Creatine and Testosterone: What the Research Actually Found

Man in training gear opening a 300g pouch of Ritua Creatine Monohydrate
Jasmine Meagher, founder of Ritua
Jasmine Meagher, BSc Food Science and Nutrition
Founder, Ritua · 8 min read

Somewhere between the gym floor and the algorithm, creatine picked up a reputation it does not deserve. Depending on which video you land on, it either turns you into a hormonal powerhouse or quietly wrecks your androgens. Both versions are wrong, and both trace back to the same small pool of research being read badly.

So here is the honest position, stated before the detail rather than after it. Creatine is not a hormonal supplement. It does not meaningfully raise testosterone. The claim that it does comes from a handful of studies that do not say what people think they say, and one of them did not measure a testosterone increase at all. What follows is what those studies actually found, why the misreading happened, and the far more boring explanation for why creatine still feels like it is doing something.

The short answer, before the detail

Creatine is not an anabolic steroid and it is not a testosterone booster. Anabolic steroids are synthetic versions of testosterone that bind to the androgen receptor inside the muscle cell and change gene expression. Creatine has a completely different chemical structure and works nowhere near that pathway, a point the 2021 review of common creatine misconceptions in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition spells out directly.

That review is also where the evidence tally sits. Across the studies that have measured it, creatine does not raise total testosterone, does not raise free testosterone, and the one finding on dihydrotestosterone that started all of this has never been repeated. None of that makes creatine less useful. It just means the mechanism people credit it with is not the mechanism it has.

What creatine actually does in the body

Creatine is an energy molecule, not a signalling one. About 95 per cent of the body's creatine sits in skeletal muscle, and roughly two thirds of that is stored as phosphocreatine, according to the International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand on creatine. The total creatine pool in muscle averages about 120 mmol per kilogram of dry muscle in a 70 kilogram person, with an apparent ceiling near 160 mmol per kilogram.

The job it does there is simple. Your muscles run on adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. When ATP is broken down into ADP to release energy, the phosphate held on phosphocreatine can be donated straight back to rebuild ATP. The position stand describes this as a buffer that helps maintain ATP availability, and it matters most during maximal effort anaerobic work, the hard set, the sprint, the last two reps. The creatine kinase and phosphocreatine system also acts as an energy shuttle, moving usable energy from where it is produced in the mitochondria to where it is spent in the cell.

Notice what is absent from that description. No receptor binding, no endocrine gland, no hormone. Supplementing simply tops up a storage pool that is already there. The body needs to replace roughly 1 to 3 grams of creatine a day depending on muscle mass, and about half of that typically comes from food, mostly red meat and seafood. A daily supplement covers the rest and pushes the store closer to its ceiling. That is the whole mechanism.

Where the testosterone claim came from

Almost the entire internet conversation about creatine and male hormones rests on one paper. In 2009, van der Merwe, Brooks and Myburgh published a study in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine on college aged rugby players at a rugby institute in South Africa. Twenty players volunteered. It was a double blind, placebo controlled crossover design with a six week washout, which is a genuinely decent structure for a study of that size.

The protocol was heavy by modern standards. Participants loaded with 25 grams of creatine a day alongside 25 grams of glucose for seven days, then dropped to a 5 gram maintenance dose with 25 grams of glucose for a further 14 days. The placebo arm took glucose alone. Serum testosterone and dihydrotestosterone were measured at baseline, at day 7 and at day 21.

Here is the finding, exactly as reported. Serum testosterone did not change. Not after loading, not after maintenance. What did change was dihydrotestosterone, or DHT, which rose by 56 per cent after the seven day loading phase and remained 40 per cent above baseline after the 14 days of maintenance. The ratio of DHT to testosterone rose by 36 per cent after loading and stayed 22 per cent elevated at the end. The authors' conclusion was cautious and specific, that creatine may in part act through an increased rate of conversion of testosterone to DHT, and that further investigation was warranted.

So the study that is endlessly cited as proof that creatine raises testosterone is, in fact, a study in which testosterone did not move. It is a paper about a downstream metabolite, and it explicitly says so in its own title.

Reading that study properly

DHT is made from testosterone by the enzyme 5 alpha reductase, and it binds the androgen receptor more strongly than testosterone does. It is also the androgen implicated in pattern hair loss in men, which is the real reason this single result has had such a long life online. That question has its own evidence base and we have kept it separate. What matters here is whether the result supports a hormonal mechanism for creatine at all.

Four things weigh against it. First, the size. Twenty players volunteered and, as the 2021 review notes, 16 males completed the trial. That is a small sample for a hormone outcome with real day to day variability. Second, the baselines were uneven. The review points out that before supplementation began, DHT was 23 per cent lower in the creatine condition, at 0.98 nmol per litre, than in the placebo condition, at 1.26 nmol per litre. Third, the absolute movement was tiny. DHT rose by 0.55 nmol per litre after seven days and 0.40 nmol per litre after 21, while the placebo response drifted down by 0.17 and 0.20 nmol per litre. A large percentage change from a low starting point is still a small change, and both the DHT values and the DHT to testosterone ratio stayed well within normal clinical limits throughout.

Fourth, and most importantly, nobody has reproduced it. Seventeen years on, the result stands alone. Intense resistance training on its own can shift androgen concentrations, and these were rugby players in their competitive season, so the design could not fully isolate supplement from sport. A single unreplicated finding in 16 men, on a metabolite rather than the hormone everyone is arguing about, is a reason to keep looking. It is not a mechanism.

What the wider evidence shows on androgens

Once you step back from that one paper, the picture is unusually consistent for nutrition research. The 2021 review counted every other trial that had measured testosterone alongside creatine supplementation, across doses from 3 to 25 grams a day and durations from six days to twelve weeks.

