Everything You Need to Know About Creatine 

Creatine supplements are widely known for their effectiveness in high-intensity activities like weightlifting. But it's a common misconception that it’s only for bodybuilders or for men.

Creatine actually provides remarkable benefits for women in their 40s and beyond. Beyond enhancing strength and workout performance, its positive impact extends to brain health, bone strength, beautiful skin and more. 

What Is Creatine? 

Creatine is a vital compound for energy production in your body that your body makes from three amino acids: arginine, glycine, and methionine. Your liver, kidneys, and pancreas make about a gram of creatine daily, which is then transported to your muscles. In fact, about 95% of creatine is stored in your skeletal muscle. Smaller amounts of creatine are also found in your brain and gut, contributing to various physiological functions. 

A few foods, including red meat and fish, provide some creatine. However, you’d have to eat an impractical amount (over two pounds of red meat) to get the recommended 4-5 grams of creatine daily. This is where supplementation comes into play as a convenient and effective way to get therapeutic amounts of this essential nutrient. 

What Does Creatine Do? 

Creatine plays a major role in energy production, particularly during short bursts of intense physical activity. In fact, the most important benefit of creatine is building a fundamental energy molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP).¹ 

When you work out, your muscles require energy, which is supplied by glucose. ATP acts like a middleman between glucose and your muscles, enabling the rapid conversion of glucose into ATP to fuel muscle contraction and movement. But everything comes at a cost.  

During this energy transfer, ATP loses a phosphate group, transforming into adenosine diphosphate (ADP). However, muscles cannot utilize ADP for energy. To regenerate ATP and maintain energy levels, muscles combine ADP with creatine phosphate (also known as phosphocreatine). This process effectively recharges ADP into ATP, ensuring a continuous supply of energy for muscle function.  

Think of supplementing with creatine as a battery charger to help your muscles power through a workout. During intense exercise, using ATP for energy and then recharging it with creatine phosphate happens again and again. Keeping your tissues saturated with creatine provides a continuous energy cycle that helps keeps your muscles fueled and ready to move.  

Notably, the benefits of this energy-enhancing process extend beyond the muscles. The brain, an organ with its own demanding energy requirements, also benefits from this mechanism. 

Why Is Creatine So Important For Women? 

Compared with men, women have 70-80% fewer tissue stores of creatine.² You’re also less likely to get it from your diet, especially if you’re vegan or vegetarian. Animal-derived foods are the highest sources, and most plant foods have little if any creatine. Deficiencies can especially become a problem with age. After 30, muscle mass decreases by about 3-8% every decade. By the time you reach 60, that loss accelerates.  

The consequences of muscle loss extend beyond aesthetics. We rely on muscle strength for everyday activities, from lifting a carry-on bag into an overhead compartment on a flight to hoisting a 30-pound bag of dog food into your trunk.³ A decrease in muscle mass also increases your risk of falling, disability, and even early death.⁴ 

Aging brings about an increased likelihood of bone loss, too. In the few years following menopause, women can lose up to 20% of their bone mass, leading to heightened risks of fractures, osteoporosis, and weakened bones.⁵ 

Muscle and bone loss are not inevitable parts of getting older, thanks to the potential benefits of creatine. One of its biggest benefits is its ability to counteract inflammation—a critical factor in various age-related concerns like bone loss and muscle decline.⁶ Creatine is also a powerful antioxidant, fighting the free radicals that can damage your cells and steal your health.⁷ 

Creatine Benefits for Women 

Creatine can be a valuable ally for women in maintaining muscle strength, bone health, and overall well-being as you navigate the aging process. From enhancing physical performance to supporting cognitive health and beyond, the advantages of this nutrient are far-reaching, making it one of the essential supplements for women over 40. 

1. Muscle Mass and Strength 

When muscle mass declines with age, so does your strength and mobility. Creatine can help. When you’re doing intense exercise (like lifting heavy weights), your muscles demand high amounts of ATP.  

Creatine accelerates the production of ATP. It's like having a backup generator for your muscles to work longer and better. With this extra energy, you can do more repetitions with weight or go harder (such as with high-intensity interval training or HIIT). 

Research supports these promising effects. In one study, older women supplementing with creatine had significant gains in muscle strength, especially when they combined creatine with resistance training for at least 24 weeks.⁸ Additional studies show that creatine can benefit muscle size and function in post-menopausal women.⁹ 

Overall, creatine is a powerful tool to slow down muscle loss and enhance strength, improving your overall physical performance and quality of life. 

