Your Body Already Makes Creatine — So Why Supplement It?

This is the question I get most at the Adventure Hike, and it is a good one. Usually it arrives slightly suspicious, which I respect. If my body already makes this stuff, why would I pay for more of it?

The answer is not that your body is failing. It is that the amount your body makes is a fixed, fairly small number, and the amount you can usefully store is a much bigger one. The gap between those two is the entire case for supplementing, and it is worth understanding rather than taking on faith.

How much creatine does your body actually make?

About one gram a day, and not where most people think. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements is specific: the liver and kidneys synthesize about 1 g/day creatine from the amino acids glycine, arginine, and methionine.

Liver and kidneys. You will see "liver and brain" repeated all over the internet, including in a draft of this very article that I rewrote before publishing it. The brain does make some creatine locally, but it is not a main production site for your body as a whole. Small detail, but if we are going to be the people who publish the certificate of analysis, we should also be the people who get the organ list right.

If you make it anyway, where does the shortfall come from?

From the size of the tank compared with the size of the daily top-up. The same ODS sheet notes that a person weighing 154 pounds has about 120 g of creatine and phosphocreatine in the body, almost all of it in skeletal and cardiac muscle.

So: roughly 120 grams stored, roughly 1 gram made per day. Your body is not topping the tank off each morning. It is maintaining a large reserve with a small, steady trickle, and the rest of the replacement has to come from what you eat.

What food actually contributes

• Beef — roughly 2g per pound
• Pork — roughly 2.3g per pound
• Salmon — roughly 2g per pound

Read those numbers honestly and you can see the problem with getting a supplemental dose from dinner. To reach a research-standard 5g from beef, you would be eating somewhere north of two pounds of it, daily. That is not a diet, it is a dare. And if you eat little or no meat, the dietary side of the equation is thinner still, which we covered in Vegan or Vegetarian? You May Be Running Low on Creatine and B12.

Does adding more actually do anything?

Yes, and this is the part with the strongest evidence behind it. The International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand concludes that creatine monohydrate supplementation raises intramuscular creatine, improves high-intensity exercise performance and training adaptations, and is safe and well tolerated in healthy people over the long term.

That is the whole mechanism in one line. You are not introducing a new compound or asking your body to learn something. You are raising the level of a reserve it already builds, stores, and spends, so there is more of it available when demand spikes.

What are the actual doses, and do I have to load?

You do not have to load, and the ODS lays out both routes. One protocol is a loading phase of 20 g/day for 5 to 7 days in four 5g portions, followed by a maintenance phase of 3 to 5 g/day. The alternative is simply taking about 3 to 6 g/day for three to four weeks with no loading phase at all.

Same destination, different speed. Most people are better served by the boring version, because the thing that actually determines whether creatine works for you is whether you keep taking it. We broke the number down further in The 5g Question, Answered.

Is this only about muscle?

No, though the muscle evidence is far more mature than the brain evidence, and I want to keep those two things clearly separated. Your brain runs on the same phosphocreatine system your muscles do, and that is a real and interesting line of research.

Here is where it currently stands. A 2018 systematic review in Experimental Gerontology pooled six randomized controlled trials covering 281 healthy people and found that oral creatine administration may improve short-term memory and intelligence or reasoning in healthy individuals, but its effect on other cognitive domains remains unclear. Worth knowing: in those trials, young adults showed no cognitive improvement while older participants responded better.

That is a promising, uneven, still-small evidence base. It is not the same tier as the performance data, and I would rather say so than let the two blur together.

So what happens if you stop?

Your stores drift back down to where your own production and diet hold them. Nothing dramatic, nothing to detox from. The reserve simply returns to baseline over a few weeks, which is the flip side of the same fact that makes supplementation work: this is a level you are maintaining, not a switch you are flipping. More on that in What Happens When You Stop Taking Creatine.

If you are new to all of this and want the whole picture in order, start at Creatine 101. And if you are managing a health condition, are pregnant or nursing, or take medication that affects kidney function, talk with your doctor before starting. A supplement supports a normal system; it does not override a medical one.

Common questions

Where in the body is creatine actually made, and how much?

The liver and kidneys synthesize about 1 gram of creatine per day from the amino acids glycine, arginine, and methionine, according to the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. The commonly repeated claim that it is made in the liver and brain is not accurate for whole-body production, though the brain does synthesize some creatine locally. The rest of your replacement comes from food.

If my body already makes creatine, why would supplementing add anything?

Because the amount stored and the amount produced daily are very different numbers. A 154-pound person holds roughly 120g of creatine and phosphocreatine, almost all of it in muscle, while endogenous production runs about 1g a day. Supplementing raises the level of that existing reserve rather than introducing anything new, which is why the body handles it as something it already recognizes.

Could I just eat more meat instead?

You could close part of the gap, but not a supplemental dose. Beef and salmon carry roughly 2g of creatine per pound and pork about 2.3g per pound, so matching a research-standard 5g from food alone means eating more than two pounds of meat every day. That is impractical for most people and effectively unavailable if you eat little or no animal product.

Is the creatine in a supplement the same as what my body makes?

Chemically, yes. Creatine monohydrate is the same molecule your liver and kidneys assemble from glycine, arginine, and methionine, which is why your body stores and uses it without having to do anything special with it. Worth knowing for anyone who assumes otherwise: supplemental creatine monohydrate is synthesized in a lab rather than extracted from animals, so it is not an animal-derived ingredient.

Is creatine for the brain as well established as creatine for muscle?

Not yet, and the honest answer is worth more than an enthusiastic one. The performance and safety evidence in healthy adults is mature and consistent. The cognitive evidence is a smaller pool: a 2018 review of six trials in 281 people found possible improvements in short-term memory and reasoning, with effects on other domains unclear, and with older participants responding better than young adults. Promising, early, and not a promise. A four-gummy serving of Vybrance Labs Creatine Gummies delivers 5g creatine monohydrate, 120mcg vitamin B12, and 500mg taurine, and every lot is third-party tested.

See you in the wild,

-Lawrence