Does creatine make you smarter?

by surprisetalk • 6 hours ago

225 209 6 hours ago

petra2• 6 hours ago

Given LLM's is being smarter still a worthwhile to optimize with supplements?

fragmede2• 6 hours ago

that was hard to parse, but yes, because then you can ask smarter questions to the LLM which saves you money, so you can afford supplements

isakmarr• 6 hours ago

Of course it is. LLMs aren't as smart as you think, or at least their "intelligence" isn't comparable to ours. They're just a useful tool, and they will always need someone to guide them.

binary1322• 6 hours ago

Productivity isn’t the only reason to be smarter. For example, there’s also the benefit of asking fewer inane questions on the internet (hypothetically)

petra2• 6 hours ago

LoL.maybe the question is not phrased in the best way, English as a second language and laziness, but it's a pretty decent question.

shermantanktop• 6 hours ago

Present company excluded, of course.

toast0• 5 hours ago

Yeah, mix some creatine in with the thermal paste. It should help!

brcmthrowaway• 6 hours ago

I remember learning about Creatine as a weightlifting teen

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?

domhudson• 6 hours ago

You don't have to cycle it. You also don't need to load it (a marketing ploy to get you to buy more).

You can just take 3-5g daily.

windward• 6 hours ago

Cycling is also a marketing ploy, since it makes it sound more like a PED and less like a compound found naturally in meat. It's the same reason people say they 'take' whey, when Miss Muffet simply ate it.

btheconqueror• 6 hours ago

I've never heard of cycling it. We're you a teen during the steroid arrival? Maybe people were confusing things. I've always just done 5mg a day, but now people are talking about taking mega doses of like 20-30mg a day, shrug

nick__m• 6 hours ago

Creatine is dosed in grams not milligrams, otherwise your number are correct.

jdelfuego• 6 hours ago

Homeopathic sports supplementation

solumunus• 6 hours ago

That’s never been the case, you were getting bad information.

switchbak3• 6 hours ago

It was certainly the case that gym bros thought you had to cycle it. But you're right that this was never necessary.

krick• 6 hours ago

Yes, they did, and many still do write it on the package, but it is, and always was a myth born God knows when out of precaution, because nobody really knows anything about how all this stuff really works now, and they did know even less than that 30 years ago. There never really was any evidence that you have to cycle it, and nobody (aside from the manufacturers) ever says it anymore. It makes about as much sense as cycling protein powder.

As for pills, yes, there is about every form of creatine supplement now, even chewing gum, but this is just dumb, how much of creatine do you think you can consume this way in a day?

matwood5• 6 hours ago

Cycling creatine was the guidance from the 90s. 5g/day and drink plenty of water is all you need to do.

F7F7F7• 3 hours ago

I don't ever remember needing or being advised to cycle it.

It was always start by 'loading' and then cruise at 5g. Of course GNC was filled with sugar filled "delivery" products like Celltech that claimed to forego any need for 'loading'.

dvduval• 6 hours ago

I don’t think they’re strong evidence that it does anything beyond helping you build muscle. There are some people say they think clearer, but I don’t think that’s been measured in any significant way.

garciasn• 6 hours ago

Saved you a click:

Does creatine make you smarter?
I don’t know. Maybe a little.

paulpauper• 1 hour ago

in other words, it doesn't do much of anything, similar to most powders, supplements, and minerals/vitamins

People are throwing away their money

olooney• 6 hours ago

Good discussion, but this conclusion:

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

taeric• 6 hours ago

Heavily agreed. The supplement industry has such a low level of reliability that it has really soured me on so many practices people have. And I flat out do not understand how some of the supplement stores survive.

PaulHoule• 6 hours ago

Hard sell. I remember the time I went to GNC and they gave me a free sample of the notorious Jack3D which had some kind of amphetamine-like stimulant in it and was associated with young soldiers in the US Army falling down dead.

Johnny555• 6 hours ago

And I flat out do not understand how some of the supplement stores survive.

I think mostly through placebo effect, people buy a supplement to treat condition X and they think it's getting better, so they keep buying.

