You haven’t been able to have a good night’s sleep for so long? Do you think the modern society and unrealistic expectations don’t let you sleep? (We are all there)
Would you want something to help you? (Yes, Just don’t tell anyone that creatine monohydrate is the solution because it isn’t.)
In short, yes, creatine does affect sleep for good. (But, don’t take it like a medicine.)
In this blogpost, we will explore and find answers to the question : Does creatine affect sleep? The short answer is Yes, it delays the sleep. It can help you in performing well the following day even if you didn’t had a good night’s sleep.
You know what creatine is right?
Creatine is a famous dietary supplement people consume to help with their workout performance and strength. (Your body also creates a small portion of creatine by itself)
Creatine And Sleep
Many actually do fear that creatine monohydrate might interfere with sleep. Do you also believe that? Let’s see.
Till date, there is no scientific evidence which claims that consumption of creatine in any form affects sleep directly.
Yes, creatine increases energy during workouts and reduces fatigue, it might impact your ability to fall asleep. So, it is generally recommended not to take creatine before bedtime.
Again, dehydration is common in athletes taking creatine supplementation, so, it’s good to keep yourself adequately hydrated and avoid taking larger doses of creatine close to your bedtime.
Do you know? Dehydration is a common side effect of using creatine.
Short Key Takeaways (Only if you are in a hurry with no time to read the details):
- Creatine consumption does increase the quantity of creatine in your brain.
- Creatine supplementation before bed can help you preserve your mental, cognitive and physical performance even after sleep loss, or a very short night of sleep.
- There are multiple benefits to using creatine including sports performance, brain functionalities, and different important aspects of human body.
- By increasing creatine stores in the brain, creatine supplementation helps reducing the sleep quality, duration of your sleep, and keeps away “rebound sleep” after sleep deprivation.
- Creatine reduces effects of sleeplessness and keeps you away from feeling tired and fatigued.
- Having 0.05 g of creatine monohydrate per kg of our body weight can improve our everyday life.
- The most common side effect is that it increases your muscle mass. (Who doesn’t want that)
Does Creatine Affect Sleep?
Yes. It delays your sleep by stopping adenosine and adenosine triphosphate accumulation around your brain cells making you feel energetic and less tired.
Scientific Correlation Between Creatine Monohydrate And Sleep
Creatine monohydrate is one of the most researched forms of creatine. There have been a number of researches to study the impact of creatine supplementation on sleep.
One study found that creatine, in fact improves sleep quality and helps people struggling to have a good sleep. There was another study which said there is no significant difference.
We seriously need more research specifically observing the sleep quality and its relation with creatine.
How To Take Creatine Without Impacting Sleep
Well, there is a number of things you can do to enjoy the benefits offered by creatine and not impact your sleep such as:
- Take your creatine supplement a good number of hours before bed time.
- Also, avoid consuming anything with caffeine. Caffeine rich foods/drinks should be taken at least 5 hours before sleeping.
- Do consult your healthcare professional before starting creatine supplementation to check for a customised dosage and any side effects specific to you.
- Avoid irregular sleep timings. Sleep and wake up around the same time so your body adjusts to your circadian rhythm and doesn’t create issues during the time you are awake.
- Look for your sleeping habits, goals, and customise the amount of creatine you will need according to your own body.
Can Creatine Reduce Your Need For Sleep
For a short answer, Yes, it can. For a better explained answer, keep reading. It’s good to know the nerdy details.
To answer this, we do need to understand how sleep works. As much our body needs food to keep functioning, that is the same way our body needs sleep as well.
What happens is when you have been awake for a longer periods of time, the adenosine and adenosine triphosphate(ATP) starts accumulating around your brain cells. This accumulation induces sleep in the brain regions with more ATP.
ATP can be seen as something keeping the count of time since you last slept. So, when you actually sleep, it’s majorly excess of ATP surrounding your brain cells and multiple regions of your brain already sleeping to give you the much needed rest. It regulates multiple processes of human body.
You must be wondering where is creatine? I know. So, creatine actually increases the number of high-energy phosphates in your brain, which delays the accumulation of adenosine and ATP.
This delayed accumulation shortens your sleep and reduces the time for deep sleep. A study on rats showed that rats who were given creatine, showed 32% reduction in total sleep time.
But we are not rats, if this affected almost 30% of rats, accordingly it should affect only 5-10% of human beings since we are much bigger and complex in size.
To finally answer the question, can creatine reduce your need for sleep? Yes, it can.
You might wonder : Does creatine cause diarrhea? If it’s causing you diarrhea, you can understand why?
