Does Creatine Increase Testosterone? What the Trials Show

No — creatine does not increase testosterone. A dozen controlled trials have measured total or free testosterone in people taking creatine and found no meaningful change, and the International Society of Sports Nutrition review that counted them says so in as many words.³ The finding that keeps this question alive is about a different hormone — DHT — and it traces to one 2009 crossover study of 20 college rugby players that nobody has replicated.¹ We sell nothing on this page. Every number below arrives with its source and its sample size.

The short answer

Creatine has no measurable effect on testosterone. In the 2025 randomized controlled trial that measured it most thoroughly, total testosterone drifted up in both arms over 12 weeks — creatine +124 ± 149 ng/dL, placebo +216 ± 203 ng/dL — with no significant group-by-time difference, meaning no effect attributable to creatine.² DHT is the more interesting question, and the honest answer is narrower: one small 2009 trial found a rise, and the only study since designed to check it found nothing.¹² Testosterone and DHT are different molecules, and most pages on this topic blur them. That blur is why the myth survives.

What the trials actually measured

The testosterone question is close to settled, and the reason is volume. A 2021 review by the International Society of Sports Nutrition went through 12 trials that measured testosterone in people supplementing creatine, at doses from 3 to 25 g/day for anywhere from six days to 12 weeks: ten reported no change, and two reported small increases the reviewers judged physiologically insignificant. Five of those trials also measured free testosterone — the fraction your body converts to DHT — and none found an increase.³

The 2025 trial is worth dwelling on, because it contains the single most useful lesson on this page. Over 12 weeks, total testosterone rose in the creatine group by 124 ng/dL and in the placebo group by 216 ng/dL, and free testosterone fell by an identical 9.0 pg/mL in both.² If you ran that study without a placebo arm, you'd have a headline: "creatine raised testosterone by 124 ng/dL." With the placebo arm, you can see that the placebo group moved more. Whatever caused the rise — 12 weeks of structured resistance training, seasonal variation, the sampling window — it was not the creatine.

That's the shape of nearly every testosterone claim you'll read online: a before-and-after number with nothing to compare it to.

The DHT study everyone cites — and its 20 participants

Here is the entire evidentiary basis for "creatine affects your androgens," stated in full.

In 2009, van der Merwe and colleagues ran a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial with a six-week washout in 20 college-aged rugby players at a South African rugby institute, during their competitive season. Participants took 25 g/day of creatine with 25 g/day of glucose for seven days, then 5 g/day with 25 g/day of glucose for another 14 days. Serum testosterone did not change. DHT rose 56% after the seven-day loading phase and remained 40% above baseline after the 14-day maintenance phase (P < 0.001), and the DHT-to-testosterone ratio rose 36%, then settled 22% above baseline (P < 0.01).¹

That's it. That is the study. Twenty men, three weeks, blood work — and nobody looked at a hair.

Two notes for context. That 25 g/day loading dose is a short-term protocol, not a daily habit — our creatine dosage guide explains why 3–5 g/day gets you to the same place. And the ISSN reviewers point out that DHT and the DHT:T ratio stayed within normal clinical limits throughout.³

What that study never measured

It never measured hair. Not density, not count, not follicles, not a photograph. Every "creatine causes hair loss" headline rests on a study that looked exclusively at blood — the leap from DHT is linked to male-pattern hair loss to creatine causes it is one the authors never made. The 2021 ISSN review is blunt: no study has reported hair loss or baldness in humans from creatine.³ (Our creatine side effects guide takes that question on directly, along with the kidney and bloating claims.)

It also never measured free testosterone — the fraction that actually feeds DHT production, which the ISSN reviewers flag as a gap.³ And of the 20 men who volunteered, 16 completed the study.³

Why one small trial is a hypothesis, not a finding

Small trials produce eye-catching effects that vanish on re-testing. That's not cynicism, it's arithmetic: with 20 people, a couple of unusual readings move the group average enough to clear a significance threshold, and there's no second sample to check them against.

This trial has a specific quirk worth knowing. When the ISSN reviewers went back to the numbers, DHT at baseline was 23% lower in the creatine arm (0.98 nmol/L) than in the placebo arm (1.26 nmol/L) — before anyone took anything. The creatine arm's DHT then rose 0.55 nmol/L at seven days while the placebo arm's fell 0.17 nmol/L, and the reviewers argue that combination is what produced the "statistically significant" 56%.³ A group starting low and rising, measured against a group drifting down, is a fragile foundation for a decade of internet anxiety — and intense resistance training moves these hormones on its own, in men who were mid-season.³

None of this makes the 2009 result fake. It makes it a hypothesis — one that sat untested for 15 years.

What happened when someone finally checked again

In 2025, Lak and colleagues published the trial the field owed itself. They randomized 45 resistance-trained men aged 18–40, each with at least a year of consistent training, to 5 g/day of creatine monohydrate or 5 g/day of maltodextrin for 12 weeks with no loading phase; 38 completed, 19 per group.²

The hormone results: no significant group-by-time effect on DHT, total testosterone, free testosterone, or the DHT-to-testosterone ratio.²

The part nobody had done before: they looked at the scalp. Using a trichogram and FotoFinder imaging at the vertex, the researchers tracked hair count, hair density, follicular unit count, the percentage of hairs in the anagen (growing) and telogen (resting) phases, terminal and vellus hair percentages, and cumulative hair thickness. Across every one of those outcomes, there was no significant effect of group, time, or group × time.²

So the study that everyone quotes measured a hormone and inferred the hair. The study that finally measured the hair found nothing — in the hormones or the follicles.

