Creatine use, knowledge and experiences in 2,178 supplement users
What it found
In a survey of 2,178 current and recent creatine users, 55% perceived a benefit and 98% intended to keep using it.
Women reported more side effects and lower perceived benefit than men.
What they found
Studies in people
Perceived benefit and satisfaction
Only 55% of respondents perceived a benefit from creatine, even though 98% intended to continue and mean satisfaction was 7.8 out of 10. Cognitive performance was the most common goal (67.8%) but had the largest unmet expectation rate (64.4% of those aiming for cognitive benefit did not perceive it).
Gender differences
Women reported higher prevalence of side effects than men and lower odds of perceiving a benefit. The positive experience composite rate was 54% in men and 38% in women.
Knowledge and misconceptions
Most respondents correctly answered that creatine does not cause kidney damage (80.6%) or hair loss (81.2%), but about 17 to 18% were unsure. Women selected 'unsure' more often than men across five of six knowledge items.
Dosing patterns
The median daily dose was 5 grams. Men reported a higher mean dose than women (7.50 vs. 5.93 grams per day), and 34% of all respondents reported doses above 5 grams per day.
Side effects
About 10 to 15% reported any side effect at a given timepoint, with higher rates in women. The highest prevalence was among newer female users (23.1% at less than 1 month).
Knowledge and outcomes
Higher knowledge scores were linked to greater perceived benefit, higher satisfaction, and above-common dosing. Knowledge was the most consistent positive correlate across outcomes.
What the authors conclude
“Knowledge appeared as the most consistent positive correlate of supplementation experience, suggesting education may be a tractable lever for improving real-world outcomes; misconceptions about kidney safety and long-term tolerability may warrant particular attention as educational targets.”
Also in their conclusions
- They say knowledge appeared as the most consistent positive correlate of supplementation experience, suggesting education may be a tractable lever for improving real-world outcomes.
- They note that misconceptions about kidney safety and long-term tolerability may warrant particular attention as educational targets.
- They suggest the cognitive expectation gap may reflect a dose-translation issue rather than absence of efficacy.
How it was done
Most real-world creatine research has focused on competitive athletes and younger men, even as evidence has grown for use in healthy aging, cognition and women. The authors wanted to see whether use patterns, knowledge and experiences in a broader population match what trials show.
They sent an online survey to about 110,000 users of a supplement tracking app who had logged creatine, and got 2,178 analysable responses from people who currently used creatine or had used it in the past 12 months. The group was 1,077 women and 1,101 men, with a median age of 55 years.
What it can’t tell you
- This was a survey, so it can show links but not cause and effect.
- The sample came from users of a supplement tracking app, so it may not represent all creatine users.
- Side effects were self-reported and retrospective, so they may reflect awareness or beliefs rather than a physiological signal.
Who paid
- Conflicts
- JB and JMG are affiliated with SuppCo, Inc., which provided the platform and distribution infrastructure for survey recruitment. The procedural workflow was as follows: survey-instrument development was led by JMG and AB; programmatic dissemination through the SuppCo platform was performed by SuppCo’s product team using the standard in-app notification system; e-mails were not retained in the analytic dataset and were not made available to any author; statistical analysis was conducted by JB and ZZ; AB and JMG contributed methodological review. AB and ZZ report no competing interests.
- Authors work at
- University of California, United States; Oklahoma State University, United States; Boston University, United States
The paper
- Title
- Real-world creatine supplementation: a large-scale cross-sectional study of use, knowledge, and experiences
- Type
- Study
- Evidence
- Studies in people
- Summarised from
- Full text
- Licence
- CC BY. Words in quotation marks are the authors’; the rest is our summary.
- Cite
- Burridge J, Boolani A, Zhang Z, Glenn JM (2026). Real-world creatine supplementation: a large-scale cross-sectional study of use, knowledge, and experiences. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. doi:10.1080/15502783.2026.2702952Free full textPubMed 42479961DOI
Summary written 29 Sep 2026. Check it against the paper before it changes what you eat. How we summarise papers · Report an error