Creatine for Longevity, Not Just Muscle

Medically reviewed by Dr Zeeshan Afzal, MBBS — Medical Reviewer, Welzo. Last updated: July 2026.

Creatine has spent forty years in the wrong aisle. It is filed under sports nutrition, sold next to pre-workouts, and mentally bracketed with teenagers chasing a bigger bench press. Yet if you built a longevity supplement from scratch — cheap, mechanistically plausible, hundreds of human trials, decades of safety data — you would end up with something that looks remarkably like creatine monohydrate.

If you are building a broader protocol, our pillar guide to longevity supplements and the wider anti-ageing and longevity range are the natural companions to this page. For the NAD⁺ side of the comparison, see our NMN benefits, side effects and dosage pillar and the NMN supplement range.

The short answer to the question everyone actually types into Google: creatine for longevity is one of the best-evidenced supplements available for healthspan — the number of good years you get — but it has never been shown to extend human lifespan. The muscle and strength evidence in older adults is strong. The brain evidence is promising but mixed. The lifespan evidence is a mouse study and a handful of observational associations. That distinction matters, and most articles on this topic blur it.

This guide walks through what creatine actually does at a cellular level, what the randomised trials show in people over 50, how it compares with NAD⁺ precursors, how to dose it, and where the science genuinely runs out.

Creatine monohydrate — the only form with meaningful long-term human data. Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA).

Key takeaways

• Creatine recycles ATP through the phosphocreatine system, which is why it affects muscle, brain and any tissue with high, fluctuating energy demand.
• A meta-analysis of 22 randomised trials in adults aged 57–70 found creatine plus resistance training added roughly 1.4 kg of lean tissue mass versus training alone.
• In mice, creatine increased median healthy lifespan by 9%. That result has never been replicated in humans and should not be presented as if it had.
• A 19.8-year NHANES analysis linked dietary creatine intake of at least 1 g/day with a hazard ratio of 0.85 for all-cause mortality — suggestive, observational, and weakened by lifestyle adjustment.
• Memory benefits appear concentrated in adults aged 66–76 and in people with low baseline stores, such as vegetarians.
• 3–5 g/day of creatine monohydrate is the standard dose. Loading is optional. Cycling is unnecessary.
• Long-term supplementation up to 30 g/day for five years has not damaged kidney or liver function in healthy people, though anyone with existing kidney disease should speak to their GP first.

Table of contents

• What "creatine for longevity" actually means
• How creatine works: the ATP–phosphocreatine system
• Creatine and the hallmarks of ageing
• The evidence on creatine and lifespan
• Creatine for muscle: the strongest healthspan case
• Creatine and the ageing brain
• Creatine, bone health and menopause
• How much creatine per day
• Which form to buy and how to check quality
• Creatine vs other longevity supplements
• Safety, side effects and who should be careful
• A practical 12-week protocol
• Verdict: is creatine worth it for longevity?
• Frequently asked questions
• References

What "creatine for longevity" actually means

Longevity science distinguishes between two things that ordinary language treats as one. Lifespan is how long you live. Healthspan is how long you live without significant disease or functional loss. Almost every supplement marketed for longevity, creatine included, has evidence for the second and speculation about the first.

That is not a reason to dismiss it. Between the ages of 65 and 90, the thing that most reliably ends independence is not a single catastrophic illness but a slow erosion of muscle, balance and cognitive speed — followed by a fall, a fracture, and a hospital admission from which many people never fully recover. Anything that meaningfully slows that erosion is doing longevity work, whether or not it moves a mortality curve.

Creatine is a natural compound, not a drug or steroid

Creatine is a nitrogen-containing compound synthesised in your liver, kidneys and pancreas from three amino acids: arginine, glycine and methionine. Around 95% of your body's creatine sits in skeletal muscle, mostly in phosphorylated form as phosphocreatine. A typical 70 kg adult carries roughly 120–140 g in total and turns over 1–2 g each day.

You replace that from two sources. Your body makes about half. The rest comes from food — almost exclusively red meat and fish, at roughly 3–5 g per kilogram of raw meat. Plants contain essentially none, which is why vegetarians and vegans consistently show lower muscle and brain creatine stores and, in several trials, respond more strongly to supplementation. If you follow a plant-based diet, our guide to vegan longevity supplements covers this gap in more detail.