2. Brain Health 

Just like your muscle cells need energy, so do your brain cells. Creatine provides energy to your brain cells (called neurons), helping them work more efficiently. When neurons have enough energy, they communicate better with each other, supporting memory and the ability to learn new things. 

When you're stressed out or sleep-deprived, your brain rapidly uses creatine to maintain ATP levels, which can impair energy production. Optimizing ATP production with creatine can especially benefit tasks that rely on the frontal cortex, including cognition, attention, and memory.¹⁰  

These and other brain-boosting benefits become important with age to reduce the risk for neurodegenerative diseases. Women have lower brain levels of creatine, particularly in the frontal lobe.¹¹ Supplementation can support brain energy levels in older women, promoting a healthy mood and brain function.¹² 

Other research shows that creatine can boost cognitive performance and brain function while reducing mental fatigue during stressful mental tasks.¹³ Creatine may even help with depression, which impacts women much more than men. One review found that women with a major depressive disorder who supplemented their daily antidepressant with 5 grams of creatine responded twice as fast and experienced remission of depression at twice the rate of women who took only their antidepressant.¹⁴ 

3. Bone Health  

Age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia) can increase your risk for falls, injuries, and fractures. Sarcopenia is also associated with other age-related conditions, including osteoporosis. Creatine offers direct and indirect benefits for bone health. Compared with strength training alone, creatine can help support bone mineral density to reduce the risk of fractures and frailty.¹⁵  

Indirectly, creatine supports bone health by promoting muscle strength and mass. When you do strength-training exercises, your muscles pull on your bones, stimulating bone growth and improving bone density.  

Overall, creatine combined with resistance training can have favorable effects on muscle and bone to help you age powerfully.¹⁶ Creatine’s anti-inflammatory impact can also help lower chronic inflammation that, left unchecked, can lead to bone loss.¹⁷ 

4. Energy Levels 

With age, energy levels can decline, making workouts and other physical activity challenging. Creatine can support your body’s ATP production to create steady, sustained all-day energy.  

The advantages of creatine extend to physical performance as well. Creatine supplementation can delay the onset of fatigue during anaerobic exercise, such as HIIT.¹⁸ In fact, researchers find that women who use creatine have a 10-15% increase in exercise performance.¹⁹ 

5. Blood-Sugar Balance 

Creatine supplementation can support glucose regulation, helping manage blood-sugar levels. Research shows that creatine can enhance insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle. When muscle cells become more sensitive to insulin, they can take up and use glucose more effectively, keeping blood-sugar levels in check.²⁰ 

While we need more research, researchers believe that creatine combined with exercise training can better improve glucose metabolism.²¹ One study found creatine, especially combined with optimal protein intake and strength training, can help your muscle cells better utilize glucose and store that glucose as glycogen, your muscles' backup fuel. ²² 

That makes creatine very promising for people with blood-sugar imbalances, including diabetes. One review of three studies found that compared with a placebo, creatine supplementation could help improve blood-sugar levels for people with type 2 diabetes.²³ 

How Much Creatine Should I Take?  

Far from being “just a bodybuilding supplement,” creatine can support women in their 40s and beyond, as aging makes you more prone to issues like muscle and bone loss.  

In fact, the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) declared that “creatine monohydrate is the most effective ergogenic nutritional supplement currently available to athletes with the intent of increasing high-intensity exercise capacity and lean body mass during training.” 

In other words, creatine monohydrate is the best supplement to use to get better at intense workouts and build stronger muscles when you're training.

Despite unsubstantiated rumors, creatine supplements are safe and effective. Creatine does not create kidney problems if you have healthy kidneys. If you have pre-existing kidney issues or other health concerns, talk with your healthcare practitioner before using creatine. Research shows that short and long-term creatine supplementation (up to 30 grams a day for five years) is safe and well-tolerated in healthy individuals.²⁴  

Another rumor is that creatine supplements create water retention. Again, this is not true. Creatine draws water into muscle cells, increasing intracellular fluid (the fluid inside your cells, including muscle cells). This increased cell hydration gives an appearance of fuller, larger muscles. This is very different than water retention, which you might associate with bloating or puffiness. This “water weight” stabilizes within a week or two of using creatine.

If you’re new to creatine, start with .06g per kg (or 2.2 pounds) of body weight and titrate up. If you weigh 150 pounds, that would be about 4 grams of creatine daily.  

Consistency is key: It can take about a month to saturate your tissues with creatine, and you’ve got to take it daily. You can either take the allotted amount (about 5 grams) every day for a month, or you can take 5 grams four times a day for five days in a row. After that, you’ll dose about 3-5 grams a day, depending on your size. 

