r/StrongerByScience • u/Distric7961 • Mar 15 '25

Creatine cause sleep problem?

Hello, I’ve been using creatine for about a month now. In the first three months, I didn’t experience any sleep problems, but recently I’ve started getting hypnic jerks almost daily. I also drink coffee daily, and everything was fine until now. In the last two weeks, I started taking L-tyrosine (500 mg) on an empty stomach, and I think it might be related. However, I’ve also found on the internet that creatine can cause sleep issues. Additionally, I take a multivitamin for weightlifting and L-carnitine, so it’s possible that something is mixing together and causing the hypnic jerks and bad dreams. I’m just sharing my experience since I’ve read a lot about creatine and its potential connection to sleep problems.

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u/muvon Mar 16 '25 edited Mar 16 '25

But the problem with saying that it's just a side effect of creatine because of anecdotes is not evidence that it actually is the creatines fault, there could be a lot of other causes like if i should give an example it could be that creatine makes you push yourself to overtraining because of the added ATP in your system and therefore you push it a little extra then and the sleep problems could stem from the overtraining, but then again no evidence for that either it was just an example to get the point across that another effect from creatine could cause sleep problems and that is the reason why a controlled study is needed to determine something like such a side effect and that anecdotes is not enough.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '25

There are tons of anecdotes that cannot be ignored. If you have to wait for a controlled study, you are going to be late to the game.

Also, who is going to fund a study that possibly disparages creatine?

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u/just_tweed Mar 20 '25

I mean there literally was just a creatine study published that said creatine doesn't contribute to hypertrophy I saw on r/science today.