Home › Supplements › Myth Busted
MYTH BUSTED · SUPPLEMENT MYTHS · 9 MIN READ
A Word, A Blood Test, And One Very Unlucky Coincidence Of Timing
A French chemist isolated creatine from a piece of meat in 1832 — a full century before anyone synthesised testosterone. Ninety-five per cent of what is in your body right now is sitting in your skeletal muscle. You made some of it this morning, in your own liver, without asking.
The Short Version
8 Min Read Ahead ↓
A steroid is a specific molecular shape. Creatine doesn’t have it. It’s not a milder version of a steroid — it’s a completely different category of substance, and your liver makes it every day whether you supplement or not.
Most arguments about this myth never get to the actual problem, which is that steroid is a structural term in chemistry, not a moral one. A steroid is any molecule built on a particular skeleton: four fused carbon rings, seventeen carbon atoms arranged in a very specific shape. Cholesterol is a steroid. Vitamin D is a steroid. Oestrogen and testosterone are steroids. So is the hydrocortisone cream in your bathroom cabinet.
Creatine has no rings at all. It is a small, water-soluble molecule built from three amino acids: arginine, glycine and methionine. Structurally it has more in common with the protein in your dinner than with anything on a controlled substances list. Calling creatine a steroid is not an exaggeration. It is a category error — like calling a bicycle a type of boat because both get you somewhere.
Your liver, kidneys and pancreas assemble roughly a gram of it a day from those three amino acids, entirely unprompted. You eat perhaps another gram if you have meat or fish. Supplementing simply tops up a tank your body already builds, fills and maintains on its own.
In 1832 the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul pulled an unknown organic compound out of skeletal muscle tissue and named it after the Greek word for meat — kreas. Creatine means, roughly, ‘the thing in the meat.’ Chevreul was a food chemist studying flesh and fat, not a pharmacologist, and anabolic steroids would not exist in any form for another hundred years: testosterone was not isolated until 1935.
For most of the following century creatine stayed an academic curiosity. Then came Barcelona, 1992. British sprinter Linford Christie won the 100m, passed every drug test, and mentioned in passing that he had been using a legal dietary supplement called creatine. Commercial creatine monohydrate went on sale in 1993, and it has never left the shelves since.
This is the origin of the confusion. Creatine arrived in public awareness attached to elite sprinters in an era already saturated with doping scandals. Guilt by association, formed in about eighteen months, and repeated ever since by people who were not born yet.
If the structures are unrelated, the mechanisms are not even in the same field of biology.
Creatine
Your muscles run on ATP, and they hold about ten seconds of it. Phosphocreatine sits in the cell as a spare phosphate group, ready to rebuild ATP the instant it runs out — one more hard rep, one more sprint. It does nothing on its own. It lets you train slightly harder. The training is what changes your body.
Anabolic Steroids
Synthetic derivatives of testosterone. They bind to the androgen receptor, travel into the nucleus, and bind directly to DNA, altering which genes are transcribed. A landmark 1996 trial showed steroids increase muscle mass and strength in men who did not train at all. Creatine cannot do this. Nothing about it works without you.
One fills an energy tank. The other rewrites gene expression. In women, steroid use causes virilisation — deepened voice, facial hair, clitoral enlargement — and the literature is clear that some of these changes are permanent. Creatine’s most reported side effect is mild stomach upset if you take it on an empty stomach.
Creatine works on energy. Steroids work on hormones. One is a fuel. One is a drug.
They are not versions of the same thing.
Creatine breaks down into a waste product called creatinine — one letter apart, entirely different substance. Your kidneys filter creatinine out of the blood, which is why doctors measure it: high serum creatinine usually means the kidneys aren’t clearing waste efficiently.
Now the trap. If you supplement creatine, you carry more of it, so you produce more creatinine — and your blood level rises. Not because your kidneys are failing, but because there is simply more of it being made. People have been told they have early kidney problems on the strength of exactly this.
When researchers measure kidney function directly instead — glomerular filtration rate, the actual filtering speed — the effect vanishes. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis in BMC Nephrology pooled the studies measuring GFR and found no meaningful change with creatine supplementation.
What To Actually Do
Tell your GP you take creatine before any blood test that includes kidney markers. If the result will guide a real medical decision, either stop taking it for two to four weeks beforehand, or ask whether a cystatin C–based estimate is appropriate. Thirty seconds of conversation prevents a genuinely unpleasant scare.
Brain tissue uses the same phosphocreatine system to buffer energy. Benefits show up wherever energy is already strained — sleep deprivation, mental fatigue, ageing — and largely disappear in well-rested young people. A 2024 trial found a single large dose measurably blunted the cognitive decline caused by sleep loss.
