Is creatine safe?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Rich_Benzina@feddit.it⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

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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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krank55@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
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

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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Exactly.
  
  Doctors can be some of the most unscientific people you meet.
  
  They repeatedly apply population level statistics for positive benefits of medications, by don’t so the same for the risks.
  
  Which is wrong from the word go.
  
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StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
There is a paper on exactly that:
Front Nutr. 2025 Dec 1;12:1682746. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1682746
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.

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Paragone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
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 )

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.

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:

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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GalacticSushi@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
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.

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- Rich_Benzina@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  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
  
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