In a large national survey, 57 percent of pregnant women were getting less creatine from their food than an adult woman's body is estimated to need each day.
That single statistic has helped fuel a wave of headlines and social posts suggesting pregnant women should be reaching for a creatine supplement. The underlying research is genuinely interesting. A serious group of scientists has spent two decades building the case that creatine might help protect a developing baby's brain. The problem is the distance between that careful research and the confident headlines it has spawned. They are not in the same place. They are not even close.
WHAT PEOPLE HEAR, AND WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS
Here is what most people take away when they hear that researchers think creatine could protect a baby's brain: that it works, and that taking it is therefore a sensible thing to do. Both halves of that conclusion run well ahead of the evidence.
The protection people are referring to has been shown in animals. In a series of animal experiments, giving the mother extra creatine reduced brain injury when the offspring were starved of oxygen around the time of birth. It is a real and repeatable finding in those models. What has never happened is a trial showing the same thing in human pregnancy. Not a small one, not a flawed one. None. And no health authority anywhere recommends that pregnant women take creatine. The gap between "promising in animals" and "you should take this" is the entire subject of this article, because almost everyone reporting on it skips straight over it.
WHY CREATINE COMES UP IN PREGNANCY AT ALL
Start with the biology, because the hypothesis is not arbitrary. Creatine is part of your body's rapid energy system. Cells use it to regenerate ATP, the molecule that powers almost everything, and that backup matters most in the moments when oxygen supply cannot keep pace with demand. Think of phosphocreatine as a charged reserve battery that carries the load for a few seconds when the mains supply flickers.
Pregnancy is one of the most metabolically demanding states the human body passes through, and the developing baby cannot make all the creatine it needs. As pregnancy progresses it draws increasingly on the mother's supply. Researchers reasoned that if the baby's tissues, the brain in particular, were well stocked with creatine, they might better withstand a short, dangerous shortage of oxygen during a difficult birth. That oxygen shortage, known as perinatal asphyxia, is a leading cause of brain injury in newborns. A safe, cheap nutrient that helped buffer it would be a genuinely important discovery. That is why this research exists, and why it deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed.
There is also a plausible reason intakes might run low precisely when demand is rising. The body makes some of its own creatine, but a meaningful share normally comes from the diet, mostly from red meat and fish. Pregnancy often brings nausea, food aversions and a shift away from exactly those foods, at the same time as the growing baby is drawing on the mother's stores. On paper, that is a recipe for a gap. Whether the gap matters enough to be worth filling, and whether filling it with a supplement does any good, is the question the research has been trying, slowly and carefully, to answer.
The diagram above shows where the evidence is strong and where it runs out.
WHAT THE ANIMAL STUDIES SHOWED
The foundational work came from an Australian research group who tested the idea in pregnant animals. Feeding creatine to the mother raised creatine levels in the offspring and, in models of birth asphyxia, reduced the resulting brain and organ damage. The pattern across these experiments was consistent enough that the researchers began arguing the idea deserved to be tested in humans.
This is encouraging, and it is also exactly the kind of result that needs stating carefully. Animal models are where almost every promising therapy begins, and they are also where a great many promising therapies quietly die, because what protects an animal does not always protect a human baby. The dose, the timing, the biology of the placenta and the realities of human birth all differ. Animal evidence earns a hypothesis the right to be tested in people. It does not stand in for that test.
THE HUMAN EVIDENCE, HONESTLY
So what do we actually have in humans? Three things, and it is worth being precise about what each one is.
First, observation. In 2024, de Guingand and colleagues published a prospective study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that followed 282 women through low-risk pregnancies and measured their creatine at multiple points. It is the largest study of its kind. Crucially, nobody was given a supplement. The researchers simply watched what natural creatine levels did and whether they tracked with how the babies grew. Maternal creatine stayed broadly stable across pregnancy, and there was no overall association between it and newborn growth. Measuring creatine in pregnant women, in other words, did not reveal a clear "more is better" signal.
Second, intake. The 57 percent figure at the top of this article comes from an analysis of national survey data by Ostojic and colleagues, published in 2022, which found that a majority of pregnant women consumed less dietary creatine than the estimated daily requirement. That tells you low intake is common. It does not tell you that topping it up changes anything, because no one in that survey was supplemented and then followed. An observation about diet is not evidence for an intervention.
Third, and most recently, the first proper look at supplementation. In 2025, Naidu, de Guingand and colleagues ran an open-label dose-escalation trial of creatine monohydrate in pregnancy, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. This is the study closest to the question everyone actually wants answered, and it is important to understand its limits. It enrolled a handful of pregnant women, fewer than ten at each stage. It was not randomised and had no placebo group. Its job was to work out the dose needed to reach target blood levels and to check for obvious tolerability problems over a few days. On that narrow question the news was reassuring: no major adverse events or side effects were reported. But the study was never designed to show that creatine helps a mother or a baby, and it did not. It was a deliberate first step, kept small on purpose.