I mean, just look at the wide variety of homeopathic "cures" that are often so diluted that there might not be any molecules of the active ingredient left. Yet people keep buying it.

antonvs2• 5 hours ago

They survive because people want to believe. Look at the history: the phrase “snake oil” exists because people actually sold products by that name as a remedy. There were also tonics based on radium.

“There's a sucker born every minute.”

jrm42• 6 hours ago

Okay, but it kind of sounds like you want to nanny-state the writer's language.

Their conclusion seems like an absolutely fair interpretation of what they saw, and it also strikes me as dangerous -- perhaps more dangerous -- to suggest "writer genuinely believes, or doesn't believe, a thing, but they should say it differently from their own interpretation because..people are dumb?" Something like that.

jdiff3• 6 hours ago

One person is not a nation.

Retr0id7• 6 hours ago

If you're being academically rigorous about it, sure, but I think it's fine as an informal conclusion.

jdiff3• 6 hours ago

Even as an informal conclusion I think it's important to know who you're up against and what their motivations are. Waving that away is how we get people like known, obvious charlatans like RFK Jr in any sort of position of power. I know this is nitpicking word choice but the informal conclusion is "Not likely, and not enough to matter for anything."

ttul2• 6 hours ago

What value is there to an informal conclusion when the topic is as important as intelligence? The downsides to creatine if taken without good scientific backing should not be disregarded, yet that’s exactly what many ordinary people are now doing because of “informal conclusions” like this.

abirch• 6 hours ago

mandatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/882/ "Jellybeans cause acne"

mrexroad• 5 hours ago

I was visiting a friend’s lab at NASA Ames the other day. I smiled seeing this on the wall there. I sometimes daydream about what it’d be like if our primary education system devoted an hour a week to reading / discussing comics (well, XKCD specifically), or pages form What If…? Maybe it’d kill the magic of it, but I still feel plenty of seeds would get planted along the way for more critical thinking later in life.

pvaldes• 2 hours ago

Just the green ones. If they found a link, they found a link

I'm sure that the comic wants to be sarcastic but is missing the mark here. This is how science works. Trying and failing every color except green, does not mean that the green experiment has an invalid result.

The author is not understanding that each experiment is independent.

The correct cartoon should show researchers trying green jellybeans 100 times, with 99 negative results and one positive result, and then the press keeping only the positive (Or in this comic, claiming that all jellybeans produce acne).

Mocking the scientific method, and showing scientists as lazy people that play video-games is funny, but is just a cartoon, not the reality. People should not take XKCD as god's speech without any critical thinking. This in your workplace says to me "I don't really understand statistics".

There is an effect that is statistically rare just by chance, AND is consistently absent within a huge control group of "non-green jellybeans" (the author seems to think that this weakens the result, but in fact is reinforcing it). And it needs further research. Not less, not more.

switchbak3• 5 hours ago

What I'm getting from all this is that we have an armchair expert explaining details about something they're not an expert in, and we have you reviewing the way they present this information, saying their very weak hedge wasn't strongly negative enough. Based on priors about the industry.

Basically, HN doing HN things - having a good deep think about topics outside their realm of expertise, then debating the minutiae. I'd just rather trust someone who has spent their career researching this stuff, thanks (unless that's what you do - in which case please tell us more).

antonvs2• 5 hours ago

It may be minutiae, but olooney’s point is valid: the evidence doesn’t seem to support saying “maybe a little”. Remove that statement from the conclusion and it’s on the right track, aside from the arbitrary IQ point calculation which is nonsensical.

dundarious• 2 hours ago

"HN doing HN things" over someone saying "good discussion, however, one point about the conclusion" and having that point be very rational and still open to debate.

Is discussing such secondary but still highly relevant aspects verboten? Must every comment here be by a lead researcher in the specific field? Would a biomedical science researcher necessarily have any more expertise on these important secondary aspects?

"Trust me, I'm a scientitian". No thanks.

somenameforme2• 5 hours ago

I think this is quite different because (1) creatine has been proven to be completely harmless for people of all ages absent some rare thing like a kidney disorder and (2) it has a bunch of clearly measurable positive effects.

