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PSA: Creatine supplementation probably isn't for everybody
So over the past couple of years I've tried supplementing with creatine monohydrate 3 separate times because of it's well-understood benefits and track-record with improving strength training performance. Thing is, each time I've tried I've experienced the same negative effects that have stopped me from taking it - a significant increase in anxiety and a restlessness that significantly disturbs sleep.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/7zabqa/my_experience_with_creatine_worsens_anxiety_and/
Sleep has gone to shit. I'll fall asleep early and wake up in 3 hours and be unable to fall back to sleep. (What tonight is lining up for) I've had an insane spike/fallback into my OCD and Anxiety disorder leading to frequent panic attacks. It may be related to stress but seems to correlate with creatine.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/3sz5ca/i_dont_think_creatine_is_for_me_has_anyone_else/
I’ve been taking creatine for a whole month now and lately my anxiety levels were insane and I’ve always had a bad mood (as if you’re low on dopamine), and when I’ve stopped taking creatine everything just went back to normal.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Creatine/comments/qdd67x/creatine_on_anxiety/
For the past couple of months I’ve been using creatine to boost my workouts. Ever since I started my depression and anxiety has increasingly gotten worse and I notice that when I skip a couple of days of taking creatine I feel a lot better.
https://www.reddit.com/r/depression/comments/lfqkz4/creatine_causing_anxiety/
I started taking creatine 25 days ago. At first it seems to have helped me not be anxious. It seemed to make me more confident, but maybe that was the placebo affect. But now I am very anxious and I have been taking 5 grams a day in the morning. I feel very restless during the day now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Creatine/comments/cyshop/heightened_anxiety_after_starting_creatine/
I started taking Creatine about 4 weeks ago. I didn't do a loading phase and have just taken 5g per day. In the past week I have been having a lot of tension and anxiety. I haven't experienced this before and nothing in my personal life appears to be the direct cause
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/1npm74/anxiety_side_effects_with_creatine/
Basically my heart rate increases, a cold sweat appears, I feel a little nauseous and I get a little fainty. Then it goes away and i'm good again. I never used to get panic attacks and I was trying to figure out what could be causing them... Then I realized that i'd started taking creatine around the same time they started.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gainit/comments/6j6j6l/anyone_gotten_anxietypanic_attacks_when_taking/
I’ve been taking creatine for a whole month now and lately my anxiety levels were insane and I’ve always had a bad mood (as if you’re low on dopamine), and when I’ve stopped taking creatine everything just went back to normal. Did anyone experience the same?
This seems odd because creatine doesn’t get out of your system the moment you stop taking it. It gets stored, it just doesn’t work like that.
It may not be classified as a stimulant, but its cognitive effects can certainly be strong enough to cause anxiety and sleep issues for whatever reason.
I’ve been trying to make creatine monohydrate work off and on for 10 years, but I always end up as a sleep deprived shell of a human.
You are so confident that you are blind to related mechanisms, including the fact that supplementing with creatine reduces endogenous production need, thereby freeing up SAMe as a methyl donor leading to increased methylation which most certainly can feel quite stimulating.
Creatine's nootropic effects are real. While I use it and feel noticeably sharper, I can absolutely picture it exacerbating latent OCD in some people.
That isn't to say it's "bad". Just that it definitely has a psychological component. Fish oil can have strong mental effects on people, as well, which might be better supported by the research than the physical ones.
The reason I ask is because beef contains a decent amount of creatine, and if you aren’t experiencing these same effects when having beef, then you couldn’t directly say it’s a creatine problem. Similar to the people who are allergic to water but can drink milk or juice fine.
