Verdict
Not enough evidence
Creatine does not cause hair loss.
1 source: 1 partly
By Arun AgrahriLast reviewed 2 timecoded sources
Short answer
The evidence does not show that creatine causes hair loss. The fear traces to one 2009 study in rugby players. DHT rose 57% but stayed in the normal range, the study never measured hair, and no one has replicated it. The one caveat is for people already prone to male-pattern baldness.
Creatine is worth taking.
The verdict on Creatine overall. 11 sources: 8 positive, 2 partly, 1 neutral
positive partly neutral negative Each researcher and each study counts once per claim, however often they come up.
Creatine does not cause hair loss.
1 source: 1 partly. Fewer than 3 sources so far.
Researchers say
1 partly
Dr. Kyle Gillett, on Huberman Lab, at 13:02
Partly Video · Opinion
Open the tape at 13:02 →“So it's not going to speed up hair loss more than just naturally being male does. So in some individuals it will have no effect.”
Studies show
No study counted yet.
Dr. Kyle Gillett, on Huberman Lab, at 13:02 Video · partly · Opinion
“So it's not going to speed up hair loss more than just naturally being male does. So in some individuals it will have no effect.”
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The claim that creatine causes hair loss rests on one study, and that study never looked at hair.
Elite rugby players took part in a crossover trial, a strong design in which every subject takes both creatine and a placebo, so diet, genes and baseline hormones cancel out. They loaded 20-25 g a day for 7 days. Dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the hormone most tied to male-pattern baldness, rose by roughly 57%.
It never measured hair. Nobody counted follicles, measured thinning or brought in a dermatologist. The DHT rise also stayed inside the normal range the whole time, in the same sense a doctor calls a glucose or cholesterol result normal.
Creatine researcher Darren Candow made that point as a guest on Rhonda Patrick's show. The subjects also started low, so their levels had more room to rise.
Layne Norton, a guest on Peter Attia's show, sums it up as one study from 2009 with no replication and no follow-up. He adds that creatine is not known to change androgen levels, which makes a lone DHT jump hard to explain. No randomized trial shows creatine changes hair follicles or causes hair loss.
Candow adds what he has seen in the lab. He says he has assessed easily over a thousand people, men and women, in blinded trials, and none reported hair falling out. A participant losing hair would be the first to say so.
Creatine may raise the conversion of testosterone to DHT. For someone already prone to male-pattern baldness, Kyle Gillett, a guest on Andrew Huberman's show, calls that "a little bit more fuel to the fire". He chooses his words with care: it may add to hair loss, but he would not say it causes it.
Androgen-receptor sensitivity differs from person to person, and you can't know your own threshold until you start losing hair. If the follicle is still alive, he says, hair usually comes back over months once the trigger stops.
For most people, the answer is no. If you are already thinning, start creatine and see more hair in the sink, stop and watch. That beats avoiding, on theory alone, a supplement with one of the best evidence bases on the shelf. Huberman's own advice elsewhere is to test how you respond rather than reason from the myth.
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