Can I Take Creatine Before Bed?

Creatine is one of the primary chemicals used to build muscle. Creatine is a naturally occurring chemical in the body, and it is obtainable from protein sources like red meat and seafood.

Creatine provides energy for your muscles, and most of it is found in the skeletal muscle. Creatine is one of the favorite supplements for gym-goers and people who are working out.

Creatine also helps with sclerosis, muscle fatigue, depression, brain health, mental clarity, and many other conditions. You can consider it a super-supplement.

As creatine is a naturally occurring chemical in certain types of foods, many people still prefer to take it separately as a supplement.

Let’s explore some fundamental facts about creatine and whether it is safe to take it before bed. Generally, what is the best time to take creatine as a supplement.

Is it OK to Take Creatine Before Bed?

Assuming that you are taking creatine in supplement form and using normal amounts (0.2-0.3 grams of creatine per kg of body weight), it is pretty much safe to take it any time of the day.

It’s important to note that if you pair creatine with a pre-workout before bed, this would be an absolute NO situation, as the pre-workouts include stimulants and it will disrupt your sleep.

In addition, make sure that you are supplementing with high-quality creatine, and double-check that it ONLY contains creatine monohydrate.

There are a lot of low-quality creatine supplements on the market that include several ingredients that can be dangerous for your health and can cause problems if taken before bed.

It’s worth mentioning that there aren’t enough studies on whether taking creatine before bed is safe; we are basing our answers on the chemical compound of creatine and the effects it has on your body.

One example is a study conducted on rats, which showed that creatine diminished the sleep requirement for rats. In other words, they could operate on less sleep.

It is true that rat studies are quite different from humans, but it’s still noteworthy and deserves proper consideration.

Some also inquire whether taking creatine at night can help improve your gains. In this case, the answer is the same, as there are not enough studies to determine whether it has any particular effect on your gains, health, or recovery.

The question is: What is the best time to take creatine?

How Does Creatine Affect Your Sleep?

First of all, there are no studies conducted on humans that would measure creatine’s effect on sleep. The study we linked above showed how creatine impacts sleeping patterns in rats.

It is surely different with humans, and we can’t give a concrete, scientific answer as there is no data to show and back our claim. As far as anecdotal evidence goes, there have been minimal reports of people having problems with sleep due to supplementing creatine before bed.

It’s still noteworthy to understand what issues we may face in case creatine causes sleep problems. Remember that sleep is an integral part of our lives, and it is crucial for humans to stay functional. Healthy sleep is heavily tied with athletic performance.

A disrupted sleep cycle can cause severe problems with:

  1. Body Inflammation: Sleep deprivation can cause diseases like diabetes, stroke, depression, obesity, heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, and much more.
  2. Mental Fatigue: It is common to become mentally incapable of completing your everyday tasks. Disrupted sleep interferes with work, school, and social functioning. It can have negative effects on learning, focusing, and reacting.
  3. Immune System: Your immune system can become severely weak, thus being unable to ward off illnesses.

If you have no other option but to take creatine before sleep, be attentive and track your sleep quality. If you notice any issues or irregularities, try to switch the time and supplement creatine either in the morning, afternoon, or evening.

According to what people report, there shouldn’t be any issues with taking creatine before sleep, but still, every body is different, and everyone reacts differently to different things, so if you notice something is off, evaluate your situation accordingly.

The Best Time to Take Creatine

People have different opinions on when to take creatine; we will include some of the most popular routines people follow. Based on this, you will have an idea of when to take it so that you reap the benefits to the fullest.

  1. Post-Workout:
    • Why: After finishing your workout, muscles are more receptive to nutrients, and supplementing with creatine along with your post-workout meal or a protein shake will help better absorb creatine. An important note is to supplement your creatine along with healthy carbohydrates, as this is essential to proper creatine absorption.
    • Tip: Take creatine within an hour after your workout.
  2. Pre-Workout:
    • Why: Taking creatine before a workout is also quite popular as it helps with muscle satiety and can increase your workout performance. Also, note that eating a healthy, protein-rich (red meat) meal can deliver the same level of muscle satiety.
    • Tip: Take creatine 60-90 minutes before your workout.
  3. Staying Consistent with Time & Dosage:
    • Why: The key is to maintain consistency with dosage and timing. If you maintain the same routine every day, it will be hard for you to miss a dose.
    • Tip: Find a time that works with your daily routine; it can be either in the morning, afternoon, or evening.
  4. Supplementing with Meals & Hydration:
    • Why: Supplement your creatine with a healthy meal that is rich in quality carbohydrates, as this helps with absorption. People who have gastrointestinal problems should be mindful of this as taking creatine on an empty stomach can cause discomfort and problems. Lastly, be mindful of hydration; it’s recommended to drink 2 to 3 liters of water daily to avoid further complications (for example, kidney dysfunction).
    • Tip: Supplement creatine with a healthy meal, for example, breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Summary

