is not the right way to interpret the null result (insufficient evidence to reject null hypothesis that it has no effect) because the prior for supplements that people are trying to sell you is so low. In the absence of clear, strong evidence, you should assume the the whole thing is just an example of motivated reasoning. People want nootropics to be real, and other people really want to sell you readily available powders by claiming they have nootropic properties. In that environment, they were always going to trying to concoct a similar narrative about some supplement, and it just happened to be creatine. Those efforts were always going to result in a handful of "positive" studies that turn out to be non-reproducible, maybe because of p-hacking, maybe because of publication bias, maybe because of outright fraud. This is what the literature always looks like for stuff that just doesn't work. If it did work - if the effect size was large enough that you could personally detect it in your own life - then the papers would be trying to put error bars around the effect size, not trying (and failing) to barely distinguish it from a placebo.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” - Ernest Rutherford
switchbak 5 minutes ago [-]
What I'm getting from all this is that we have an armchair expert explaining details about something they're not an expert in, and we have you reviewing the way they present this information, saying their very weak hedge wasn't strongly negative enough. Based on priors about the industry.
Basically, HN doing HN things - having a good deep think about topics outside their realm of expertise, then debating the minutiae. I'd just rather trust someone who has spent their career researching this stuff, thanks (unless that's what you do - in which case please tell us more).
Retr0id 31 minutes ago [-]
If you're being academically rigorous about it, sure, but I think it's fine as an informal conclusion.
jdiff 22 minutes ago [-]
Even as an informal conclusion I think it's important to know who you're up against and what their motivations are. Waving that away is how we get people like known, obvious charlatans like RFK Jr in any sort of position of power. I know this is nitpicking word choice but the informal conclusion is "Not likely, and not enough to matter for anything."
Retr0id 17 minutes ago [-]
Personally I take creatine for entirely non-cognitive reasons, so it's reassuring to know it's probably not making me any dumber.
hombre_fatal 4 minutes ago [-]
Though you also have to consider potentially adulterated powder (accidental or not) in the unregulated supplement industry.
NopIdoN 10 minutes ago [-]
it might even be counteracting the negative effects of your frequent contact with airborne nitrogen
ttul 16 minutes ago [-]
What value is there to an informal conclusion when the topic is as important as intelligence? The downsides to creatine if taken without good scientific backing should not be disregarded, yet that’s exactly what many ordinary people are now doing because of “informal conclusions” like this.
overgard 14 minutes ago [-]
Are there really downsides to creatine though? (Genuine question). All the advice I've seen makes it seem like it's basically just good for you even if it doesn't accomplish some specific thing. The only downside I've heard is maybe water retention?
freehorse 13 minutes ago [-]
What are the "downsides"? It is one of the most studied substances and except in special cases like kidney issues it is totally safe.
I was visiting a friend’s lab at NASA Ames the other day. I smiled seeing this on the wall there. I sometimes daydream about what it’d be like if our primary education system devoted an hour a week to reading / discussing comics (well, XKCD specifically), or pages form What If…? Maybe it’d kill the magic of it, but I still feel plenty of seeds would get planted along the way for more critical thinking later in life.
taeric 37 minutes ago [-]
Heavily agreed. The supplement industry has such a low level of reliability that it has really soured me on so many practices people have. And I flat out do not understand how some of the supplement stores survive.
PaulHoule 26 minutes ago [-]
Hard sell. I remember the time I went to GNC and they gave me a free sample of the notorious Jack3D which had some kind of amphetamine-like stimulant in it and was associated with young soldiers in the US Army falling down dead.
Johnny555 9 minutes ago [-]
>And I flat out do not understand how some of the supplement stores survive.
I think mostly through placebo effect, people buy a supplement to treat condition X and they think it's getting better, so they keep buying.
I mean, just look at the wide variety of homeopathic "cures" that are often so diluted that there might not be any molecules of the active ingredient left. Yet people keep buying it.
jrm4 32 minutes ago [-]
Okay, but it kind of sounds like you want to nanny-state the writer's language.
