Don’t Take Creatine to Boost Brain Power

The popular supplement helps build muscle, but your brain isn’t a muscle

Image: Roy Stephen Pixabay

Advertisements, media stories and social media posts promote the idea that creatine will not only help you build muscle, but that it will strengthen your brain as well. Decades of research and the regimens of countless body builders provide evidence that consuming creatine promotes muscle growth and strength. But building a better brain? Well…

While it’s true that your muscles and brain both rely on creatine as a major source of energy, there’s not much research indicating creatine can improves mental performance.

While I came to that conclusion through my own evaluation of the research, the more I explored creatine and cognitive performance, the more I felt indebted to the work of Igor Eckert, an independent Brazilian researcher. He has written statistical critiques of peer-reviewed meta-analyses that have caused the authors of the scientific papers to completely retract their conclusions about the efficacy of creatine for improving brain function. He has highlighted how the largest studies of specific neurodegenerative conditions in humans have failed to show benefit for creatine. And he has written in scientific publications about how experts appear to use more lax standards for evaluating supplements…