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October 19, 2026

Creatine and the Brain: What the Evidence Shows So Far

By The MDR Team · Editorial standards

An open blank notebook, a pencil and reading glasses on an oak table beside a small glass dish of white powder

Your brain uses creatine the same way muscle does, to keep its energy supply steady, and creatine supplements raise brain creatine modestly. Whether that improves memory or thinking in healthy people is not settled. The largest trial we found, 123 adults taking 5 grams a day for six weeks, found only a possible small benefit, and neither of its two main tests reached statistical significance. Pooled studies suggest older adults may gain more than younger ones, and some studies report short-term benefits under stress, such as a night without sleep.

Creatine is best known as a gym supplement, but the brain keeps its own creatine supply for the same reason muscle does: to help recycle ATP, the cell's energy currency (Sandkühler and colleagues, 2023). That is the basis for the interest in creatine and the brain. What researchers are still working out is how much a supplement changes, and for whom.

Does a supplement reach the brain?

Some of it does, though the increases measured so far have been smaller and more variable than in muscle.

In an early brain-scan study, six young volunteers took 20 grams of creatine a day, four times the usual amount, for four weeks. Total brain creatine rose by about 9 percent on average, with a wide range from person to person of roughly 3.5 to 13 percent (Dechent and colleagues, 1999). For comparison, in a classic muscle study, muscle creatine rose about 20 percent after six days at 20 grams a day (Hultman and colleagues, 1996).

A review published in 2026 by several creatine researchers was candid about this. Measuring brain creatine is technically difficult, the response may depend on dose and how long people take it, and in the authors' words the efficacy of creatine supplementation in the brain "remains largely unknown" (Candow and colleagues, 2026).

The largest trial: 123 adults, 5 grams a day

One of the most carefully designed studies so far was run in Germany and published in 2023. It was preregistered, double-blind and placebo-controlled, with a crossover design: each of the 123 participants spent six weeks on 5 grams of creatine a day and six weeks on a placebo. About half were vegetarians, who start with less creatine from their diet (Sandkühler and colleagues, 2023).

The results, in plain terms:

  • On a working-memory test (repeating a string of digits backwards), creatine came close to a significant improvement but did not reach it.
  • On a reasoning test, there was no statistically significant improvement.
  • On eight additional tests, there was no sign of improvement.
  • Taken together, the statistics leaned toward a small benefit, and the authors concluded creatine "might have a small beneficial effect" that larger studies need to confirm or rule out.
  • Vegetarians did not benefit more than meat eaters.
  • Participants reported side effects more often on creatine than on placebo.

This trial matters because it is large, it used the everyday 5 gram dose, and it was preregistered, which reduces the risk of cherry-picked results. Its result is a possible small effect, not a proven one.

What pooled studies suggest about older adults

A 2023 meta-analysis combined 8 randomized trials of creatine and memory in healthy people. Overall, memory scores improved modestly with creatine. When the authors split the trials by age, the benefit was concentrated in older adults (66 to 76 years) and essentially absent in younger people (Prokopidis and colleagues, 2023). An earlier systematic review of six trials reached a similar, cautious view: short-term memory and reasoning may improve, other areas of thinking showed conflicting results, and young people showed no change (Avgerinos and colleagues, 2018).

Two cautions. These analyses rest on a small number of small trials. And after the 2023 meta-analysis was published, other researchers wrote to the journal arguing that some data had been counted twice, which could have made the result look stronger than it is (Eckert and colleagues, 2023). The authors replied, but the disagreement, together with how much the results varied between the older-adult trials, means that finding is a signal, not a settled fact.

Creatine during sleep loss

Sleep deprivation and creatine appear to push the brain's energy chemistry in opposite directions, so researchers have asked whether creatine helps under that kind of stress (Gordji-Nejad and colleagues, 2024).

In a 2024 study, 15 healthy young adults stayed awake through the night and took either a single large dose of creatine or a placebo, then switched on a second occasion. With creatine, scans showed changes in the brain's energy chemistry, and the participants did better on cognitive tests and processing speed during the sleep loss (Gordji-Nejad and colleagues, 2024).