Their conclusion seems like an absolutely fair interpretation of what they saw, and it also strikes me as dangerous -- perhaps more dangerous -- to suggest "writer genuinely believes, or doesn't believe, a thing, but they should say it differently from their own interpretation because..people are dumb?" Something like that.
jdiff 16 minutes ago [-]
One person is not a nation.
John23832 32 minutes ago [-]
Most people taking creatine just need to drink water. They drink more water using creatine. In reality, the water/hydration is doing the heaviest lift, not the creatine.
richardlblair 9 minutes ago [-]
I slam a lot of water. I also have a toddler and baby who suck at sleeping (I've done all the things, these kids just suck at sleeping).
Since taking creatine I feel so much more energized. I can make it through the day with just 2 coffees (was previously drinking 5 coffees and an energy drink).
Maybe it's placebo. Maybe it's not. I don't really care. I feel the benefit and I love it.
jerlam 2 minutes ago [-]
"Creatine found to improve cognitive performance during sleep deprivation" (2024, 56 comments)
A pity that water isn’t being sold as an expensive supplement. Or is it?
jerlam 21 minutes ago [-]
There are lots like Vitamin water, alkaline, and coconut water. And overpriced salt packets like Nuun and LMNT.
There's also no shortage of expensive water bottles being sold, and smart water bottles that track your drinking frequencies and flavor pods sold via subscription.
geophile 24 minutes ago [-]
You're looking in the wrong place. There is a moderately large industry around water bottles.
Retr0id 27 minutes ago [-]
I take my creatine with as little volume of water as possible, probably less than 50ml. I doubt that 50ml is having much impact on my overall hydration.
clayhacks 25 minutes ago [-]
How much water are you drinking the rest of the day? Creatine in theory makes you more thirsty such that you should be drinking more water throughout the day
Retr0id 24 minutes ago [-]
It's not something I track, but if it is making me thirstier then that sounds like another useful benefit.
berkeatac 22 minutes ago [-]
yes but again, the idea is that it helps retains water in your muscles so I don't see it aiding in regular water intake
John23832 25 minutes ago [-]
If you actually drank enough water daily, sans creatine, I'm sure you'd feel better.
Retr0id 21 minutes ago [-]
Hydration is important so I'm with you on the first half, but what is the proposed link between reduced creatine intake and emotional wellbeing?
John23832 19 minutes ago [-]
Placebo.
Retr0id 16 minutes ago [-]
I wasn't expecting creatine to have any bearing on my emotional state in the first place, so I'm not sure how that would work.
TIPSIO 25 minutes ago [-]
I don’t know. I personally wouldn’t take it if you aren’t also working out/lifting frequently (even if you drink a ton of water).
Anecdotal so safe to ignore this… but my hair did thin out but only after I was lazier on my work outs. Stopped taking and hair mostly returned to normal thank God.
leoqa 22 minutes ago [-]
I get severe muscle cramping, even after pounding water and electrolytes. Like I can’t handle my kid something in the car without risking a spasm.
logicallee 18 minutes ago [-]
spasms are commonly a potassium deficiency, you could take a multivitamin.
parpfish 17 minutes ago [-]
I like creatine when I’m lifting because it reduces soreness. For some people that effect helps them push further and train harder, for me it’s just proactive pain relief
jacob_rezi 14 minutes ago [-]
just reminded me to buy a decent waterbottle - thank you
jgbuddy 16 minutes ago [-]
This is not true. Did you read the article?
peder 9 minutes ago [-]
People love to float this myth that everyone's just walking around dehydrated all the time and they do so based on absolutely no data.
faangguyindia 36 minutes ago [-]
Sometimes I stay up until 1–3 a.m. because I'm working on a problem that's so interesting I can't stop until I make progress.
If I know I'm only going to get a few hours of sleep, I'll take 5–10 g of creatine, drink plenty of water, and go to bed. The next morning, I usually don't wake up with a headache.
If I skip the creatine under the same conditions, I'm much more likely to wake up with a headache after a short night's sleep.
