Creatine: what does it actually do for women?

So now we are taking creatine… Balance explores the new gym craze.

Creatine has spent years being ushered into the algorithm under “things men take at the gym”. Now it is everywhere in women’s wellness, with TikTok promising everything from better workouts and bigger glutes to improved energy, cognition, and even hormonal support.

A systematic review and meta-analysis published in ‘Frontiers in Nutrition’ this month is one of the first to look at the overall effects of creatine in females who exercise or train, rather than assuming findings from predominantly male studies apply equally to women. The researchers searched more than 13,000 records and included 34 studies involving over 600 female-identifying participants.

The headline of ‘now we should really be taking creatine’ is considerably less dramatic than your FYP might suggest. Across the evidence, creatine produced a slight positive overall effect. In non-scientific terms, it’s neither here nor there.

They found that women taking creatine will not suddenly become stronger or gain a certain amount of muscle; in fact, differences between groups varied across very different studies and tests. More importantly, the researchers rated the certainty of the evidence as low for performance and body composition, and very low for the overall and physiological findings. Their conclusion is essentially that creatine could improve selected measures of strength, power, high-intensity performance and lean-mass-related outcomes, but there is not yet enough consistent evidence to make sweeping claims about exactly what it does for every woman.

That distinction matters in particular because the female creatine conversation has often run ahead of the research (as these things usually do when it comes to research in women’s health). A 2025 review found that the evidence for creatine in women was mixed. When researchers compared women taking creatine with those taking a placebo, creatine improved some measures of strength and power, but not most of them. It helped with 3 of the 11 strength and power tests they looked at, while 4 of 17 tests involving short, intense bursts of exercise (such as sprinting) showed a benefit. For endurance-based exercise, such as sustained cardio, only 1 of 5 measures showed an improvement.

In other words, creatine appeared to help in some situations, particularly when exercise required short, powerful bursts of effort, but it wasn't a guaranteed performance boost across every type of exercise. The researchers also highlighted how poorly many studies accounted for female-specific factors such as menstrual status and hormonal contraception.

So what is creatine actually doing? Creatine is stored in muscle largely as phosphocreatine, which helps rapidly regenerate ATP, the energy currency used during short, intense bursts of activity. Supplementing increases the available creatine pool, which is why its most established use is supporting repeated high-intensity exercise and strength training. Standard protocols do not require a special “women’s” dose: the International Society of Sports Nutrition generally recommends 3–5g a day, with an optional loading phase of around 20g a day for five days before moving to a maintenance dose.

And no, creatine is not a steroid reserved exclusively for the gym bros, nor does gaining water inside muscle cells mean you are suddenly bulking. Some initial weight gain can occur because creatine draws water into muscle, but that is different from gaining body fat. For women, creatine is not some secret female performance hack. But it can be a vehicle for understanding the supplement world; it has been researched for decades in men, and should be more considered for the other half of the population too.