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Is creatine worth taking after fifty?
Of everything on the supplement shelf, creatine monohydrate is the one where the evidence is not close. Three to five grams a day, no loading phase needed, no cycling needed, and it costs about the same as a coffee a week.
What it actually does
Creatine helps your muscles regenerate their immediate energy supply between hard efforts. In practice that shows up as one or two more repetitions on a set, slightly better output across a session, and slightly more total work done over a training block. That extra work is what builds the strength. The powder does not build anything by itself.
The research base in older adults is smaller than the enormous one in young athletes, and it points the same direction, particularly when it is paired with resistance training rather than taken on its own. Taken with no training at all it does very little, which is worth knowing before you buy it.
What to buy
Plain creatine monohydrate. Unflavoured, micronised if you like it to mix better. That is the entire specification.
Every other form on the shelf is more expensive and none of them has beaten monohydrate in a fair comparison. If a tub has a name with more than one word in it, you are paying for the word.
How to take it
Three to five grams a day, every day, including days you do not train. No loading phase is required. Loading gets you to the same place a fortnight sooner and gives some people an upset stomach on the way.
Timing does not matter. Put it in your coffee, your yoghurt, or a glass of water, whenever you remember. The consistency matters and the hour does not.
The scale, in the first two weeks
You will probably gain one to three pounds in the first fortnight. That is water held inside the muscle cell, which is the mechanism working rather than a side effect. It is not fat and it does not keep going.
Men who watch the scale closely and do not know this coming tend to stop at day ten, which is exactly the wrong moment.
The conversation to have first
Creatine has an unusually long safety record in healthy adults. That said, if you have a kidney condition, or you take medication of any kind, run it past your doctor or your pharmacist before you start. Not because it is likely to be a problem, but because that is the cheap way to find out that it is not.
This applies to every supplement, including the ordinary looking ones, and it is the reason the supplement chapter in these books is shorter than the shelf in the shop.