Now it's become a habit, I automatically take creatine whenever I know my sleep duration is going to be much shorter than usual.
johnthedebs 31 minutes ago [-]
Do you still drink water when you skip creatine? Being dehydrated causes headaches, so it may be the extra water intake that's helping and not the creatine.
faangguyindia 26 minutes ago [-]
yes, i always drink plenty of water throughout day and night too, infact when i get stuck on a problem i go for a walk and drink water.
So drinking water part is consistent with or without creatine. I do know the creatine takes a while to build up, so i don't know why it works but it does.
BugsJustFindMe 33 minutes ago [-]
> If I know I'm only going to get a few hours of sleep, I'll ... drink plenty of water
>Headache pain often appears along with other signs and symptoms of dehydration, including darker-than-usual pee, dry mouth and fatigue
none of these symptoms are true for me.
BugsJustFindMe 21 minutes ago [-]
"often" and "always" are two different words that mean two different things
faangguyindia 16 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but hydration isn’t really a problem for me. I’m a bit of a water purification nerd, I collect water from a natural waterfall, run it through multiple stages of purification, and then start convincing myself it has some magical properties. I don’t drink soda or caffeine, I mostly just drink water.
pawelduda 34 minutes ago [-]
Do you take monohydrate or HCL?
faangguyindia 24 minutes ago [-]
most common one, monohydrate.
serf 20 minutes ago [-]
>Contrary to the common myth, thinking hard does not burn significantly more calories. (Demonstration: Start thinking hard, and watch as your heart rate does not increase.)
The original claim is not wrong. Thinking hard does not burn significantly more calories.
If it’s really hard to measure because the amount is so small that it requires precise equipment, it’s not significant relative to the rest of the body’s energy expenditure.
doix 22 minutes ago [-]
This matches what Gwern wrote years ago [0]. It does unequivocally make you stronger though. So if you're training anyway, may as well take it and hope it makes you smarter as well (just believing might be enough for that sweet placebo effect).
This made me wonder if sun exposure/vitamin D has any impact on storing or processing creatine, and maybe that's why the results in Australia were so much greater
bassiee 33 minutes ago [-]
In my experience, it wont make you smarter but my brain just feels more energized to think.
jfrbfbreudh 19 minutes ago [-]
Would also be interesting to study creatine’s effect on depression. There is some promising research and I personally (having used it and stopped using it at various points) have definitely noticed a difference.
Just having the desire to think makes a huge difference.
sspehr 27 minutes ago [-]
> Available short and long-term studies in healthy and diseased populations, from > infants to the elderly, at dosages ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 g/kg/day for up to 5 > years have consistently shown that creatine supplementation poses no adverse
> health risks and may provide a number of health and performance benefits.
They missed a zero behind the comma, didn't they?
jefozabuss 6 minutes ago [-]
Likely. I did one time a creatine loading week of 30gr a day at 100kg body weight and I had to drink 7L of water to not feel like I have a hangover.
131012 7 minutes ago [-]
I think another source of variation on the results is the actual nutritional intake of the subjects.
The vegan/vegetarian is a big spectrum. A vegetarian eating plenty of dairy products and eggs should in theory be much better creatine-equipped than a poor vegan student feeding on noodles and ketchup pastas. A lot of pseudo-meat for vegans are full of processed shit.
Confusion will be even higher if you include fish in the vegetarian diet, which is odd but some people do that.
Could the cognitive effect works in the case of creatine deficiency (vegan) and not in the case a vegetarian (low creatine but not deficient) ?
aeonik 40 minutes ago [-]
Studies I read seems to show a marginal boost in cognitionl and memory, but only if you were otherwise overtaxed for some reason.
Like being tired, stressed, etc...
slipnslider 23 minutes ago [-]
Yep. From what I read mental fatigue (mental math problems is what the study used) or sleep deprivation are two scenarios in which creatine boosted cognition and memory.
> thinking hard does not burn significantly more calories
Up to 50 Cal extra over ~2 hours of intense thinking IS significant given brains consume 240-400 Cal over 24 hours.
