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By MoMo · Sourced + cited
Published September 6, 2026·News · Nutrition science·15 min read
Creatine for women: what the September 4, 2026 meta-analysis of 424 women actually found, why the lean-mass number is smaller than the men's, what the water does and does not do, and the 5-gram protocol that makes it worth taking.
you have seen the wave. every third reel this year is a woman in her forties holding a tub of white powder and telling you it changed her life, and somewhere underneath it is the version of you at 1am going: isn't that the stuff the guys at the squat rack take. won't it make me puffy. is creatine just a bro thing, or is it actually for me.
i have a bias to declare before the numbers, because you should always know where the writer's money is. i do not sell creatine. i do not have a code. i take it, 5 grams in an iced coffee most mornings, and i have for years. so the honest thing i can do is read what came out on thursday, because on September 4, 2026 a group in China published the first meta-analysis built only on women, and it is smaller, more careful and more useful than the reels.
the short version is that creatine works in women, the effect is small, and the smallness is the interesting part. the rest of this is what the number means, why it is smaller than the men's, what the water does, and what to actually do with a tub.
the straight answer up front. across 21 studies and 424 women, creatine produced a small positive effect, Hedges g 0.23, with the clearest gains in strength and high-intensity performance and a small lean-mass effect that the authors say may partly be water. the evidence is rated low certainty and the studies disagree with each other a lot. in postmenopausal women, seven trials add up to +0.37 kg of lean mass and +7.5 kg on the leg press, but only at 5 grams a day or more, and only with lifting. safety in 951 women: no serious events, no extra gut trouble, and a scale change of about a kilo that was not different from placebo. so: yes, if you lift. it is a 5-gram edge on training, not a replacement for it.
Key facts
| g = 0.23 | overall effect of creatine in women across 21 studies, 170 outcomes, 424 participants; 95 percent interval 0.09 to 0.37 [Lin, Zhu & Hong 2026, Front Nutr] |
| +0.37 kg / +7.5 kg | lean mass and leg-press gain in postmenopausal women, 7 RCTs, 608 women, median 38 weeks; effect only at ≥5 g/day with resistance training [Naddafha 2026, JISSN] |
| +1.46 vs +0.29 kg | lean-mass gain with creatine plus lifting in men vs women across 35 trials; the women's interval crosses zero [Delpino 2022, Nutrition] |
| 20 to 25% | more strength gained over 10 weeks of training in 19 previously sedentary women on creatine vs placebo [Vandenberghe 1997, J Appl Physiol] |
| 1.24 → 1.37 kg | average body-weight difference in creatine-supplemented women before and after trials, 951 women; neither significant; no serious adverse events [de Guingand 2020, Nutrients] |
| 20 g × 6 d = 3 g × 28 d | both protocols raise muscle creatine by about 20 percent; a loading phase changes the speed, not the destination [Hultman 1996, J Appl Physiol] |
what did thursday's meta-analysis actually find.
the paper is Lin, Zhu and Hong, Frontiers in Nutrition, September 4, 2026. they searched for every trial of creatine in females who were exercising or training, found 34 studies covering 692 women, and could fit 21 of them, with 170 separate outcomes and 424 women, into one statistical model. that model is the first of its kind. every creatine number you have ever been quoted came from a pool that was mostly men, with women's results folded in at the edges.
the headline result is a Hedges g of 0.23. hedges g is a standardised effect size: it tells you how far the creatine group finished from the placebo group, in units of how spread out people were to begin with. the usual reading is that 0.2 is small, 0.5 is medium, 0.8 is large. so 0.23 is a small, real, positive effect, and the confidence interval, 0.09 to 0.37, does not touch zero. it is not nothing and it is not the reels.
this is the chart to keep. the effect is small and real, it lives in the performance lane, strength and sprint and jump outputs at 0.30, and it disappears in the physiology lane, the blood markers and oxygen numbers, at 0.10 with an interval that crosses zero. read that as: creatine changes what you can do in a hard set. it does not change your bloodwork.
