Does Creatine Raise IQ? What the Trials Show About Memory and Reasoning

Creatine has not been shown to raise IQ. The claim traces to a single 2003 trial in 45 vegetarians and vegans, whose scores on a 10-minute Raven's matrices test rose from 9.7 to 13.7 items correct after six weeks on 5 g a day. A preregistered replication with 123 people, published in 2023, found no significant effect on that test (p = 0.327). Later reviews find small memory gains, mainly in older adults and people who are sleep-deprived, and in November 2024 the European Food Safety Authority's panel concluded that a cause-and-effect relationship between creatine and improved cognitive function has not been established. This is an evidence summary, not medical advice.

Where does the "creatine raises IQ" claim come from?

It comes from Rae, Digney, McEwan and Bates (2003), a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial. Forty-five vegan or vegetarian adults, 12 men and 33 women, took 5 g a day of creatine monohydrate or a maltodextrin placebo for six weeks each, with a washout between. They completed timed, 10-minute parallel versions of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and the backward digit span, a Wechsler working memory subtest. The mean matrices score was 9.7 items correct (standard deviation 3.8) on placebo and 13.7 (4.1) on creatine, and backward digit span rose from 7.05 to 8.5 items, both at p below 0.0001.

Three points keep that result in proportion. The outcomes are raw items correct in a timed set, not IQ points, so a gain of four items is not a gain of four points; it is about one standard deviation of the placebo scores, our arithmetic, which is far larger than most supplement effects. The authors wrote that, because the matrices are a rather pure measure of g, general ability appeared to improve. And brain creatine was not measured: only red-cell creatine, which rose. The EFSA panel later criticised this trial and a 2007 elderly study for missing information on randomisation and inadequate adjustment for baseline differences. Our guide to Raven's matrices scores explains why raw items and IQ points are different scales, and the IQ score converter shows how a score on one scale maps to another.

Did the finding replicate?

Not on the matrices test. Sandkühler and colleagues (2023, BMC Medicine) approximately replicated the design and dose, 5 g a day for six weeks, in a preregistered study of 123 people, half of them vegetarian. The creatine effect bordered on significance for backward digit span (p = 0.064) but not for Raven's matrices (p = 0.327). Vegetarians did not benefit more than omnivores. Side effects were reported significantly more often on creatine than on placebo (p = 0.002, risk ratio 4.25), and the authors note that brain creatine levels were not assessed. Their abstract adds that a Bayesian analysis supported a small beneficial effect, so the result is null on one method and weakly positive on the other.

Other trials point the same way in young adults. Rawson and colleagues (2008) gave 22 people about 21 years old 0.03 g per kilogram a day for six weeks and found no effect on reasoning, memory or reaction time. Benton and Donohoe (2011) gave 128 young women 20 g a day for five days and found better memory in vegetarians but not in meat eaters; that is a memory test, not an IQ test, and the 2023 replication did not find a larger effect in vegetarians.

What do the reviews conclude?

Avgerinos and colleagues (2018) found six studies with 281 people and judged a meta-analysis not feasible. They wrote that creatine may improve short-term memory and intelligence or reasoning in healthy individuals but that its effect on other domains remains unclear, that performance stayed unchanged in young people, and that findings suggest potential benefit for older and stressed individuals. The one elderly trial in their set, of 32 people with a mean age of 76.4, was rated at high risk of bias. A term used below: an SMD, or standardised mean difference, states an effect in standard deviations.

• Prokopidis et al. 2023, 8 trials: memory SMD 0.29; 0.88 in ages 66 to 76, 0.03 in ages 11 to 31
• Xu et al. 2024, 16 trials and 492 people: memory SMD 0.31, but overall cognition SMD 0.34 with a confidence interval of -0.20 to 0.88 and heterogeneity of 75%
• Xu corrigendum: attention and processing-speed scores were null; only reaction times were significant
• 2026 review in older adults: 6 studies, 1,542 people, only 2 double-blind trials, 3 of 6 rated poor quality
• 2026 scoping review in dementia: no relevant randomized controlled trials found

The pooled numbers are shaky. A letter alleged double counting in the 2023 review, and a 2026 commentary reports that the re-analysis left the effect no longer significant except in older adults. The 2024 analysis lists 24 studies with 1,000 participants in its memory pool inside a review of 492 people, which looks like double counting, and the EFSA panel wrote that no conclusions can be drawn from that meta-analysis. In its November 2024 opinion the panel found that a cause-and-effect relationship has not been established between creatine supplementation and an improvement in cognitive function, and that three intervention studies in diseased individuals do not support an effect on cognition.

What about sleep loss?

The strongest recent signal is in sleep deprivation, from a small trial. Gordji-Nejad and colleagues (2024) gave 15 healthy adults, aged 23 on average, a single dose of 0.35 g per kilogram or corn starch during 21 hours of sleep deprivation in a double-blind crossover. Pooled over three time points, language task performance improved by 29.1% and logic by 16.0%. Two cautions apply. The dose is about 24.5 g for a 70 kg adult, five to eight times a usual 3 to 5 g daily dose, our arithmetic. And the tasks were drawn from IQ-test training material, so they are practice items, not a normed IQ test. A 2026 review of sleep-deprivation studies found only five that met its criteria. Our guide to sleep loss and test performance covers what a poor night does to a score.

Does creatine reach the brain?

A little. Dechent and colleagues (1999) measured brain creatine by spectroscopy in six people after 5 g four times a day for four weeks and found an increase of 8.7%, with individual changes from 3.5% to 13.3%, reversing within three months. A 2017 position stand of the International Society of Sports Nutrition says brain creatine can generally rise by 5% to 15%, that uptake is slow and limited, and that 3 to 5 g a day maintains muscle stores. It also says there is no compelling evidence that up to 30 g a day for five years harms healthy people, though the paper was prepared at the request of an industry body, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, and the 2023 replication found side effects more often on creatine. Rae and colleagues wrote in 2003 that long-term supplementation had yet to be declared truly safe. Another nutrient question with trial evidence behind it is covered in our guide to iodine deficiency and IQ.

What no trial shows

We found no trial that measured full-scale IQ on a Wechsler test after creatine, and none of the reviews above lists it as an outcome; our search covered reviews and abstracts, not every database. The outcomes are matrices raw scores, digit span, word memory and reaction time. Popular claims that creatine adds IQ points, that vegetarians benefit most, or that it works in healthy young adults each fail against a replication or a null trial. For the wider evidence on food and test scores, see our page on nutrition and IQ; our guides to caffeine and the practice effect cover two things that do change a timed score.

A single small gain on a timed test is also hard to read on its own, because every score carries a margin of error; our guide to IQ score margin of error shows how large it is. For the wider picture of what can and cannot change a score, see can you improve your IQ, and for working memory in particular, our guide to working memory and reasoning. To measure where you stand today, take the IQ Metrics test.

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