So this is more like trying to determine whether ginseng is good at keeping away colds or whatever. Maybe it does (actually quickly searching this, it definitely does but let's pretend it's as folksy as it sounds for a minute) but even if it doesn't then it's harmless and has a bunch of other effects, so when one takes it - the whole possible cold prophylaxis can just be seen as an added perk.

ffsm8• 5 hours ago

and the thing people seem to not understand: how exactly do you _expect_ to be able to notice this change? Its something that happens after you take it for a prolonged period of time (>7days) and only has a minor/medium effect.

It doesn't make you a genius. I think a better view on it is that it may mitigate some of the adhs symptoms (at least for me).

I can keep on track for a significantly longer time since ive started supplementing with it at ~15g/day - and while i dont feel a difference, i can observe it when actually paying attention to what i do / how often i drift off etc.

zardo• 2 hours ago

Is there a particular rare kidney disorder that creatine is contraindicated for? Because kidney disease is not rare, something like 14% of US adults have kidney disease.

chmod775• 2 hours ago

Issue being that if you took everything that's "probably harmless" at once, cramming your body full of supplements, you might just end up harming yourself with substances that are toxic above certain amounts (acute iron toxicity etc.). Also the more random stuff you take, the more likely it is that something you took actually does turn out to have been harmful later.

So no, you should not take something merely because it's "probably harmless".

jliptzin• 1 hour ago

It’s not completely harmless, for me it causes heart palpitations that are so bad my watch tells me I’m in atrial fibrillation. Yes I know this sounds crazy. I’ve ruled everything else out. No, it is not creatine mixed with caffeine or whatever. Just pure creatine. No, I don’t have any other heart issues. I can give myself an irregular heartbeat just by having some creatine. It doesn’t happen otherwise. I have seen a cardiologist, he said it’s rare but it is theoretically possible.

artrockalter• 5 hours ago

The null is surely different in this case because we know that supplemented creatine goes to the brain and the brain uses it, which is definitely not a claim all supplements can make.

The fact that there's a biologically plausible mechanism plus mixed statistical evidence makes "maybe" a perfectly reasonable conclusion.

Ker1022• 3 hours ago

You are essentially trying to say that most studies regarding supplements are not valid

Zababa• 2 hours ago

I think the way you interpret the null result is downstream of considering creatine as "a supplement". You can make the null result say anything by changing your prior about creatine or supplements. That's the issue with priors.

You also seem to reject the possibility that some things help just a bit. The author has another article in the same vein about "things that can help maybe a bit but the evidence we have doesn't really help detecting small effects" https://dynomight.net/vitamin-d/

rubyfruit3• 1 hour ago

People have no idea how successful big pharma’s info campaign has been since what I’m increasingly calling the real Web 3.0 (post-influencer social media and arrival of big corporate narratives).

According to Reddit, Epsom salt has no effect (doesn’t absorb) - you’re wasting your time by using it. They’ll cite all sorts of real, funded studies that agree and yet always the comment section is filled with anecdotal evidence of the contrary - to which a typical response is “hot water in general is soothing” (ignoring efficacy of magnesium sulfate in ice baths).

I digress - creatine is a similar situation. All this confusion at best. It’s also not unlike the health effects of cannabis just prior to going effectively legal - it either causes or cures cancer, or something? We need more research! That’s the real problem!

Any time you see this sort of narrative it’s corporate politics and influence at play.

By virtue of how hard it is to get any information on creatine, it probably threatens some market or vertical at least (whether or not it “works”). Like A. muscaria mushroom or sassafras, you’ll have to do your own research to really know.

nemomarx• 57 minutes ago

if there's a strong measurable effect to any of these supplements, why can't it be studied? there are companies on both sides, so someone who sells creatine could fund one if they like.

asdfman123• 55 minutes ago

Lots of state actors criticizing the US too. Bots everywhere.

techteach002• 49 minutes ago

That website examine is good for supplement info. They had to paywall most info because LLMS scraped the c$#p out of them m

coke12• 41 minutes ago

The Epsom salt meme predates your “Web 3.0” thesis by many decades. I have no idea if it’s true but it’s not indicative of any new trend.

pibaker• 39 minutes ago

Reddit is shit tier source for all kinds of information about commercial products. Even subreddits for niche hobbies are full of astroturfed advertising for random online businesses. There is no way the supplement industry isn't doing its own campaign over Reddit and other platforms especially when you consider how large of a market it is.