This is where it gets interesting. The most striking thing about this field is not the animal results. It is that the researchers doing the work are markedly more cautious than the people reporting on it. The 2014 Cochrane review, the most rigorous attempt to pool the human evidence, found not a single eligible trial and concluded only that the question deserves to be tested. A 2021 review of creatine across women's health put it plainly: there are no human studies to date evaluating creatine supplementation during pregnancy, and while it could one day prove a safe and low-cost strategy, that remains a hope rather than a finding. The scientists are saying "we do not know yet." Much of the internet is saying "take this." Only one of them is reading the studies.
WHAT A REAL ANSWER WOULD REQUIRE
It is worth being clear about what would actually settle this, because it explains why honest researchers keep saying not yet. To know whether creatine helps in human pregnancy, you would need a randomised controlled trial: a large group of pregnant women allocated by chance to creatine or to a placebo, followed through to birth and beyond, with the babies' health as the measured outcome and safety monitored throughout. That is a serious undertaking. Pregnancy trials are rightly held to a high bar, recruitment is difficult, and the outcomes that matter most, such as long-term brain development, can take years to read. The small 2025 safety study is exactly the kind of careful groundwork that has to come first. The trial that could actually change the guidance has not been done.
WHAT THIS MEANS IF YOU ARE PREGNANT OR PLANNING TO BE
The practical answer is refreshingly simple, even if it is not what a supplement article usually says. There is currently no basis for taking creatine to influence your pregnancy, and no health authority recommends it. The honest state of the science is a promising hypothesis, strong in animals, untested for benefit in humans.
In the United Kingdom, the supplements actually recommended in pregnancy are short and well established: folic acid in the early weeks and a daily vitamin D, as the NHS advises. Creatine is not on that list, and it is not recommended by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists or other bodies either, because the evidence to put it there does not yet exist.
If you are pregnant, trying to conceive, or breastfeeding, the single most useful thing you can do with an article like this is take it to your midwife or GP rather than to a checkout. They can tell you what is genuinely worth taking and what is not, in the context of your own pregnancy. Supplements that are unremarkable for the general adult population are not automatically appropriate in pregnancy, which is exactly why the standard advice is to check before starting anything new.
A common, practical question deserves a direct answer. If you were already taking creatine, perhaps for training, and then discovered you were pregnant, that is not in itself a cause for alarm, but it is a reason to check rather than to carry on by default. The one small safety study to date reported no obvious short-term tolerability problems, and creatine is a substance the body and an ordinary diet already contain. That is reassurance about what has been observed so far, not a recommendation to continue, and the two are not the same. The sensible next step is the same one as before: tell your midwife or GP what you have been taking and let them advise you, rather than deciding either way on your own.
This is a research story worth following. Over the next few years, properly designed human trials may tell us whether the animal promise translates. Until they do, the responsible reading of the evidence is patience, not a purchase.
Key Takeaways
1. The idea that creatine could protect a baby's brain during a difficult birth comes from animal studies, where the effect is real but has never been replicated in humans. 2. The largest human study measured natural creatine in 282 pregnancies and found no overall link to how the babies grew. 3. The first human supplementation trial, published in 2025, was tiny and open-label, and tested only short-term tolerability, not whether creatine helps. 4. No health authority, including the NHS, recommends creatine supplementation in pregnancy.
The bottom line: Creatine in pregnancy is a promising hypothesis backed by animal research, not an established benefit, and no one should start taking it on the strength of the current evidence.
SOURCES
1. Dickinson H, Bain E, Wilkinson D, et al. Creatine for women in pregnancy for neuroprotection of the fetus. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2014;(12):CD010846. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25523279/
2. de Guingand DL, Palmer KR, Callahan DL, et al. Creatine and pregnancy outcomes: a prospective cohort study of creatine metabolism in low-risk pregnant females. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2024;119(3):838-849. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38432717/
3. Naidu M, de Guingand DL, Hunter G, et al. Open label, dose escalation trial of creatine monohydrate in pregnancy. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2025;22(sup1):2533652. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12291183/
4. Ostojic SM, Forbes SC, Candow DG. Do pregnant women consume enough creatine? Evidence from NHANES 2011-2018. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism. 2022;78(2):114-116. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34763333/
5. Smith-Ryan AE, Cabre HE, Eckerson JM, Candow DG. Creatine supplementation in women's health: a lifespan perspective. Nutrients. 2021;13(3):877. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7998865/
6. National Health Service. Vitamins, supplements and nutrition in pregnancy. NHS. 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/keeping-well/vitamins-supplements-and-nutrition/
This article is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. It is not a recommendation to take creatine or any other supplement during pregnancy. If you are pregnant, trying to conceive, or breastfeeding, speak to your midwife, GP, or pharmacist before taking any supplement. </content>
