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Mind that, while the "creatine high dose to fight drowsiness" hack works and has no side effects (other than upset stomachs), the lost sleep still does it thing. You don't notice day to day but it will catch up to you eventually in many bad ways.

Definitely! I would not recommend it to make up for lack of sleep for extended periods of time.

One of the things I'm trying to do better lately is to have a good sleep hygiene. Sun in the eyes early in the morning, no caffeine for the first 60 waking minutes of the day (adenosine absorption period), no screens 2 hours before bed and whatnot. Still, some nights I will just wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to get back to sleep, then it's when I feel creatine helps

Edit: Typo

>some nights I will just wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to get back to sleep, then it's when I feel creatine helps

I suspect creatine is responsible for me not being able to get back to sleep easily, because once I'm awake, I'm awake.

How much do you eat and how\when?

Also @ others in this thread.

I'm eating 10g, in the morning, don't have tendency for stomach issues, taking it mostly to have more energy at a physical job.

I can definitely run longer on it before being tired, but not sure what to observe for other effects?

Creatine ruins my sleep if I take it late in the day. It most definitely has this conditional side effect for me.

Opposite for me. It seems to noticably improve my sleep quality.

Hey. I'm not familiar with this site, which isn't very important anyways, since I joined specifically to contact you. I can't tell much more without sharing sensitive information. Is there a way to contact you?

is it possible that this is the bump due to your workouts and not plainly creatine ?

I take creatine daily but when I'm working out more than a couple of weeks, i feel much better than on weeks when I skip working out.

great question. Can I take creatine and skip the workout hassle?

For me, just creatine doesn’t seem to do a whole lot. But heavy workouts (with or without creatine), energize me enormously.

Going from minimal exercise to light-moderate exercise will do as much for you as creatine would. To me it's almost a no-brainer to try doing both.

You can do the workout and skip creatine and its marginal benefits pushed by gym bros and health influencers beyond reason.

If your body requires more creatine than your diet currently provides, then supplementing with creatine would help, even without exercising.

from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42578920/ (CrM is creatine monohydrate)

  Results: CrM supplementation without exercise training and diet intervention increased lean tissue mass, strength, and muscular endurance while promoting favorable changes in selected blood lipids, HbA1c, and selected markers of cognitive function and memory. Creatine supplementation during an exercise and weight-loss diet intervention increased lean tissue mass, promoted a greater reduction in body fat percentage, and improved muscular strength, endurance, and selected markers of cognitive function and memory. Supplementation was well-tolerated.

  Conclusion: CrM supplementation with and without exercise and diet intervention may help middle-aged and older adults maintain muscle mass and strength while favourably affecting selected markers of health and cognitive function. Individual cognitive and biomarker findings should be interpreted as exploratory.

The overall fitness is going to definitely have a positive effect on the perceived energy levels (my Vo2 max is at its highest ever). On the other hand, I have been very fit at other times in my life but have never experienced this "my head can just go on" feeling before. I used to take conscious breaks, do NSDR between meetings and other energy-replenishing tricks because I __needed__ them. It feels like now I don't

You mentioned that you took up CrossFit after starting creatine. Did your previous fit phases include lifting heavy weights?

No, mostly cycling (~200km+/week with one 100km+ ride) and 30 minutes of daily yoga

>I'm 43 and I feel like I have more energy than I have ever had before. I started taking it during recovery from a bad ankle fracture / Once the ankle was better I took up CrossFit, and kept on taking creatine because why not

And how do you know it's the creatine and not ...taking up CrossFit and the benefits to energy and cognitive function exercize brings?

It has an especially noticeable effect if you're a vegetarian. I'm a lifelong vegetarian, and high doses of it for me are a crazy cognitive enhancer.

Oh I’ve been mostly plant based for years, maybe that helps explaining the difference

That's because creatine is missing in vegetarian diets. It is found in beef. Something to consider if you are thinking about going vegetarian.

There's 0.5 g of creatine per 4 ounces of red meat.

That's pretty insignificant. Does anyone really wanna eat 2.5lbs of beef every day for the usual dose of 5g?

Yes, but I probably shouldn’t.

Creatine is not available from plants and the 0.5 g is not insignficant for normal health. The 5 grams you're quoting is generally for people who supplement for athletic performance.

Creatine is created within the body so a vegetarian eating plant precursors can help create their own baseline supply.

> 0.5 g is not insignficant for normal health

A non-aggressive, curious question: can you give a citation for the "significant" health benefits of 0.5g creatine? That seems like quite a claim. (I'm reading "not insignificant" as "significant", perhaps a step too far?)

Note that there have also been brain benefits from creatine, but those have only been observed in ~20g/day studies (its not just athletic performance).

I'm not making a claim for a significant health benefit from 0.5g of creatine I'm just countering your bald claim that it's insignficant - we are getting into word lawyer territory. But anyway to establish what I'm claiming, 0.5g of creatine, I feel, is a useful amount - the numbers you are fixated on are for athletes or neurotropic nerds.

