Creatine for Cognitive Function

Research suggests that creatine supplementation may offer modest but meaningful benefits for certain aspects of cognitive function, particularly memory, attention, and information processing speed, based on evidence from multiple randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. Studies indicate that these benefits appear most pronounced in specific populations, including older adults, women, vegetarians and vegans, individuals under cognitive stress such as sleep deprivation, and those with existing health conditions — likely because these groups tend to have lower baseline creatine levels in the brain to begin with. However, the overall evidence is mixed in several areas, with inconsistent findings for executive function, reaction time, and general cognitive performance, and a 2018 systematic review noted that young, healthy meat-eating individuals showed little to no cognitive benefit from supplementation. The certainty of the available evidence remains moderate at best for memory outcomes and low for other cognitive domains, and researchers across multiple reviews consistently call for larger, more rigorous trials before firm conclusions can be drawn.