What Happens if You Take Creatine Without Working Out?

Gymgoers and athletes have long revered creatine for its ability to enhance performance.

Recently, it has also gained attention for a range of health benefits, such as enhanced cognitive function, better bone health, and reduced risk of neurodegenerative disease.

This newfound hype has led many to wonder: can you take creatine without working out?

In other words, are there benefits to taking creatine for those who don’t exercise regularly?

Online health and fitness “gurus” often say unequivocally yes.

However, research suggests we should probably be cautious about these claims. 

To get the facts, we consulted Dr. Grant Tinsley, an expert in the field and one of the researchers who helps formulate supplements for Legion.

In this article, you’ll get his evidence-based takes on creatine’s benefits for non-exercisers. You’ll also discover whether you should take creatine on days you don’t train, what happens when you stop taking creatine but still work out, and more.

Table of Contents

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• What Happens if You Take Creatine Without Working Out?
• Does Taking Creatine Without Exercise Build Muscle?
• Potential Benefits of Taking Creatine Without Working Out
• Should You Take Creatine on Rest Days?
• What Happens if You Stop Taking Creatine But Still Workout?

What Happens if You Take Creatine Without Working Out?

Most of the creatine you consume makes its way to your muscles, where it boosts your ability to regenerate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the most basic unit of cellular energy.

Dr. Tinsley explains, “This process occurs whether you exercise or not. The difference is that when you exercise, you can use the increased ATP production to train harder for longer. In contrast, when you don’t exercise, you don’t make use of the potential performance benefits.”

Does Taking Creatine Without Exercise Build Muscle?

Taking a creatine supplement, such as creatine powder or gummies, can help you build muscle in several significant ways:

1. It increases strength, power, and endurance, allowing you to perform more reps with heavier weights, which is crucial for gaining muscle. 
2. It draws water into your muscle cells, creating conditions conducive to muscle growth in your body.
3. It activates cells that repair and grow muscle fibers.
4. It may reduce muscle protein breakdown, resulting in more muscle growth over time.
5. It can elevate levels of anabolic hormones like insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and influence gene expression to promote muscle growth.

However, as Dr. Tinsley points out, “These benefits are only discernible when combined with regular resistance training. Without the stimulus of lifting weights, the muscle-building effects of creatine are likely too minor to notice.”

In other words, you will only gain significant muscle while taking creatine if you also do regular strength training.

Potential Benefits of Taking Creatine Without Working Out

Here are the most widely touted non-performance benefits of creatine and what science says about each.

Improved Bone Health

Creatine may support bone health in two main ways:

1. By increasing muscle strength and exercise performance, creatine allows you to contract your muscles more forcefully. These contractions strain the areas where tendons connect to bones, increasing compressive forces along the bones. Stronger muscles also let you lift heavier weights, which places more stress on bones. In both cases, the stress spurs bones to become stronger and denser.
2. Creatine might boost ATP production in bones, increasing the activity of osteoblasts (bone-forming cells) and reducing bone breakdown.

Despite these theoretical benefits and some promising animal evidence, human studies are less conclusive.

A meta-analysis of five studies found that taking creatine didn’t lead to reliable or significant improvements in bone health. 

Another 2023 study found that taking creatine for 2 years had no impact on bone mineral density, but that it may positively affect some structural characteristics of bone, which may protect against fractures. 

Thus, there’s currently not enough evidence to recommend taking creatine solely for bone health. However, given the theoretical potential and some promising study results, it warrants further investigation.

Enhanced Cognitive Function

Despite making up only about 2% of your body’s mass, your brain uses about 20% of your energy. It also requires a constant supply of ATP to function properly. 

Given that creatine helps maintain ATP levels in the brain, it’s logical to think that taking creatine supplements might improve cognitive function.

However, studies investigating creatine’s effects on mental performance have uncovered mixed results. 

Some studies show creatine can reduce mental fatigue, improve memory, and enhance cognitive performance, especially in stressful circumstances (like sleep deprivation), while others show it has no effect.

We see these mixed results across different groups of people, too, including young and older adults, healthy and ill people, omnivores and vegetarians, and so forth.

So, while creatine has the potential to enhance cognitive function, the evidence isn’t strong enough to draw definitive conclusions yet.

