Creatine supplements have been credited with boosting everything from muscles to brain power. But a new, albeit small, study is calling their worth into question.
The randomized clinical trial, which followed 54 healthy people 18 to 50 through a 12-week resistance-training program, found no difference between those who took the supplement at the recommended dose and those who did not, shows the research, published in Nutrients on March 19.
Both the creatine group and the non-creatine group gained an average of 4.4 pounds of lean body mass during the program, which involved three supervised workout sessions per week.
“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,” said senior author and exercise physiologist Mandy Hagstrom, from the University of New South Wales’ School of Health Sciences, in a news release.
What is creatine?
Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that supplies energy to muscles by producing ATP, our cells’ most basic form of energy. It’s produced by the liver, pancreas, and kidneys, and is found in animal products and some seafood. In supplement form, creatine is typically found in powder form but can also be marketed in pills and drinks to be consumed pre-workout.
Previous research shows creatine supplements help build muscles, improve energy and enhance athletic performance, and may even have cognitive benefits.
What the new creatine study found
“The benefits of creatine may have been overestimated in the past, due to methodological problems with previous studies,” said Hagstrom.
Those problems, Hagstrom noted, involved starting supplementation and exercise programs on the same day, making it difficult to separate how each affected muscle gains. Also, they overlooked the potential for creatine to cause water retention, but added that more research was needed to confirm that.
In Hagstrom’s trial, those in the supplement group started taking five grams of creatine daily one week before the exercise program kicked off.
“We had what we call a wash-in phase,” she said, “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.”
Read more from Fortune
During the first, pre-exercise week, those taking creatine, especially women, gained more lean body mass—an average of 1 pound more than the control group. But the extra gains they made varied greatly, and soon dropped back to equal those of the control group.
“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,” Hagstrom said. “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.”
The trial, she said, suggests people need to take more creatine than is commonly thought to get the benefit of additional muscle gains—although exactly how much more needs to be the subject of more research.
“For your average person taking creatine to boost their gains in the gym, this will hopefully change their perception about what it can help them achieve,” said co-author Imtiaz Desai in the news release. “For professional athletes, particularly those who must be at a particular weight for their sport, the findings may inform how and when they take the supplement.”
More on nutrition:
- Meet the hot new superfood—dark green algae powder that’s full of vitamins, minerals, protein, and omega-3s
- Top nutrition expert shares the No. 1 mistake he sees in American diets
- Nutritionists offer these 6 ways to get back to a healthy diet
- Are prebioitic sodas like Olipop and Poppi actually good for you?
