Creatine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Creatine is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Sold as
- Creatine Monohydrate
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Can you take creatine with…?
Source-cited answers for the combinations people actually ask about — each with a verdict and what to watch for.
Every creatine product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Creatine Monohydrate.
Creatine and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for creatine: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadCreatine is used as a dietary supplement to increase muscle mass and improve exercise performance. Creatine is a normal component of human milk, supplying about 9% of the infant’s daily requirements, although the amount varies by country and ethnicity. Creatine levels are highest in colostrum, with levels decreasing over the first 2 weeks postpartum before stabilizing. Milk levels of creatine have not been measured after supplementation in humans. Creatine blood levels are lower in vegan than omnivorous mothers. Some authors speculate that creatine supplementation of nursing mothers might help avoid creatine deficiency syndromes, but no studies are available that test this hypothesis. Creatine is converted into creatinine in the mother's and infant's bodies. It can increase the infant's serum creatinine, which may alter estimations of the infant's kidney function. Until more data are available, it is probably best to avoid creatine supplementation unless it is prescribed by a healthcare professional.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised July 15, 2025. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about creatine
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 983 reports naming creatine, and the FDA flagged 63% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- somnolence122 reports
- gastrooesophageal reflux disease98 reports
- pneumonia aspiration95 reports
- coma93 reports
- nausea66 reports
- fatigue65 reports
- anxiety45 reports
- headache45 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean creatine caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
What is Creatine Monohydrate?
The most-researched sports supplement, supporting strength and muscle.
Can you take creatine with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run creatine against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
Is there a generic creatine?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled creatine product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
What should I avoid while taking creatine?
Other medicines: we hold source-cited interaction answers for Can you take creatine and protein together?. This is what the FDA label and our cited sources say — it is not a complete list. Your pharmacist can check your own combination.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Creatine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/creatine
- MLA
- “Creatine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/creatine.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for creatine on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.