Note: If you have sensitivity to supplements, GI issues, or fluid retention, start with 1 gram and slowly increase to 3 grams (or whatever your full dose is based on the equation above) over the course of one to two weeks. Then, it will take four weeks at your full dose to reach tissue saturation. Once your tissues are saturated, timing of your supplementation is not important, but as you build your creatine stores you'll want to supplement before your workouts.

Be sure to track your results! Cronometer tracks your food macros, movement, and more to give you direct feedback. A measuring tape and a body-composition scale are invaluable tools to monitor progress, celebrate your wins, and tweak where necessary. 

My brand-new Resistance Training Cheat Sheet has everything you need to quickly get started on your fitness journey, including home gym essentials, an 8-week workout plan, and a progress tracker to track your sets, reps, and weights with each workout. It’s FREE, so grab yours here. 

What Creatine Supplement Should I Look For? 

I take creatine every day. Especially as you head into menopause, this should be a core supplement. And as I’ve noted repeatedly, you’ll see the biggest improvements when you combine a creatine supplement with resistance training. 

Creatine can help you work out harder and not fatigue as quickly, but its benefits for stronger bones and brain health make it ideal for menopausal women. The key to those and other perks is the right supplement.  

You’ll find creatine powder as creatine monohydrate, which is simply creatine combined with a molecule of water. Look for a creatine powder with zero additives or fillers. 

Clean Creatine Powder is the purest form of creatine, with only one ingredient: 100% creatine monohydrate. Each serving delivers a therapeutic 5 grams of this multitasking nutrient, with no fillers or other ingredients.* The flavorless powder mixes easily into your loaded smoothie or favorite beverage.   

I'm confident that this is the best creatine supplement on the market and can be your ticket to better brain health, energy levels, blood-sugar balance, muscle strength, and more. Order yours here.

References: 

1. Saito S, Cao DY, Okuno A, Li X, Peng Z, Kelel M, Tsuji NM. Creatine supplementation enhances immunological function of neutrophils by increasing cellular adenosine triphosphate. Biosci Microbiota Food Health. 2022;41(4):185-194. doi: 10.12938/bmfh.2022-018. Epub 2022 Jun 17. PMID: 36258765; PMCID: PMC9533032. 

2. Brosnan JT, Brosnan ME. Creatine: endogenous metabolite, dietary, and therapeutic supplement. Annu Rev Nutr. 2007;27:241-61. doi: 10.1146/annurev.nutr.27.061406.093621. PMID: 17430086. 

3. Scientific American: How to Keep Muscles Strong as You Age 

4. Harvard Health: Age and muscle loss 

5. Endocrine Society: Menopause and Bone Loss 

6. Cordingley DM, Cornish SM, Candow DG. Anti-Inflammatory and Anti-Catabolic Effects of Creatine Supplementation: A Brief Review. Nutrients. 2022 Jan 27;14(3):544. doi: 10.3390/nu14030544. PMID: 35276903; PMCID: PMC8839648. 

7. Sestili P, Martinelli C, Colombo E, Barbieri E, Potenza L, Sartini S, Fimognari C. Creatine as an antioxidant. Amino Acids. 2011 May;40(5):1385-96. doi: 10.1007/s00726-011-0875-5. Epub 2011 Mar 15. PMID: 21404063. 

8. Dos Santos EEP, de Araújo RC, Candow DG, Forbes SC, Guijo JA, de Almeida Santana CC, Prado WLD, Botero JP. Efficacy of Creatine Supplementation Combined with Resistance Training on Muscle Strength and Muscle Mass in Older Females: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Nutrients. 2021 Oct 24;13(11):3757. doi: 10.3390/nu13113757. PMID: 34836013; PMCID: PMC8619193. 

9. Smith-Ryan AE, Cabre HE, Eckerson JM, Candow DG. Creatine Supplementation in Women's Health: A Lifespan Perspective. Nutrients. 2021 Mar 8;13(3):877. doi: 10.3390/nu13030877. PMID: 33800439; PMCID: PMC7998865. 

10. Dworak M, McCarley RW, Kim T, Kalinchuk AV, Basheer R. Sleep and brain energy levels: ATP changes during sleep. J Neurosci. 2010 Jun 30;30(26):9007-16. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1423-10.2010. PMID: 20592221; PMCID: PMC2917728. 