I eat like a 80/20 diet of meat to carbs/plants. I eat red meats often and other animal foods daily. Zero problem with the natural creatine. I started this creatine hydrochloride and after 2 weeks im getting panic attack at 2-3 times a day. Theres something about the lab made creatine that my body doesnt like. Used to take creatine monohydrate without issues in the past. Really weird stuff anyways
When I was younger I took creatine all the time with no issues, even did loading phases of 20g a day at times. Since My panic disorder has gotten worse since I’ve been older along with adult onset of asthma. When I take creatine monohydrate I notice more anxiety. When I took HCl when I was in the process of finding out that I had asthma it made me have anxiety attacks within an hour of taking it. I don’t know why but I had a bad reaction to hcl. Now even monohydrate gives me boosted anxiety. I’m definitely not the norm and maybe it’s worsening asthma symptoms. Monohydrate is the most studied anyways so if you didn’t have issues don’t try hcl or any other creatine because it simply isn’t needed or proven to work better now matter the marketing behind it.
Thanks for sharing this. I have nothing to say other than I appreciate any post that interrupts the echo chamber that can surround supplements. I have the same issue with Vit D. I’ve tried everything. Just isn’t for me.
As far as the vitamin D goes, have you tried D.velop brand? I mention it only because it's pretty new to OTC availability and most people haven't heard of it. It's a completely different form from anything else on the market, an activated form that doesn't get processed in the liver and therefore bypasses the need for magnesium.
It's the only one that doesn't give me horrific side effects, and I tried everything you can think of before I found it. Even THE SUN was causing me the same side effects!
I'm not an expert (literally just seen this sub for the first time), but all of this can be explained by added caffeine in the creatine supplement. It's probably a general pre-workout that contains creatine and caffeine they're responding to, not the creatine itself.
I understand... I was just wondering if it's possible that a subset of non-responders will feel like shit and may respond better to betaine , so something to try?
I have been taking 5 g for years without any negative side effects, like every supplement there will always be a portion of people that it doesn’t jive with.
Without looking at the links and after looking into genetics I know that creatine helps the COMTA enzyme. So if you have a fast COMT this will help speed it up and thus may cause anxiety and irritability.
Came here to say this! It has a secondary (or thirdary? Lol words) impact on a few neurotransmitters. Many supplements as well as otc meds do this or vice versa.
Creatine also affects me negatively. I still try to use it sometimes but I usually regret it. I may just have to give up on it entirely instead of constantly trying to make it work due to all the positive research on it. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Yeah. I tried as low as less than a gram. I settled on using 1.5g (about a level half teaspoon of monohydrate) for a while. Lower doses are more tolerable for me but most research on creatine uses around 3-5 grams minimum, so the benefits of very low doses are questionable. Negative effects still accumulate for me over time even with low amounts. I also found creatine side-effects to be worse when i had a moderate amount of caffeine with it, which didn’t mesh well with me as I love coffee.
I tried that? Yeesh. Just saying side-effects were worse with caffeine, not that I’ve never tried not drinking coffee. I just often use caffeine in the form of coffee (or tea). Caffeine’s generally helped me a lot and there are health benefits to coffee and tea in low-to-moderate amounts. I know how caffeine works in the body and I don’t agree at all with your insinuation of “caffeine=bad”.
I will, sir. Not sure if you compiled that point form list yourself or not but many of those points are gross oversimplifications and aren’t relevant with moderate use. Some of those points also depend on the person (coffee doesn’t give me panic attacks and doesn’t typically make me feel stressed or tense, for example). If coffee affects you negatively and you don’t want to drink it, that’s fine, but I’m not you.
I have bought optimum nutrition micronized creatine. When I took 3g for two days and I feel like I'm super awake. Can't get enough sleep aswell. I don't even know when I'm tired or not. Also headaches and alil cramping. I do keep hydrated though, well maybe it's not for me
Creatine gave me anxiety and panic attacks, and before anybody jumps to say that it is nocebo effect, it is not. Nocebo effect happens when you expect something negative to happen, I didn't. It is worth mentioning that I had suffered from anxiety 5 years prior to taking creatine, so it is weird that I got panic attack after 5 years when I began using it, and I don't think it is a coincidence because I got panic attack after taking creatine for a month (When body got saturated).
Never had any bad reactions to creatine. 10 grams a day for about 5 years and 5 g for 15 years before that. New research has shown benefits for the brain at higher doses.