But sure, keep believing they are on your side.

aeonik• 6 hours ago

Studies I read seems to show a marginal boost in cognitionl and memory, but only if you were otherwise overtaxed for some reason.

Like being tired, stressed, etc...

slipnslider• 6 hours ago

Yep. From what I read mental fatigue (mental math problems is what the study used) or sleep deprivation are two scenarios in which creatine boosted cognition and memory.

Here are the sleep deprivation studies

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16416332/

softbuilder• 6 hours ago

I started taking 5g for cognition. Never any clear signal for that, but it does seem to help a bit with my (more than occasional) sleep deprivation. Mostly with fighting off headaches.

thisisauserid• 6 hours ago

Article's answer to its own question:

It safely builds muscle and boosts cognition.

dd8601fn• 6 hours ago

No, it does not.

More like "probably", "yes", and "probably not."

faangguyindia5• 6 hours ago

Sometimes I stay up until 1–3 a.m. because I'm working on a problem that's so interesting I can't stop until I make progress.

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.

pawelduda2• 6 hours ago

Do you take monohydrate or HCL?

faangguyindia5• 6 hours ago

most common one, monohydrate.

SkyPuncher• 3 hours ago

Monihydrate causes me terrible GI issues and insomnia. I’ve found HCL to me much easier on my body.

BugsJustFindMe2• 6 hours ago

If I know I'm only going to get a few hours of sleep, I'll ... drink plenty of water

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21517-dehydra...

faangguyindia5• 6 hours ago

from your link

Headache pain often appears along with other signs and symptoms of dehydration, including darker-than-usual pee, dry mouth and fatigue

none of these symptoms are true for me.

johnthedebs• 6 hours ago

Do you still drink water when you skip creatine? Being dehydrated causes headaches, so it may be the extra water intake that's helping and not the creatine.

faangguyindia5• 6 hours ago

yes, i always drink plenty of water throughout day and night too, infact when i get stuck on a problem i go for a walk and drink water.

So drinking water part is consistent with or without creatine. I do know the creatine takes a while to build up, so i don't know why it works but it does.

_superposition_3• 1 hour ago

I do the same thing with pickle juice. Works for me.

imzadi• 6 hours ago

This made me wonder if sun exposure/vitamin D has any impact on storing or processing creatine, and maybe that's why the results in Australia were so much greater

bassiee• 6 hours ago

In my experience, it wont make you smarter but my brain just feels more energized to think.

John238326• 6 hours ago

Most people taking creatine just need to drink water. They drink more water using creatine. In reality, the water/hydration is doing the heaviest lift, not the creatine.

Retr0id7• 6 hours ago

I take my creatine with as little volume of water as possible, probably less than 50ml. I doubt that 50ml is having much impact on my overall hydration.

clayhacks• 6 hours ago

How much water are you drinking the rest of the day? Creatine in theory makes you more thirsty such that you should be drinking more water throughout the day

John238326• 6 hours ago

If you actually drank enough water daily, sans creatine, I'm sure you'd feel better.

Isamu• 6 hours ago

A pity that water isn’t being sold as an expensive supplement. Or is it?

geophile• 6 hours ago

You're looking in the wrong place. There is a moderately large industry around water bottles.

jerlam2• 6 hours ago

There are lots like Vitamin water, alkaline, and coconut water. And overpriced salt packets like Nuun and LMNT.

There's also no shortage of expensive water bottles being sold, and smart water bottles that track your drinking frequencies and flavor pods sold via subscription.

TIPSIO• 6 hours ago

I don’t know. I personally wouldn’t take it if you aren’t also working out/lifting frequently (even if you drink a ton of water).

