Creatine is it Bad For You? (Kidneys, Hair Loss, and More)

Creatine, is it bad for you?

I recently did a video on the benefits of creatine. In the comments, quite a few expressed concerns about the safety of creatine, particularly with kidney function and hair loss.

Granted, it’s been a long time since I worried about my hair, but I do like my kidneys. So I decided to take a closer look at the potential risks of creatine.

We’re gonna start with what we know Creatine does—focusing on what could be perceived as negative.

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Creatine does cause weight gain. This isn’t fat or muscle; it’s water. Creatine draws water into the muscle cells. They say you can gain from 2 to 6 pounds.

There’s no evidence that Creatine causes dehydration. Still, because it draws water into the muscle cells, you might find a need to increase your water intake to be fully hydrated, avoiding symptoms of dehydration like water retention and cramping.

Over supplementation of Creatine has been found to increase the risk of gastrointestinal distress. A study was done on soccer players, and it found those who took a 10 g dose every day for 28 days which is double the recommended amount, had an increase in diarrhea and GI tract distress.

Even at the recommended serving, as I mentioned in my last video, a friend of mine had to reduce his intake from 5 to 3 grams before he got rid of his stomach upset issue.

A subscriber told me that using Creatine raised his blood pressure by 10 points.

So I did some research on this, and I couldn’t find any connection between increased blood pressure and creatine, with most studies stating they found it didn’t affect blood pressure, but worth noting if you start taking Creatine and find your blood pressure increasing try stopping for a while and see if it improves.

The case of this subscriber is what’s called an-ec-do-tal evidence. It’s based on a personal account rather than research or hard evidence. Keep this in mind because it ties in with the next risk Creatine has been associated with.

And that's Kidney damage. This accusation comes from two primary sources.

Creatine raises crea-tin-ine levels in the blood, these levels are used as a measure to diagnose kidney or liver problems. So it creates a false positive and can cause your doctor to think the increased levels are from your kidneys.

So it’s important to let your doctor know you are supplementing with creatine before having a test done and, of course, follow his directions, you should stop taking Creatine at least 3 weeks before testing to prevent a false positive.

There was a case of a young 18-year-old weightlifter who was taking a bunch of different supplements, including creatine, and he got sick with acute kidney failure. 25 days after he stopped taking the supplements, he recovered fully.

We don’t know what else he was taking or if there was something in that patch of product.

To be clear, I’m not against an-ec-do-tal evidence. If I’m doing something and it’s not working for me, I’m going to stop doing it no matter what the research tells me.

But looking at the research helps make an initial decision giving us an idea of overall Results.

They’ve done some on people with kidney disease, but it isn’t as well studied, and I would agree with a 2018 review that stated while Creatine has no detrimental effects on healthy kidneys. It would be advisable to suggest it not be used by people with kidney disease or anyone at potential risk for kidney dysfunction.

They looked at whether Creatine increased dihydrotestosterone or DHT, and this hormone contributes to hair loss in men.

How much DHT affects hair loss is primarily genetic. In this study, DHT didn’t increase outside of the normal range.

The more sensitive your hair is to DHT, the greater the odds of you losing it. On the upside, DHT plays a positive role in muscle growth.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12500988/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18373286/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17046619/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10694109/#:~:text=men%20and%20women-,Acute%20creatine%20loading%20increases%20fat%2Dfree%20mass%2C%20but%20does%20not,Med%20Sci%20Sports%20Exerc.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30367015/
https://examine.com/nutrition/does-creatine-cause-hairloss/