Taking a large dose of creatine might help young healthy people think faster when solving language, logic, and math problems after staying awake all night, with the biggest benefits seen about 4 hours after taking it.
Scientific Claim
A single high dose of creatine (0.35 g/kg) may improve processing speed in language, logic, and numeric cognitive tasks by 10.6-18.4% in young healthy adults during 21 hours of sleep deprivation, with the most pronounced effects observed approximately 4 hours after administration.
Source Excerpt
“Further improvements revealed in the language (5.6±2.0%, t43=2.9, p43=0.003) and numeric (9.6±3.2%, t43=3.2, p43=0.001) task and in processing time in language (10.6±1.7%, t43=3.1, p43=0.002), logic (13.7±2.8%, t43=4.8, p43=0.00001) and numeric (18.4±3.0%, t43=5.9, p43=2.8×10–7) task when pooled at all 3 time points (Fig. 4).”
Evidence from Studies
Supporting Studies
Single dose creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in cerebral high energy phosphates during sleep deprivation
The study measured cognitive performance using multiple standardized tests and found statistically significant improvements in processing speed for language, logic, and numeric tasks in the creatine condition compared to baseline during sleep deprivation.