Anecdotal so safe to ignore this… but my hair did thin out but only after I was lazier on my work outs. Stopped taking and hair mostly returned to normal thank God.

leoqa3• 6 hours ago

I get severe muscle cramping, even after pounding water and electrolytes. Like I can’t handle my kid something in the car without risking a spasm.

parpfish• 6 hours ago

I like creatine when I’m lifting because it reduces soreness. For some people that effect helps them push further and train harder, for me it’s just proactive pain relief

0xmattf2• 1 hour ago

but my hair did thin out but only after I was lazier on my work outs.

How old are you?

Also, working out helps reduce stress. Does it seem more plausible that getting lazier on your workouts, rather than the creatine, increased stress in your life, thus the hair thinning?

I have never heard of creatine causing thinning hair.

jgbuddy3• 6 hours ago

This is not true. Did you read the article?

peder• 6 hours ago

People love to float this myth that everyone's just walking around dehydrated all the time and they do so based on absolutely no data.

John238326• 5 hours ago

Yes. None of the supposed action of creatine was backed by any statistically significant study. Just drink water. Or don't. It's up to you.

jacob_rezi• 6 hours ago

just reminded me to buy a decent waterbottle - thank you

richardlblair2• 6 hours ago

I slam a lot of water. I also have a toddler and baby who suck at sleeping (I've done all the things, these kids just suck at sleeping).

Since taking creatine I feel so much more energized. I can make it through the day with just 2 coffees (was previously drinking 5 coffees and an energy drink).

Maybe it's placebo. Maybe it's not. I don't really care. I feel the benefit and I love it.

jerlam2• 5 hours ago

"Creatine found to improve cognitive performance during sleep deprivation" (2024, 56 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40170474

throwforfeds2• 5 hours ago

I also drink a lot of water (always have). I also train Muay Thai and am in my 40s, which means an hour of 1:1 with my trainer would just leave me ridiculously tired. I started supplementing with creatine and immediately it was evident that it was working -- after 8-10 rounds on pads and the heavy bag I was fine. To the point where my trainer would often tell me to take another round on the bag.

At a certain point I was wondering if it was just placebo, stopped taking it for a month or so, and was quickly back to feeling tired after training. Started taking it again, back to feeling energized. It really does work.

kixiQu• 5 hours ago

Plausible-sounding mechanisms like you're presenting here do not add value to the discourse without data. There are tons of plausible mechanisms we could make up absent empirical evidence to distinguish them.

John238326• 4 hours ago

You’re yelling at clouds.

CalChris• 5 hours ago

I was taking 5mg of Creatine and was in the ER for an unrelated reason. My metabolic panel measured creatinine at 1.34 mg/dL. A panel from last year without the supplement was a very normal 0.95. These were gummies and I wasn’t slamming water.

BTW, it tends to trash the eGFR test which relies on an unbiased creatinine reading.

rubyfruit3• 55 minutes ago

The people who deny that Epsom salt has any effect say the same thing. They say it’s only the hot water relaxing your muscles not the Epsom salt.

But they fail to account for ice baths with Epsom.

Similarly you fail to account for anyone who takes creatine with any other food or beverage.

So I don’t love such theories.

neurahawk• 29 minutes ago

This is nonsense.

Creatine works because of buffering ATP and creatine kinase.

A problem though is that 1lb of chicken breast contains about 1.5 grams of creatine.

If a person is already eating a modern high protein diet, they are most likely already getting a decent amount of creatine.

I would imagine a vegetarian taking creatine would get a much better effect.

