Creatine: Can it help brain performance

You take supplements for your joints. For your heart. For your bones.
But what about your brain?

Your brain is the most energy-hungry organ you own. It represents roughly 2% of your body weight yet consumes nearly 20% of your daily energy.

That energy comes in one form. ATP. Creatine helps your cells regenerate ATP faster. Most people associate creatine with muscle.

Athletes loading up before training. Bodybuilders maximizing their lifts. But the same energy principle that powers your muscles also powers your neurons.

This matters more as you age.

Cognitive decline isn't simply about neurons dying. It's often about neurons starving. Your brain's energy metabolism becomes less efficient with each passing decade.

The machinery that produces ATP slows down. Your prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for working memory, planning, and complex reasoning, feels this shortage most acutely.

Creatine supplementation appears to help bridge that gap.

Research published in Experimental Gerontology found that older adults taking creatine showed improvements in working memory and processing speed. The effect was particularly pronounced during cognitively demanding tasks, exactly when your brain needs rapid ATP regeneration most.

The mechanism is elegantly simple.

Creatine stores in your brain act as an energy buffer. When a neuron fires and depletes its ATP, creatine phosphate steps in to regenerate it almost instantly.

More buffer means more sustained cognitive output. There's another layer worth understanding.

Sleep deprivation, stress, and mental fatigue all drain your brain's energy reserves. Studies suggest creatine supplementation can partially protect cognitive performance under these conditions.

For older adults managing demanding schedules, chronic stress, or simply the accumulated sleep debt of decades, this buffering capacity becomes increasingly valuable.

So how much should you take?

For most people the safe dosage is 5 gms a day and then you cycle off after say 6-8 weeks. There are those who mega-dose. Mega-dosing is taking say 25 gms a day for 8 weeks and then switching to a normal dose.

What ever you choose to do, do so after consulting someone who knows what they are doing.

Creatine doesn't replace that machinery. But it does give your neurons a larger fuel tank to draw from when demand spikes. But , sometimes the simplest interventions address the most fundamental needs.

Reach out to me on twitter @rbawri Instagram @riteshbawriofficial and YouTube at www.youtube.com/breatheagain