"Although the human body produces a portion of its daily creatine needs, approximately 50 % must be obtained through the diet – predominantly from animal-based foods like red meat and fish"

So in that context, a vegetarian can benefit from small amounts of supplementation if they aren't getting it in their diet.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12722096/

Ah. I guess the term we're looking for is "physiologically meaningful"; I wasn't talking about "statistical significance". Something can be statistically significant but have a clinically worthless effect size.

FYI the standard null hypothesis is that differences are not significant until shown otherwise. E.g. no doctor will prescribe 50mg metformin to a prediabetic even if it might have an effect; it will be physiologically meaningless.

> the numbers you are fixated on are for athletes or neurotropic nerds

If you have other numbers/studies to back "0.5g of creatine, I feel, is a useful amount", then I'm willing to "fixate" on those numbers.

Ok.

A vegetarian diet is not a null hypothesis. Other way around

You can eat meat — and still not eat red meat.

Vegetarian status is irrelevant.

> A null hypothesis is a default statistical assumption that states there is no real relationship, effect, or difference between variables or groups.

It is up to whoever to show that there _is_ a relationship. Hence me asking for a citation.

you are either doing it for moral reasons. in that case all these facts are irrelevant. or you can eat red meat for a month and see if you can tell the difference. if you can't there's your answer.

citations are bullshit for this context. Unless you are doing research.

Good grief. I say absolutely nothing about vegetarianism: you're the one who keeps bangin on about about it.

> you are either doing it for moral reasons

Or red meat isn't easily available or cheap in the place where you live? There are many reasons why red meat isn't in your digestive system that are outside "morals". Beef is literally at an all-time high in the US. https://www.macrotrends.net/3141/us-ground-beef-prices

Summary of this thread:

Me: 0.5 g of creatine is small

Other: No it isn't

Me: Citation please?

Other: no

Me: null hypothesis

You: Incorrect interpretation of null hypothesis

Me: Correction

You: "citations are bullshit"

There are many people who feel morally grey about eating meat yet still choose to do so. E.g. there are science-based discussions in plant-based-diet social media; relatively few plant-based diet discussions revolve around morality. Facts matter.

I agree that n=1 experiments are important and often _overrule_ any RCT for an _individual_. If that's your point, I _agree_. But you should say so instead of me trying to infer whatever it is you're arguing...? Is that even what you're saying?

The goalpost shifting is immense. All I wanted was a citation for 0.5g creatine being meaningful, and instead I get "facts are irrelevant", "citations are bullshit", and "morals".

(To be clear: I'm not saying that you're saying "facts are irrelevant"; I'm annoyed that you seem to think that _I'm_ arguing "facts are irrelevant". See this? This is me giving you grace. I would appreciate the same in kind.)

/me throws up arms

so you thought I had a handy citation showing 0.5g is meaningful.

or were you just trying to make a point that you didn't think 0.5g is meaningful.

i don't fucking know. vegetarians seem to gain more than non vegetarians from creatine supplementation. implying that eating meat is meaningful. then you fixated on 0.5g as if 4oz of red meat per day was allot or not, I don't even know.

but I see it now. the accusation of goal post shifting, you are arguing about what idk. find your damn citation.

_You_ made an assertion. I questioned it. Drama ensues. Why would I find your citation lol.

I’m 45 and work out a lot and feel this way without creatine. To the point that this makes me worry it would exacerbate my existing sleep issues (I literally never feel sleepy, I feel exactly the same 24 hours a day).

Have you tried stopping creatine? How do you know it's the creatine?

I've been taking it for almost a month and I plan to stop to see if I notice any change back that would make me want to start taking creatine again.

Creatine is one of the few if not the only supplements we actually know work. But with that said, my experience is that the bump is there but not world changing. Although it could be placebo, I don't think so because the first time I started taking it I noticed something but didn't make the connection because I noticed it playing basketball and not as much lifting. I could just sprint a lot easier. I recently started taking it again and again I noticed I can sprint easier and not be as spent. Of course you can improve by simply working out regularly, but IMHO the bump you get is obvious.

aye. along with steroids its one of the few supps that has concrete evidence supporting.

didn't feel like a serious game changer when I was taking big doses, but I felt like it did a good job at making me present at the gym. Like I didn't have "slow" days working out, or off-days, or days where I roll up and feel 'blah' and slack on the workout.

I'm not sure it let me actually push more iron or run faster in an absolute sense, but it ensured got there and went hard.

by comparison I had friends on the gear, and they were visibly more muscular in weeks, and started lifting serious metal not long after. "die young, die strong, dianabol"

I take creatine daily, have done for well over a year. I also run 5-6 days a week and lift twice a week.

I’ve previously stopped taking it for a couple months and noticed no real difference in physical or mental ability.