Oily fish and red meat are the only meaningful dietary sources of creatine. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Why the longevity field started paying attention

Three developments moved creatine out of the sports aisle. First, meta-analyses in the 2010s showed consistent lean mass and strength benefits in adults over 50, not just in young athletes. Second, brain imaging work confirmed that oral creatine can raise cerebral creatine levels, giving a mechanism for cognitive effects. Third, a 2025 analysis of US national survey data linked dietary creatine intake to lower epigenetic age acceleration — the first hint of a connection to biological age markers rather than just performance.

How creatine works: the ATP–phosphocreatine system

Every cell in your body runs on adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Muscle stores only a few seconds' worth. What allows you to sprint for a bus, stand from a low chair, or catch yourself mid-stumble is not stored ATP but the speed at which you can regenerate it.

The phosphocreatine shuttle

Phosphocreatine acts as a rechargeable phosphate battery. When ATP is spent and becomes ADP, the enzyme creatine kinase transfers a phosphate group from phosphocreatine to ADP, remaking ATP almost instantly — far faster than glycolysis or mitochondrial respiration can. Supplementing raises muscle phosphocreatine stores by roughly 20–40% in people who start low, expanding that buffer.

This is also why creatine shows up in tissues nobody associates with the gym. The brain is about 2% of body weight but consumes around 20% of resting energy, and it uses the same creatine kinase system. So does the heart. So does the retina.

Creatine biosynthesis from arginine, glycine and methionine. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

The methylation connection most articles miss

Here is an underappreciated detail. The final step of creatine synthesis requires a methyl group donated by S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe). Creatine production is estimated to consume a substantial share of the body's total methyl group budget — some estimates put it around 40%.

Supplementing creatine reduces the need for endogenous synthesis and therefore spares methyl groups for other jobs, including DNA methylation. This is speculative as a longevity mechanism, but it is a genuine biochemical link and it explains why creatine occasionally appears in discussions about methylation support alongside TMG. If you are already taking NMN, the related question of whether you need TMG with NMN is worth reading, as is our comparison of TMG vs methylfolate.

Creatine and the hallmarks of ageing

The hallmarks of ageing framework gives a useful scorecard. Creatine plausibly touches three of them and clearly does nothing for most of the others.

Being honest about that last row is the difference between a supplement guide and a sales page. Creatine is not a senolytic, not an NAD⁺ precursor, and not an autophagy inducer. If those pathways are what you are targeting, look at fisetin and quercetin, our NMN Pro 1000, or autophagy-focused approaches respectively. Creatine sits in a different lane.

The evidence on creatine and lifespan

The mouse study everyone cites

In 2008, Bender and colleagues fed creatine to 162 aged C57Bl/6J mice. Creatine-fed animals reached a median healthy lifespan roughly 9% longer than controls — 613 days versus 563 days — performed better on neurobehavioural tests, and showed significantly less accumulation of lipofuscin, the so-called ageing pigment, in the brain. Gene expression profiling showed upregulation of genes tied to neuronal growth and learning.

This is a genuinely good animal study and it is the single strongest piece of direct longevity evidence creatine has. It is also a mouse study from 2008 that has not been replicated in humans, and the healthy-lifespan endpoint is not the same as total lifespan. Treat it as a reason to investigate, not as a result.

Human observational data

A linked mortality analysis of NHANES data followed 4,041 US adults for a median of 19.8 years, recording 858 deaths. Participants consuming at least 1 g of creatine per day from diet had a hazard ratio for all-cause mortality of 0.85 (95% CI 0.72–1.00) compared with those consuming less.

Read the caveats carefully, because they are load-bearing. The confidence interval touches 1.00. Intake was estimated from a single 24-hour dietary recall. Most importantly, the association weakened once demographic and lifestyle factors were added to the model — which is exactly what you would expect if creatine intake is partly a marker for eating more meat, having a higher income, and being more physically active. This is a hypothesis-generating finding, not a demonstrated effect.

Why there is no human lifespan trial

There never will be one, at least not soon. A randomised trial powered to detect a mortality difference from a cheap, unpatentable supplement would need tens of thousands of participants followed for decades, with no commercial sponsor able to recoup the cost. This is the same structural problem facing metformin and rapamycin research. In its absence, the reasonable approach is to weight functional and disease-risk endpoints heavily, which is where creatine performs well.

Creatine for muscle: the strongest healthspan case

Resistance training is the non-negotiable partner to creatine supplementation. Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY).

