I love creatine. I feel much better when I stick to my daily creatine routine. It’s like night and day when I run out, forget to order a new batch, and a few weeks later realize why I’m so tired all the time. Creatine gives me more energy, I get tired later during my workouts, I can focus better, my recovery is improved, and I’m generally less fatigued even with the same amount of sleep.
In reality though, creatine doesn’t give me energy — it helps me buffer more energy. Let’s dive deeper to see what creatine is, how it works its magic, and why I’m hooked on it.
Quick Disclaimer
There’s no study directly linking creatine use with creativity. However, there are studies showing better working memory and less mental fatigue, which could help cognitive performance — creativity included.
What Is Creatine?
Creatine is a naturally occurring compound found in vertebrates — so, in us too. We can get creatine from eating animal meat: beef, pork, and fish are fairly high in creatine. A kilogram of raw beef provides about 4 grams of creatine on average. Our bodies can also produce creatine on their own — roughly 2 grams per day for an average human.
Creatine is synthesized from the amino acids arginine, glycine, and methionine in the liver, kidneys, and pancreas.
What Does Creatine Do?
Creatine helps us store more energy in the form of phosphocreatine. Think of it as a fast-discharging battery in the body’s energy system. I won’t go deep into the details now — that’s a great topic for another post. For now, all you need to know is about ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) — the main energy currency in all living cells.
Keeping us alive uses up ATP, which gets converted to ADP (Adenosine Diphosphate), an inorganic phosphate, and some released energy. Creatine can store that extra phosphate, and with the help of the enzyme creatine kinase, it donates its phosphate back to ADP, turning it back into ATP — providing an extra energy buffer for our bodies.
The Life of Creatine
Creatine exists in three forms in the body. About 95% is stored in skeletal muscle: roughly one-third as free creatine (the discharged “battery”) and about two-thirds as phosphocreatine (the charged “battery” ready to donate its phosphate). The remaining 5% is mostly in the brain, in neurons and glial cells.
Creatine and phosphocreatine cycle back and forth: at rest, ATP helps recharge creatine into phosphocreatine, storing energy. During intense work, when ATP levels drop, phosphocreatine donates its phosphate to ADP, recharging it into ATP and restoring extra energy.
The third form is creatinine, which is created by the spontaneous breakdown of creatine — about 1–2% of total creatine daily. Creatinine is a waste product filtered by the kidneys and excreted in urine.
In the Muscles
In muscles, creatine provides a buffer to regenerate ATP during high-intensity, short-burst activities like heavy lifts, sprints, and jumps. The enzyme creatine kinase reacts immediately to dropping ATP levels and helps restore them. Creatine mostly resides in fast-twitch muscle fibers since they handle high-intensity work.
After using up phosphocreatine, it takes about 5 minutes to fully restore its buffer capacity — hence the recommended rest time between heavy lifting sets or max-effort sprints.
In the Brain
In the brain, creatine acts as an energy buffer for sudden needs — like dips in oxygen or intense thinking. It helps ion pumps run and protects cells against oxidative stress. Creatine kinase cycles creatine in the brain too, reacting immediately to drops in ATP. This is especially helpful when you’re tired but trying to stay focused.
What Does This Mean for Us?
So, creatine helps us store and have more immediate energy. It’s naturally made in our bodies. What next? Should we supplement it? Is it safe? What about hair loss?
Is Creatine Safe?
Creatine is one of the most researched supplements in sports and health science. There are hundreds of studies on athletes, elderly people, patients, and healthy adults. There’s no evidence of harm to kidney, liver, or heart function in healthy people taking recommended doses (3–5 grams per day).
There are a few known side effects: some people experience mild water retention, bloating, stomach discomfort, or cramping — usually due to not drinking enough water. Creatine supplementation is not recommended for people with kidney disease.
There’s no good evidence linking creatine to dehydration, muscle tears, hair loss, or increased injury risk — these myths have been tested and debunked by reliable studies.
For healthy people, creatine is safe, effective, and one of the most proven supplements for improving muscle strength, high-intensity performance, and possibly cognitive resilience.
To Supplement or Not to Supplement?
As mentioned, our bodies can make their own creatine if we get enough arginine, glycine, and methionine from our diet. This usually adds up to about 2 grams daily. If we eat a good amount of meat, we can reach around 5 grams per day — raw beef has about 4 grams of creatine per kilogram, though cooking can reduce this. So, eating about a kilogram of good-quality meat every day could get you close to 5 grams.
An average adult (about 80 kg body weight) stores roughly 140 grams of creatine total. We lose about 1–2% daily — around 3 grams a day, assuming a 140-gram baseline. So, without supplementation and unless you eat lots of creatine-rich meat, it’s hard to keep your stores topped up.
Supplementing with 3–5 grams daily helps maintain a surplus, and can increase your natural stores by about 20%. Since creatine is mostly stored in muscle — especially fast-twitch fibers — higher muscle mass means more storage capacity. This could push your total stores to around 180–200 grams for an 80 kg person.
I won’t tell you whether you should use creatine or not. I do. I take about 5 grams every day. And I feel much better for it.