Reduced Risk of Neurodegenerative Disease

According to Dr. Tinsley, “Theoretically, creatine may help reduce your risk of neurodegenerative disease by maintaining higher ATP levels in the brain, which may protect against oxidative stress (cell damage from harmful molecules) and damage to mitochondria (the parts of cells that produce energy). But this doesn’t always play out in practice.”

Here’s what science says about creatine’s effects on various neurodegenerative diseases:

• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS): Some studies suggest supplementing with creatine may improve physical performance and reduce muscle fatigue in the early stages of ALS but not in advanced ALS.
• Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD): Preliminary research shows that creatine monohydrate improves strength, endurance, and bone density in DMD patients. Still, we need more research to confirm these findings. 
• Huntington’s Disease (HD): While some research suggests creatine can slow the progression of HD, other studies disagree. And although some research suggests creatine reduces DNA damage, there’s no evidence this improves cognition or people’s ability to move. Therefore, current research doesn’t support the use of creatine in treating HD.
• Multiple Sclerosis (MS): People with MS who take creatine don’t store more creatine in their muscles or experience an increase in their exercise capacity or power. As such, creatine isn’t an effective treatment for MS.
• Parkinson’s Disease: Studies show that creatine can help improve the effects of dopamine therapy (a common treatment for Parkinson’s disease) and increase muscle strength and function, but it doesn’t slow the progression of the disease.

Overall, creatine supplementation seems to have little to no effect on slowing down or managing neurodegenerative diseases.

Improved Hydration

Many people believe that creatine causes dehydration. The logic is that since creatine draws water into muscle cells, it must leave less water for the rest of the body. 

However, this is a misunderstanding. While creatine does cause water retention in muscles, research shows it doesn’t disrupt the body’s overall water balance.

In other words, taking creatine increases the total amount of water in your body, but the balance of water inside and outside your cells remains the same, which is likely why studies show creatine doesn’t cause dehydration.

In fact, by encouraging your muscles to hold on to water, creatine may benefit total body hydration, which can be especially advantageous during long bouts of intense exercise.

Improved Mental Health

Given creatine’s role in supporting brain energy levels and the limited effective treatments for common mental health issues, scientists are exploring creatine as a potential treatment for conditions like depression, anxiety, and PTSD.

Here’s a summary of the evidence so far:

• Depression: Current data on creatine’s effect on depression is conflicting. While some studies show that people experience an improvement in mood when they take creatine, especially when they take it alongside traditional antidepressant medication, others show no effect. 
• Anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Few studies have examined how creatine affects PTSD. Two small-scale studies found that creatine might help improve symptoms, particularly among people who don’t respond well to standard treatments.

While we don’t yet have enough research to determine how creatine affects mental health, some preliminary findings are promising. This makes creatine a valuable topic for future studies.

Reduced Need for Sleep

Animal research suggests taking creatine reduces total and deep sleep duration. 

While reducing sleep duration and quality usually harms mental and physical performance, other studies show that taking creatine makes you mentally and physically sharper, even when sleep-deprived.

While speculative, this could mean creatine reduces your need for sleep and offsets any negative effects of insufficient sleep quantity and quality. 

Should You Take Creatine on Rest Days?

“To maximize the benefits of creatine, take it every day, including rest days,” says Dr. Tinsley.

“Consistent daily intake ensures your muscles remain saturated with creatine, allowing you to train and recover optimally.”

What Happens if You Stop Taking Creatine But Still Workout?

If you stop taking creatine but continue to train, your performance will likely decline, but this happens more gradually than many people think.

A study by Queen’s Medical Centre found that once your muscles become saturated with creatine, it takes about four weeks without supplementation for your creatine levels to return to baseline. 

Moreover, the decline in stored creatine only really begins after two weeks of stopping creatine intake. In other words, your muscles stay saturated with creatine for around 14 days, even after you stop supplementing.

In practical terms, if you stop taking creatine, you have a two-week window where your performance should remain relatively unaffected.

After this period, you’ll probably notice a gradual decline in your strength, endurance, and recovery, but it won’t be an immediate drop-off. And if you resume taking creatine during this time, you should see the benefits return quickly.