Can Creatine Help With Sleep Loss
As mentioned earlier, creatine delays the accumulation of adenosine and ATP leading to reduced sleep time.
Multiple studies suggest that use of creatine supplements helped athletes in maintaining their performance after a short sleep.
In short, creatine can’t help you with sleep loss. It can’t improve the sleep quality but it can for sure help you perform optimally on the following day after a short night of sleep.
Does Creatine Keep You Awake
Yes, Creatine does keep you awake. Accumulation of adenosine and adenosine triphosphate around our brain cells induces sleep in our brain.
On the other hand creatine delays this accumulation of ATP, means your brain feeling more energetic and less tired, in turn keeping you awake for longer periods of time.
So, what to do?
How To Get A Good Quality Sleep
Well, there can be many other factors influencing your sleep quality and not necessarily creatine.
These factors can be :
- Your sleeping position
- Stress levels
- Irregular sleeping schedules
- Having a big meal just before bed time
- Noise in your environment
- Try cultivating a cool room temperature for you to sleep cozily.(Yes, we all want that)
How To Take Creatine Monohydrate
This is a common question asked by many. But, what is the right answer? There is none. It varies from person to person.
If you are a newbie, taking creatine for the first time, it’s always good to start slow. Take smaller doses of 2 grams of creatine 3 times a day and see how it goes. If creatine suits your body and you feel good, increase that dose from 2 to 5 grams a dose.
If you want to load your body’s creatine stores ASAP, take those 5 g creatine doses 4 times a day for a week. And then you can go back to your maintenance dose for a few weeks. (Try not to go above 5 g in a single dose to avoid digestive issues.)
If you don’t want to go into the loading, you can continue taking maintenance dose for longer periods of time, which is essentially 0.05 g of creatine per kg body weight per day.
Key Fact
Of course, it will take longer time to fill your body’s creatine stores when you take maintenance dose than when you do a loading phase.
When Can You Take Creatine
It’s usually good to take it during the day starting from breakfast and avoid taking it close to bedtime.
Also, what many people do is that they take creatine for 5-7 days and then take a break of 2-3 days. They keep repeating the cycle so that they can experience the benefits as well, and their body doesn’t rely on external supplementation.
Well, we have read much about creatine and its impact on sleep. But, one major thing is. Is it safe to take creatine?
Is Creatine Safe?
A big YES.
Creatine is just a dietary supplement. And most of us, already take multiple grams of creatine from natural sources like red meat, etc. Even our own body creates a small amount of creatine for its optimum functioning.
There have been researches and people have consumed creatine supplement for as long as 5 years and taking about 30 grams of creatine everyday without showing any side effect.
A very common side effect was an insignificant pump in bodyweight which is due to increase in muscle mass. Who doesn’t want that? Muscle mass is even linked to longevity of homo sapiens.
So, it’s safe to say that there aren’t much significant side effects of creatine consumption even for this longer periods of time. You can take creatine for how long as you want.
Just make sure, you are first visiting your healthcare professional, just to see the recommended dosages for your body type and anything to be concerned specifically for you.
FAQs
Why Does Creatine Keep You Up At Night
Creatine releases energetic phosphates into the bloodstream and delay the accumulation of sleep causing adenosine and ATPs in brain which keeps you up.
Does Creatine Cause Insomnia?
No, creatine doesn’t cause insomnia.
Can You Take Creatine Before Bed?
You can do anything. But it’s not generally advised to take creatine before bed since it affects your sleep and might keep you awake for longer.
Is It Harder To Sleep On Creatine?
Yes. It is harder to sleep on creatine.
Conclusion
Right, so here we are. What did we got out of reading this article? So, we started with asking the question : Does Creatine Affect Sleep? You know the answer is yes. It delays sleep. (You must have read the reasoning above)
Now you can take creatine? Yes, my friend, creatine is safe. Just don’t go overboard with it. Take reasonable doses(not more than 5g in a dose).
Should you take creatine before bed? No. Unless you want to play with your sleep all night.
Does creatine help sleep loss? Not specifically sleep loss. It just helps you maintain your performance the following day. (Creatine reduces effects of sleeplessness and keeps you away from lethargy)
Keep sleep and proper nutrition(yes, nutrition from food, other than supplement) a priority. See what works for you and what doesn’t. Also, avoid taking your creatine supplement around the bedtime.
Hit me up in the comments, if there’s anything you want to share, ask, or you want me to write on something specifically.
Stay healthy fellas, stay good. God Bless You All.