The only difference I notice is a small increase in muscle strength after taking it for a month or so.

You may not have taken enough. You need 15-20g/day for mental benefits. And long term, at least 2+ weeks.

Yeah I definitely don’t take that much.

If you would, please explain or point me to the material where you get your higher dosage recommendation. (I always heard and understood proper dosage to be 5–7.5g/day, 10g/day at the most. I’d like to correct my error if I’m mistaken.)

Huberman podcast has some coverage

Sorry i dont have strong views on the fact under question but 1) pointing to an entire podcast is not a very helpful suggestion 2) I listened to a few episodes on issues I know about and can just say that the guy is speaking with confidence but just making it all up. So much false info or at best hearsay repackaged as supposedly scientific advice.

Agreed, Huberman (and his guests) strike me as charlatans, with their “protocols” du jour. And given the number of creatine posts on HN of late, I suspect that guerrilla marketing and astroturfing are at play too.

I mean creatine monohydrate costs like 20€/kg off of Amazon.

Taking it 2 weeks is not a big investment, and by that time you'll know whenever it works for your body or not.

The thing that's unclear is wherever there are long term health issues when taking a lot of creatine over months and years - but with it being so cheap and highly available by countless cheap brands, astroturfing initiatives would be highly unlikely.

My options are: provide keywords to research with your favorite agent, do the research for you, or withhold the keyword suggestions.

Which option seems preferable to you?

<10g is the correct dosage for the non-mental benefits

But inversely, unless you actually go above 10, eg 15... The blood saturation isn't enough for your brain to take advantage of it.

But there is very little studied about sustained use of such a dosage. (Only short term - eg 1 week - which isn't long enough for the benefits again)

It's safe enough for anecdotes of people doing it for years and not having issues - but despite others claiming that it's well studied, it's really not - at least not with dosages above 5g in humans.

Personally I've been doing so for a year now and can unquestionably confirm a strong effect, which goes away if I reduce the dosage below the threshold. So at least my body responds to it.

But you're not getting a proper study unless you get thousands of people to take it for years... Which is basically impossible as there are too many confounding factors to get meaningful results.

And organizing such a study is gonna be too expensive too, with no sponsors willing to take up the tab

I've already written and edited this comment a lot, but as a final remark I'd like to point out that the benefits I'm referencing is having an easier time concentrating. This can also be a demerit, as you can easily be caught thinking about something for pretty long before you realize.

It's beyond crazy, lol. How many grams are you doing a day?

It has replaced in some ways caffeine for me.

The part of where creatine wipes out sleep deficit sounded like a stretch, but it definitely helps.

Do you take the standard 5g or something else? What's your weight?

~5g most days, ~10g if I didn't sleep well. I'm currently 68kg

height?

Any tips on GI impact? I pair mine with food and lots of water and it's improved but wondering if there's any more I should be doing

Some people report less GI distress with creatine HCL but it’s much more expensive.

The GI issues are caused by the creatine absorbing water. This causes your gut to have more water than usual as it follows the creatine through the works… which causes… urgency.

The effect diminishes after you’ve been taking a regular dose for a while, even with just monogydrate (not HCL).

Some people say HCL causes less distress because it doesn’t draw water as much. Others argue that defeats the purpose of taking it.

Monohydrate is studied to death and proven effective, HCL not so much.

The studies I've seen from HCl claim it's more bioavailable too, so you only need 1/3 the dosage compared to honohydrate. That makes the cost pretty comparable.

But otherwise, I'd agree that monohydrate has significantly more research behind it and I'd default to that if it's tolerable.

Interesting, haven't heard of creatine HCL.

Have a friend with sensitive gut. He has to use protein extract instead of concentrate due to issues from lactose.

He had issues with creatine too and switched to Creapure, which is monohydrate from one factory in Germany producing just that. With their nazi like attention to details and certification. It's sold by multiple providers.

The aforementioned friend has no issues now.

Instead of switching from cheapest to most expensive, I take a mid-shelf creatine that also has some certs and never had issues. hn hates name drops, but it's a Polish medium price supplement company. And I use pills, because I just hate the hassle of measuring and mixing it. Eat 10g in 8 big pills.

It's even more anegdotical, but supposedly some cheaper brands give you bad stomach because to save money they use the same production/packaging line without expensive thorough cleaning in between products.

But the logic about water absorption makes more sense. And it would be rare to have such high level of people with issues from creatine just because of negligent cost cutting production/packaging practices. OTOH, I work in food production myself and heard some people say how things look in other places and could believe that people get bad stomach at least from some producers/packagers/resellers.

I took double the dose once and I regretted it. I was in the bathroom pretty often that day.

Anything over 5g is hard on my stomach. I take it in my protein shake in the morning and dont notice any issues.

The gut adapts to it over time so you'll be able to increase the dose bit by bit

What does are you taking?

And this is surely thanks to Creatine. Amazing!