  • Post-Workout: Taking creatine post-workout can aid in recovery and uptake when paired with healthy carbs and protein.
  • Pre-Workout: Supplementing creatine pre-workout guarantees muscle saturation during training, but the same results can be achieved by eating a proper, healthy meal.
  • Consistently: This essential builds a routine and ensures consistent levels in your body.
  • Creatine with Meals: This absolutely improves absorption and reduces gastrointestinal discomfort.

Choose the timing that best fits your lifestyle and training schedule. The key is consistency in daily intake.

All in all, there are much better times to supplement your creatine than taking it before bed.

What Does Creatine Do Chemically?

Firstly, creatine can come in different forms. For example, powder, pills, or capsules. When supplementing with creatine, it increases phosphocreatine (PCr) in muscles, which then creates kinase to regenerate Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in skeletal muscle.

Phosphocreatine increases one’s physical performance, aids during high-intensity exercise, and helps with muscular strength and endurance.

Supplementing creatine increases ATP (which is made in mitochondria) and PCr (phosphocreatine) for kinase reactions.

Studies have shown that supplementing creatine has better effects on male athletes than on women. This is mainly because females have higher resting levels of intramuscular creatine.

The studies observed weight fluctuations in both genders, and the changes turned out to be minimal. As for the minimal increase, it was related to increased intramuscular water volume.

Creatine prevents the downregulation of GLUT4 transporters, which means that supplementing creatine is effective in recovery and rehabilitation.

Supplementing creatine increased muscle glycogen and muscle creatine levels after 3 weeks of consistent intake. Supplementing creatine has also been proven effective against muscle loss during an injury.

Supplementing creatine is effective in treating Parkinson’s disease as the patients have a loss of muscle mass, weak muscle strength, and uncoordinated muscle movements.

What To be Mindful About Taking Creatine

There are a few important things you need to be mindful of when supplementing with creatine. This is essential to ensure your health and avoid any gastrointestinal complications.

  1. Water Intake: Drink enough water, we would advice using the following formula: Daily Water Intake = Body Weight (in kilograms) x 0.04
  2. Creatine Dosage: A lot of gym-goers overdose on creatine and take it in huge amounts. We are completely against this, as it can seriously harm your health. For optimal dosing, use this formula: Maintenance Dose = Body Weight (kg) × 0.03g/day.
  3. Example For Dosage: For a 70kg individual, the formula will look like this: 70kg × 0.03g/day = 2.1g/day.
  4. Quality Control: Make sure that you are supplementing with a high-quality creatine product. Double-check that it is 100% creatine and that there aren’t any extra ingredients.
  5. Natural Sources: Do not rely solely on supplement form; rather, try to eat foods that are naturally rich in creatine.

Please note that 1kg of steak contains around 5g of creatine. Particularly, red meat is rich in creatine, so try to also eat foods that have creatine naturally, rather than focusing solely on creatine supplements.

Back to the topic of whether it is safe to take creatine before bed, we can’t stress this enough – many commercial creatine products are not 100% creatine, as they have additional ingredients that might affect your health and sleep negatively. So, if you plan on supplementing with creatine, be sure that what you are buying has only one ingredient – creatine monohydrate.

Pros & Cons and Side Effects of Creatine

First, let’s discuss the benefits of taking creatine and, generally, why we need or want to supplement it or eat foods that are rich in it.