now the honest lines, because this is the paper the whole article leans on. the authors graded their own certainty as low for performance and body composition, and very low overall. the studies were all over the place: soccer players, dancers, wrestlers, recreationally active women, different doses, four days to three months, and a heterogeneity figure of 71 percent, which means most of the variation between studies is real disagreement, not chance. they also flag that the body-composition effect may be partly water, and that almost nobody recorded where the women were in their cycle or whether they were on the pill. and the effect in trials that ran a week or less was not significant on its own; it needed more than seven days to show. so the paper's own conclusion is measured: possible small effects on strength, power and lean mass, not a universal recommendation. that is a more careful sentence than anything on the reels, and it is the one i trust.
what is creatine actually doing in there.
the mechanism matters here because it explains the whole shape of the results. your muscle has a few seconds of instant fuel called ATP, the molecule every contraction spends. when a set starts, ATP runs out almost immediately, and the thing that refills it fastest is phosphocreatine: creatine with a phosphate bolted on, sitting in the muscle waiting. phosphocreatine hands its phosphate to the spent ATP and the contraction continues. that system is the first ten seconds of anything hard, a heavy triple, a sprint, the last reps of a set where the bar slows down. after that, sugar and oxygen take over and creatine is a bystander.
so creatine supplementation does one thing: it raises the amount of creatine stored in muscle by about 20 percent. that number comes from biopsies. in the classic loading study, 31 men took either 20 grams a day for six days or 3 grams a day for 28 days, and both groups ended at roughly the same 20 percent rise. stop taking it and the muscle drifts back to baseline over about a month. in women specifically, a four-day load raised muscle phosphocreatine by 6 percent measured directly by magnetic resonance, and 5 grams a day held it there for ten weeks of training.
a fuller tank means a few more reps before the bar slows, across weeks of sessions, and that is where the strength and lean-mass numbers come from. creatine does not build muscle. it lets you do slightly more of the thing that builds muscle. that is also why the effect is zero without training: in 35 trials pooled, creatine with lifting added 1.10 kg of lean mass and creatine with no exercise added 0.03 kg. a fuller tank you never drive is just a fuller tank.
why is the number smaller for women.
here is the part every page-one article skips, and the part you actually need to make a decision. when researchers split the creatine-plus-lifting trials by sex, men gained 1.46 kg of lean mass on creatine and women gained 0.29 kg, and the women's interval, minus 0.43 to plus 1.01, crosses zero. a 2025 meta-analysis of 69 strength studies found the same shape: on the bench press, women on creatine gained a statistically real but tiny 0.15 kg more than placebo across 12 interventions, men gained 1.34 kg; on the squat, men gained 6.43 kg and the women's estimate, 1.63 kg, was not significant across 5 interventions; on the leg press, 3 interventions in women could not separate creatine from placebo at all.
so what is going on. four things, and they stack. one: absolute size. a kilogram of new lean tissue is a bigger ask of a 62-kilo body than an 85-kilo one, and every one of these numbers is in kilograms, not percent. the older, cross-sex analysis that looked at effect sizes rather than kilos, 100 studies pooled in 2003, found no difference between men and women once the outcome was standardised. two: the studies. the women's leg-press estimate rests on three interventions, the squat on five. you cannot get a tight answer from that. three: starting stores. the international review on creatine misconceptions notes that women may carry a higher creatine concentration per kilo of muscle, possibly because there is less muscle to spread it across, and a fuller starting tank has less room to fill. that is the same reason vegetarians, who start lower, respond more, and why the biggest responders in biopsy studies are the people with the lowest initial creatine. four: who was in the trial. the two cleanest women-only training studies point in opposite directions and it is not a coincidence which is which. 19 sedentary women starting from scratch gained 20 to 25 percent more strength and 60 percent more fat-free mass on creatine over ten weeks. 26 already-trained women on a similar protocol gained nothing extra at all, and the authors reached for the word nonresponders. the beginner's tank had room; the trained lifter's was fuller and her training was already harder to improve on.
you will also see, on nearly every women's-health page, the line that women have "70 to 80 percent lower creatine stores" than men. it comes from a 2021 review, and it is doing a lot of marketing work. read it carefully: it is a total-body figure that folds in less muscle mass and lower dietary creatine from eating less meat. it is not a claim that the muscle you have is running on empty, and the misconceptions review above says the per-kilo concentration may in fact be higher in women. less total creatine, not emptier muscle. both things can be true, and only one of them makes a good reel.
