Creatine as a food supplement for the general population

The Potential and Challenges of Creatine Supplementation for Cognition/Memory in Older Adults

“…Decreased ability to isolate central and flanked information can lead to postural instability and falls, while correctly discerning the surrounding environment increases autonomy. Previous studies (3,4,(32)(33)(34) allow us to suggest that creatine intake in daily diet and supplementation can be an ally in maintaining the autonomy and health of old adults (33), not only due to the effects against sarcopenia but also in the maintenance of CNS activity (6,12,21).…”

“…The main challenge for the future is to measure the appropriate doses so that the results can be confirmed, increasing the strength of the evidence. Approximately 1 g of creatine is converted to creatinine per day, suggesting that 1 g of creatine be ingested or synthesized to replenish reserves (8,10,32,33,45). It is quite common for older adults to have low protein intake, especially from meat (33), possibly due to difficulty in chewing.…”

Low Tissue Creatine: A Therapeutic Target in Clinical Nutrition

“…In addition, it might be used as a predictive biomarker to identify individuals with specific conditions who are more likely to experience a favorable effect from the exposure to supplemental creatine. Cut-off points for low tissue creatine are not established so far for specific organs and pathologies, yet various degrees of deficiency of the cerebral creatine pool are seen in neurology, from almost complete depletion of the cerebral creatine pool in CCDS [ 36 , 37 ] to a partial reduction (~10%) seen in other conditions [ 38 , 39 ] ( Table 1 ).…”

“…A vast majority of pharmacovigilance studies demonstrated favorable safety of supplemental creatine, with creatine posing no adverse health risks in humans across various life stages and conditions, at dosages ranging from 0.03 to 0.8 g per kilogram of body weight per day for up to 5 years, and dosages commonly prescribed for CCDS and other diseases/syndromes 2 to 20 g/day (for a detailed review, see Refs. [ 39 , 84 ]). In line with affirmative evidence from safety trials, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently recognized creatine monohydrate as a safe ingredient (Generally Recognized as Safe, GRAS) [ 85 ].…”

Analysis of the efficacy, safety, and cost of alternative forms of creatine available for purchase on Amazon.com: are label claims supported by science?

“…Creatine is synthesized endogenously by the transfer of the amidino group of L-arginine to the N α -amine group of L-glycine that is catalyzed by L-arginine-glycine amidinotransferase to yield ornithine and guanidinoacetate (GAA); GAA is then methylated by guanidinoacetate N-methyltransferase with S-adenosyl methionine to form creatine [ 5 , 23 , 35 , 37 , 52 ]. Although creatine is not a traditional proteinogenic amino acid [ 35 ], it is frequently referred to as an amino acid in the literature [ 1 , 5 , 13 , 26 , 36 , 66 ] because it is a non-proteinogenic amino acid similar to ornithine, citrulline, and homoserine [ 5 , 7 , 40 , 45 ]. In a general sense, an amino acid can be any organic compound that contains both an amino group and carboxylic group [ 40 ].…”