Go on TikTok or Instagram and you'll see ads for creatine gummies or powder supplements all over the place. Creatine monohydrate (CrM) is recommended by fitness trainers and bodybuilders who say the compound, which comes from three amino acids and is found naturally in your muscles and brain, is a crucial necessity for building lean muscle mass if you're strength training. This has been a common truth in the fitness industry for decades.
But now, a new study out of Australia is shocking the industry with its results. Researchers found that taking the recommended dose of 5 grams of creatine a day "does not make any difference" on muscle-building—and, in fact, could just be causing water retention. Let's unpack the results and break down what this means for you.
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Study Finds No Benefits of Creatine Supplements
A recent clinical trial led by The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and published in the journal Nutrientsfound that creatine supplements had little to no impact on muscle growth when combined with resistance training.
Over the course of 13 weeks, researchers supervised 63 participants (34 women and 29 men, with an average age of 31) in a weightlifting program.
One half of the group starting taking 5 grams of creatine a day for 7 days before they started working out.
"We had what we call a wash-in phase, where half of the participants started taking the supplement, without changing anything else in their daily life, to give their body a chance to stabilize in terms of its response to the supplement," said senior author Dr Mandy Hagstrom from UNSW's School of Health Sciences.
Then, they proceeded to take the same daily dose of creatine throughout the entire 12-week workout program.
The other half of the participants served as the control group and took nothing.
Every person's muscle mass was measured before the experiment started, after the first 7 days, and after the full 12 weeks of training wrapped.
Interestingly, after the first 7 days, the creatine group gained about 1.1 pounds of additional lean mass—particularly the women.
But after the full training period ended, both groups gained the same amount of lean mass: About 4.4 pounds, suggesting that creatine didn't provide any extra muscle growth for those taking it. And, any initial gains eventually leveled out.
"We've shown that taking five grams of creatine supplement per day does not make any difference to the amount of lean muscle mass people put on while resistance training," concluded Dr. Hagstrom.
What's more, since women developed more lean mass at the start of taking the supplement, the researchers believe that these increases may have been just water retention—not real muscle growth.
"The people taking the creatine supplement saw changes before they even started exercising, which leads us to believe that it wasn't actual real muscle growth, but potentially fluid retention," Dr Hagstrom explained.
"Then once they started exercising, they saw no additional benefit from creatine, which suggests that five grams per day is not enough if you're taking it for the purposes of building muscle."
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Should You Stop Taking Creatine?
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This latest study suggests that more research needs to be done on this particular supplement and its effects on building muscle.
As Dr. Hagstrom pointed out, previous papers may have had methodological problems that "overestimated" the benefits of creatine.
For instance, some studies had participants start taking the supplement the same day they started working out, which would make the effects hard to differentiate.
So, the next step could be to study the effects of 10 grams of creatine a day, suggested Dr. Hagstrom, which is still considered a safe dosage.
The long-term effects should also be examined, added the study's first author, Dr. Imtiaz Desai, from UNSW’s School of Health Sciences and Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA).
"When you start weight training, you have those beginner gains in strength and those start tapering off around the 12-week mark and become slower, so it's possible the support from creatine might come at a later stage," Dr. Desai explained.
Plus, more research into water retention, women's menstrual cycles, and other factors need to be considered, too.
For now, just like with any other supplement, it's important to consult with your doctor before taking something new.
If you'd like to grow your muscles, resistance training is the most effective way to do so, hands down—with or without supplementation.
If you're an athlete, Dr. Desai hopes this research can help you decide how and when to take creatine and be more realistic about your expectations.
