The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
we know that when you supplement vegans and vegetarians with 5 grams of creatine per day which is the amount of creatine in one pound of meat their intelligence their memory and their recall and the processing speed gets better so vegans and vegetarians are operating at a lower threshold which means James is a pretty smart guy he clearly did well if he's not somebody with creatine he can be even smarter if he takes creatine cuz he's not getting on his diet
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I've been recommending this to patients for 6 months now. The big shift is patients actually do it because the explanation is concrete.
Same in nutrition counseling. The before/after framing helps.
Tracking with a CGM on top of this for 3 months. Variability dropped quickly and stayed dropped.
Worth noting the 0.71 SMD in the Kreider meta is in trained athletes. Effect in untrained adults runs closer to 0.3 — still meaningful, but the panel should reflect that gradient.
Good catch. Could the brief surface the training-status interaction inline?
there are incredible studies showing that when vegetarians are given creatine back they get smarter because we need creatine in our brain with about 20 different proteins and amino acids
creatine for instance has been shown to improve the intelligence of creatine deficient vegetarians which all of them are because there is no creatine in the plant kingdom when it is administered them in either 20 gram loading doses or five gram-loading doses over a longer period but vegetarians improve card sorting and memory tasks when they are given creatine
you can take vegans or vegetarians who don't have much creatine in their diet and you give them five grams of creatine per day and then you retest them in terms of cards sorting tasks and memory tasks and they get smarter
I 100% believe that humans may be smarter and we've seen this you know nutritional interventions affect human intelligence yeah the best case I can think of off the top of my head is giving creatine to vegetarians which clearly improves many mult many many measures of intelligence
But it's pretty clear across the data that 10 to up to 20 grams of creatine per day improves brain creatine stores and then brain ATP stores, which leads to better working memory, better attention, better focus, better number recall, especially during times of cognitive stress.
And lastly, a 2021 review found that 10 to 20 grams of creatine can protect against cognitive stress and cognitive decline. So up to 20 grams of creatine may be beneficial for those at risk of neurocognitive issues, potentially dementias and other memory issues.
In 2008, there was a study looking at 20 gram of creatine for 5 days in vegetarians. And as you can imagine, vegetarians or vegans are going to have lower creatine stores in their brain because they're not eating meat, which is the only place the creatine actually lives. So what did they find? 20 grams of creatine for 5 days in 45 vegetarians led to significant improvements in memory, attention, focus, and cognitive tasks.
A 2003 study also on 45 adults who are not vegetarians showed that five grams of creatine four times a day, so 20 grams a day for six weeks led to improvements in cognitive performance. That's wild. Even people who are eating meat, more creatine, boom. Specifically in that study, they looked at working memory, number recall, and reaction time and found that these were especially better during cognitive stress.
I don't anecdotally I don't notice any negative side effects from 20 grams of creatine a day and I you know I think I do notice mental performance benefits.
5 g of creatine monohydrate daily improves muscle strength and lean mass in healthy adults at standard training loads.
Creatine improves cognitive performance, especially under sleep deprivation and high cognitive load.
Creatine improves cardiovascular health markers and reduces all-cause mortality risk.
Creatine supports bone-mineral density in post-menopausal women when paired with resistance training.
Women need higher creatine doses (8–10 g/day) than men to reach the same intramuscular saturation.