> Start thinking hard, and watch as your heart rate does not increase.
And yet you soon get tired and slow down. Now try the opposite. Stretch or punch the air a few times to get the heart rate going. You'll sustain brain performance for longer. Try it.
Perhaps the problem is that higher brain activity SHOULD trigger heart rate increase, but doesn't due to one of many design defects of the human body.
igor_nast 28 minutes ago [-]
Nope, but makes a producer's pocket heavier :D
croes 14 minutes ago [-]
When you realize that, you got a little smarter
6thbit 30 minutes ago [-]
Why is creatine so popular lately? what changed?
matwood 7 minutes ago [-]
I've been taking 5g/creatine daily for nearly 30 years. In weightlifting circles it's always been popular because it's cheap and one of the few non-steroidal supplements that actually works.
throwup238 27 minutes ago [-]
It’s always been popular among athletes and weight lifters but now nootropic influencers have gotten ahold of it. It’s one of the few supplements with robust scientific evidence of a strong effect but that’s in athletic performance not nootropics.
exhumet 24 minutes ago [-]
another upside is its also hella cheap so its a very easy addin
gedy 29 minutes ago [-]
Health fads come and go
softbuilder 38 minutes ago [-]
I started taking 5g for cognition. Never any clear signal for that, but it does seem to help a bit with my (more than occasional) sleep deprivation. Mostly with fighting off headaches.
nonameiguess 25 minutes ago [-]
The conclusions aren't any different (it's one of the few thing that helps strength, poses no danger to your hair, and almost certainly does nothing for cognition), but the articles at https://www.strongerbyscience.com/?s=creatine are far more comprehensive, including the famous extremely long podcast episodes they used to do.
The one thing this misses is many supplements are tainted, which skews the popular perception of both upsides and risks. This was especially true in the US prior to 2005 or so when prohormones were still legal over the counter. Anything branded that wasn't just pure creatine was extremely likely to actually be a low-dose oral steroid, which really can make you lose hair and will increase strength quite a bit more than any dietary supplement.
This also misses caffeine as the other a-tier supplement that consistently shows strength increases in RCTs, though of course, caffeine is more frought than creatine because you build tolerance and it can disturb sleep.
matwood 9 minutes ago [-]
> This also misses caffeine as the other a-tier supplement
In college Ripped Fuel wasn't banned yet. We would take two, go to the gym for 2 hours, shower, then go out until the sun came up the next day. It's no surprise it was eventually banned. I think some people ended up dying by taking too many.
switchbak 13 minutes ago [-]
"poses no danger to your hair" I keep hearing folks say this, and even in this thread there's someone who's experienced that and had it stop when they eliminated creatine. I too have experienced exactly that with exactly the stopping of issues once I stopped taking creatine.
Perhaps you can say "danger to your hair is rare", but there's very clearly (to me at least) an effect there, and the way it gets hand-waved away is strange to me.
zuzululu 18 minutes ago [-]
if you are using to slim down it will hold on to water unless you are bulking i dont see creatine to be consumed regularly
if you truly want fuel for the brain nothing beats keto
garciasn 41 minutes ago [-]
Saved you a click:
> Does creatine make you smarter?
> I don’t know. Maybe a little.
brcmthrowaway 45 minutes ago [-]
I remember learning about Creatine as a weightlifting teen
I never ended up doing it because you had to cycle it, and it was just one more thing to track
Is it the same case in 2026? Is there a simple pill I can take?
domhudson 44 minutes ago [-]
You don't have to cycle it. You also don't need to load it (a marketing ploy to get you to buy more).
