28/09/2026
What is Creatine?
(Energy, preserve muscle, increase strength, cognitive function, bone health)
Creatine is something your body already makes, mostly in your liver and kidneys, and stores in your muscles and brain. It's not a hormone, not a stimulant, and nothing your body is unfamiliar with. You also get small amounts from red meat and fish, though nowhere near enough from food to hit the levels that research points to as beneficial.
Creatine's job is energy. Creatine helps your cells regenerate ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the molecule your muscles and brain run on. More available creatine means your body can produce energy faster during physical effort and cognitive demands.
The reason creatine matters more as you age is straightforward: your natural creatine stores decline as you get older, right alongside muscle mass, strength, and energy levels. Supplementing helps offset that decline.
Sarcopenia is the gradual loss of muscle mass that starts in your 30s and picks up pace after 60. It affects strength, metabolism, and your physical independence over time. Creatine, when paired with resistance training (even light resistance training), consistently helps older adults preserve muscle and build strength compared to training without it.
That doesn't mean you need to be in the gym five days a week. Walking with a backpack, bodyweight exercises, or light dumbbells all count. Creatine just gives that effort more traction.
Cognitive function
Your brain uses roughly 20% of your body's energy. It runs on ATP. So it makes sense that creatine, which supports ATP production, also supports brain function, particularly short-term memory, processing speed, and mental clarity under stress or poor sleep.
This is an area of growing research interest, and the findings on cognitive benefits in older adults are more consistent than most people realise. The brain connection is one reason creatine for healthy ageing looks quite different from creatine for sport.
Bone health
Creatine doesn't directly build bones, but it supports the training that does. Resistance exercise is one of the most effective ways to maintain bone density, and creatine improves the quality of that exercise. Some research also points to direct effects on bone markers in older adults, particularly around the hip. The evidence here is earlier-stage than the muscle data, but the direction is encouraging.
Energy levels and daily function
This is the one that doesn't get talked about enough. Creatine isn't a stimulant, so there's no buzz and no crash. What it does is support your cells' ability to produce energy, which can mean feeling less flat during everyday tasks: stairs, groceries, staying sharp through the afternoon.
Research has specifically looked at creatine in people in their 60s, 70s, and beyond, and the findings on muscle strength, recovery, and cognitive function hold up. Starting at 50, 60, or 70 is still starting. The body responds.
What matters more than timing is consistency. Creatine works through accumulation. Daily use over several weeks is what raises your muscle creatine stores to a level where you'll actually feel a difference.
How to Take It
The standard recommendation is 3–5g per day. You don't need a loading phase (that was designed for athletes wanting rapid saturation, not for everyday health use). Just take it daily at whatever time is easiest to remember.
Creatine monohydrate mixes into water, coffee, smoothies, or yoghurt. It doesn't need to be taken around exercise for it to be effective. If you're prone to bloating, we recommend taking creatine alongside food for best digestion.
Vegans and vegetarians tend to start with lower baseline creatine stores, since dietary creatine comes almost entirely from meat and fish. That often means supplementing produces a noticeably bigger effect. (Credit Nothing Naughty)
We stock Nothing Naughty Creatine in a powder form, and Push Creatine Gummies