Dietary creatine comes almost entirely from meat and fish, so vegetarians and vegans run measurably lower stores — and are consequently the strongest responders in the literature. If you eat little or no meat, this is the single most relevant supplement to you.
Creatine is osmotically active inside the muscle cell, drawing water into the fibre — intracellular, not the puffy under-the-skin retention people imagine. This cell swelling is itself an anabolic signal, not a side effect.
Creatine does not appear on the World Anti-Doping Agency prohibited list — not restricted, not in-competition only, not at all. Olympic athletes take it openly. Anabolic steroids are Class C controlled substances under the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
Falling oestrogen appears to reduce how efficiently the creatine system operates. A 2025 RCT in peri- and postmenopausal women found eight weeks of supplementation improved reaction time and reduced mood swing severity, with signs of improved bone density when combined with resistance training.
Three to five grams of creatine monohydrate, daily, forever. That is the protocol. No loading phase — it just reaches the same end point about three weeks sooner, and the high loading doses are what cause the stomach upset people complain about. No cycling on and off; there is no receptor to desensitise. No timing strategy worth the effort, because you are filling a reservoir, not catching a window.
Buy plain, unflavoured monohydrate. It is the form used in the overwhelming majority of the research and it is the cheapest one on the shelf. Evidence that HCL or ethyl ester outperform monohydrate for results does not exist — you’re paying extra for a powder that dissolves slightly better.
It is, by a wide margin, the most studied supplement in sports nutrition. The International Society of Sports Nutrition concluded it is the most effective ergogenic nutritional supplement available for increasing high-intensity exercise capacity and lean mass, with no documented adverse effects on kidney or liver function in healthy people at these doses.
Creatine is not a steroid. It does not share its molecular structure, its mechanism, its legal status, or its risk profile. It is a compound your own liver manufactures daily, found in every piece of meat you have ever eaten, discovered by a food chemist in 1832, and legal in every sport on earth including the Olympic Games.
The myth survives on a single accident of history: creatine entered public consciousness through elite sprinters in the early nineties, at the precise moment the word ‘supplement’ had been thoroughly poisoned by doping scandals. It has been carrying somebody else’s reputation ever since.
For a woman who trains — boxing, lifting, running, or all three — three to five grams a day is arguably the single most evidence-backed thing you can add to your routine. It costs about the price of a coffee a week. The most researched supplement in sport turns out to be the most boring one, and that is precisely the point.
The most researched supplement in sport is also the most boring one.
FUEL.
Ostojic SM et al. (2021). Common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation: what does the scientific evidence really show? Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.
Kreider RB et al. (2017). International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. JISSN, 14(18).
BMC Nephrology (2025). Effect of creatine supplementation on kidney function: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
de Souza e Silva A et al. (2023). Is it time for a requiem for creatine supplementation-induced kidney failure? A narrative review.
Bhasin S et al. (1996). The effects of supraphysiologic doses of testosterone on muscle size and strength in normal men. New England Journal of Medicine, 335(1).
Kicman AT (2008). Pharmacology of anabolic steroids. British Journal of Pharmacology, 154(3).
Smith-Ryan AE et al. (2021). Creatine supplementation in women’s health: a lifespan perspective. Nutrients, 13(3).
Journal of the ISSN (2025). Creatine in women’s health: bridging the gap from menstruation through pregnancy to menopause.
Nutrients (2026). Single-dose creatine reduces sleep deprivation-induced deterioration in cognitive performance, 18(8).
This page is educational and is not medical advice. If you have a health condition, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or take prescription medication, speak to your GP before changing your supplement routine.
Is creatine actually a steroid?
No. Steroids are defined by a specific four-ring molecular structure. Creatine has no rings at all — it’s a small molecule built from three amino acids, structurally closer to the protein in food than to any hormone.
Does creatine damage your kidneys?
No. Rising creatinine on a blood test after starting creatine reflects more being produced, not kidney damage. Studies measuring actual kidney filtration rate (GFR) directly find no meaningful change, even at doses well above normal, for years.
Do you need a loading phase?
No. Loading just reaches the same saturation point about three weeks sooner, and the higher doses involved are what cause the stomach upset some people report. Three to five grams daily gets you there just as effectively.
Is creatine safe for women?
Yes — and current research suggests it may matter more with age, as falling oestrogen reduces how efficiently the creatine system works. Trials in peri- and postmenopausal women show improvements in reaction time, mood, and bone density when combined with resistance training.
Why do vegetarians respond more to creatine?
Dietary creatine comes almost entirely from meat and fish, so vegetarians and vegans start with measurably lower stores. This makes them the strongest responders in the research, for both muscle and cognitive outcomes.