Hi all, im asking this because yesterday i went to donate blood for the first time and they asked me stuff about my medical history to make sure im ok to donate.
They asked me if i’m taking or took in the past some supplements and i said yes cause i take creatine monohydrate and protein powder. When the doctor heard this said that i absolutely shouldn’t because it damages my kidneys.
I was a bit shocked because, being someone that just doesn’t trust the internet blindfolded (even when the absolute majoriy of reputable sources are kinda unanimous on saying that creatine is safe to take), before starting with creatine i went to my doctor and asked if i were ok taking it and he said yes just dont exceed the suggested dosage.
so im asking because im no one to dispute a doctor’s claim, but i got two very differente responses from two doctors so i’d like a clearer view on which advice to follow.
thank you :)
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Creatine is like the most studied performance enhancer. It is safe.
If you’re taking the universally agreed on and recommended dosage of 5g/day, you’re fine. You’re not going to see insane results as opposed to not taking it, but it won’t hurt.
And just stick with the monohydrate powder. I’ve been seeing a lot of other stuff recently, like gummies, or creatine added to acidic energy drinks. It doesn’t hold up well in those conditions, so just mix it yourself.
A meat eating american ingests more than enough creatine and your body can make it. Its not particularly dangerous but like many things having to much effects depending on substance either the liver or kidneys depending on the substance (apparently this one is kidneys). This is why its bad to get to much of most anything as you body has to deal with eliminating it. Some water soluble things are almost impossible to get to much of as it does not need to be filtered out but even water you can have too much of but that is more due to electrolyte balance. Anyway if your supplementing then you better excersise enough to actually use it and that should be real strength training. Don’t be taking because you intend to excersize. Be dependable in your excersise routine and then you can start supplements and junk.
My son is also taking creatine, and we did a lot of research before I agreed.
Creatine CAN cause significant kidney damage, and before that point, CAN cause kidney stones. The key is to (a) regulate your dose, and (b) drink enough water.
Within reason it’s quite safe, but stay within reason.
Reading around, it seems like if you keep it within recommended dosages and have no existing kidney problems, it’s all good. The main thing is to make sure whatever supplement you’re actually taking is reporting the amount of creatine correctly.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/creatine-long-term-use-safety-11867165
Supplements aren’t regulated well.
I’ve taken creatine for a long while without any issues. Are you also taking a pre-workout?
No pre workout
If you’re taking other supplements alongside the creatine it could also be one of those.
I personally had a bad reaction to some BCAA supplement I was taking. It was making me feel really off and my doctor noted elevated liver enzyme activity, which went away after I stopped taking them.
Maybe it’s not the creatine but something else?
I dont have any particular problem showed by latest blood analysis i made. I dont take anything other than creatine and protein powder. The doctor didnt said this about creatine cause he saw somethibg off. He just said it like: hey you should stop cause it damages kidneys. like in general, not cause i had something wrong.
doctors be saying stupid ass shit sometimes, it’s a proven fact there is an actual gazillion of studies on creatine, so you could just look that up if you’re wary
Exactly.
Doctors can be some of the most unscientific people you meet.
They repeatedly apply population level statistics for positive benefits of medications, but don’t do the same for the risks.
Which is wrong from the word go.
Was it an actual doctor at the blood donation place? Usually it’s just a phlebotomist or nurse. They typically don’t need a doctor just to draw blood.
But yeah, if you’re taking way more than needed it can be damaging but at or below the normal dosage should be fine.
yeah he was a doctor, he wasnt the one who took my blood. i talked to him before the sampling to check the questionnaire i filled with medical, he measured my blood pressure and asked me a bunch of stuff.
i always stay within and frequently under the suggested dosage, so i never tought somebody could straight up tell me i was ruining my kidneys. i would have expected this opinion on creatine from someone old maybe, but he was quite young. confusing times
I know a few people who kind of went crazy with the creatine and definitely took it too far and hurt themselves with it, which is crazy because I’m not even into fitness stuff so you wouldn’t expect a filthy casual like me to see that. From what I understand figuring out the right dose is tricky because there’s a lot of different body types and metabolisms, and the label always overestimates how much you really can process. It’s a supplement meaning it’s basically unregulated so they can put whatever they want on there. I’d say it’s common enough that people overdoing it is common enough to be concerning.
