Can Creatine Supplements Make Your Brain Stronger?

Dana G. Smith

Experts generally agree that creatine can help you build slightly stronger muscles. Could the supplement also help to strengthen your brain?

That assertion has been gaining momentum, particularly on social media, and experts say it’s plausible. But they emphasize that caveats abound, and, when it comes to many of the claims, the hype has gotten ahead of the science.

“I think a little dose of reality needs to really come into what we’re talking about on the brain health side of things,” said Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario. “Promise? Sure. But lots of things show promise.”

Energizing the Brain

Creatine plays a critical role in the production of the body’s main source of cellular energy, ATP. That’s why if you lift weights and take creatine, it can help you train a little bit harder so that you can get a little bit stronger.

The brain is an especially hungry organ, accounting for roughly 20% of the body’s energy consumption. That fact, combined with creatine’s effect on muscle cells, led to the theory that creatine supplementation might also energize brain cells, helping people focus better, think more clearly and overcome fatigue.

But the brain keeps its creatine supplies under tight control. In fact, the organ actually synthesizes its own creatine to ensure it has enough. Creatine made in the liver and elsewhere in the body, or consumed through diet or supplements, is able to pass through the blood brain barrier via a special transporter protein, but only in very small amounts.

The brain “doesn’t have an open gate” that says, “‘welcome all creatine,’” said Mehdi Boroujerdi, an expert in pharmaceutical sciences and author of the “Handbook of Creatine and Creatinine In Vivo Kinetics.”

“If you increase the dose of the creatine and assume that is going to increase the concentration of creatine in the brain, it’s a questionable concept,” he added.

A few small studies have shown that supplementing with a large dose of creatine — typically 20 grams, roughly four times the amount recommended daily for building muscle — can increase brain levels of the molecule by about 5% to 10%. But other research has not shown an increase in brain creatine from supplementation.

Whether a small brain creatine boost is enough to make a difference in a person’s ability to think, remember and make decisions is also an open question. Indeed, most studies have not shown a cognitive benefit when healthy adults, young and old, are given a creatine supplement. Experts think that may be because the brain is already at capacity for creatine, so adding more would not be advantageous.

There may be an exception, though: A few small studies have found that during times of exhaustion and stress, supplementing with creatine may improve performance on some aspects of cognition — following sleep deprivation, for instance, or a challenging mental or physical workout, though the evidence there is weaker.

“If you take the average healthy person,” creatine provides no cognitive benefits, said Darren Candow, a professor of kinesiology and health studies at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan who’s conducted some of the research.

But, he added, “when the brain is metabolically stressed — so, you know, sleep deprivation, hypoxia, university students staying up all night — maybe the brain says, ‘Hey, I need a little bit of help, and what I’m naturally making might not be enough.’” (Candow is on the advisory board of several supplement companies.)

Healing the Brain

Creatine supplements have also been hypothesized as a way to help the brain when it is challenged by disease or injury.

There is evidence that people with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders have impaired energy metabolism in the brain, and supplementing with creatine could be a way to increase production. But clinical trials testing creatine supplementation in Huntington’s and Parkinson’s patients have been disappointing, not showing a benefit for people’s symptoms.

One recent study of 20 Alzheimer’s patients was more promising. It found that taking a large dose of creatine for two months increased brain levels by 11%. Participants also performed better on tests of cognition at the end of the study. But there was no placebo control, so the cognitive benefit could have been from a practice effect, wherein the participants performed better the second time they took the tests because they were familiar with them.

“I’m not saying that we improved their memory,” said Matthew Taylor, an associate professor of dietetics and nutrition at the University of Kansas Medical Center who led the research. “We saw associated effects, and it could be due to other things — I don’t want to rule that out. But it is compelling evidence that we should continue looking at this.”

That call for more research into how creatine supplementation affects the brain in various ways was echoed by other experts. “Large-scale trials and long-term outcomes are nil at this point,” Phillips said.

“The honest truth,” he added, is we have “done nowhere near the amount of science that’s needed to unpack this.”