6thbit2• 6 hours ago

Why is creatine so popular lately? what changed?

gedy2• 6 hours ago

Health fads come and go

perrygeo• 5 hours ago

Creatine is a health fad? No other supplement has been this widely-used for such a long time. It was considered safe and effective when I started using it 30 years ago. The benefits are/were well established, the mechanisms well-known, the safety is impeccable. If anything, it's the most well-established supplement on the market - the exact opposite of a fad!

throwup2382• 6 hours ago

It’s always been popular among athletes and weight lifters but now nootropic influencers have gotten ahold of it. It’s one of the few supplements with robust scientific evidence of a strong effect but that’s in athletic performance not nootropics.

exhumet• 6 hours ago

another upside is its also hella cheap so its a very easy addin

6thbit2• 5 hours ago

and that scientific evidence is new? like a new study boosted this or just resurfacing?

matwood5• 6 hours ago

I've been taking 5g/creatine daily for nearly 30 years. In weightlifting circles it's always been popular because it's cheap and one of the few non-steroidal supplements that actually works.

pandaman• 2 hours ago

JRE mentioned it several times recently, I imagine it could have spiked interest but overall it's been growing over the past decade because of the advances in fitness trackers, IMO. It's been very easy to see its effect with trackers measuring FTP and VO2max.

igor_nast• 6 hours ago

Nope, but makes a producer's pocket heavier :D

croes• 6 hours ago

When you realize that, you got a little smarter

sspehr• 6 hours ago

Available short and long-term studies in healthy and diseased populations, from > infants to the elderly, at dosages ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 g/kg/day for up to 5 > years have consistently shown that creatine supplementation poses no adverse health risks and may provide a number of health and performance benefits.

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

jefozabuss• 5 hours ago

Likely. I did one time a creatine loading week of 30gr a day at 100kg body weight and I had to drink 7L of water to not feel like I have a hangover.

nonameiguess• 6 hours ago

The conclusions aren't any different (it's one of the few thing that helps strength, poses no danger to your hair, and almost certainly does nothing for cognition), but the articles at https://www.strongerbyscience.com/?s=creatine are far more comprehensive, including the famous extremely long podcast episodes they used to do.

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.

switchbak3• 6 hours ago

"poses no danger to your hair" I keep hearing folks say this, and even in this thread there's someone who's experienced that and had it stop when they eliminated creatine. I too have experienced exactly that with exactly the stopping of issues once I stopped taking creatine.

Perhaps you can say "danger to your hair is rare", but there's very clearly (to me at least) an effect there, and the way it gets hand-waved away is strange to me.

matwood5• 6 hours ago

This also misses caffeine as the other a-tier supplement

In college Ripped Fuel wasn't banned yet. We would take two, go to the gym for 2 hours, shower, then go out until the sun came up the next day. It's no surprise it was eventually banned. I think some people ended up dying by taking too many.

volkl48• 5 hours ago

poses no danger to your hair,

Last I checked, the only study actually focusing on this is n=38, out of Iran, and has heavy conflict of interest issues (funded by the supplement industry).

That's not remotely sufficient to consider this a settled fact.

BizarroLand• 3 hours ago

I feel like you would need to find some correlation between dosing creatine and increased DHT production to find a link between the two.

Creatine is not an anabolic steroid and does not increase testosterone levels, according to Harvard Health, so while there was 1 suspicious study that claimed that creatine increased DHT, that study has afterwards not been able to be replicated, and since creatine does not manipulate hormones but rather energy instead, it seems to as closes a possible to being a settled fact sans the final nail in the coffin.

doix• 6 hours ago

This matches what Gwern wrote years ago [0]. It does unequivocally make you stronger though. So if you're training anyway, may as well take it and hope it makes you smarter as well (just believing might be enough for that sweet placebo effect).

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

serf• 6 hours ago

Contrary to the common myth, thinking hard does not burn significantly more calories. (Demonstration: Start thinking hard, and watch as your heart rate does not increase.)

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

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

Aurornis• 6 hours ago

The original claim is not wrong. Thinking hard does not burn significantly more calories.

If it’s really hard to measure because the amount is so small that it requires precise equipment, it’s not significant relative to the rest of the body’s energy expenditure.

npilk• 1 hour ago

Interesting. I had heard that chess players burn a crazy amount of calories during tournament matches, but when I looked it up just now it seems like that isn't true: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/06/30/its-sapols...

zuzululu• 6 hours ago

if you are using to slim down it will hold on to water unless you are bulking i dont see creatine to be consumed regularly

if you truly want fuel for the brain nothing beats keto

blobbers• 6 hours ago

Okay, I skimmed the article.

