More Strength, Less Stress: Why 5 Grams of Creatine a Day Matters

I recently shared why creatine is an important supplement for building strength even if you’re not a bodybuilder. Now new research suggests creatine’s real magic lies far beyond the gym—like boosting brain function, protecting heart health, and even improving sleep. In fact, a recent study found that women who supplemented with creatine got nearly an extra hour of sleep on workout days. Imagine how much better you’d feel (and perform) with that kind of recovery boost.

Creatine is particularly helpful for women over 40 because it offers a lifeline for stressed-out bodies and minds, whether from intense workouts, restless nights, or long days of cognitive strain. If you're ready to unlock better sleep, sharper focus, and deeper resilience, keep reading. This supplement might be the game-changer your routine is missing.

[This is a slightly shortened email from FoundMyFitness (Dr. Rhonda Patrick)]:

If you haven’t started taking creatine yet, my question would be: why not?

People who work out supplement with creatine to enhance their gains in muscle strength and build more muscle mass. That’s because creatine accumulates in muscles and provides high-energy phosphates that our body can use to replenish ATP stores when energy demands are high. In this way, creatine allows you to train harder. That’s why it’s typically thought of as being an exercise performance or ergogenic supplement.

But that might be creatine’s least interesting application.

The benefits of creatine are now being demonstrated for cardiovascular health, cognitive health, and even traumatic brain injury. You can read about some of these benefits and more on our Creatine topic page.

New research reveals that taking 5 grams of creatine daily might improve sleep—up to an hour more per night—on days you workout. Creatine may aid in sleep recovery by offsetting the physiological stress of training, making it an intriguing supplement for anyone looking to optimize both performance and rest.

Creatine is good for the brain

About 5% of the body’s creatine is stored in the brain. Just as our muscles can call on creatine in an “energy crisis,” so too can our brain. There’s emerging evidence that creatine may improve cognition and memory (especially among older adults), have therapeutic benefits for people with anxiety or depression, and treat neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease and ALS.

One recent study found that a high dose of creatine (30 grams) preserved aspects of cognitive function during sleep deprivation. This comes back to why creatine is beneficial—it provides the body and brain with energy during times of metabolic stress like sleep deprivation or traumatic brain injury.

Exercise training is also a physiological stress, which can sometimes lead to disturbed sleep. We’ve all probably had times when we trained too hard and didn’t sleep well as a result. This is especially true if you’re starting a new training program or implementing more high-intensity training. A new study suggests that creatine could help with this.

Women who supplemented with 5 grams of creatine per day experienced close to an hour more sleep per night on days that they exercised compared to a group who didn’t supplement with creatine. This effect was apparent throughout a 6-week exercise training program.

Creatine, exercise, and sleep

In the 6-week randomized controlled study, the participants (all of whom were women) completed a whole-body resistance training intervention and were supplemented with 5 grams of creatine or a placebo daily. They trained twice per week for a total of 35–45 minutes per session.

The participants’ sleep quality—which was measured using an OURA ring—didn’t change in either group during the study. In fact, both groups had a self-reported “poor” sleep quality before and after the 6-week intervention. Total sleep duration and time spent in light sleep were also similar between the groups and didn’t change during the study.

This finding seems a bit surprising, not because creatine didn’t have any apparent effects on sleep quality or duration, but because resistance training per se didn’t appear to benefit sleep, something that’s been shown in previous studies. Regular exercise can improve sleep, but it didn’t do so here.

However, something interesting jumped out when the researchers separated the days that participants exercised from the days that they didn’t.

Sleep improves on workout days

The participants who supplemented with creatine slept nearly 50 minutes longer on workout days (7 hours and 24 minutes total) than participants in the placebo group (who slept 6 hours and 36 minutes). Creatine improved sleep on workout days, but not non-workout days—the placebo group and creatine group slept 7 hours and 2 minutes and 7 hours and 11 minutes, respectively, on days that they didn’t exercise.

As would be expected during resistance training, the participants improved their muscle strength, but the participants taking creatine improved just as much as participants receiving the placebo. Creatine did not enhance gains in muscle performance outcomes.

Despite an increase in strength, the participants didn’t improve their lean body mass and even gained some fat mass during the study, perhaps a result of an (unintentional) decrease in protein intake and an increase in fat intake. Notably, the participants’ habitual diets were low in creatine—they consumed between 0.25 and 0.39 grams per day even though they reported eating an omnivorous diet.

Creatine as a sleep supplement?

We could choose to focus on several outcomes here including the lack of an effect of creatine on muscle strength or lean body mass, but I don’t think that’s the unique or applicable finding.

Rather, we should focus on the implications of the interaction between sleep, training, and creatine. Overall, taking creatine did not improve sleep, but I’m not aware of any reason why creatine would improve sleep in adults who are currently sleeping enough. It’s not really a sleep supplement per se.

However, creatine may become a sleep supplement under certain conditions, particularly those involving a significant cognitive or physiological stress. For example, when creatine is taken before sleep deprivation, it improves cognitive performance, enhances brain energy levels, and reduces fatigue the next day.

Even though the participants in this study weren’t sleep deprived, they were exposed to a novel physiological stress—resistance training. None of the participants in this study had resistance training experience, so the addition of 60–90 minutes of training was a significant stimulus for them. This stress appeared to be enough to slightly disrupt their sleep on workout days—an effect that was prevented by taking 5 grams of creatine per day.

The difference in sleep was statistically significant but is also practically relevant—50 minutes is a huge difference in sleep; it's the difference between a restful night and a totally inadequate one. If we think about this in the context of training, getting more sleep on the days you train is going to help you adapt better and improve rapidly. It’ll also reduce your risk of injury, fatigue, and burnout.

Think about it this way: the participants gained an extra 2 hours per week of sleep (1 extra hour on each workout day) simply by taking creatine. If you're working out 3-5 days per week or more, this sleep improvement could be massive if these findings translate to your unique scenario!

Final thoughts

These results might have you wondering if you should only take creatine on the days you workout. The answer to that is no—you should take it every day to experience the benefits.

However, the benefits of creatine might only be apparent on days that you workout (or are exposed to another stress like a lack of sleep).

Consider taking creatine as a hedge against stress—the stress of life, exercise, intense cognitive work, or sleep deprivation—which we all experience from time to time. As the evidence continues to accumulate on creatine, it’s apparent that nearly everyone should be taking it to support general health. There’s little downside and seemingly unlimited upside.

My recommendation (and what I do) is to take 5 grams per day. This dose is sufficient to saturate your body’s stores after about one month. Larger people may want to increase their dose to 10 grams per day.

By the way, I also take 3-5 grams of creatine daily, for all of the reasons listed above!