11. Smith-Ryan AE, Cabre HE, Eckerson JM, Candow DG. Creatine Supplementation in Women's Health: A Lifespan Perspective. Nutrients. 2021 Mar 8;13(3):877. doi: 10.3390/nu13030877. PMID: 33800439; PMCID: PMC7998865. 

12. Dworak M, McCarley RW, Kim T, Kalinchuk AV, Basheer R. Sleep and brain energy levels: ATP changes during sleep. J Neurosci. 2010 Jun 30;30(26):9007-16. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1423-10.2010. PMID: 20592221; PMCID: PMC2917728. 

13. Roschel H, Gualano B, Ostojic SM, Rawson ES. Creatine Supplementation and Brain Health. Nutrients. 2021 Feb 10;13(2):586. doi: 10.3390/nu13020586. PMID: 33578876; PMCID: PMC7916590. 

14. Lyoo IK, Yoon S, Kim TS, Hwang J, Kim JE, Won W, Bae S, Renshaw PF. A randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trial of oral creatine monohydrate augmentation for enhanced response to a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor in women with major depressive disorder. Am J Psychiatry. 2012 Sep;169(9):937-945. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2012.12010009. PMID: 22864465; PMCID: PMC4624319. 

15. Rawson ES, Venezia AC. Use of creatine in the elderly and evidence for effects on cognitive function in young and old. Amino Acids. 2011 May;40(5):1349-62. doi: 10.1007/s00726-011-0855-9. Epub 2011 Mar 11. PMID: 21394604. 

16. Candow DG, Chilibeck PD, Forbes SC, Fairman CM, Gualano B, Roschel H. Creatine supplementation for older adults: Focus on sarcopenia, osteoporosis, frailty and Cachexia. Bone. 2022 Sep;162:116467. doi: 10.1016/j.bone.2022.116467. Epub 2022 Jun 7. PMID: 35688360. 

17. Cordingley DM, Cornish SM, Candow DG. Anti-Inflammatory and Anti-Catabolic Effects of Creatine Supplementation: A Brief Review. Nutrients. 2022 Jan 27;14(3):544. doi: 10.3390/nu14030544. PMID: 35276903; PMCID: PMC8839648. 

18. Wang CC, Lin SC, Hsu SC, Yang MT, Chan KH. Effects of Creatine Supplementation on Muscle Strength and Optimal Individual Post-Activation Potentiation Time of the Upper Body in Canoeists. Nutrients. 2017 Oct 27;9(11):1169. doi: 10.3390/nu9111169. PMID: 29077022; PMCID: PMC5707641. 

19. Smith-Ryan AE, Cabre HE, Eckerson JM, Candow DG. Creatine Supplementation in Women's Health: A Lifespan Perspective. Nutrients. 2021 Mar 8;13(3):877. doi: 10.3390/nu13030877. PMID: 33800439; PMCID: PMC7998865. 

20. Solis MY, Artioli GG, Gualano B. Potential of Creatine in Glucose Management and Diabetes. Nutrients. 2021 Feb 9;13(2):570. doi: 10.3390/nu13020570. PMID: 33572228; PMCID: PMC7915263. 

21. Solis MY, Artioli GG, Gualano B. Potential of Creatine in Glucose Management and Diabetes. Nutrients. 2021 Feb 9;13(2):570. doi: 10.3390/nu13020570. PMID: 33572228; PMCID: PMC7915263. 

22. Derave W, Eijnde BO, Verbessem P, Ramaekers M, Van Leemputte M, Richter EA, Hespel P. Combined creatine and protein supplementation in conjunction with resistance training promotes muscle GLUT-4 content and glucose tolerance in humans. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2003 May;94(5):1910-6. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00977.2002. Epub 2003 Jan 10. PMID: 12524381. 

23. Mancini de Sousa M, Nakata MTK, Baldini CES, de Oliveira-Sales EB, Boim MA, Martimbianco ALC, Maquigussa E. Creatine Supplementation in Type 2 Diabetic Patients: A Systematic Review of Randomized Clinical Trials. Curr Diabetes Rev. 2022;18(3):e120721194709. doi: 10.2174/1573399817666210712151737. PMID: 34931982. 

24. Kreider RB, Kalman DS, Antonio J, Ziegenfuss TN, Wildman R, Collins R, Candow DG, Kleiner SM, Almada AL, Lopez HL. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017 Jun 13;14:18. doi: 10.1186/s12970-017-0173-z. PMID: 28615996; PMCID: PMC5469049. 

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. Products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The views in this blog by JJ Virgin should never be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. Please work with a healthcare practitioner concerning any medical problem or concern.