Sarcopenia by the numbers

Skeletal muscle mass declines by approximately 3–8% per decade after the age of 30, with the rate accelerating after 60. Sarcopenia prevalence rises steeply with age: in one large US cohort, prevalence climbed from 5.0% at ages 65–69 to 36.0% at ages 85–89.

The consequences are not cosmetic. Low muscle mass and grip strength predict falls, fractures, hospitalisation, loss of independence and mortality. Muscle is also your largest glucose disposal site, so losing it worsens insulin sensitivity, which feeds forward into cardiovascular and metabolic risk.

What the randomised trials show

Chilibeck and colleagues pooled 22 randomised controlled trials involving 721 participants with a mean age of 57–70. Creatine combined with resistance training produced significantly greater gains than resistance training alone.

That final row is the most important line in this article. A separate meta-analysis examining age, sex and exercise type reached the same conclusion: creatine supplementation alone, with no training stimulus, was ineffective for lean body mass. Creatine is an amplifier, not a source. Without resistance training, you are buying a slightly heavier water weight and very little else.

Where the benefit is less consistent

More recent reviews have added nuance. Gains in lean tissue mass are reliable across most trials, but improvements in multi-joint lower-limb strength, walking speed, balance and quality of life have been inconsistent. A two-year trial in 237 postmenopausal women found creatine improved 80-metre walking speed by around 1.5 seconds versus placebo but produced no additional strength gain over an already-effective exercise programme. In other words: the tissue changes are dependable; the functional translation depends on the person and the programme.

Creatine and the ageing brain

Memory in older adults

Prokopidis and colleagues meta-analysed randomised trials of creatine and memory in healthy people, finding a modest overall effect (SMD 0.29, 95% CI 0.04–0.53). The subgroup analysis is where it gets interesting: the effect was pronounced in adults aged 66–76 (SMD 0.88) and absent in younger participants (SMD 0.03, non-significant). Doses above 5 g/day did not produce greater benefit.

A methodological letter to the editor subsequently challenged part of that analysis over double-counting, and a 2024 review by Xu and colleagues reported the opposite age pattern. A 2026 systematic review in Nutrition Reviews confirmed a positive overall relationship in older adults while noting the small number of trials involved. The honest summary: there is a real signal for memory in older adults, it is probably modest, and it is not yet settled.

Sleep deprivation and mental fatigue

The most striking recent brain finding came from Forschungszentrum Jülich. In a double-blind crossover trial, 15 participants received a single high dose of creatine (0.35 g/kg — roughly 25 g for a 70 kg adult) or placebo before 21 hours of enforced wakefulness. Using phosphorus and proton MRS, researchers tracked brain energy chemistry directly.

Creatine maintained brain phosphocreatine levels, prevented the drop in cerebral pH, and produced measurably better performance on word memory, processing speed and logic tasks compared with placebo. It was the first demonstration of an acute, measurable creatine effect on the human brain.

Two important qualifications. The sample was 15 young adults, not older people. And the study's own lead researcher publicly cautioned against people taking single doses that large at home. This is a mechanistic proof-of-concept, not a dosing recommendation. If disrupted sleep is your issue, our guides on shift work supplements and apigenin vs magnesium for sleep are more directly relevant.

Where the brain evidence fails

Creatine has been tested in Parkinson's disease at scale and did not work. A pooled analysis of three randomised trials covering 1,935 patients found no neuroprotective benefit. Similar disappointments occurred in Huntington's disease and ALS. Creatine appears to support normal brain bioenergetics in healthy ageing; it does not treat established neurodegenerative disease, and no one should take it expecting that.

Creatine, bone health and menopause

Bone is the area where marketing has run furthest ahead of data. The largest and longest trial — two years, 237 postmenopausal women, creatine at 0.14 g/kg/day alongside resistance training three days a week and walking six days a week — found no effect on bone mineral density at the femoral neck, total hip or lumbar spine. Both groups lost bone at the same modest rate.

Creatine did preserve two bone geometry measures at the femoral neck: section modulus, which predicts resistance to bending, and buckling ratio, which reflects cortical shell integrity. Both differences were statistically significant. A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis concluded that creatine does not maintain or increase DXA-measured BMD in postmenopausal women, with possible small benefits at loaded sites like the femoral neck awaiting replication.

