Does Creatine Affect You Sexually? (Myths Debunked)
Author:
Unlock your full potential by engaging with our experts and community! Have questions about your fitness journey or looking for expert advice on weightlifting techniques? Don’t hesitate — leave a comment below and Camila Parente Santos will provide a personalized answer and insights to help you reach your goals.
Torokhtiy is reader-supported. Some links are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. See our disclosure page for details.
If you’ve been struggling with your hormone levels or sexual health, you may be looking for a supplement that can help. With creatine having a ton of benefits related to exercise performance, you may be wondering, “Does creatine affect you sexually?”
While creatine is great for exercise performance, it doesn’t appear to have any real effect on sexual health. Below we’ll be taking a closer look at creatine and what its real effects are.
Does creatine affect you sexually? Creatine doesn’t have any direct effects on hormones and sexual health. However, it can help with exercise performance and energy. As a result, it may have some long-term indirect effects on your sexual health and hormone levels.
What is the Role of Creatine in the Human Body?
Creatine is an amino acid that’s either found in the diet through animal products or synthesized by the body. It’s largely used for ATP production, which is why it’s so beneficial for exercise production. To maximize the benefits of creatine for exercise, it’s commonly taken as a sports supplement at a dose of 3-5g/day.
While creatine has been proven to benefit exercise performance and recovery, it has no real relation to sex hormones or sexual health. While there may be some indirect benefits to sexual health, these are largely related to creatine helping with exercise performance and energy levels.
creatine dosage calculator
Loading Phase:
Maintenance Phase:
How Can Creatine Affect Your Sex Life?
You may have a lot of questions relating to creatine and sex. Can creatine cause ED? Does creatine make you hornier? Does creatine make you last longer in bed?
As a quick answer to all of these questions, creatine will have no real effect on you sexually, positive or negative. However, it may have some indirect effects which we’ll be covering below.
1. Common Myths and Misconceptions
Likely because creatine has several benefits related to performance and recovery, many men may believe that creatine will affect them sexually. Creatine is not a magical testosterone-booster, and will not cause any drastic changes to your sexual health.
However, creatine can help support intense physical exercise, which in turn may help raise your testosterone levels. So, although it doesn’t have any direct effects, it may still be worth taking if you’re looking for a supplement to help mainly with exercise and recovery.
2. Direct Effects
As mentioned, there don’t appear to be any direct effects linking creatine supplementation and sexual health. While it has been hypothesized that creatine can boost testosterone, this doesn’t appear to be the case.
If you’re struggling with hormone levels or sexual health, we recommend consulting with your doctor before looking for supplements to help. This way, they can provide a more effective plan for improving your sexual health, whether it be through hormone therapy or other treatments.
Overall, any effects creatine has on sexual health will be largely indirect, which we’ll be covering below.
3. Don’t Forget the Indirect Effects
Creatine has plenty of positive effects that, although not directly correlated with sexual health, may provide some indirect benefits. These include improved exercise performance, better recovery, and boosted mood, which may work together to provide a minor boost to your sexual wellbeing. Let’s get into it.
• Performance Enhancement & More Energy
One of the main effects of creatine is improving exercise performance because of increased cellular energy. Understand that creatine will not give you long-term sustained energy, and is instead most useful for short bursts of energy. This is why it’s especially useful for short bursts of intense exercise.
Creatine helps with exercise performance, and exercise can help to improve testosterone production, which may then help with your sexual health. So, although creatine itself doesn’t have an effect on testosterone, its benefits for performance may have an indirect, long-term effect on testosterone production. Just keep in mind that exercising without creatine will likely produce the same general benefits.
• Recovery
Additionally, creatine is especially useful for recovery from strenuous exercise. This means the supplement can help you get the most out of your training, which once again, may have a long-term, indirect effect on testosterone and sexual health.
Also, improved recovery may translate into more energy and less soreness after exercise. This may indirectly affect your sex life by improving how you feel after hitting the gym.
• Mood and Brain
Creatine supplementation may help with cognitive performance and is hypothesized to help with mood as well, although more research is needed in this aread. Once again, this benefit to mood may have an indirect effect on your testosterone levels, as lower stress is correlated with increased testosterone production.
Additionally, just being in a better mood may improve your sex life by encouraging a healthier relationship with your partner.
• Creatine Combined with Exercise
Overall, the vast majority of creatine’s benefits are related to exercise. We want to make it clear that creatine on its own is unlikely to have any major effect on your sexual health.
However, when paired with exercise, its effects on performance and recovery may compound to provide a minor benefit to your testosterone levels and sex life over time. While there are some studies that suggest creatine maybe beneficial for mood, there is minimal good evidence to prove this. The main benefits of creatine are all related to exercise, namely performance and recovery.
Also, as mentioned above, many of the positive effects exercise will have on your sexual health will be found with or without the use of creatine. While creatine has plenty of benefits, there’s no need to use this supplement to start exercising more effectively.