  • Enhanced Performance: One of the main benefits of supplementing creatine is the improved workout performance. This means you will be able to slightly improve your lifts, reps, time, and distance. The added phosphocreatine gives your muscles an extra boost of capability to perform better.
  • Workout Recovery: When we work out, we create micro-tears in the muscle fiber, and we heal, rebuild, and regrow during rest and recovery. Creatine improves the resynthesis of Adenosine triphosphate (ATP). In other words, the quicker you make energy, the faster you will recover.
  • Muscle Growth: Creatine increases muscle and promotes growth, but don’t confuse creatine with protein, as creatine cannot replace the role of protein. When creatine is increased in muscle tissue, it promotes osmotic pressure, which means the amount of water and pressure in your cells. The osmotic pressure is the backbone of muscle repair and growth.
  • Cognitive and Mental Clarity: Creatine improves your brain metabolism, enhances your mood, and positively affects your intelligence and reasoning. As we said at the beginning of the article, you can consider creatine a super-supplement.
  • Injury Prevention and Recovery: Creatine can help reduce inflammation and reduce the risk of injuries. Not all bodies are created the same, but everyone can feel the benefits of creatine at some level.

As for the side effects of creatine, it is safe in normal amounts, but it can cause severe gastrointestinal issues if used in high quantities, especially in those individuals who already have gastrointestinal problems.

Research has also found that supplementing creatine affects water retention and increases the workload on the kidneys. This can be very serious if left unchecked.

We would like to remind you once more to buy high-quality creatine and supplement in adequate doses. You may even hear of two terms, the loading dose and maintenance dose.

Loading Dose: A lot of bodybuilders and coaches recommend the initial 5-7 day loading dose, which essentially means taking up to 25g of creatine in 4-5 separate doses during the day. The goal is muscle saturation to maximize your workout gains and performance.

Maintenance Dose: When the initial loading phase/dosing is complete, supplementing creatine continues with maintenance dosing, which, depending on your weight, can be around 5g a day.

We would advise against this, but if you still want to do it, make sure to do it under a physician’s supervision. Our recommended route would be starting directly with the ‘maintenance dose’ and maintaining the routine for 6-12 months. You can evaluate your results after this and proceed accordingly.

To tell you once more, creatine is safe, and there aren’t any serious negative side effects unless taken in huge amounts. Remember that creatine is a naturally occurring chemical and is beneficial for our health and fitness journey.

The main side effects that are reported are dehydration, upset stomach, and muscle cramps.

Lastly, is supplementing creatine safe? – Yes, 100%. It is safe to take creatine during the day and night. What matters is the quality of the product and proper dosing.

Do I need to Take/Supplement Creatine?

Now, creatine is a naturally occurring chemical in our body. On a daily basis, we, as humans, produce up to 1g of creatine. It is possible to naturally supplement creatine from certain foods, like:

  1. Herring: 1.0-1.1 grams
  2. Beef: 0.4-0.9 grams
  3. Salmon: 0.45 grams
  4. Tuna: 0.4 grams
  5. Cod: 0.3 grams
  6. Milk: 0.02 grams

If you can keep up with a consistent, healthy, and nutrient-dense diet, it is not necessary to supplement with creatine. You can achieve stunning results by eating healthy food alone, without any extra supplements.

It also won’t hurt to supplement creatine in powder, pill, or capsule form, as long as it is pure creatine monohydrate and has no additional ingredients.

Remember, you cannot out-supplement or out-train a bad diet. In order to get results, you will need to maintain good eating habits. If you can’t go 100% healthy, we advise keeping the 80/20 rule. Meaning, 80% of the foods you eat should be healthy, and the remaining 20% can be junk food.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we don’t have enough evidence to advise against taking creatine before going to sleep. Considering the chemical compound of creatine and the way it affects our bodies, there is no concrete evidence why it could negatively affect or disrupt our sleep.

It’s still important to purchase the highest-quality creatine as many commercial products have additional ingredients that can be stimulants or unknown chemicals that can severely impact our health and sleep.

Additionally, every body is different, and everyone reacts differently to certain things. If you decide to take creatine before sleep, make sure to track your sleep quality, and if you notice irregularities, try to reflect.

We would recommend not relying fully on supplementing creatine in powder, pill, or capsule form, but also consuming foods that are naturally high in creatine. Remember, that organic sources > everything else.

As you already know, you need to continually supplement creatine. Some people have done very dangerous things like consuming more than 20-30 grams of creatine at once. Please do not repeat this as it is very dangerous and it can cause serious health problems like kidney failure.

We would advise taking your daily creatine dose along with meals or smoothie shakes. Supplementing creatine with healthy carbs can increase absorption, benefiting your overall performance. Don’t forget to hydrate and drink your water daily.

Lastly, creatine is okay to take in the morning, afternoon, evening, or before bed. Supplement your creatine as your schedule allows, just make sure to be attentive to any irregularities.

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