The practical reading: creatine is not an osteoporosis intervention. It may make the hip slightly more fracture-resistant in ways DXA does not capture, and the muscle it helps you keep reduces fall risk, which is arguably the more important fracture pathway anyway. Women navigating this stage may also want our guides to longevity supplements for women over 40 and NMN and menopause.

How much creatine per day

A level 5 g scoop is the standard maintenance dose. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Maintenance versus loading

Two approaches reach the same destination.

For longevity purposes there is no reason to load. You are playing a decade-long game; four weeks is noise. Loading mainly increases the chance of bloating and stomach upset, which is the most common reason people abandon creatine in the first fortnight.

Do you need to cycle creatine?

No. Cycling is a bodybuilding tradition with no physiological basis. Your natural creatine synthesis does downregulate modestly during supplementation, but it recovers within weeks of stopping, and there is no evidence of receptor desensitisation or diminishing returns. This is a common point of confusion with NAD⁺ precursors, where the question of whether to cycle NMN is genuinely more debatable.

Timing and taking creatine with food

Because creatine works by saturating a tissue pool, total daily intake matters and timing barely does. Take it whenever you will actually remember. Taking it with a carbohydrate- or protein-containing meal modestly improves uptake via insulin-mediated transport, and it reduces the chance of stomach discomfort — so with a meal is a sensible default. For everything else in your routine, our supplement timing chart and guide to supplements on an empty stomach will save you some guesswork.

How long until it works

Water retention within muscle appears in days. Strength and performance changes typically emerge across 4–8 weeks alongside training. Lean mass differences in trials generally show up between 8 and 12 weeks. Cognitive effects, where they occur, take at least four weeks of consistent dosing because brain uptake is slower than muscle uptake. Our article on how long supplements take to work sets realistic expectations across the category.

Which form to buy and how to check quality

Buy creatine monohydrate. That is the entire recommendation.

Creatine hydrochloride, ethyl ester, buffered creatine, magnesium chelate and liquid creatine are all marketed on claims of superior absorption. None has outperformed monohydrate in a head-to-head trial for muscle creatine content or performance outcomes, and some — creatine ethyl ester in particular — perform measurably worse because they degrade to creatinine before absorption. Monohydrate also happens to be the cheapest and the form used in essentially every study cited on this page.

Quality markers worth checking

• Creapure or equivalent — a German-produced monohydrate with documented low levels of dicyandiamide and dihydrotriazine contaminants.
• Micronised — smaller particles, better dispersion, less grit. No absorption advantage, but better compliance.
• A published certificate of analysis — see our guide to reading a supplement certificate of analysis.
• Third-party testing — particularly relevant for tested athletes. Read more on third-party tested supplements.
• Minimal excipients — plain creatine needs no fillers. Our breakdown of supplement fillers explains what to avoid.

Creatine vs other longevity supplements

Creatine amplifies a training stimulus. Without one, most of its benefit disappears. Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

On evidence-per-pound, creatine is the outstanding entry in this table and arguably in the entire longevity supplement category. It is also the least glamorous, which is presumably why it gets a fraction of the marketing spend. For a direct head-to-head, see NMN vs creatine. If budget is the constraint, our cheap longevity stack and minimal supplement stack both put creatine near the top, and longevity supplements that don't work covers what to drop first.

Safety, side effects and who should be careful

Creatine has one of the strongest safety records of any supplement in existence. The International Society of Sports Nutrition's position stand concluded that short- and long-term supplementation, up to 30 g/day for five years, is safe and well tolerated in healthy people and in patient populations ranging from infants to older adults.

The kidney question

This is the most persistent myth and it stems from a testing artefact. Creatine breaks down into creatinine, and serum creatinine is the standard proxy for kidney filtration. Supplementing raises serum creatinine because you are consuming more creatine — not because your kidneys are struggling. Athletes monitored for up to five years showed no adverse effect on kidney function.

The practical implication is worth flagging to your GP: tell your doctor you take creatine before any blood test that includes eGFR or creatinine, or you risk an unnecessary investigation. Cystatin C is an alternative marker unaffected by supplementation.

Common side effects

• Weight gain of 1–2 kg in the first weeks — intracellular water, not fat. It does not cause a bloated appearance under the skin.
• Gastrointestinal discomfort — almost entirely associated with large single doses. Split the dose or drop to 3 g.
• Nothing else, reliably. Controlled research has not supported claims that creatine causes hair loss, dehydration, muscle cramping or heat illness. One study in American football players training in heat found lower rates of cramping and heat illness in creatine users.