You can just take 3-5g daily.
windward 29 minutes ago [-]
Cycling is also a marketing ploy, since it makes it sound more like a PED and less like a compound found naturally in meat. It's the same reason people say they 'take' whey, when Miss Muffet simply ate it.
matwood 13 minutes ago [-]
Cycling creatine was the guidance from the 90s. 5g/day and drink plenty of water is all you need to do.
btheconqueror 42 minutes ago [-]
I've never heard of cycling it. We're you a teen during the steroid arrival? Maybe people were confusing things. I've always just done 5mg a day, but now people are talking about taking mega doses of like 20-30mg a day, shrug
nick__m 36 minutes ago [-]
Creatine is dosed in grams not milligrams, otherwise your number are correct.
jdelfuego 8 minutes ago [-]
Homeopathic sports supplementation
krick 30 minutes ago [-]
Yes, they did, and many still do write it on the package, but it is, and always was a myth born God knows when out of precaution, because nobody really knows anything about how all this stuff really works now, and they did know even less than that 30 years ago. There never really was any evidence that you have to cycle it, and nobody (aside from the manufacturers) ever says it anymore. It makes about as much sense as cycling protein powder.
As for pills, yes, there is about every form of creatine supplement now, even chewing gum, but this is just dumb, how much of creatine do you think you can consume this way in a day?
solumunus 41 minutes ago [-]
That’s never been the case, you were getting bad information.
switchbak 11 minutes ago [-]
It was certainly the case that gym bros thought you had to cycle it. But you're right that this was never necessary.
Helloworldboy 44 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
deton3991 24 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
thisisauserid 38 minutes ago [-]
Article's answer to its own question:
It safely builds muscle and boosts cognition.
dd8601fn 31 minutes ago [-]
No, it does not.
More like "probably", "yes", and "probably not."
dvduval 43 minutes ago [-]
I don’t think they’re strong evidence that it does anything beyond helping you build muscle. There are some people say they think clearer, but I don’t think that’s been measured in any significant way.
petra 48 minutes ago [-]
Given LLM's is being smarter still a worthwhile to optimize with supplements?
isakmarr 20 minutes ago [-]
Of course it is. LLMs aren't as smart as you think, or at least their "intelligence" isn't comparable to ours. They're just a useful tool, and they will always need someone to guide them.
binary132 16 minutes ago [-]
Productivity isn’t the only reason to be smarter. For example, there’s also the benefit of asking fewer inane questions on the internet (hypothetically)
shermantanktop 8 minutes ago [-]
Present company excluded, of course.
petra 10 minutes ago [-]
LoL.maybe the question is not phrased in the best way, English as a second language and laziness, but it's a pretty decent question.
fragmede 44 minutes ago [-]
that was hard to parse, but yes, because then you can ask smarter questions to the LLM which saves you money, so you can afford supplements
Rendered at 16:42:04 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
> I don’t know. Maybe a little.
is not the right way to interpret the null result (insufficient evidence to reject null hypothesis that it has no effect) because the prior for supplements that people are trying to sell you is so low. In the absence of clear, strong evidence, you should assume the the whole thing is just an example of motivated reasoning. People want nootropics to be real, and other people really want to sell you readily available powders by claiming they have nootropic properties. In that environment, they were always going to trying to concoct a similar narrative about some supplement, and it just happened to be creatine. Those efforts were always going to result in a handful of "positive" studies that turn out to be non-reproducible, maybe because of p-hacking, maybe because of publication bias, maybe because of outright fraud. This is what the literature always looks like for stuff that just doesn't work. If it did work - if the effect size was large enough that you could personally detect it in your own life - then the papers would be trying to put error bars around the effect size, not trying (and failing) to barely distinguish it from a placebo.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” - Ernest Rutherford
Basically, HN doing HN things - having a good deep think about topics outside their realm of expertise, then debating the minutiae. I'd just rather trust someone who has spent their career researching this stuff, thanks (unless that's what you do - in which case please tell us more).
I think mostly through placebo effect, people buy a supplement to treat condition X and they think it's getting better, so they keep buying.
I mean, just look at the wide variety of homeopathic "cures" that are often so diluted that there might not be any molecules of the active ingredient left. Yet people keep buying it.
Their conclusion seems like an absolutely fair interpretation of what they saw, and it also strikes me as dangerous -- perhaps more dangerous -- to suggest "writer genuinely believes, or doesn't believe, a thing, but they should say it differently from their own interpretation because..people are dumb?" Something like that.
