Creatine is one of the most highly-regarded performance-enhancing supplements on the market. But like any dietary supplement, it has potential benefits and drawbacks.

Some users report changes in their sleep habits while taking creatine, which begs the question; does creating mess with your sleep?

Let’s find out.

What is Creatine?

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound in your muscle tissue cells that helps generate energy for muscle contraction during intense exercise.

Your body can produce creatine on its own and you can also obtain it from food sources, such as meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, and dairy products. It’s made up of three amino acids, arginine, glycine, and methionine, which is why it’s typically found in protein-rich foods.

Your liver and kidneys synthesize creatine from the amino acids arginine and glycine, which make up about half of your body’s stores. The other half comes from food sources.

Creatine is stored in your muscle as phosphocreatine, which is a form of stored energy that helps your body to create more of the high-energy molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP) [1].

The more ATP you produce, the better your muscles can perform during exercise.

Why Do People Take Creatine?

Because creatine can help boost your muscle’s energy for better performance, it’s become a very popular athletic supplement. But if you can get it from food, why take it as a supplement?

Despite your body’s ability to make creatine and get it from various food sources, many people aren’t maxing out their muscle’s creatine stores.

It’s difficult to do this with food sources alone as it is challenging to quantify the amount of creatine in various foods and even when this is done it’s difficult to eat enough of these foods to get a substantial amount of creatine.

Most foods that contain creatine only contain very small amounts. Creatine supplements can help people get concentrated amounts of creatine that maximize their muscle’s creatine stores for maximum improvements in muscle growth, increased muscle strength, exercise performance, and recovery [2, 3].

Does Creatine Affect Your Sleep?

Researchers have found that creatine supplements may have benefits outside of physical performance, including helping with increasing energy levels and combating fatigue from sleep deprivation.

While it may sound surprising that creatine supplements of all things can help you feel more awake after a long night without adequate rest, when you think about how it affects your energy levels during exercise it makes a bit more sense.

Because creatine increases ATP production, which is the main energy source for our cells, it may have a similar effect as caffeine. ATP helps boost energy in our muscle tissues as well as our brain which can help give you the boost you need after a long night and feel more rested on less sleep [4, 5].

While creatine may act similarly to caffeine in this way, creatine is not a stimulant like caffeine. This means it can be taken in the evening without impacting your ability to fall asleep.

So, the answer is yes creatine does affect your sleep but not in a negative way.

How to Add Creatine to Your Diet

If you are considering including creatine supplements in your daily routine, you may be wondering what the best way to do that is.

As mentioned above, you can get creatine from food sources but these often contain minute amounts. If you are trying to get enough creatine to maximize your stores and see improvements in your physical performance you might consider a creatine supplement.

Creatine supplements come in many forms including powders, gummies, capsules, and liquids. If you are considering a creatine supplement be sure to choose one from a trusted brand that offers third-party testing for quality and purity so you know what you are getting.

Avoid supplements that contain a lot of added fluff and unidentifiable ingredients. Simple is usually better so just look for a product that contains creatine monohydrate, the most researched form of creatine.

You can take it right before exercise or right after. If it’s on a rest day, you can take it anytime. If you are new to creatine, you can do an optional loading phase, which is when you take higher amounts of creatine (20-25g) split into 5-gram increments throughout the day for 5-7 days to max your creatine stores in your muscle.

After that, you will continue with a loading phase of 3-5g per day or you can start with that if you don’t want to do a loading phase, the results will just take a little longer to notice.

Because your muscles can only get so saturated, you will eventually stop seeing results from taking creatine after a while. Because of this many choose to take it for 4-6 weeks consistently and then take a 2-4 week break before starting the process again.