Research brief · 2026-09-09
Does Creatine Do Anything for the Brain?
Creatine's best-known job is in muscle, where it buffers the phosphocreatine system that powers short bursts of effort. The brain uses the same buffering system, which is why researchers have tested whether raising creatine availability changes memory or thinking. The answer depends heavily on who is being tested.
Prokopidis's 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis in Nutrition Reviews pooled eight randomized controlled trials measuring memory in healthy people. Overall, creatine improved memory compared with placebo, with a standardized mean difference of 0.29. But the effect was not uniform. In adults aged 66 to 76 it was large, at 0.88. In people aged 11 to 31 it was 0.03, essentially zero. Neither dose nor duration explained the age gap.
The largest single trial told a more cautious story. Sandkühler's 2023 crossover study in BMC Medicine tested 123 adults, half vegetarian, over six weeks of creatine and six weeks of placebo. The effect on backward digit span, a working-memory task, bordered on significance. The effect on fluid reasoning missed entirely, and none of eight exploratory tests showed benefit. Gastrointestinal side effects were reported about four times as often on creatine.
Two smaller trials add texture. Korovljev's 2025 trial in the Journal of the American Nutrition Association randomized 36 perimenopausal and menopausal women and found the medium-dose group improved reaction time while frontal-lobe brain creatine rose 16.4 percent on imaging, versus 0.9 percent on placebo. In children, Merege-Filho's 2016 trial of 67 healthy 10- to 12-year-olds found a week of creatine changed neither brain creatine content nor verbal learning scores.
The limits are clear. In healthy young adults the signal is close to zero. No trial tested creatine in diagnosed dementia or mild cognitive impairment, no dose-response relationship exists for cognitive outcomes, and no study followed participants after stopping. Anyone considering creatine for cognitive reasons should discuss it with a physician.
Sources
- Prokopidis K et al. Effects of creatine supplementation on memory in healthy individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis
- Nutrition Reviews 2023
- Sandkuhler JF et al. The effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive performance: a randomised controlled study
- BMC Medicine 2023
- Korovljev D et al. 8-Week Creatine Supplementation on Cognition and Brain Creatine in Perimenopausal and Menopausal Women (CONCRET-MENOPA)
- Journal of the American Nutrition Association 2025
- Merege-Filho CAA et al. Does brain creatine content rely on exogenous creatine in healthy youth? A proof-of-principle study
- Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism 2016
Peptide Proof reports what studies found. We do not give medical advice, dosing guidance, or treatment recommendations.