Can it mess with your kidneys? Absolutely. Will it? Bruh, this is the internet, we have no way to know that, but if you’re going easy on it, then probably not. Just make sure you’re using your head and it should be fine.
There is a paper on exactly that:
Front Nutr. 2025 Dec 1;12:1682746. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1682746
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12702719/I didn’t read the whole thing, but it looks like, at least right now, they didn’t find anything major.
It does not make you stronger, only makes you look stronger.
Creatine helps the muscles store a little more energy which allows it to work harder for longer (minimally).
It also makes you retain water.
What does that even mean?
It means a group of us started lifting in school, same weight, skinny dudes, some took creatine, and put on a lot of muscle quick, but got no stronger, we lifted the same amounts, they weren’t better at our other gym activities either.
They might be talking about the muscle retaining more water and thus giving it a fuller appearance.
I might be confused, but I thought creatine gives your muscles a minor"second wind" kinda thing so you can push yourself to do some extra reps? It’s not like a steroid kinda thing, I was told.
Kinda, but the effect is almost imperceptible. It’ll help you get like one more rep on your last set, or maybe one more sprint, at sufficient intensity, which is a little bit of extra volume that does add up over time with proper consistency. So, not just “looking stronger.”
The brain health effects that the influencers are talking about now are just hype, though.
I’m only basing this on.anecdote, in school we had body kinetics and a group of us skinny guys the same weight were lifting and half took creatine and put on a lot of muscle real quick but were not any stronger than those of us that did not evenn after putting on 15 lbs more muscle or whatever.
- creatine-supplementation measurable improved the memory if vegans, in some experiment … I think that was in Australia, some years ago…
( I consistently supplement with choline, when vegan, because the choline-deficiency is bluntly a kind of chronic-fatigue-syndrome, & I’m fed-up with health-problems. Eating eggs corrects the choline-deficiency, but blocks me from reaching better-quality meditations, which also is aweful/wrong )
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the dosages recommended by the pushers of products are consistently waaay too high, whether laundry-detergents or health-supplements. I use less than 1/2 of the scoop-size, when supplementing with the stuff, because I can feel how wrong it makes my biochemistry when taking the amount they want me taking.
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always trust your body’s healthsense over what the label pushes you to do, & remember that your-biochemistry may well be incompatible with some “fixes” that pushers are profiting from.
Sorry to be cynical, but that’s what evidence has convinced me of.
Whether creatine damages kidneys would be dependent on dosage, obviously.
Apparently the doctor claiming it damages kidneys doesn’t consider dosage important?
That’s as bogus as the supplement-industry’s pretense that the same dosage is right for all different sizes of people, of all metabolisms, of all sexes/genders/hormonal-balances: pseudoscience, absolute.
Proper dosages are when you calibrate to units-per-kg-of-<type-of-animal>.
So, for me, it might be that taking ( 75 / 10 / 4 )g/day of creatine per 75kg of bodyweight, might be right.
Or something like that.
I know from Gershon’s book “The Second Brain”, that glutamine-supplements FRY the nervous-system of the gut, as nicotene does…
& that’ll never get well-known in the supplement-industry, because of how it’d gimp easy-profits…
Some things are just too outside natural-chemistry to do any good ( like chemically-pure glutamine ), & sometimes it’s the insane dosages, compared with normal food, that’s the problem…
but it isn’t logical to claim that there is no safe dosage for creatine, since dosages can go down to infinitesimal: that isn’t logical.
There has to be a safe level for it, unless it’s intrinsically harmful, in its pure form.
I’m certain that the pushed dosages will harm kidneys, though.
So, seen in that light, yeah: if taking what the pushers want you taking, then yes, that’ll probably damage your kidneys.
There’s a limit to what they can deal-with…
I knew a guy who’d worked in a hospital, & he told me he 1 time had to watch a patient destroy their own life by overdosing with vitamin-C: they crushed their kidneys from the inside, with stones.
They wouldn’t listen, & that was that: they kept overdosing until they died.
Didn’t get deemed valid by the megadose-vitamin-C crowd, obviously…
but how could any organ in our body possibly deal with insane quantities of some single-chemical that they aren’t evolved-for, you know?
I just looked at PubMed:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=creatine+kidney
& glanced into the 2nd item I saw, & it stated plainly that unless someone has a kidney condition, it’s safe, as far as evidence-based-medicine is concerned.
hth,
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