How To Use Creatine To Improve Cognition

Creatine is emerging as a powerful brain fuel.

Creatine can make you smarter. It's basically an established fact now that creatine supplementation will increase your strength, aid in building bigger muscles, and improve your all-around performance.

But creatine has been found to provide benefits for much more than just athletics and looks. Recently, one of the more interesting areas of research has focused on creatine's role in cognition and whether supplementation can improve it. Here's what you need to know about taking creatine for your cognition.

Recap: What Is Creatine?

By now, most people know what creatine is, but here's a recap. 

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound stored within the body's muscles and liver. Its primary physiological role is to maintain energy availability by replenishing adenosine triphosphate (ATP) through the phosphocreatine system (one of your three metabolic systems).

During short bursts of high-intensity activity, creatine rapidly donates a phosphate group to regenerate ATP, the body's immediate energy currency. This buffering system supports muscle contraction, cellular energy stability, and proper function of energy-demanding tissues like the brain.

Your creatine levels are constantly being used and restored. Naturally, your body has two mechanisms to maintain creatine levels;

• Consumed with your diet (i.e., Red meat, fish)
• Synthesized through other amino acids

Due to a person's individual diet and lifestyle, these levels will vary but generally sit at around 60-80%¹. This is why you supplement to "fill" these levels.

How Does Creatine Improve Cognition?

In the past, creatine was thought to be primarily a supplement for athletes and bodybuilders. 

Higher creatine levels generate more ATP for intense activities such as weightlifting and sprinting. This allows a greater workload, resulting in improved performance. 

However, due to its substantial success in various studies, researchers began to notice its potential in other areas. This includes your brain and cognition.

Your Brain And Creatine

Just like your muscles, ATP is used to support energy metabolism for your brain. We don't think about it, but the brain consumes a ton of energy. In fact, some research suggests it accounts for up to 20% of the body's energy consumption.²

When it comes to brain processes, ATP supports a plethora of functions, including: 

• Neurotransmission
• Memory formation
• Problem-solving

Supplementing with creatine increases the phosphocreatine stores in the brain in special neurons and glial cells. These are concentrated in regions with the highest energy demand, such as: ²

• Cerebral cortex - Involved in memory, attention, and higher-order thinking 
• Hippocampus - Critical for learning and memory formation 
• Basal ganglia - Important for motor control and procedural learning

When these stores are full, they allow faster regeneration of ATP, especially during times of high demand or stress.

Mechanisms of Cognitive Enhancement

"Brain health" and "improve cognition" are pretty broad terms, so let's examine some specifics. What areas of cognition has creatine been found to improve?

1. Increase In Cognitive Functions. As we saw above, creatine kinase is found in various areas of the brain that play a role in cognition. At the same time, metabolic dysfunctions that result in drops in creatine have been connected with cognitive and neurodevelopmental defects.

This can result in a variety of benefits, including: ²⁻⁴

• Memory improvements
• Intelligence/reasoning
• Response time

These can improve to varying degrees depending on the person and their condition.

2. Neuroprotection and Oxidative Stress. Creatine acts as a neuroprotector by providing continual levels of ATP. When ATP is insufficient, a chain reaction can begin, leading to oxidative stress that can damage crucial compounds in the brain.

At the same time, creatine may even improve mitochondrial function, which further mitigates oxidative stress.

Chronic, providing plenty of creatine can potentially mitigate the risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Huntington's, and ALS.⁵

3. Neurotransmission and Plasticity. Sustaining creatine levels and ATP availability helps regulate ion pumps and neurotransmitter release at synapses, ensuring efficient communication between neurons.⁶

This is thought to be due to its effect on various neurotransmitters responsible for mood, learning, and memory. This includes;

• Dopamine
• Glutamate
• GABA

Stabilizing energy supply for cognition can improve long-term potentiation, which is responsible for memory formation and learning.

Together, these effects position creatine as a potential enhancer of both neural signaling and adaptive brain plasticity.

4. Sleep Deprivation & Mental Fatigue. One of the more interesting benefits of creatine supplementation is its role in mental fatigue, particularly in cases of sleep deprivation. Obviously, we should all be getting plenty of sleep.  However, that's not always possible for business workers or students.⁷

Research shows that supplementing with creatine can actually mitigate the ill effects of sleep deprivation and improve mental performance.

Evidence from Research

The influence of creatine supplementation on the cognitive functioning of vegetarians and omnivores. (2011)¹⁰

Here we're going to break down some of the individual studies that have provided us with information.

One of the earliest studies that showed creatine had a definite effect on cognition was actually done comparing vegans and omnivores.

Due to their diet, vegans generally have lower levels of natural creatine than omnivores. In theory, this means creatine supplementation would have a greater effect on cognitive benefits.