will it make me puffy.
this is the real question, so here is the real answer with the mechanism attached. creatine is osmotically active, meaning where it goes, water follows. it is pulled into muscle by a transporter that also moves sodium, and water comes along to keep the cell's concentration balanced. so yes, a loaded muscle holds more water. the question is where.
the study that answers it measured 32 people, 16 men and 16 women, through a 7-day load and 3 weeks of maintenance, with a tracer that separates water inside cells from water outside them. muscle creatine went up, body mass went up, total body water went up, and the split between inside and outside the cells did not change. the water went where the creatine went: into muscle. it did not pool under the skin, which is the puffiness people are actually afraid of. and the misconceptions review adds the piece the short studies miss: the water rise is a first-days effect, and across the 5-to-10-week training studies it tracked, total body water was not different from placebo by the end.
the scale, though, will move, and you should expect it so you do not quit on day nine. across 29 female trials that tracked side effects, 951 women, the average body-weight difference on creatine was 1.24 kg before and 1.37 kg after, neither statistically different from placebo, with no more gut complaints than placebo, a risk ratio of 1.09, and no serious adverse events at all. so the honest expectation is a kilo, maybe two, in the first fortnight, that is inside your muscle, that your waist tape will not find. if the scale is a problem for your head, the overnight-weight article explains why that number was never measuring fat anyway.
What the tub and the comments say
and what it rests on
- "it makes women bloated" — rests on the first week of a 20-gram load; 5-to-10-week studies show no extra body water
- "women have 70 to 80 percent less creatine" — a total-body figure that includes having less muscle; per-kilo concentration may be higher
- "it causes hair loss" — one 2009 study of 20 male rugby players, never replicated, contradicted by a 2025 trial that measured hair
- "it builds muscle" — with no training the pooled lean-mass effect is 0.03 kg
What the trials say
the sourced version
- small, real performance effect in women — g 0.30 on strength and power outputs [Lin 2026]
- water goes into muscle, not under skin — inside/outside split unchanged in 16 women [Powers 2003]
- about a kilo on the scale, not different from placebo — 951 women, no serious events [de Guingand 2020]
- it works when you lift — +1.10 kg lean mass with training, +0.03 without [Delpino 2022]
the hair thing, the kidney thing, and the other reasons you were told to skip it.
hair. every warning you have read traces to a single study: 20 male rugby players in 2009, in whom a loading week raised dihydrotestosterone, the hormone involved in male-pattern baldness, by 56 percent, settling to 40 percent above baseline on a maintenance dose. testosterone itself did not move. nobody measured hair. it has never been replicated, and in 2025 a group finally measured the actual thing: 45 trained men, 12 weeks of 5 grams a day or placebo, with hair density, follicle count and hair thickness photographed and counted. no difference, in hormones or in hair. both studies are men only. no trial has ever measured hair loss in women on creatine, so the precise answer is: no evidence for it, and the one mechanism proposed did not survive testing.
kidneys. creatine raises blood creatinine, which is the waste product doctors use to estimate kidney function. that is a measurement artefact, not damage: more creatine in, more creatinine out. a 2019 meta-analysis of renal outcomes found no kidney harm at the doses and durations studied, the female-only safety review found no renal or liver differences, and the international position stand calls it safe at up to 30 grams a day for five years in healthy people. in the year-long trial in postmenopausal women below, creatinine clearance was checked throughout and stayed normal. if you have an actual kidney condition, that is a conversation with a doctor, not a blog. tell them you take it so the creatinine number does not scare either of you.
fat. the misconceptions review walked through randomised trials from one week to two years, including one in recreationally active women doing interval training, and found no effect of creatine on fat mass in any of them. the scale moves. the fat does not.
the brain lane, which is where the women's numbers get interesting.
your brain runs the same ATP-and-phosphocreatine system your muscles do, and it burns hard when you are sleep-deprived, stressed, or thinking under pressure. this is the lane where women's results are, unusually, larger than men's, and also the lane where i want you to hold the claims loosest, because the trials are small.
