The short version: A 2025 narrative review in Nutrients stepped outside the athletic literature to ask who else creatine might help. Its answers: women with lower baseline stores, people eating plant-based diets, and several clinical populations. It also compared the different forms of creatine sold commercially and found that creatine monohydrate remains the best-evidenced choice — the newer forms charge more without demonstrating more.

If you are not an athlete and have been wondering whether creatine is even aimed at you, this is your paper.

Why the “beyond athletics” framing matters

Creatine’s reputation was built in weight rooms, which has quietly excluded a lot of people who might benefit. The research team — Gutiérrez-Hellín, Del Coso, and colleagues — organized their review around the idea that creatine’s core function is cellular energy supply, and cellular energy is not a sports concern. It is a brain concern, a muscle-maintenance concern, and an aging concern.

Their reasoning starts from a simple observation: creatine’s benefit scales with how depleted you are to begin with. If your stores are already full, adding more does less. If they are low, there is room to move. That single principle explains why the review’s three focus groups are the ones it chose.

Women: lower baseline, more headroom

The review notes that women typically carry lower baseline intramuscular creatine than men, which theoretically means greater responsiveness to supplementation. It also raises a specific, non-athletic application: creatine may help alleviate fatigue-related symptoms associated with the menstrual cycle, particularly during the early follicular and luteal phases — the windows when many women report the heaviest energy dips.

Read that as a mechanistically reasonable hypothesis with early support, not a settled finding. The 2025 lifespan review reaches a similar place on cycle-related effects: plausible, under-tested.

Vegans and vegetarians: the clearest case in the paper

This is the review’s most concrete finding, and it is the one most likely to change someone’s decision.

Creatine occurs in food almost exclusively in animal muscle tissue — red meat and fish. A person eating no animal products consumes essentially none. The body synthesizes some creatine endogenously from glycine, arginine, and methionine, but synthesis alone leaves stores meaningfully lower than in omnivores.

The consequence: vegetarians and vegans consistently show reduced creatine stores, and they tend to show the largest responses to supplementation — in both physical and cognitive measures. The cognitive piece is worth emphasizing, because several of the more striking creatine-and-cognition results in the broader literature came from vegetarian samples, precisely because those participants had the most room to gain.

The review also frames this as supporting adherence to plant-based diets, which is a sensible way to think about it: if you are eating plant-based for ethical, environmental, or health reasons, supplementing the one compound that diet reliably lacks removes a genuine drawback rather than compromising the choice.

For a woman who is both female and plant-based, the two baseline factors stack. This is arguably the single strongest “you personally should consider this” case in the entire creatine literature.

Clinical populations

The review surveys evidence for creatine in conditions involving muscle wasting, neurodegenerative disease, and chronic fatigue, alongside general findings on cognitive function and fatigue reduction. The picture across these areas is genuinely mixed — some promising signals, many small studies, few definitive answers.

The honest framing: creatine is being actively investigated as an adjunct in several clinical contexts because it is cheap, safe, and mechanistically plausible. That is a reason for researchers to keep studying it. It is not yet a reason to treat any condition with it. If you are managing a health condition, this is provider territory. We cover what is established about safety separately, including the situations that warrant medical supervision.

The forms comparison: why monohydrate keeps winning

Walk into a supplement shop and you will find creatine monohydrate, micronized creatine, creatine hydrochloride (HCl), creatine ethyl ester, buffered creatine, and creatine gummies — most priced above plain monohydrate, most marketed on better absorption or less bloating.

The review’s assessment aligns with the broader consensus: creatine monohydrate has by far the deepest evidence base, and alternative forms have not demonstrated superiority. Newer forms are typically sold on theoretical solubility or absorption advantages that have not translated into better outcomes in head-to-head research.

A few practical distinctions worth knowing:

• Micronized monohydrate is the same molecule, ground finer. It mixes more easily. That is a texture benefit, not a biological one — and it is a reasonable thing to pay slightly more for if grittiness bothers you.
• Creatine HCl is marketed as requiring smaller doses due to solubility. The evidence for equivalent or better outcomes at lower doses is not there.
• Creatine ethyl ester has performed poorly in the studies that have examined it, with evidence of degradation before it reaches muscle.
• Gummies carry real quality-control issues. Heat and moisture in manufacturing can degrade creatine into creatinine, meaning the labeled dose is not necessarily the delivered dose. Dosing accuracy is also poor, and you are often paying for added sugar.

The purchasing implication is refreshingly simple: buy creatine monohydrate, verify third-party testing, and do not pay a premium for a novel form. Our full creatine guide for women covers exactly what to check on a label.

What this review is and isn’t

It is a narrative review, not a systematic review or meta-analysis. That distinction matters. Narrative reviews synthesize a field and are valuable for orientation, but authors select which studies to discuss, which introduces more interpretive latitude than a systematic review’s predefined search protocol.

Read it, in other words, as a well-informed expert survey of the landscape — useful for understanding the terrain, less authoritative on any single question than a systematic review would be. For contrast, the systematic review of performance studies in active women applied a formal protocol and reached notably more conservative conclusions. Both perspectives belong in your thinking.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need creatine if I don’t work out? The strongest, most consistent benefits in the literature involve creatine paired with resistance training. Non-exercise applications — cognition, fatigue, clinical uses — are areas of active research with less settled evidence.

Is creatine more effective if I’m vegetarian or vegan? The evidence supports this. Plant-based eaters have lower baseline stores and tend to show larger responses to supplementation in both physical and cognitive measures.

Is creatine HCl better than monohydrate for bloating? There is no good evidence that it is. Bloating at 3–5 g/day is uncommon regardless of form; it is more associated with high loading doses. Monohydrate has the research behind it.

Are creatine gummies worth it? Generally no. Manufacturing conditions can degrade creatine into creatinine, dosing accuracy is inconsistent, and cost per gram is high.

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Read next

• The master research summary: everything the evidence says about creatine for women
• Creatine across the female lifespan: the 2025 review
• Creatine and brain fog: the sleep deprivation research
• How much creatine should women take?

Comparing products? Our complete creatine guide for women explains what separates a well-made monohydrate from an overpriced one.

Sources

1. Gutiérrez-Hellín J, Del Coso J, Franco-Andrés A, Gamonales JM, Espada MC, González-García J, López-Moreno M, Varillas-Delgado D. Creatine supplementation beyond athletics: benefits of different types of creatine for women, vegans, and clinical populations — a narrative review. Nutrients. 2025;17(1):95. Full text (MDPI) · PMC
2. Kreider RB, et al. ISSN position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. JISSN. 2017;14:18. PubMed
3. Smith-Ryan AE, et al. Creatine in women’s health: bridging the gap from menstruation through pregnancy to menopause. JISSN. 2025;22(1):2502094. PubMed

Educational information only. This article summarizes published research and is not medical advice. Talk to your healthcare provider before starting any supplement, particularly if you are managing a health condition.