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Does creatine make you smarter?

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Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#81

Post by NopIdoN »

Retr0id wrote: post #63
jdiff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Personally I take creatine for entirely non-cognitive reasons, so it's reassuring to know it's probably not making me any dumber.

it might even be counteracting the negative effects of your frequent contact with airborne nitrogen

Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#82

Post by MadameMinty »

> 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.

Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#83

Post by peder »

jgbuddy wrote: post #68
John23832 wrote: post #22

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.

This is not true. Did you read the article?

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.

Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#84

Post by matwood »

nonameiguess wrote: post #41

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 percepti…

> 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.

Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#85

Post by Johnny555 »

taeric wrote: post #15
olooney wrote: post #11

Good discussion, but this conclusion: > 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…

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.

>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.

Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#86

Post by richardlblair »

John23832 wrote: post #22

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.

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.

Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#87

Post by shermantanktop »

binary132 wrote: post #66
petra wrote: post #2

Given LLM's is being smarter still a worthwhile to optimize with supplements?

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)

Present company excluded, of course.

Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#88

Post by jdelfuego »

btheconqueror wrote: post #8
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #3

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?

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

Homeopathic sports supplementation

Re: Does creatine make you smarter?

#90

Post by 131012 »

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) ?

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