the cleanest data is sleep deprivation. in 29 adults kept awake for 21 hours, a single dose of creatine, 0.2 grams per kilo, cut the overnight decline in logic, processing speed and reaction time by up to 12 percent, and women benefited more than men on the logic, vigilance and processing-speed tasks. an older study found the same shape: a week of creatine before 24 hours awake preserved reaction time, balance and mood. pooled across 16 randomised trials and 492 people, creatine improved memory with a standardised effect of 0.31, moderate certainty, and processing speed with low certainty, and again the subgroup effect was larger in women and in people aged 18 to 60.
then mood. in 52 women with major depression, adding 5 grams of creatine to a standard antidepressant produced faster and larger improvement than adding placebo, visible by week two. and in 22,692 American adults surveyed, the quarter eating the least creatine in their food had a depression rate of 10.2 per hundred against 6.0 in the quarter eating the most, an association that was strongest in women. that is a survey, not a trial, so it can only say "these travel together". the same authors who run the sleep-deprivation lab published a review this January titled, roughly, have we put the cart before the horse, and their answer is that brain creatine responses depend on dose and duration and that the clinical findings are "preliminary and inconsistent". i take it for the lifting. the brain effects are a possible bonus i would not pay for on their own.
what about after 40.
this is where the women-specific evidence is strongest, and it is not close. a meta-analysis published this May pooled seven randomised trials in postmenopausal women, 608 of them, average age 62, running 12 weeks to two years. creatine added 0.37 kg of lean mass by DXA scan and 7.5 kg to the leg press, with the leg-press trials in perfect agreement with each other. the condition was clear: 5 grams a day or more, combined with resistance training. trials using 3 grams or less without lifting showed nothing. bone density did not change overall. side effects were mild and matched placebo, and kidney markers did not move.
the individual trials underneath it are worth knowing because they are the ones with a tape measure and a barbell. in 47 postmenopausal women lifting three days a week for a year, the creatine group lost 1.2 percent of bone density at the hip's femoral neck against 3.9 percent on placebo, widened the femoral shaft, which predicts bending strength, and gained 64 percent on relative bench press against 34 percent. in 60 older women classed as vulnerable, six months of creatine plus lifting raised leg press by 19.9 percent against 15 percent for lifting alone and 2.4 percent for placebo, and added arm-and-leg lean mass while every other group lost it or stood still. and in 22 trials in older adults of both sexes, creatine during training added 1.37 kg of lean tissue over placebo. after menopause, the case is not "is it worth it". it is "why are you not." muscle and bone are leaving on a schedule, and this is one of two supplements with trial evidence that slows it. the other one is protein, and the protein article is the number for that.
what actually changes for you.
the news is a number, and the number is small. here is what that small number means in practice, and the protocol that the trials that worked actually used. this is what i would tell you if you asked me in a DM.
| Decision | What the evidence says | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Take it or not | Small real effect in lifting women [g 0.23]; zero lean-mass effect without training | If you lift 2+ days a week, yes. If you do not, spend the money on the gym first. |
| Which one | Every trial above used creatine monohydrate; other forms have no advantage in the data | Plain monohydrate powder. Flavoured, "HCl", gummies and capsules cost more for the same molecule or less of it. |
| How much | 3 to 5 g/day, or 0.1 g/kg; postmenopausal effect only at ≥5 g/day [Naddafha 2026] | 5 grams a day, every day, training day or not. A 60-kg lifter is at 6 g on the per-kilo rule; a level teaspoon is about 5. |
| Loading | 20 g × 6 days and 3 g × 28 days reach the same +20% [Hultman 1996]; the load is where the water week comes from | Skip it. Take 5 g and give it a month. If you have a meet in a week, load at 4 × 5 g and accept the kilo. |
| The scale | +1.2 to 1.4 kg average in women, not different from placebo, inside muscle [de Guingand 2020; Powers 2003] | Measure your waist the day you start. Reweigh in 3 weeks. The tape is the truth, the scale is the water. |
| Your cycle | Only one trial has checked: loading improved sprint fatigue most in the high-hormone half [Gordon 2023] | Do not cycle it with your cycle. Daily, all month. The luteal weeks are the ones where the tank helps most, not least. |
| If you are vegetarian | Lower starting stores, larger response in muscle creatine, lean tissue and work done [Burke 2003] | You are the person this works best on. Same 5 g. |
| If nothing happens | Trained women with full stores may not respond [Ferguson 2006; Syrotuik 2004] | Give it 8 weeks with a log. If the bar has not moved and the tape has not moved, stop; you are allowed. |
and one thing the trials cannot tell you, which is what it feels like. it does not feel like anything. there is no buzz, no pump you can point at, no day-three moment. what happens, if it happens, is that in week three the last rep of a set that used to stall does not stall, and you write down one more rep than last week, and the rule for adding weight fires a session earlier than it would have. that is the whole effect, stacked across a year. it is a rounding error per set and a real number per year, which is exactly what a g of 0.23 looks like from the inside.
