What Is Creatine and How Does It Work?

The Most Researched Supplement You Might Not Fully Understand

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound found in small amounts in red meat and fish, and produced by the body in the liver, kidneys, and pancreas. It has been the subject of over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies over the past 30 years, making it one of the most extensively researched supplements in existence. Despite this, many people still have a fuzzy understanding of what it actually does.

The short answer: creatine helps your body produce energy faster during high-intensity activity. The longer answer is more interesting.

How Your Body Uses Energy

To understand creatine, you first need to understand ATP — adenosine triphosphate. ATP is the molecule your cells use as their primary energy currency. When you lift a weight, sprint, or even think hard, your cells break down ATP to release energy. The problem is that your cells can only store a very small amount of ATP at any given time — enough for about 1–2 seconds of maximum effort.

To keep going, your body needs to rapidly regenerate ATP. This is where creatine comes in.

The Creatine-Phosphate System

About 95% of the creatine in your body is stored in your muscles as phosphocreatine (also called creatine phosphate). When ATP gets broken down during intense effort, phosphocreatine donates its phosphate group to regenerate ATP almost instantly. This system — called the phosphocreatine system or ATP-PCr system — is your body's fastest energy pathway.

By supplementing with creatine, you increase the amount of phosphocreatine stored in your muscles. More phosphocreatine means more rapid ATP regeneration, which means you can sustain high-intensity effort for longer before fatigue sets in.

What Creatine Supplementation Actually Does

When you take creatine consistently, research shows it can increase muscle phosphocreatine stores by 10–40%, depending on your baseline levels and diet. This translates into measurable real-world benefits:

Benefit	What the Research Shows
Strength & Power	Increases in 1-rep max and peak power output across multiple studies
Muscle Growth	Greater lean mass gains when combined with resistance training
Exercise Capacity	More reps, more sets, shorter recovery between efforts
Cognitive Function	Emerging evidence for improved memory and mental fatigue resistance
Recovery	Reduced muscle cell damage and inflammation post-exercise

Who Makes Creatine Naturally?

Your body synthesizes about 1–2 grams of creatine per day from the amino acids arginine, glycine, and methionine. You also get small amounts from food — about 1–2g per day if you eat meat regularly. Vegetarians and vegans typically have lower baseline creatine stores, which means they often see the most dramatic response to supplementation.

Creatine Monohydrate: The Gold Standard

There are many forms of creatine on the market — creatine HCl, buffered creatine, creatine ethyl ester, and others. Despite the marketing claims, creatine monohydrate remains the most studied, most effective, and most cost-efficient form. Every major meta-analysis comparing creatine forms has found that monohydrate performs at least as well as any other form, and the research base behind it is far deeper.

NuKosh uses pharmaceutical-grade creatine monohydrate — the same form used in the vast majority of clinical research.

The Bottom Line

Creatine works by increasing your muscles' capacity to rapidly regenerate ATP, the energy molecule your cells run on. It is safe, well-tolerated, and backed by decades of research. Whether your goal is strength, muscle growth, cognitive performance, or healthy aging, creatine is one of the few supplements with genuine evidence behind every claim.

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