Who should speak to a doctor first

Creatine is not appropriate for everyone without medical input. Please consult your GP before starting if you:

• have chronic kidney disease, reduced kidney function, or a single kidney;
• have liver disease;
• take nephrotoxic medications, including long-term NSAIDs, certain diuretics or cyclosporine;
• are pregnant or breastfeeding, where safety data are limited;
• are under 18, where use should be supervised;
• have bipolar disorder — there are case reports of creatine precipitating manic episodes.

If you take multiple supplements, our guide on whether you can take supplements together covers interaction basics, though creatine is unusually free of them.

A practical 12-week protocol

Weeks 1–4: establish the habit

5 g creatine monohydrate daily, taken with your largest meal. No loading. Two resistance training sessions per week covering a squat pattern, a hinge, a horizontal push and a horizontal pull. If you have never trained, start with bodyweight and resistance bands. Expect 1–2 kg of scale weight — this is intracellular water and it is the point.

Weeks 5–8: progressive overload

Same dose. Increase to three sessions per week and begin adding load or repetitions each week. This is the window where creatine's benefit is expressed, because the supplement does nothing without a stimulus to amplify. Add 20–30 minutes of easy aerobic work — see zone 2 training for longevity.

Weeks 9–12: assess honestly

Retest what you measured at week one: a grip strength reading, a five-times sit-to-stand test, and your working weight on two lifts. Creatine will not be the only variable, but a total absence of change after 12 weeks of consistent training suggests the training programme needs attention before the supplement stack does.

Where creatine fits in a broader stack

Creatine layers well with almost anything. A reasonable evidence-first foundation for most adults over 40 is creatine, vitamin D, omega-3, magnesium and adequate protein, with NAD⁺ support added if budget allows — see our longevity stack guide, how to start longevity supplements, and NAD supplement guide. Men in their sixth decade may also find longevity supplements for men over 50 useful, and those starting earlier should read longevity supplements in your 30s.

Verdict: is creatine worth it for longevity?

Yes — with the caveat that you should buy it for the right reason.

Creatine will not extend your lifespan on current evidence, and anyone telling you otherwise is extrapolating from mice. What it will plausibly do, at a cost of a few pounds a month, is help you hold onto lean tissue and strength through the decades when losing them is what ends independence. It may sharpen memory modestly in your seventies. It carries a safety record most prescription medicines would envy.

The condition attached to all of that is resistance training. Creatine without training is close to inert for body composition. Creatine with training is one of the most reliable interventions available. If you only ever adopt two things from the longevity literature, make them lifting weights and eating enough protein — then add creatine, because it makes the first one work better for less than the price of a coffee a week.

Frequently asked questions

Does creatine actually increase lifespan?

Not on current human evidence. Creatine increased median healthy lifespan by 9% in mice, and a long-running NHANES analysis linked higher dietary creatine intake with a 15% lower risk of all-cause mortality — but that association weakened after adjusting for lifestyle factors and is observational. Creatine has good evidence for healthspan, meaning functional years, and no proof for lifespan.

How much creatine should I take for longevity?

3–5 g of creatine monohydrate daily is the standard dose used in nearly all research. People over roughly 90 kg or with high lean mass can use 0.1 g per kg of body weight. There is no need to load and no benefit to exceeding 5 g/day for cognitive or longevity purposes — the memory meta-analysis specifically found no additional benefit above 5 g.

Do I need to take creatine forever?

Muscle creatine stores return to baseline roughly four to six weeks after stopping, along with the associated benefits. Creatine works by maintaining a saturated tissue pool, so it should be viewed as an ongoing habit rather than a course of treatment. Our guide on what happens when you stop taking supplements covers this pattern more broadly.

Is creatine safe for older adults?

Yes, for healthy older adults. The ISSN position stand documents safe use up to 30 g/day for five years across populations from infants to the elderly, and multiple two-year trials in postmenopausal women reported good tolerability. Anyone with kidney disease, liver disease, or on nephrotoxic medication should check with their GP first.

Does creatine damage your kidneys?

There is no evidence it does in people with healthy kidneys. Creatine raises serum creatinine because creatinine is its breakdown product, not because of kidney injury — this is a lab artefact, not a warning sign. Tell your doctor you supplement before any test involving creatinine or eGFR so results are interpreted correctly.

Does creatine help with brain fog and memory?

