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When most people hear “creatine,” they picture male athletes bulking up in the gym. But here’s the truth: creatine isn’t just for men or bodybuilders. Creatine is far more than a performance supplement, and creatine is definitely not just for men! Read on to learn how creatine supplementation can specifically help women by helping improve energy, physical strength, mental clarity, hormonal resilience, and promote healthy aging.
Why Women Need to Supplement with Creatine
Creatine is a compound that plays a large role in our bodies, from helping to provide energy, improve functional strength, and even cognitive function. While our bodies produce and store some creatine naturally, women and men make and process creatine differently. Women make and store less creatine than men, with some studies finding that women actually have 70-80% less creatine stores than men. Additionally, on average, females consume significantly lower amounts of dietary creatine compared to males.
For both of these reasons, supplementing with creatine is especially important for women to help them maintain optimal creatine levels. On top of that, creatine supplementation becomes increasingly useful to women as they age. As women enter perimenopause and menopause, their bodies experience natural fluctuations and declines in hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone as well as changes in the brain’s sensitivity to these hormones, which can significantly decrease the amount of creatine that women produce. Creatine supplementation becomes essential to women to help maintain energy, preserve muscle mass, bone mineral density, and even improve mood.
Benefits of creatine supplementation for women
Creatine helps boost energy and muscle growth
Supplementing with creatine can help women of all ages boost energy and enhance their muscle strength. Creatine helps to provide energy and reduce fatigue so you can exercise to the fullest capacity. More energy allows you to work harder and longer and even recover faster, meaning you will be able to maximize your workouts for maximum results.
Since women in particular start to lose their muscle mass in their 30s, supplementing with creatine becomes especially important as they age. As women start going through perimenopause and menopause, their bodies produce less estrogen and creatine, which can lead to muscle and bone mass loss. The reduced muscle mass can lead to weight gain and slower metabolism, while decreased bone density and weaker bones put aging women at a greater risk of fractures and osteoporosis.
Creatine can help improve bone density and strengthen bones
Studies have shown that supplementing with creatine can counter some of the effects of aging and perimenopause and menopause. Supplementing with creatine particularly in combination with resistance training, can help build bone mass density and strengthen bones. By including regular creatine supplementation into their regular routines, women can continue to maintain energy, boost muscle strength and even improve bone density, which are key to staying strong and healthy and helping minimize the risk of bone loss, osteopenia and osteoporosis. Note that maintaining consistency in a strength training routine and creatine supplementation are key!
Creatine may help women boost brain function
Creatine plays an important role in ATP regeneration, helping the body maintain brain energy homeostasis, which is crucial for proper brain function, cognitive processes and emotional regulation. During their reproductive years, as women go through various stages of their menstrual cycles, the levels of estrogen and progesterone fluctuate, which can cause a variety of physiological changes. Additionally, as women age and their creatine levels decrease, this can lead to disruption of brain homeostasis, causing imbalances and even contributing to sleep disturbances and various neurological and psychological disorders.
Studies have found that supplementing with creatine can help restore brain energy levels, helping the brain to return to homeostasis. This means that supplementing with creatine can help boost brain function, including the mental fatigue, brain fog and mood fluctuations that can occur during PMS, perimenopause, and menopause.
Creatine supplementation can help improve mood
Due to creatine’s role in helping the brain return to homeostasis, supplementing with creatine can help reduce mood fluctuations that may be caused by decreased estrogen, creatine and other hormones. Recently, researchers have been looking at the link between mood disorders and brain creatine stores. Several studies have seen positive results by introducing creatine supplementation in people suffering from depression or other mood disorders. Research studies in promising field are ongoing.
Supplementing with creatine may help improve sleep
Women of all ages experience sleep disturbances, which can impact mood and cognitive function. As women enter perimenopause and menopause, sleep disturbances become increasingly common, and can contribute to an overall feeling of fatigue, brain fog and depressed mood. Researchers are looking into whether supplementing with creatine may help improve the quality of sleep. Scientists theorize that since creatine helps to keep brain energy in homeostasis, creatine supplementation may play a role in helping improve sleep and promote better sleep cycles.
Creatine supplementation may boost cognitive function and even help memory
Supplementing with creatine helps to enhance brain function by providing energy to the brain and increasing brain creatine stores. The increased cellular energy reserves can help reduce oxidative stress, leading to better cognitive performance. This can mean better focus and ability to process information. These cognitive benefits are especially useful to counter the brain fog that women experience as they age and go through perimenopause and menopause.
Creatine supplementation can also help with memory. Studies have found that creatine monohydrate supplementation can have a beneficial effect on memory performance in healthy individuals. Recently, researchers have been looking at the role creatine can play in protecting against neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's or dementia. In a 2025 study, researchers found that supplementing with creatine may have beneficial impacts to those with Alzheimer's. Further research and studies on creatine’s role in helping those with memory related disorders is ongoing.
Creatine’s benefits go way beyond helping men get bigger muscles! Supplementing with creatine can benefit women during various life stages, from helping to improve muscles and bone mass, improve cognition and brain function and even boost mood and improve cognition. Learn more about creatine here.
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