Researchers kept adults awake for 21 hours and scanned their brains. Creatine changed brain-energy chemistry and slowed the cognitive slide. Here's what the experiments found, what the dose was, and what it does and doesn't mean for a 5 g scoop.
You probably associate creatine with one thing: muscle.
And that's fair. Creatine is one of the most studied sports supplements in existence, and its role in muscle energy is well established.
But here's what almost nobody knows: your brain runs a creatine/phosphocreatine energy system too. And researchers have now run some genuinely strange experiments to see what happens when they deliberately stress that system — by keeping people awake all night.
The experiment: 21 hours awake inside a brain scanner
In 2024, researchers in Germany recruited 15 healthy young adults for a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover experiment.
Each person served as their own control. On one experimental night they received creatine. On the other, a placebo.
Then the researchers kept them awake for about 21 hours, repeatedly put them through cognitive tests, and looked inside their brains using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P- and 1H-MRS) to measure the compounds involved in cellular energy metabolism.
That last part is what makes this study so good. They weren't simply asking, "Do you feel less tired?" They were watching brain-energy chemistry change while the participants became sleep-deprived.
The reveal: creatine changed the brain's energy chemistry
Creatine changed what happened.
The researchers reported changes in the balance of phosphocreatine to inorganic phosphate (PCr/Pi), in ATP, and in total brain creatine relative to N-acetylaspartate — and creatine prevented the drop in brain pH that otherwise came with sleep loss. At the same time, participants performed better on measures of cognitive performance and processing speed as the night went on.
In other words: the researchers stressed the brain's energy system, gave it creatine, and saw both metabolic and cognitive differences.
The catch: the dose was enormous
The dose used in that first experiment was 0.35 grams per kilogram of body weight. For a 175-pound person, that's around 28 grams of creatine at once.
So this study does not show that one scoop of creatine prevents mental fatigue. It doesn't demonstrate that, and we won't claim it.
But the researchers found their own result interesting enough to come back and ask the obvious next question: could a lower dose still work?
The follow-up: a lower dose, 29 more people
That study was published in 2026.
This time the same research group enrolled 29 healthy adults in another randomized, double-blind crossover experiment. Again: creatine night versus placebo night. Again: about 21 hours of sleep deprivation. Again: cognitive testing throughout the night.
But the dose was reduced to 0.2 g/kg — around 16 grams for a 175-pound person. Still considerably more than a standard 5 g serving, but substantially lower than the original experiment.
And again, creatine appeared to reduce some of the cognitive deterioration from sleep deprivation. The researchers reported a mitigating effect on logical and numerical tasks, language-related processing speed, and the Psychomotor Vigilance Test, with improvements of up to roughly 12% in some measures. The effect was less pronounced than with the higher dose, and women benefited more than men on several of the tasks.
Not every individual comparison held up after correction for multiple statistical tests, so treat this as intriguing emerging evidence rather than established fact.
The biology: creatine is an energy buffer, not a muscle molecule
Here's the deeper point: creatine isn't fundamentally a "muscle-building molecule."
Its fundamental job is closer to being an energy buffer.
Cells spend ATP to do work. ATP becomes ADP. The phosphocreatine system can rapidly donate a phosphate group to regenerate ATP. Muscle happens to depend heavily on that system during explosive activity — which is why creatine became a gym supplement. (We break that down in the creatine detail most people never learn.)
But neurons need ATP too.
So the real creatine story is this: muscles and brains both face moments when energy demand temporarily outpaces the rate at which ATP can otherwise be regenerated. Sleep deprivation is one of those moments for the brain — and it may also be a moment when more creatine gets taken up into brain tissue, which is the hypothesis the 2024 researchers set out to test.
The dose that matches our product
Back in 2003, researchers in Sydney gave 45 young adult vegetarians either placebo or 5 grams of creatine per day for six weeks, in a double-blind crossover design.
That's the same daily amount in one scoop of Monthlees Creatine Monohydrate.
They then tested working memory (backward digit span) and performance on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, a demanding reasoning test. Creatine significantly improved both measures in that study.
Two decades later, a much larger preregistered trial in Germany tested the same 5 g/day for six weeks in 123 people — about half vegetarians, half omnivores. Its Bayesian analysis supported a small beneficial effect, not a dramatic one, and vegetarians didn't benefit more than omnivores.
So we wouldn't market creatine as an IQ supplement. But there's enough here to tell a far more interesting story than "gym powder."
What the broader evidence says
A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis pooled 16 randomized controlled trials involving 492 people. It found statistically significant effects for memory, attention time, and processing-speed time. Overall cognitive function and executive function did not improve significantly. The authors rated the certainty of evidence as moderate for memory and low for the other outcomes.
And in November 2024, the European Food Safety Authority's nutrition panel reviewed an application for a creatine-and-cognition health claim and concluded that a cause-and-effect relationship has not been established.
That's exactly why the sleep-deprivation experiments are interesting: the clearest signal appears when the brain is under energetic stress, not in well-rested people.
What this means — and what it doesn't
What it means: Creatine is famous for muscle energy, but your brain uses the same molecule and the same phosphocreatine energy system. Scientists are finding that creatine's effects may become most visible when the brain is under energetic stress.
What it doesn't mean: It doesn't mean creatine makes you smarter. It doesn't mean one 5 g scoop rescues you after an all-nighter — the acute sleep-deprivation experiments used 0.2 to 0.35 g/kg. And it doesn't mean any finished product, ours included, was the thing tested.
Why creatine is in our catalog
Monthlees Creatine Monohydrate provides 5,000 mg (5 g) of creatine monohydrate per scoop — the daily amount used throughout much of the supplementation literature, including the 2003 and 2023 cognition trials above.
If you'd rather take it with electrolytes, ATP+™ combines the same 5 g of creatine monohydrate with sodium, potassium, and magnesium in one daily scoop. And with a Monthlees membership, both come at member prices.
The interesting story isn't "creatine makes you smarter." It's that creatine is part of the energy-buffering system used by cells throughout your body, including your brain.
The takeaway
Next time someone tells you creatine is just for muscle, you'll know the fuller story: your brain runs the same energy system. And when researchers deliberately stressed it with a night without sleep, creatine changed what happened — both in the chemistry and in the performance.
That's the kind of finding that makes you look at a scoop of creatine a little differently.
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The statements in this article have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Consult a healthcare professional before adding new supplements to your routine.