To date, 12 other studies have investigated the effects of creatine supplementation on testosterone. Two studies reported small, physiologically insignificant increases in total testosterone after six and seven days of supplementation, while the remaining ten studies reported no change in testosterone concentrations.

Five of those studies also measured free testosterone, the fraction the body actually uses to make DHT, and none found an increase. The review's summary sentence is blunt: the current body of evidence does not indicate that creatine supplementation increases total testosterone, free testosterone or DHT.

The evidence has only firmed up since. A 12 week randomised controlled trial published in 2025 gave 5 grams of creatine monohydrate or a matched maltodextrin placebo daily to resistance trained men aged 18 to 40. Forty five were recruited and 38 completed. Total testosterone, free testosterone and DHT were measured at baseline and at 12 weeks. There were no group by time interactions for any hormone. Total testosterone rose over the twelve weeks in both groups and free testosterone fell in both groups, which is exactly the pattern you would expect from training and normal variation rather than from a supplement. DHT and the DHT to testosterone ratio showed no difference between creatine and placebo.

The 2025 follow up review from the same group reaches the same place, noting that the majority of studies indicate creatine has no effect on testosterone levels. That is about as settled as this kind of question gets.

So why does it feel like it works

Because it does work. Just not through hormones. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis in Nutrients pooled 69 studies and 1,937 participants. Creatine combined with resistance training produced small but statistically significant improvements over placebo: bench and chest press strength up by 1.43 kilograms, squat strength up by 5.64 kilograms, vertical jump up by 1.48 centimetres and Wingate peak power up by 47.81 watts. Handgrip and leg press strength did not reach significance. These are modest, real numbers, and they are the kind of edge that compounds when you train consistently.

The mechanism behind them is the one described earlier. More available phosphocreatine means slightly better ATP resynthesis during hard efforts, which means an extra rep or a slightly heavier set, which over months means more total training volume. The ISSN position stand also documents a recovery side to this, with creatine supplementation associated with reduced markers of muscle damage and inflammation after intense exercise, and with a better ability to tolerate high training volumes and periods of deliberate overreaching.

More volume, better tolerated, recovered from faster. That is a training effect wearing a hormonal costume. If someone starts creatine and feels stronger three weeks later, all of that is explained without invoking a single androgen.

The bottom line

Creatine is not a testosterone booster, and the research does not claim it is. The study everyone cites found no change in testosterone at all. It found a 56 per cent rise in DHT in 16 men, from an unusually low baseline, within normal clinical limits, and no one has reproduced it since. Every other trial that has measured testosterone directly has found either nothing or a change too small to mean anything.

If you came here worried that creatine was doing something to your hormones, the evidence says it is not. If you came here hoping it was, the evidence says the same thing, and that is fine, because the case for creatine was never hormonal. It is one of the most studied supplements in sport, it improves strength and power by a small but reliable margin, and it does it by making an energy system you already run work slightly better.

Practically, that means the boring version is the right version: a single ingredient, a consistent daily serve, and time. Ritua's creatine monohydrate for men is pure micronised creatine monohydrate at a 3 gram serve, with no fillers, flavours or sweeteners, which is all this particular molecule has ever needed to be. If you want the dosing detail rather than the myth, we covered how much creatine to take and when separately.

This article is general information, not medical advice, and is not a substitute for guidance from your doctor, particularly if you are managing an existing health condition or taking medication.

Jasmine Meagher, founder of Ritua

Jasmine Meagher

BSc Food Science and Nutrition · Founder, Ritua

Jasmine founded Ritua to bring evidence-based, TGA-compliant supplements to Australian women. She writes about the research behind every ingredient Ritua sells.

Frequently asked questions

Does creatine increase testosterone?

No. The 2021 review in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition counted 12 trials measuring testosterone alongside creatine. Two found small increases the authors described as physiologically insignificant, and the other ten found no change at all. A 2025 controlled trial over 12 weeks found no supplement effect on total or free testosterone either.

Is creatine a steroid?

No. Anabolic steroids are synthetic analogues of testosterone that act on the androgen receptor. Creatine has a completely different chemical structure, does not touch that pathway, and works instead by helping regenerate ATP through the phosphocreatine system. The two are sometimes compared because both are used alongside resistance training, not because they share a mechanism.

What did the rugby player study actually find?

Van der Merwe and colleagues, publishing in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine in 2009, gave 20 college aged rugby players a heavy creatine protocol of 25 grams a day for a week then 5 grams a day for two weeks. Serum testosterone did not change. DHT rose by 56 per cent after loading and remained 40 per cent above baseline after maintenance, and the DHT to testosterone ratio rose 36 per cent then settled 22 per cent above baseline.

Why is that study not considered strong evidence?

Sixteen men completed it, the creatine condition started from a DHT baseline 23 per cent lower than placebo, the absolute change was around half a nanomole per litre, all values stayed within normal clinical limits, and no research group has replicated the finding since 2009. It is a signal worth following up, not a settled mechanism.

If it is not hormonal, why do people feel a difference?

More stored phosphocreatine means faster ATP resynthesis during maximal effort, so hard sets hold up slightly better. Over weeks that becomes more total training volume, and the ISSN position stand also links creatine to lower markers of muscle damage and better tolerance of heavy training loads. The pooled 2025 meta-analysis puts the strength effect at around 1.43 kilograms on bench press and 5.64 kilograms on squat versus placebo.

Do you need to load creatine the way that study did?

No. The 25 grams a day used in the 2009 rugby trial is far above what anyone recommends now. A consistent daily serve of around 3 to 5 grams saturates muscle stores over a few weeks without a loading phase, which is why Ritua's creatine is dosed at 3 grams a serve.

Sources

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