Tier 3 — preclinical

Creatine supplementation and brain health: Methodological challenges, current evidence, and translational perspectives

Jedd Pratt, Cas J Fuchs, Luc J C van Loon, Aneurin J Kennerley, Craig Sale

The Journal of Nutritional Physiology 2026 5:100017

Bibliography

DOI: 10.1016/j.jnphys.2026.100017
Funding: No explicit funding statement was located in the accessible publisher record during Biohack Blueprint's 2026-10-02 audit.
Competing interests: Craig Sale is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Nutritional Physiology and Cas J. Fuchs is an editorial-board member; the publisher states neither was involved in handling the submission. Other authors declared no known competing financial interests or personal relationships.

Study snapshot

Design	Critical narrative and methodological review
Model	Human evidence synthesis or trial
Sample	Review of human brain-creatine supplementation and magnetic-resonance spectroscopy literature
Intervention	Creatine supplementation studies evaluating brain creatine content and cognitive or translational outcomes
Duration	Included studies used heterogeneous acute and multi-week protocols
Endpoints	Brain creatine concentration; Magnetic resonance spectroscopy methodology; Dose and duration; Cognitive translation; Measurement reproducibility

What the study showed, in plain terms

2026 critical review explaining why brain-creatine research is harder to interpret than muscle-creatine research, with emphasis on MRS methodology, heterogeneous dosing and sparse dose-response data.

Key findings

Existing evidence suggests creatine may increase brain creatine under some conditions, especially metabolically demanding states, but measurement heterogeneity and the absence of reliable dose-response data limit confident translation to cognition and clinical outcomes.

What this study can and cannot tell us

Narrative methodological review rather than a systematic meta-analysis; conclusions depend on heterogeneous underlying studies and do not quantify a pooled clinical effect.

Citation network

Articles citing this research paper

1 article

Biohack Blueprint analyses that reference this study in their evidence base.

Oct 2, 2026 Creatine Brain Benefits: Memory, Cognition, Sleep Loss and What Is Still UncertainCreatine and the brain: evidence for memory, attention, processing speed, older adults and stressed states—plus why recent systematic reviews disagree.Read analysis

Editorial review

Reviewed by the Biohack Blueprint research team

Last verified 02 October 2026

Dr. Khaled Mahmoud, MBBChCritical Care Medicine, Longevity Science & Editorial Direction