so. is it a bro thing.
it was studied on bros for thirty years, which is not the same as being for them. the first women-only meta-analysis says the effect is there, small, and strongest in the exact places you train for: the heavy set, the sprint, the last rep. the postmenopausal data says it gets more important with age, not less. the safety data in 951 women says the scary stories rest on twenty rugby players and the first week of a loading dose. if you lift, take 5 grams a day of the cheapest monohydrate you can find, measure your waist, and give it two months. if you do not lift, it is a fuller tank in a parked car. the bros were right about one thing. it is a shame it took until thursday to have the paper that said so about us.
Quick answers
is creatine worth it for women?
yes, if you lift. the September 2026 meta-analysis of 21 studies and 424 women found a small positive effect overall, Hedges g 0.23, with the clearest gains in performance measures like strength and sprint output. the effect is real but modest and the evidence quality is rated low, so treat it as a 5-gram-a-day edge on top of training, not a substitute for it. without resistance training the lean-mass effect in trials is essentially zero.
will creatine make me bloated or puffy?
it adds water inside muscle, not under skin. in a study of 16 men and 16 women, four weeks of creatine raised total body water but did not change the split between water inside and outside cells. across 951 women in safety trials the average weight change was about 1.2 to 1.4 kilograms and not statistically different from placebo, and gastrointestinal complaints were no more common than placebo. the scale can move 1 to 2 kilograms in the first two weeks; your waist measurement should not.
do women need to do a creatine loading phase?
no. 20 grams a day for six days and 3 grams a day for 28 days end at the same place, about a 20 percent rise in muscle creatine. loading gets you there in a week instead of a month and is the phase most associated with the early water gain. a plain 3 to 5 grams of creatine monohydrate daily, or 0.1 grams per kilogram of body weight, is the dose used in most of the trials that worked.
does creatine cause hair loss in women?
there is no evidence that it does. the entire concern traces to one 2009 study of 20 male rugby players in which a hormone linked to male-pattern baldness rose after a loading phase. it has never been replicated, and a 2025 randomised trial that measured hair density, follicle count and hair thickness directly over 12 weeks of 5 grams a day found no change. no trial has ever measured hair loss in women on creatine, so the honest answer is no evidence for it, and no mechanism that survived testing.
Creatine is the 5 grams. The Fighter is the thing the 5 grams works on: the program, the progression rule, the food, and the part where you actually add the rep. Every number in this article assumes you are lifting. This is the lifting.
