Does creatine also help with memory and concentration?
Creatine has the strongest evidence for a memory effect in older adults aged 66 and over. In younger, healthy adults, the best available research shows no convincing benefit.
Creatine gives the energy supply in brain cells a boost. Whether that also improves your memory and concentration depends heavily on your age. Across all age groups combined there is a signal, but the effect is small and inconsistent1.
The evidence is strongest in older adults aged 66 to 76. Multiple studies report a moderate to large memory effect in this group. A small study of 32 older adults found improvement on virtually all measured cognitive tasks after one week of creatine (5 grams, four times per day)2,1. A recent systematic review in adults aged 55 and over with more than 1500 participants found positive outcomes for memory and attention in five out of six studies3. One caveat: the variation between studies is large and the quality of many of the underlying studies was moderate to poor.
In younger adults the picture is considerably less positive. The largest available study, with 123 participants including both vegetarians and meat-eaters, found no convincing benefit for reasoning or working memory after six weeks of creatine at 5 grams per day4. On average across studies in 11- to 31-year-olds, the memory effect is close to zero1,5. For attention and reaction time, results are actually contradictory5.
Side effects are also worth noting. In that large study in young adults, the creatine group experienced gastrointestinal complaints more than four times as often as the placebo group4. Not dangerous, but something to factor in if you expect little benefit from it.
Two situations make creatine particularly interesting in older adults. When combined with strength training, the cognitive effect appears to become larger6. And in cases of sleep deprivation or other forms of stress on the brain, there are indications that creatine is especially useful, although this has barely been studied in controlled trials7. Vegetarians seemed likely to see greater gains because they take in less creatine through their diet, but the largest study found no statistically significant difference compared with meat-eaters4,8,5.
Based on two meta-analyses and systematic reviews (PMID 35984306, 40971619), multiple randomised studies including the largest available study in this field (PMID 37968687, n=123), and additional smaller studies and narrative reviews. Total estimated number of participants across all sources: approximately 2200+. The methodological quality of the underlying studies varies considerably.