs or depletion. Also as with anything when you stop doing it, it will go away. Also muscles are mostly water (75-80%), Mike Menzter also said that which reminded me.

Who will benefit from creatine? The ones who has it low. How can it help? Allows to push harder, allows to store more fluid and hydrate cells internally, may trigger MPS more often/recovers better.

It is like, "by itself" creatine don't go and build muscle, but it boosts whatever mechanism if they weren't already.

Some reality checks, don't expect signifiant size, don't expect significant contractile muscle size increase, expect water weight and boosted performance, but that is if only your muscles weren't actually saturated with creatine.

Ps: not sure about the boosted MPS signalling.

googlehater• 1 year ago

As with all nutrition """science""", studies should only be used to generate ideas for your own routine, not provide any conclusions.

Try it and see if it works for you. If it does - great! If it doesn't - great!

tjbiddle• 1 year ago

Creatine is quite literally the most researched supplement in the world. It's safe, effective, and recommended by both gym rats and doctors in any field. It's naturally occurring in many foods.

It's the only supplement that's actually given insanely effective results for my own anecdotal use.

Any study that says otherwise I'm just going to assume is complete BS. Normally I'd give something a chance and read their evidence, but this is practically up there with someone trying to argue the world is flat for me.

Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds

Related Stories