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

Creatine for Men VS. Women

6 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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In this conversational excerpt, JJ Virgin addresses the question of whether men and women require different creatine doses. He explains that creatine is stored primarily in muscles and the brain for both sexes, with men also storing some in the gonads, which might suggest a slightly higher total need for men. However, the key issue is dietary intake: men typically consume more meat and protein, providing about 1–2 grams of creatine daily, whereas many women eat less meat and protein, leading to lower creatine intake. Because women also have less muscle mass, their total tissue stores are smaller. Despite these differences, the relative creatine requirement per unit of body size is similar for both sexes. JJ emphasizes that women should stop fearing creatine and focus on ensuring adequate intake, either through diet or supplementation, to meet their physiological needs.

Chapters

Hey JJ, do you feel like men and women should have different doses of creatine?
I don't think it's that men and women need different doses of creatine. I think it's that women need to stop fearing creatine. The reality is we store creatine in our muscles and our brain, and men store it in their gonads. So maybe men need a little bit more because of that, but they're not that big, right? Most guys. But the other part of it is men tend to eat more meat than women do. And when you look at where we get creatine in the body, we store about 120 grams of it. We get about a gram that we make from essential amino acids, and then we need to get another gram or two from our diet. Most women are not eating a pound or two of meat, and so most women are not getting it from their diet. Most women are not eating enough protein to begin with, so they're certainly not gonna get enough creatine. And we have less muscle than men do, so we have less tissue stores. So the reality is, while we both need about the same relative to our body size, women aren't getting what they need and they need to focus on it.