Before reading too much into it: the dose was 0.35 grams per kilogram of body weight, about 25 grams for a 155-pound person, or five times a normal daily serving, taken all at once. It was one small study in people in their twenties. It suggests a high dose of creatine can affect the brain under acute stress. It does not tell us that 5 grams a day will make a tired afternoon feel different.

What we don't know yet

  • The right dose for the brain. Brain uptake seems slower than muscle uptake, and the dose that helps the brain, if any, may be higher or the time course longer than the 5 grams a day that works for muscle.
  • Real-life effects. Most studies use laboratory tests. Whether creatine changes how people think and remember in daily life is unknown.
  • Healthy older adults over the long term. The older-adult signal comes from a few short trials.
  • Who responds. The vegetarian idea was reasonable, but the largest trial did not support it.

Common questions

Will creatine improve my memory?

It might help a little, and pooled studies suggest the signal is stronger in older adults than in younger ones, but the evidence is small and mixed. Nobody can promise you a noticeable change.

Is 5 grams a day enough for the brain?

We don't know yet. The largest trial used 5 grams a day and found only a possible small effect. Some researchers think the brain needs more creatine, or more time, than muscle does.

Is creatine safe to take for this reason?

At 3 to 5 grams a day, creatine has a long safety record in healthy adults (Antonio and colleagues, 2021). It can raise blood creatinine slightly, so tell your doctor before kidney tests. Our creatine after 50 article covers this in more detail.

Where PowerFactors fits

MDR PowerFactors contains 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per scoop, the dose used in the largest trial above, with 250 mg of NMN, 100 mg of magnesium from magnesium bisglycinate and 100 mg of collagen peptides. Our label lists focus and memory among the things PowerFactors is for†. The research behind that is what this article describes: creatine has a well-established role in brain energy, and its effects on memory in healthy people are so far small and unsettled. No trial has tested PowerFactors itself. The muscle evidence is stronger (Chilibeck and colleagues, 2017), and if you are weighing the combination, read Creatine and NMN together first.

Last updated October 19, 2026.

Sources

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  • Prokopidis K, Giannos P, Triantafyllidis KK, et al. Effects of creatine supplementation on memory in healthy individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Nutr Rev. 2023;81(4):416-427. PubMed 35984306
  • Eckert I, Pascher E. Letter to the Editor: Double-counting due to inadequate statistics leads to false-positive findings in "Effects of creatine supplementation on memory in healthy individuals". Nutr Rev. 2023;81(11):1495-1496. PubMed 36644917
  • 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. PubMed 29704637
  • Gordji-Nejad A, Matusch A, Kleedörfer S, et al. Single dose creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in cerebral high energy phosphates during sleep deprivation. Sci Rep. 2024;14(1):4937. PubMed 38418482
  • Dechent P, Pouwels PJ, Wilken B, Hanefeld F, Frahm J. Increase of total creatine in human brain after oral supplementation of creatine-monohydrate. Am J Physiol. 1999;277(3):R698-R704. PubMed 10484486
  • Candow DG, Pratt J, Fabiano N, et al. Creatine supplementation and the brain: have we put the cart before the horse? J Diet Suppl. 2026;23(2):175-204. PubMed 41556609
  • Antonio J, Candow DG, Forbes SC, et al. Common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation: what does the scientific evidence really show? J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2021;18(1):13. PubMed 33557850
  • Chilibeck PD, Kaviani M, Candow DG, Zello GA. Effect of creatine supplementation during resistance training on lean tissue mass and muscular strength in older adults: a meta-analysis. Open Access J Sports Med. 2017;8:213-226. PubMed 29138605
  • Hultman E, Söderlund K, Timmons JA, Cederblad G, Greenhaff PL. Muscle creatine loading in men. J Appl Physiol. 1996;81(1):232-237. PubMed 8828669

†These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.