JJ Virgin4x NYTimes Best Selling Author, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer

Cognitive Benefits of Creatine

26 Jan 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker highlights the shift from viewing creatine solely as a muscle performance supplement to recognizing its potential cognitive and mental‑health benefits. He describes an 8‑week clinical trial where participants received 5 g/day of creatine alongside an antidepressant, showing an enhanced antidepressant response as early as two weeks that persisted through eight weeks. He notes emerging research suggesting that higher creatine doses may be required to achieve optimal brain effects and mentions that he is co‑authoring a paper with Darren Kanda on the need for higher dosing for both cognition and mental‑health outcomes.

Chapters

Creatine, it's, it's more traditionally viewed through this muscle lens of improved performance, whether it's weightlifting, whether it's running. But because we know creatine also has cognitive benefits, there's been a resurgence of interest from a mental health perspective. So what they did was they, as you mentioned, paired creatine with an antidepressant and compared it to an antidepressant alone. And this trial was 8 weeks long, and what they found was that at the marker of 2 weeks, there was an improved antidepressant response, and that went onwards to 8 weeks where they continued to see antidepressant benefit. And in that point, they only used 5 grams of creatine, which is impressive because we're starting to see literature that we may actually need higher doses of creatine to have some of these brain benefits. And I'm actually writing a paper with Darren Kanda right now. I just was finished writing it yesterday about why we may need higher doses from a cognition but also mental health perspective.