Is creatine safe to supplement for children?

MadameMinty• 6 hours ago

thinking hard does not burn significantly more calories

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.

131012• 6 hours ago

I think another source of variation on the results is the actual nutritional intake of the subjects.

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) ?

ErroneousBosh• 5 hours ago

if you include fish in the vegetarian diet, which is odd but some people do that.

Meat Is Murder but Fish Is Justifiable Homicide.

dotcoma• 2 hours ago

It's OK to eat fish cause they don't have any feelings

- Something in the way, Nirvana

block_dagger• 5 hours ago

I have severe sleep apnea as well as insomnia. I may also be a multi-phasic sleeper. In any case my average sleep per night is ~3.5 hours with only ~1.5 hours of deep sleep. I use light therapy, CPAP, medications, etc but none of it solves my problems. I started taking creatine daily a couple of months ago. I've noticed a significant uptick in my cognitive abilities, despite being constantly sleep deprived. TFA doesn't touch on this apparent benefit of creatine, so thought I'd mention it for others who might be suffering from similar sleep issues.

mgraczyk2• 2 hours ago

I also started sleeping measurably better when I started taking creatine, but the broader evidence strongly suggests this was some kind of coincidence

boringg• 2 hours ago

What dosage are we talking here?

threecheese• 2 hours ago

Apnea sufferer here, for whom cpap stopped working after weight loss. It turned out that my mouth was opening during sleep, reducing the effectiveness of cpap, and after adding a chin strap to keep my mouth shut I have had very few apnea events.

The mouth-tapers aren’t always wrong (though we do always look silly).

gavinray• 1 hour ago

There was actually a VERY recent study on mega-dose creatine for sleep deprivation:

  > "Single dose creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in cerebral high energy phosphates during sleep deprivation"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9

You need a dose high enough to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, around 0.3g/kg (so ~30g for a 100kg person).

tyjen• 1 hour ago

Last year, I was severely sleep deprived, but needed to focus. On a whim, I took 25 grams of micronized creatine and it removed the issue with the dampened cognitive abilities. It just worked. It's nothing I would recommend as a long-term solution to sleep problems, but as a possible solution in a pinch, it could work.

jadbox• 55 minutes ago

Just a word of caution, 25g has a very strong chance of causing intense bloating. I'm part of multiple athletic teams, and the general consensus is that more than 10g is generally "uncomfortable" for its bloat pressure effects.

helterskelter• 1 hour ago

For sleep apnea you may look into playing the didgeridoo for 30 minutes a day. The circular breathing every day really improve people's symptoms, and I've heard you see results after a few weeks or months. I'm in the middle of trying this but unfortunately I just haven't been doing it every day.

I've also heard just practicing circular breathing by blowing through a straw into a cup of water can produce the same effect but playing a didge is just so much cooler.

aaronrobinson• 1 hour ago

Isn’t a didge just a big straw anyway?

smt88• 30 minutes ago

FYI, your sleep hygiene sounds good, but doctors have started to agree that primary, idiopathic insomnia doesn’t exist. It’s either anxiety or evidence of some severe disease or physiological condition.

So as long as you’re trying things, CBT is the most evidence-based long-term solution for the (very likely) cause of your insomnia.

msie• 5 hours ago

I just ordered some yesterday because I saw something that reminded what my friend said recently about it boosting cognition. Then this morning I saw it mentioned in some health segment on tv. Now I stumble upon this discussion. Hmmm.

jermberj• 5 hours ago

Wikipedia quotes a paper saying people make / recycle around 50 kilograms per day. That would imply that people make around 0.5787 grams per second. But this is in tension with the idea that people use 100 watts at rest. Since that 100 watt number seems to be more strongly established, I think 1 gram per second is a better estimate.

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.

zemvpferreira• 5 hours ago

Personally I have noticed a lot less cognitive impairment after a poor night’s sleep since starting on 10g per day. It seems to make a noticeable difference in my ability to reason and to act having slept less than 7 hours per night, even on consecutive nights.

blueSky1989• 5 hours ago

Maybe for some reason, Rae et al.’s cohort had lower baseline creatine levels?