A group of omnivores and vegans were instructed to take a series of cognition tests and were then given either a placebo or a creatine supplement of 20g for five days. The subjects then retook the tests.

Beyond muscle: the effects of creatine supplementation on brain creatine, cognitive processing, and traumatic brain injury (2018)⁹

One of the first large reviews on creatine's effect on cognition was performed in 2018. It concluded that research shows creatine supplementation is particularly beneficial for improving brain function during times of stress. This includes times of;

• During sleep deprivation
• Experimental hypoxia
• During the performance of more complex and more cognitively demanding tasks.

Effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function of healthy individuals: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials (2018)⁴

This paper was interesting as it specifically looked at healthy individuals. Originally, cognitive benefits were largely believed to be for those with various conditions or during times of stress.

The review found significant evidence for probable improvements in short-term memory and intelligence tasks. While other cognition tasks were researched, the results were inconclusive. This includes;

• Attention
• Executive function
• Response inhibition
• Word fluency
• Reaction time
• Mental fatigue

However, these results were not seen in younger adults.

Creatine Supplementation and Brain Health (2021)²

In 2021, a large review was performed to review all available research. In short, it built upon knowledge and found that creatine supplementation could potentially improve cognitive processing. 

These improvements were particularly significant when creatine levels were low or in individuals under stress, such as those with sickness, during exercise, or sleep deprivation.

However, they did find that creatine helped improve the performance of individuals and athletes during non-stressful activity.

The effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis (2024)⁷

One of the newest reviews examined 16 randomized controlled studies to determine the efficacy of creatine supplementation for brain health in adults.

It showed various results for almost all of the brain function and cognition tasks studied. In this review, the most promising tasks that saw improvements were;

• Processing time
• Memory function
• Attention span

Proper Dosing Of Creatine For Cognition Benefits

When taking creatine for general performance, the general dosing lies somewhere between 3-5g/day.

However, researchers have found that it’s a bit more difficult for creatine to pass through the blood-brain barrier. The research is still relatively new, so we reached out to Dr. Rick Kreider's input on dosing creatine for cognition. He reported;

“The overall average from all studies is 0.16 g/kg/d, which gets you about 8 to 10 g per day…The consensus is 10g per day, divided into two equal doses.”

In addition, Dr. Kreider mentioned new, ongoing research that utilizes guanidinoacetic acid (GAA) in conjunction with creatine. GAA is the direct biochemical precursor to creatine and may help with the blood brain barrier issue.

“GAA is being looked at as possibly a more efficient way to increase brain creatine content. Several studies suggest 2 g per day may be as effective as higher doses of creatine monohydrate.”

Even more interesting is that he told us that GAA has both independent and additive effects when taken in conjunction with creatine. Basically, you might get more benefits with smaller dosing.

References

1. Kreider RB, Kalman DS, Antonio J, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017;14:18. Published 2017 Jun 13. doi:10.1186/s12970-017-0173-z
2. Roschel H, Gualano B, Ostojic SM, Rawson ES. Creatine Supplementation and Brain Health. Nutrients. 2021;13(2):586. Published 2021 Feb 10. doi:10.3390/nu13020586
3. Benton D, Donohoe R. The influence of creatine supplementation on the cognitive functioning of vegetarians and omnivores. British Journal of Nutrition. 2011;105(7):1100-1105. doi:10.1017/S0007114510004733 
4. Avgerinos KI, Spyrou N, Bougioukas KI, Kapogiannis D. Effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function of healthy individuals: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Exp Gerontol. 2018;108:166-173. doi:10.1016/j.exger.2018.04.013 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29704637/
5. Cunha MP, Martín-de-Saavedra MD, Romero A, et al. Both creatine and its product phosphocreatine reduce oxidative stress and afford neuroprotection in an in vitro Parkinson's model. ASN Neuro. 2014;6(6):1759091414554945. Published 2014 Nov 24. doi:10.1177/1759091414554945
6. Candow DG, Forbes SC, Ostojic SM, et al. "Heads Up" for Creatine Supplementation and its Potential Applications for Brain Health and Function. Sports Med. 2023;53(Suppl 1):49-65. doi:10.1007/s40279-023-01870-9 
7. Xu C, Bi S, Zhang W and Luo L (2024) The effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Front. Nutr. 11:1424972. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1424972 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39070254/
8. Benton D, Donohoe R. The influence of creatine supplementation on the cognitive functioning of vegetarians and omnivores. British Journal of Nutrition. 2011;105(7):1100-1105. doi:10.1017/S0007114510004733 
9. Dolan, E., Gualano, B., & Rawson, E. S. (2018). Beyond muscle: the effects of creatine supplementation on brain creatine, cognitive processing, and traumatic brain injury. European Journal of Sport Science, 19(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2018.1500644