START FIGHTERkeep reading
- how much protein do i actually need. — the other supplement with trial evidence, and it is food
- why did i gain weight overnight. — the scale, the water, and why the number was never fat
- do i still lift on my period. — the high-hormone weeks the creatine trial found most useful
- how jacked can i actually get. — relative vs absolute muscle growth, the same kilos-vs-percent problem as this chart
- when am i supposed to add weight. — the rule the extra rep feeds into
References
| Source | What it supports |
|---|---|
| Lin, Zhu & Hong 2026, Front Nutr, doi 10.3389/fnut.2026.1921827 — creatine in females engaged in exercise or training, systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis [published Sep 4, 2026] | 34 studies / 692 women reviewed; 21 studies / 170 effects / 424 women modelled: overall g 0.23 [0.09–0.37]; performance 0.30 [0.06–0.54]; body composition 0.24 [0.06–0.43]; physiology 0.10 [−0.17–0.38] ns; ≤7-day trials ns; I² 71%; GRADE low / very low; lean-mass rise "may partly reflect water" |
| Naddafha, Antonio, Kreider & Stout 2026, J Int Soc Sports Nutr 23(1):2668435 — creatine for lean mass, strength and bone density in postmenopausal women, meta-analysis | 7 RCTs, 608 women, 12–104 wk: lean mass +0.37 kg [0.05–0.69]; leg press +7.5 kg [2.2–12.8]; effect only at ≥5 g/day with resistance training; BMD unchanged; adverse events and renal indices = placebo |
| Delpino et al. 2022, Nutrition 103-104:111791 — influence of age, sex and exercise type on creatine and lean body mass, meta-analysis of RCTs | 35 RCTs, 1,192: with resistance training +1.10 kg [0.56–1.65]; no exercise +0.03 ns; males +1.46 kg [0.47–2.46] vs females +0.29 [−0.43–1.01] ns |
| Kazeminasab et al. 2025, Nutrients 17(17):2748 — creatine and upper- and lower-body strength and power, meta-analysis | 69 studies, 1,937: bench +1.43 kg, squat +5.64 kg overall; by sex, bench females +0.15 kg [0.002–0.30] vs males +1.34; squat females +1.63 ns [5 interventions]; leg press females +2.53 ns [3 interventions] |
| Vandenberghe et al. 1997, J Appl Physiol 83(6):2055–63 — long-term creatine intake during resistance training in sedentary females | 19 women, 10 wk: phosphocreatine +6%; maximal strength +20–25% more, fat-free mass +60% more than placebo; stores normalise within 4 wk of stopping |
| Ferguson & Syrotuik 2006, J Strength Cond Res 20(4):939–46 — creatine in experienced resistance-trained women | 26 trained women, 10 wk: no difference from placebo in lean mass, bench, leg press or training volume; authors cite nonresponders |
| Hultman et al. 1996, J Appl Physiol 81(1):232–7 — muscle creatine loading in men | 31 men: 20 g/day × 6 d and 3 g/day × 28 d both raise muscle creatine ≈20%; 2 g/day maintains; baseline again ≈30 d after stopping |
| Powers et al. 2003, J Athl Train 38(1):44–50 — creatine increases total body water without altering fluid distribution | 16 men + 16 women, 7-d load + 21-d maintenance: muscle creatine, body mass and total body water up; intracellular / extracellular split unchanged |
| de Guingand et al. 2020, Nutrients 12(6):1780 — risk of adverse outcomes in females taking creatine monohydrate, meta-analysis | 58 female-only studies of 656 [9%]; 29 reported adverse events, 951 women: no deaths or serious events; total events RR 1.24 [0.51–2.98]; GI RR 1.09; weight MD 1.24 → 1.37 kg, both ns; no renal or hepatic difference |
| Antonio et al. 2021, J Int Soc Sports Nutr 18:13 — common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation | Water retention is a first-days effect, no extra body water across 5–10-wk training studies; females may hold higher creatine per kg of muscle; hair-loss concern rests on one unreplicated study; loading not required; no fat-mass effect in RCTs of 1 wk–2 yr |
| van der Merwe, Brooks & Myburgh 2009, Clin J Sport Med 19(5):399–404 — creatine and the DHT-to-testosterone ratio in rugby players | 20 college-aged men: DHT +56% after 7-day load, +40% at 21 d; testosterone unchanged; hair not measured; never replicated |
| Lak et al. 2025, J Int Soc Sports Nutr 22(sup1):2495229 — does creatine cause hair loss? 12-week RCT | 45 resistance-trained men, 5 g/day vs placebo, 38 completed: no group-by-time effect on DHT, testosterone, hair density, follicle count or thickness |