Possibly, and more so with age. Meta-analysis found memory improvements concentrated in adults aged 66–76, with no significant effect in younger people. A separate trial found a single high dose maintained brain energy chemistry and cognitive performance during 21 hours of sleep deprivation. Effects appear largest in people with low baseline stores, including vegetarians and older adults.

Should women take creatine?

Yes. Women typically have around 70–80% of the muscle creatine stores men do and often consume less dietary creatine, so there is a plausible case for greater relative benefit. The two-year postmenopausal trial found improved walking speed and preserved femoral neck bone geometry. Weight gain is intracellular water and does not increase body fat.

Can I take creatine with NMN and other longevity supplements?

Yes. Creatine has essentially no known interactions with NAD⁺ precursors, resveratrol, TMG, magnesium, omega-3 or vitamin D, and the mechanisms are complementary rather than overlapping — creatine buffers ATP while NMN supports NAD⁺-dependent metabolism. See our NMN, TMG and resveratrol stack guide for how to combine them.

Which type of creatine is best?

Creatine monohydrate. No alternative form — hydrochloride, ethyl ester, buffered, liquid or magnesium chelate — has outperformed it in head-to-head trials, and creatine ethyl ester performs worse. Monohydrate is also the cheapest form and the one used in almost all published research. Look for micronised monohydrate with a published certificate of analysis.

Does creatine work if I don't exercise?

Largely no, at least for body composition. Meta-analysis found creatine supplementation without a training intervention was ineffective for lean body mass gains. There may be residual benefit for brain energetics and for maintaining muscle during illness or immobilisation, but the muscle and strength benefits that make creatine interesting for longevity depend on a resistance training stimulus.

References

1. Bender A, et al. Creatine improves health and survival of mice. Neurobiology of Aging, 2008;29(9):1404–1411.
2. Kreider RB, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017;14:18.
3. 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 Journal of Sports Medicine, 2017;8:213–226.
4. Prokopidis K, et al. Effects of creatine supplementation on memory in healthy individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Nutrition Reviews, 2023;81(4):416–427.
5. Gordji-Nejad A, et al. Single dose creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in cerebral high energy phosphates during sleep deprivation. Scientific Reports, 2024;14:4937.
6. Forschungszentrum Jülich. Creatine improves cognitive performance during sleep deprivation. Press release, 2024.
7. Ostojic SM, et al. Dietary creatine intake and all-cause mortality among U.S. adults: a linked mortality analysis from the NHANES study. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 2025.
8. Antonio J, et al. Common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation: what does the scientific evidence really show? Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2021;18:13.
9. Volpi E, Nazemi R, Fujita S. Muscle tissue changes with aging. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, 2004;7(4):405–410.
10. National Institutes of Health. Slowing sarcopenia. NIH News in Health, 2025.
11. Forbes SC, et al. Meta-analysis examining the importance of creatine ingestion strategies on lean tissue mass and strength in older adults. Nutrients, 2021;13(6):1912.
12. Creatine supplementation as an adjunct to improving healthy aging. Translational Exercise Biomedicine, 2026.
13. Creatine and cognition in aging: a systematic review of evidence in older adults. Nutrition Reviews, 2026.
14. The impact of creatine supplementation associated with resistance training on muscular strength and lean tissue mass in the aged: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European Review of Aging and Physical Activity, 2025.
15. The power of creatine plus resistance training for healthy aging: enhancing physical vitality and cognitive function. Frontiers in Physiology, 2024.
16. Creatine monohydrate for lean mass, strength, and bone density in postmenopausal women: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2026.
17. Two-year randomised controlled trial on creatine supplementation during exercise for postmenopausal bone health. Reported in NutraIngredients, 2023 (original: Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2023;55(10):1750–1760).

Medical disclaimer

This article is for general information only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is not a substitute for a consultation with a qualified healthcare professional. Supplements are not medicines and are not intended to prevent, treat or cure any disease. Do not start creatine or any supplement if you have an existing medical condition, are taking prescription medication, or are pregnant or breastfeeding, without first speaking to your GP or pharmacist. If you experience any adverse effects, stop taking the product and seek medical advice.

Written by the Welzo Editorial Team. Medically reviewed by Dr Zeeshan Afzal, MBBS. Welzo content is reviewed against peer-reviewed literature and updated as new evidence emerges. All images are used under Creative Commons or public domain licences via Wikimedia Commons.