Dr. Luc van Loon: Can creatine help you cope with mental stress?

by Luc van Loon, PhD

Can creatine help you cope with mental stress?

A note from the editor:

You probably know creatine as that powder gym rats mix into protein shakes — but did you know your brain uses it, too? When you're juggling deadlines, struggling with poor sleep, or running on mental fumes, creatine might actually help you think more clearly and bounce back faster. In the article below, world-renowned scientist Dr. Luc van Loon unpacks the surprising connection between this well-known ingredient and how it can help us stay sharp even when life gets stressful.

Mental stress has become a constant part of modern life, affecting how we feel, think, and function every day. Prolonged exposure to high stress levels leaves us feeling drained and overwhelmed and can compromise our health. While regular exercise, mindfulness, and more sleep are commonly recommended for proper stress management, our diet also plays a pivotal role in how we handle stress and think clearly under pressure.

How stress and sleep loss disrupt clear thinking and healthy habits

Under high-stress conditions, people tend to adopt more unhealthy habits:

• Stress often triggers cravings for comfort foods that are high in sugar or fat, leading to poor dietary choices. 

• Increased stress levels often lead to disrupted sleep and sleep deprivation. 

• A decline in sleep quality impairs clear thinking and makes individuals even more susceptible to unhealthy behavior, creating a vicious cycle. 

It is, therefore, not surprising that interest is growing to better understand the basis of stress and sleep deprivation, the impact on cognitive function, and the potential role of our diet to ease the impact of high stress levels. A growing body of research into the effect of creatine on cognitive function and stress has shown promising potential.

Creatine: untapped potential for mental health

Recharged cells boost muscle and brain performance

For several decades, creatine has been a popular supplement widely used to enhance physical performance. Creatine boosts the ability for your muscles to regenerate energy. This enhances energy availability, delays fatigue, and supports faster recovery during repeated, high-intensity exercise.

Reduced cognitive decline under stress 

However, creatine is stored not only in muscle but also in the brain. More recently, research has revealed potential applications of creatine beyond physical performance, particularly in supporting mental health and resilience to stress and sleep deprivation. 

In the brain, creatine supports energy availability, aids neurotransmitter production, and provides protection against oxidative stress. Long-term supplementation has been shown to effectively increase creatine content in the brain, which may promote cognitive performance and reduce cognitive decline under metabolic stress.

In particular, evidence has since emerged showing that creatine supplementation can enhance cognition and memory even with sleep deprivation. It was previously thought that creatine needed to be taken regularly over time to impact the brain. However, a recent study indicated that even a single dose can improve cognitive performance and processing speed during sleep deprivation. This would imply that even a single dose of creatine could help to counteract some of the adverse effects of inadequate sleep.

Of course, more research will be needed to fully understand the potential of creatine in helping individuals cope with stress and maintain cognitive performance under high-stress conditions. Such insights may prove to benefit groups frequently exposed to acute stress and sleep deprivation, such as students, athletes, soldiers, and emergency responders.

The bottom line:

Experiencing stress is a part of life — but the way we support our brains matters. A balanced diet, regular exercise, and restful sleep is still the foundation of a healthy lifestyle, but research into supplements like creatine shows that we might have even more tools to help us stay mentally strong when it matters most.

About the author: Dr. van Loon has been a professor of nutrition and exercise at Maastricht University in the Netherlands since 2010. He has published well over 500 peer-reviewed articles, with his current focus being on the skeletal muscle adaptive response to physical activity and the impact of nutritional and pharmacological interventions to modulate metabolism in both health and disease. He is active in various media to translate research findings to the general public, highlighting the impact of nutrition and physical activity to support performance and health.

References

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2. Candow, D., et al. (2023). "Heads Up" for Creatine Supplementation and its Potential Applications for Brain Health and Function. Sports Med. 53(Suppl 1):49-65.

3. Forbes, S., et al. (2022). Effects of Creatine Supplementation on Brain Function and Health. Nutrients. 14(5).

4. Gordji-Nejad, A., et al. (2024). Single dose creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in cerebral high energy phosphates during sleep deprivation. Sci Rep. 14(1):4937.

5. Terjung, R., et al. (2000). American College of Sports Medicine roundtable. The physiological and health effects of oral creatine supplementation. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 32(3):706-17.

6. Xu, C., et al. (2024). The effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive function in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Front Nutr. 11:1424972.