Creatine We Recommend – Kaged Creatine Monohydrate
Kaged Creatine Monohydrate
- Supplement Type: Creatine
- Best For: Building Muscles, Increasing Strength, Muscular Endurance, High-Intensity Performance, Recovery
- Suitable for Vegans: Yes
- Added Sugar: 0g
- Price per Serving: ~$0.35
- Servings per Package: 100
- Recommended by Athletes: Andrea Somer, Colt Nichols, Kris Gethin
Although creatine doesn’t directly affect sexual health, it still has a ton of benefits for your overall health and exercise performance. If you’re still interested in giving creatine a try, we recommend trying Kaged’s Creatine Monohydrate.
This is a simple, single-ingredient monohydrate supplement that provides an effective 5g dose of creatine per serving. Consistent daily use, will eventually lead to improved exercise performance and recovery. As we’ve mentioned, this may then lead to some indirect benefits for your sexual health.
This supplement’s also certified by Informed Sport, meaning it’s been tested for any banned substances and harmful contaminants. This is a great certification to look for whenever you’re buying a supplement.
Finally, at only $0.35 per serving, Kaged’s Creatine is also very budget-friendly. Even though it probably won’t greatly affect your sexual health, we believe it’s still worth it for all the other benefits.
FAQ
Does Creatine Affect Your Sperm?
No, there’s no evidence to suggest that creatine supplementation will affect sperm health. So, if you’re trying to have a baby, there’s no reason to avoid creatine. However, be aware that this supplement won’t help improve the health of your sperm either.
Does Creatine Affect Size?
No, creatine will have no effect whatsoever on penis size or length. However, creatine does have a moderate effect on total body weight because of increased water retention. As a result, many people report a fuller and more muscular appearance to their body when supplementing with creatine.
Does Creatine Affect Mood?
While there has yet to be a major study on the effect of creatine on mood, it’s hypothesized that creatine supplementation may have a minor effect on mood. More studies are needed to draw any definitive claims, although it’s hypothesized that creatine may improve overall cognitive performance, specifically in older individuals.
Does Creatine Increase Libido?
There’s no evidence to suggest that creatine increases libido or has any other direct effects on sexual health. However, it does improve exercise performance and recovery, which may have a long-term indirect effect on testosterone production and therefore libido.
Conclusion
Overall, don’t expect creatine to have any major effect on your sexual health – positive or negative. The most we can say is that it may have some indirect effects on testosterone production by boosting exercise performance and recovery, although these benefits will be very minor at best.
So, although creatine won’t have a major effect on your hormones or sexual health, it is still a great supplement for exercise performance and overall health. If you’re interested in giving creatine a try, check out Kaged’s Creatine Monohydrate supplement.
Have you ever tried creatine before? Were you aware of creatine’s effects on sexual health? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Also read:
- Can You Take Creatine Before Bed
- Does Creatine Make You Constipated
- Does Creatine Make You Thirsty
- Does Creatine Make Your Face Fat
- Why Does Creatine Make You Pee a Lot
- Does Creatine Break a Fast
References:
- Richard B Kreider, et. al, “ International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition volume 14, Article number: 18 (2017).
- Michael Hull, “ Can Creatine Increase Your Testosterone Levels,” Examine.com, https://examine.com/faq/can-creatine-increase-your-testosterone-levels/ (Accessed March 5, 2024)
- Wholehealth, “Improving Low Testosterone Naturally”, University of Wisconsin-Madison https://wholehealth.wiscweb.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/414/2019/07/Improving-Low-Testosterone-Naturally.pdf (Accessed March 5, 2024)
- Benjamin Wax, et. al, “Creatine for Exercise and Sports Performance, with Recovery Considerations for Healthy Populations” Faculty Scholarship. 15. (2021).
- Patricia J. Allen, “Creatine metabolism and psychiatric disorders: Does creatine supplementation have therapeutic value?” Neurosci Biobehav Rev. Author manuscript; available in PMC May 1. (2013).
- Photos made by Torokhtiy Media Team.
Why Trust Us?
With over 20 years in Olympic weightlifting, strength training, nutrition coaching, and general fitness our team does its best to provide the audience with ultimate support and meet the needs and requirements of advanced athletes and professional lifters, as well as people who strive to open new opportunities and develop their physical capabilities with us.
By trusting the recommendations of our certified experts in coaching, nutrition, and sports training programming, as well as scientific consultants, and physiotherapists, we provide you with thorough, well-considered, and scientifically proven content. All the information given in the articles concerning workout programming, separate exercises, and athletic performance, in general, is based on verified data.
The product testing process is described in more detail here.
Camila has worked as a Nutritionist for 7 years. In addition to being a nutritionist, she is an amateur weightlifting athlete for 2 years. Camila has experience at Flamengo’s football base and in a food supplement company and currently provides services at a clinic. At the moment she is coursing a postgraduate study in Sports Nutrition.
Still have questions after reading our article? Unlock your full potential by engaging with our experts and community! Don’t hesitate — leave a comment below and Camila Parente Santos will provide a personalized answer and insights to help you reach your goals.