Since taking creatine I feel so much more energized. I can make it through the day with just 2 coffees (was previously drinking 5 coffees and an energy drink).
Maybe it's placebo. Maybe it's not. I don't really care. I feel the benefit and I love it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40170474
There's also no shortage of expensive water bottles being sold, and smart water bottles that track your drinking frequencies and flavor pods sold via subscription.
Anecdotal so safe to ignore this… but my hair did thin out but only after I was lazier on my work outs. Stopped taking and hair mostly returned to normal thank God.
If I know I'm only going to get a few hours of sleep, I'll take 5–10 g of creatine, drink plenty of water, and go to bed. The next morning, I usually don't wake up with a headache.
If I skip the creatine under the same conditions, I'm much more likely to wake up with a headache after a short night's sleep.
Now it's become a habit, I automatically take creatine whenever I know my sleep duration is going to be much shorter than usual.
So drinking water part is consistent with or without creatine. I do know the creatine takes a while to build up, so i don't know why it works but it does.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21517-dehydra...
>Headache pain often appears along with other signs and symptoms of dehydration, including darker-than-usual pee, dry mouth and fatigue
none of these symptoms are true for me.
this is wrong [0] , it's just hard to measure.
[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32314956/
If it’s really hard to measure because the amount is so small that it requires precise equipment, it’s not significant relative to the rest of the body’s energy expenditure.
[0] https://gwern.net/creatine
Just having the desire to think makes a huge difference.
They missed a zero behind the comma, didn't they?
The vegan/vegetarian is a big spectrum. A vegetarian eating plenty of dairy products and eggs should in theory be much better creatine-equipped than a poor vegan student feeding on noodles and ketchup pastas. A lot of pseudo-meat for vegans are full of processed shit.
Confusion will be even higher if you include fish in the vegetarian diet, which is odd but some people do that.
Could the cognitive effect works in the case of creatine deficiency (vegan) and not in the case a vegetarian (low creatine but not deficient) ?
Like being tired, stressed, etc...
Here are the sleep deprivation studies
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54249-9
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16416332/
Is creatine safe to supplement for children?
Up to 50 Cal extra over ~2 hours of intense thinking IS significant given brains consume 240-400 Cal over 24 hours.
> Start thinking hard, and watch as your heart rate does not increase.
And yet you soon get tired and slow down. Now try the opposite. Stretch or punch the air a few times to get the heart rate going. You'll sustain brain performance for longer. Try it.
Perhaps the problem is that higher brain activity SHOULD trigger heart rate increase, but doesn't due to one of many design defects of the human body.
The one thing this misses is many supplements are tainted, which skews the popular perception of both upsides and risks. This was especially true in the US prior to 2005 or so when prohormones were still legal over the counter. Anything branded that wasn't just pure creatine was extremely likely to actually be a low-dose oral steroid, which really can make you lose hair and will increase strength quite a bit more than any dietary supplement.
This also misses caffeine as the other a-tier supplement that consistently shows strength increases in RCTs, though of course, caffeine is more frought than creatine because you build tolerance and it can disturb sleep.
In college Ripped Fuel wasn't banned yet. We would take two, go to the gym for 2 hours, shower, then go out until the sun came up the next day. It's no surprise it was eventually banned. I think some people ended up dying by taking too many.
Perhaps you can say "danger to your hair is rare", but there's very clearly (to me at least) an effect there, and the way it gets hand-waved away is strange to me.
if you truly want fuel for the brain nothing beats keto
> Does creatine make you smarter?
> I don’t know. Maybe a little.
I never ended up doing it because you had to cycle it, and it was just one more thing to track
Is it the same case in 2026? Is there a simple pill I can take?
You can just take 3-5g daily.
As for pills, yes, there is about every form of creatine supplement now, even chewing gum, but this is just dumb, how much of creatine do you think you can consume this way in a day?
It safely builds muscle and boosts cognition.
More like "probably", "yes", and "probably not."