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

eudamoniac• 4 hours ago

I experienced dramatic and obvious hair loss in my late twenties after starting creatine supplementation. I'm talking hundreds of hairs coming out every shower. It stopped when I stopped creatine. No I didn't make any other changes in diet or lifestyle at the time. I hadn't even heard of the link before that. This is actually one of those things that made me start doubting "the science" in general because it's supposedly not true, but, it obviously is true for my head beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ker1022• 4 hours ago

Its something you might aswell just take, no proven side negative side effects, unless you are gulping it, it will benefit you

jgbuddy3• 4 hours ago

I have definitely noticed improvements taking a larger dose with my energy when low on sleep, check out McMorris et al. (2006) which is not cited here. I agree it probably doesn't make you generally more 'smart' but it does may improve function under stress, e.g. when sleep deprived, also see Gordji-Nejad et al. (2024). I think the sleep benefits should at least be mentioned in this article.

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

odinthedog• 3 hours ago

Dang, missed opportunity to explain the actin-myosine sliding filament theory.

sajithdilshan• 3 hours ago

I wonder if there’s any long term studies like how the body gets adjusted to creatine. Because human body is remarkable at adjusting and setting new baselines and I wonder if it’s true with creatine as well, like to have the same effect you need to take more creatine the longer you keep on taking it

eduction• 2 hours ago

This in turn may increase the long-term gainz from strength-training exercise

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?

grvdrm2• 2 hours ago

I take 5g/day, through better part of last 9-12 months (don't remember when I started).

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).

sdevonoes• 2 hours ago

Im curious, since I don’t drink coffee nor take protein supplements and the like, my question is: is the plan you keep taking what you take, let’s say, “forever”? Because the moment you stop taking, wouldn’t you notice a big drop?

0xmattf2• 1 hour ago

Because the moment you stop taking, wouldn’t you notice a big drop?

No. They're not steroids.

gtowey• 1 hour ago

It's my understanding that creatine doesn't directly make you stronger, instead it gives your muscles the ability to work a bit longer. This means you can do more strength training per session which is the part which makes you stronger.

fhdkweig• 2 hours ago

A different discussion on the same general topic 51 days ago (and now flagged)

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

cljacoby• 1 hour ago

Personal anecdotal experience, but I experienced my most rapid period of hair loss while taking creatine. This was for about 1 year when I was 22-23.

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.

buttscicles• 1 hour ago

Yeah, enough people say this that I avoid taking creatine knowing I have the genetic predisposition for male pattern baldness, despite the lack of solid evidence.

Although OP's post says "There is no mechanistic reason to think that would happen." but I don't think that's true. Creatine is known to increase DHT, and higher levels of DHT is linked to hair loss.

jamal-kumar• 55 minutes ago

I switched from creatine to eating pickled herring or steak instead. It's WAY more expensive, but considering I don't live in a country with very great control over stuff like adulterants, I'll definitely elect for tasty and safe.

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)

t1234s• 52 minutes ago

I think its supposed to make you able to concentrate better when you are tired. For most people this can make them feel smarter.

techteach002• 47 minutes ago

On some drug abuse forums I visit people also claim creatine has antidepressant effects. I honestly can't tell but I take 3g daily.

anenefan• 10 minutes ago

I'd say probable in some situations - maybe more effect for people who are not eating well. I am not someone who takes or used drugs or alcohol - but the 90s I used pure low dose of creatine at about half teaspoon a day to help repair neck muscles damaged from treated-too-late whiplash. At the time my diet was probably poor even though I ate meat daily, had a low grade cold I hadn't been able to shake off for three years, and would blow a fuse easily around idiotic BS. After a few weeks I was pretty mellow and easy going, not to mention the cold had finally cleared up. I stopped taking it for various reasons, needing to be on top of BS quicker was one of those reasons. Later in life I have used it but not with the same pronounced effects.

rapamycin• 32 minutes ago

Scam through and through for omnivores

onesandofgrain• 31 minutes ago

scam through and through for omnivores

Does creatine make you smarter?

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