| de Souza e Silva et al. 2019, J Ren Nutr 29(6):480–9 — creatine and renal function, meta-analysis · Kreider et al. 2017, ISSN position stand | 15 studies: no renal damage at studied doses and durations; position stand: safe up to 30 g/day for 5 years in healthy people |
| Chilibeck et al. 2015, Med Sci Sports Exerc 47(8):1587–95 — creatine and resistance training on bone in postmenopausal women | 47 women, 12 months, 0.1 g/kg/day: femoral neck BMD −1.2% vs −3.9% placebo; femoral shaft width increased; relative bench press +64% vs +34%; creatinine clearance normal throughout |
| Gualano et al. 2014, Exp Gerontol 53:7–15 — creatine and resistance training in vulnerable older women, RCT | 60 women, 24 wk, four arms: leg press +19.9% creatine + training vs +15% training alone, +2.4% placebo; bench +10% only in creatine + training; appendicular lean mass +1.31% vs −0.2 to −1.2% elsewhere |
| Chilibeck et al. 2017, Open Access J Sports Med 8:213–26 — creatine during resistance training in older adults, meta-analysis | 22 studies, 721 adults 57–70 y: lean tissue +1.37 kg [0.97–1.76]; chest press SMD 0.35; leg press 0.24 |
| Burke et al. 2003, Med Sci Sports Exerc 35(11):1946–55 — creatine and weight training in vegetarians · Syrotuik & Bell 2004, J Strength Cond Res 18(3):610–7 — responders vs nonresponders | Vegetarian muscle creatine 117 vs 130 mmol/kg; lower starting stores, larger response; responders have the lowest initial creatine and most type II fibre |
| Xu et al. 2024, Front Nutr 11:1424972 [corrigendum 2025] — creatine and cognitive function in adults, meta-analysis | 16 RCTs, 492: memory SMD 0.31 [0.18–0.44], moderate certainty; processing speed −0.51, low certainty; larger effects in females and ages 18–60 |
| Gordji-Nejad et al. 2026, Nutrients 18(8):1192 — single-dose creatine and sleep-deprivation cognition · McMorris et al. 2006, Psychopharmacology 185(1):93–103 | 29 adults, 21 h awake, 0.2 g/kg: up to 12% less deterioration, females benefited more; 7-day creatine before 24 h awake preserved reaction time, balance, mood |
| Lyoo et al. 2012, Am J Psychiatry 169(9):937–45 — creatine augmentation of an SSRI in women with major depression, RCT · Bakian et al. 2020, Transl Psychiatry 10:52 — dietary creatine and depression, NHANES | 52 women, 8 wk: greater improvement from week 2 with 5 g/day creatine; NHANES 22,692: depression 10.2 vs 6.0 per 100 in lowest vs highest creatine-intake quartile, strongest in women. Survey = association only |
| Candow et al. 2026, J Diet Suppl 23(2):175–204 — creatine and the brain: have we put the cart before the horse? | Brain creatine response is dose and duration dependent; clinical findings "preliminary and inconsistent"; benefits clearest under acute metabolic stress like sleep deprivation |
| Gordon et al. 2023, Nutrients 15(16):3567 — creatine loading and recovery across the menstrual cycle | 39 women, crossover, 20 g/day load: sprint fatigue index −5.8% vs +0.1% placebo in the high-hormone phase [interaction p = 0.048]; heart-rate variability unchanged |
| Smith-Ryan et al. 2021, Nutrients 13(3):877 — creatine in women's health, a lifespan perspective · Branch 2003, Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab 13(2):198–226 — meta-analysis of 100 studies | Source of the "70–80% lower endogenous stores" figure; Branch: body-composition effect size 0.17 with no difference between males and females once standardised |
educational content, not medical advice. the numbers above are group results: the women-only meta-analysis is rated low to very low certainty with high heterogeneity; the women's lean-mass and lower-body strength subgroups rest on three to five interventions each; the body-water study is 32 people over four weeks; the hair and hormone trials are men only; the brain findings come from small trials and one survey; the postmenopausal effects required 5 grams a day with lifting. if you have kidney disease, are pregnant, or take medication that affects the kidneys, ask a doctor before starting. everything in the tables is sourced.
- MoMo