Does Creatine Cause Hair Loss?

Creatine is the most researched supplement in sport, and for most lifters it is the one that earns its place in the cupboard. Yet the same question follows it around every gym floor and forum thread. People worry that the white powder helping their training is quietly thinning their hair.

The fear is specific and it has a source. It traces back to a single study from 2009 that found a rise in a hormone linked to male pattern baldness. That one result has been repeated so often online that it now reads like settled fact. In April 2025 a research team measured what the earlier work had not. They gave men creatine for three months and checked their hair directly. Here is what the evidence shows.

Where the worry started

In 2009, van der Merwe and colleagues gave creatine to 20 college-aged rugby players in a small double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Total testosterone did not move. What did move was dihydrotestosterone, usually shortened to DHT, a more active androgen made from testosterone. In the creatine phase the players showed DHT 56 per cent higher after a week of heavy loading, and still 40 per cent above baseline through the lower maintenance dose. The ratio of DHT to testosterone rose too.

DHT matters here because it is the hormone most tied to male pattern baldness. In men who are genetically sensitive to it, DHT shortens the growth phase of scalp follicles over years and shrinks them. So a supplement that raises DHT by more than half sounds alarming on paper. That single chain of logic is the whole basis of the creatine hair-loss story.

Three reasons that one study was not the full picture

The 2009 result is real and it was published in a respected journal. The problem is how much weight a single, small finding was asked to carry. Three details are usually left out of the forum version.

• •No hair was measured. The study recorded a hormone in the blood and stopped there, so it could not show hair loss even in principle, and the authors did not claim it did.
• •The creatine group began with lower DHT than the placebo group, so part of the rise was a climb back toward a normal level, and the ratio of DHT to testosterone stayed within the normal clinical range throughout, as the 2021 ISSN review noted.
• •In the sixteen years since, no other trial has reproduced even the hormone change, let alone linked creatine to hair loss. It was one group of 20 young athletes in a single sport.

The 2025 trial that finally looked at hair

In April 2025, Lak and colleagues published the study the debate had been missing. It was a 12-week, double-blind, randomised controlled trial in 38 resistance-trained men, half on 5 grams of creatine a day and half on a matched placebo. Crucially, the team measured the thing people care about most. They assessed the scalp with trichoscopy, recording hair count, hair density, follicular units, the share of hairs in the growth phase, the balance of thick terminal to fine vellus hairs, and overall thickness, alongside blood tests for testosterone and DHT.

Across all six hair measures, the creatine and placebo groups were statistically indistinguishable, with every comparison landing well short of significance. Raw DHT did not change, and the DHT-to-testosterone ratio drifted down slightly rather than up. Total testosterone rose over the 12 weeks in both groups, which is what regular lifting tends to do, and the creatine group's rise was the smaller of the two. The authors concluded that the trial was "the first to directly assess hair follicle health following creatine supplementation, providing strong evidence against the claim that creatine contributes to hair loss".

What the wider evidence says

The 2025 trial does not stand alone. The 2021 ISSN review gathered 12 studies that measured testosterone on creatine. Ten found no change, and the two that found a small rise described it as physiologically insignificant. Free testosterone was tracked in five of those studies, and none found an increase. The review's plain summary was that "no study has reported hair loss or baldness in humans" and that "the majority of available evidence does not support a link between creatine supplementation and hair loss or baldness".

That sits on top of a long safety record. The ISSN position stand calls creatine monohydrate "the most effective ergogenic nutritional supplement currently available to athletes", and reports no compelling evidence of harm in healthy people at doses up to 30 grams a day studied over five years. The only side effect it flags as consistent is a small gain in body weight, mostly water pulled into muscle early on. None of this points toward a follicle problem.

What this means for you

For the vast majority of people, the practical answer is settled enough to act on. Creatine is cheap, well studied, and useful, and the direct evidence does not support the hair-loss fear. If you want to take it, these are the sensible defaults.

• •Take 3 to 5 grams of plain creatine monohydrate a day, every day. The timing does not matter, so pick whatever you will remember.
• •Skip the loading phase if you prefer. A steady 3 to 5 grams fills your muscle stores within a few weeks without the early water-weight jump.
• •Choose monohydrate over the pricier "advanced" forms. It is the version almost every study used, including the 2025 hair trial.
• •If you carry a strong family history of early baldness and still feel uneasy, the honest position is that the evidence shows no effect, while the longest direct hair trial so far ran 12 weeks. You lose nothing by tracking your hairline as you would anyway.

Common mistakes

• •Treating a blood-hormone result as proof of hair loss. The 2009 study measured DHT, not hair, and a hormone shift inside the normal range is not a bald spot.
• •Blaming creatine for a hairline that was already receding. Male pattern baldness is largely genetic and tied to age, and it often becomes obvious in the same years men take up serious training.
• •Stopping a supplement that is helping your training on the strength of one unreplicated study, while ignoring the newer trial that measured hair directly.

Frequently asked questions

The bottom line

The creatine hair-loss story is built on one small 2009 study that measured a hormone, not hair, and was not repeated. When researchers finally looked at the scalp directly in 2025, three months of creatine changed nothing about DHT or about the hair itself. Set against a safety record that runs to years of use, the evidence points one way. For the vast majority of people, creatine is a cheap, effective supplement that is not going to cost you your hair.

Sources

• •Lak M, Forbes SC, Ashtary-Larky D, et al. Does creatine cause hair loss? A 12-week randomized controlled trial. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2025. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12020143
• •van der Merwe J, Brooks NE, Myburgh KH. Three weeks of creatine monohydrate supplementation affects dihydrotestosterone to testosterone ratio in college-aged rugby players. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. 2009. 19(5):399-404. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19741313
• •Antonio J, Candow DG, Forbes SC, et al. Common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation: what does the scientific evidence really show? Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2021. 18:13. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7871530
• •Kreider RB, Kalman DS, Antonio J, 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. 2017. 14:18. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5469049