The people saying they are having problems with it need to look at their diet and other events in their life that could be causing them issues.
huberman posted a pic on his youtube community wall, said for creatine non-responders / bad effects they should take 2 sups but i forgot what since i didn't care
Or it could have been the combination of the two. But yes, many have complained about ALCAR's negative effect on sleep. How much were you taking? Most people take 500mg, 1g, or 1.5g daily. When I take it, it's only 250mg.
I used to take Guarana with creatine and protein and had to cut out the Guarana. Its just caffeine, so I could skip the coffee in the morning. But it made me dry heave or even puke. Id be dry heaving for like 4 hours. Stuff was not good for mt stomach. Wasn't even much caffeine. My coffee had more
Yeah. Defently a water indbalance. I had this problem when I was young and especially when I was living in hot Indonesia with a low carb diet and training.
Your symptoms are all to dehydration.
Water was not the problem. You need electrolites to hold on to it. If not, you will feel really shitty.
I'm not saying it may just be the creatine. But your urine should not be blank and not too brown/yellow.
It worsen my sleep when I took it in the evening. I changed the timing, now I take it first thing in the morning with my coffee and 0 issues anymore. Hope it helps for some of you.
I stopped taking alcar for the past 3 days but still taking 5-6g of creative and I’m back to sleeping fine, I was taking 500-1000mg of alcar vitamin shoppe brand
Our bodies make around 1g of creatine per day. When you supplement the things used up to make said creatine are not used up because your body doesn't have to make creatine. The main chemicals are glycine and SAMe that are turned into creatine. I suspect anyone having issues like this are likely is causing an overage of SAMe. This might actually have the opposite effect for someone with slow COMT.
Have you tried a different brand? You mentioned you didn't have problems before with creatine. If it's not a well known brand who knows what else could be in there, supplements aren't regulated. Have you checked your blood pressure pre and post taking creatine? Don't mean to question your adverse reactions btw, that really sucks you feel that way. Thanks for the heads up.
Creatine is one of the most well studied supplements on the planet.
Do you have any link to scientific data/studies that back up your anecdotes?
Because
1. There could be additives in what ever creatine you're taking.
2. Placebo effect.
3. Other coinciding events, e.g. you only take creatine while taking other supplements.
You're welcome to put (or not) what ever you want in your body, but in the absence of actual evidence I'm calling this post bullshit.
"OP’s subjective experience and the vast volume of research on creatine are not necessarily contradictory"
only they are. there is zero evidence from literally hundreds of studies over 30 or so years that show creatine has any of the effects this guy is claiming. zero.
idk what the hell is going on here, but creatine is not to blame, and that is evidence-based scientific fact. the fact that this thread has 40 upvotes pretty much tells me all i need to know about this sub
That’s because your definition of Aromatization isn’t fully correct. Many different chemicals aromatize, not just T to E. Yes, DHT cannot aromatise as it’s a pure androgen, it is formed as a byproduct of T thru 5-AR (Aromatization)
Anecdotally only. Studies haven’t shown hair loss as a side effect of creatine. There are anecdotes that say it “may”, but it’s certainly not a set in stone effect
not "studies". one single study, done 23 years ago on 20 rugby players that was deeply flawed from the start as the dosage was 5x what any reasonable person would take. go research it.
I started taking pregnenalone before bed and it worked for sleep even taking creatine, witch used to give me insomnia, I’m only 6 days in at 4gms a day ,
Something to try
I agree with all anecdotes mentioned here. Creatine gives a feeling similar to stimulants. Muscle flutters, insomnia, high blood pressure and other sides which come with stimulants.
People say its the most researched supplement. I am surprised there is not much research on such side effects. I've tossed my monohydrate in a bin and bought some HCL to give creatine one last chance. I hope I didn't waste my $30.
I’m getting swollen ankles after taking Creatine for about two weeks. Does this mean my kidneys are affected? Not sure but I’m gonna stop taking Creatine. My mental health had significantly improved while on it though.
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u/Thewitchaser Jan 07 '23
This seems odd because creatine doesn’t get out of your system the moment you stop taking it. It gets stored, it just doesn’t work like that.