The caveats, before anyone else raises them

This is one trial, and its authors name its limits plainly: it enrolled males only; it ran 12 weeks, not years; it sampled plasma rather than scalp tissue, so it can't rule out androgen activity happening locally in the follicle; and family history of hair loss wasn't recorded, so a genetically predisposed subgroup couldn't be analyzed separately.²

Add ours: 38 men is a small trial too. It is bigger than the 2009 study, better designed for the question, and measures the outcome people actually care about — but a single null result is not proof of a universal negative.

The honest summary is two different confidence levels. Testosterone: settled. Consistent nulls across a dozen trials.³ DHT: one small unreplicated positive, and one better-designed null. The weight of evidence points at "no effect," and the only study that checked the thing you're worried about found nothing — but we're not going to pretend a decade of silence was resolved by a single 38-man trial either.

Is creatine a steroid?

No, and it isn't close. Anabolic steroids are synthetic derivatives of testosterone that enter the cell and bind androgen receptors to drive muscle protein synthesis; they're Schedule III controlled substances, illegal to possess without a prescription. Creatine is a small compound your body builds from amino acids and stores in muscle as phosphocreatine, where it recycles ATP for short, hard efforts. The ISSN review's verdict runs to one sentence: "because creatine has a completely different chemical structure, it is not an anabolic steroid."³

Different molecule, different mechanism, different legal status. The outcomes rhyme — more training volume, more muscle over time — which is where the confusion starts, and the magnitudes aren't in the same league.

So how does creatine build muscle without touching testosterone?

Because the mechanism was never hormonal. Your muscles run on ATP and burn through it within seconds of a heavy set. About 95% of your body's creatine sits in skeletal muscle, most of it as phosphocreatine, which donates a phosphate to regenerate ATP almost immediately — so a fuller tank means a couple more quality reps before the set falls apart.⁴ Do that across every set, every session, for months, and the extra accumulated work is what drives the adaptation.

That's the whole story: creatine doesn't build muscle, it lets you earn more of it. The full evidence-graded breakdown lives on our creatine hub, and where it fits alongside protein and training is in the muscle growth guide.

Which is why the hormone question was a category error from the start. People assume a supplement that reliably adds muscle must be doing something androgenic, because that's how the other muscle-adding compounds work. Creatine just makes the energy system work better.

What actually moves testosterone

Short version, because this isn't the page's job and the honest levers aren't supplements.

Sleep has the cleanest experimental evidence. In one controlled study, 10 healthy young men (mean age 24.3) spent eight nights on five-hour bedtimes, and their daytime testosterone fell 10–15%.⁵ Note the sample size — the denominator rule applies to findings we like, too. It's a within-subject manipulation of the exact variable, which makes it more informative than its size suggests, and it's still 10 men.

Body composition and consistent resistance training are the other two levers with real backing. Both are slow, unglamorous, and free.

Testosterone-booster supplements are mostly not a lever. When researchers pulled the human evidence behind the 10 commonest ingredients in popular online testosterone boosters, they found 37 human studies: 30% (11/37) showed an increase in testosterone, 46% (17/37) no effect, 3% (1/37) a decrease, and 22% (8/37) were indeterminate.⁶ A category with no reliable signal, sold as if it had one.

Correcting a documented nutrient shortfall is the one real adjacent case — and it's a different question from "does this raise testosterone in someone who isn't short." Zinc is the clearest example of the split: repleting deficient men raised testosterone in a 1996 study of nine of them, and nothing shows a man who already gets enough gaining anything from more. The denominators are in does zinc increase testosterone. The one supplement route with real trial evidence works indirectly, through stress and sleep; our ashwagandha for men guide covers that mechanism, who it actually helps, and where it stops, in detail.

And the sentence that matters most: if you have persistent symptoms you're worried about, that's a conversation with a doctor and a morning blood test, not a supplement decision. This page is educational information, not medical advice.

Frequently asked questions

Does creatine increase testosterone?

No. Randomized trials measuring total and free testosterone have not found an increase from creatine supplementation. An ISSN review counted 12 such trials: ten found no change, and the two that found small increases called them physiologically insignificant.

Does creatine raise DHT?

One 2009 crossover study of 20 college rugby players found DHT rose 56% during a loading week and stayed 40% above baseline through maintenance. A 2025 randomized trial designed to check that finding measured DHT over 12 weeks in 38 men and found no difference from placebo.

Does creatine cause hair loss?

No study has shown that it does. The 2009 DHT study never measured hair at all, and the 2025 trial that did measure hair count, density, and follicle health found no difference between creatine and placebo on any hair outcome.

Is creatine a steroid?

No. Creatine is a compound your body makes from amino acids and stores in muscle to regenerate ATP. Anabolic steroids are synthetic androgens that bind hormone receptors and are controlled substances — a different molecule, a different mechanism, and a different legal status.

Does creatine affect hormones at all?

Not in any way trials have reliably detected. Its established effect is energetic — more phosphocreatine in muscle for short, hard efforts — rather than hormonal.

If creatine doesn't raise testosterone, why does it build muscle?

Because it lets you train harder. More available phosphocreatine means a few more quality reps per set, and those accumulated reps drive the adaptation. The muscle comes from the training; creatine just raises the ceiling on how much of it you can do.

The bottom line

Creatine does not increase testosterone, and the evidence for that is a dozen trials deep.³ The DHT claim that powers the hair-loss myth is a single 2009 study of 20 rugby players, measured over three weeks, never replicated — and it never looked at a hair.¹ When researchers finally checked in 2025, with 38 men, 12 weeks, and the follicles included, there was no effect on DHT, on testosterone, or on the scalp.² Creatine works, and the reason it works has nothing to do with your hormones.