Creatine and the Testosterone/DHT Myth
The Single 2009 Rugby Study vs the Broader Null Literature (van der Merwe)
Evidence grade 2 of 5, Thin. Read how the Atlas grades evidence.
The written rationale for this grade is still being prepared.
- FDA
- Not FDA regulated (well-characterized dietary supplement)
Reference only. Not medical advice.
What can go wrong
Creatine is among the most extensively studied and well-tolerated supplements; the main genuine caveat is water retention and a benign rise in serum creatinine (a lab artifact, not kidney damage) that can confuse renal testing. The real 'risk' here is misinformation: men avoiding a safe, effective training supplement over an unreplicated DHT finding, or conversely buying it expecting a testosterone boost it does not provide.
This is something to take to a clinician. The Atlas can tell you what is known about creatine and the testosterone/dht myth in general. It cannot tell you what is happening in your body, and the difference matters most for exactly the symptoms that bring people to this page.
Creatine monohydrate is one of the most validated supplements in sport science for strength, power, and lean mass, and one of the most misattributed when it comes to hormones. The belief that creatine raises testosterone or DHT traces almost entirely to a single 2009 study by van der Merwe and colleagues in rugby players, which reported a ~56% rise in DHT after a loading phase (and ~40% during maintenance). That result has not been reliably replicated, while the broader controlled literature shows creatine does not meaningfully change total testosterone. The DHT claim is a one-study artifact, not an established effect.
One DHT study built an internet legend creatine does not deserve.
What it is invoked to explain
Claims this idea is used to support. Whether it supports them is the rest of the entry.
How it is supposed to work
Creatine works by replenishing phosphocreatine stores, buffering ATP regeneration during high-intensity effort, a bioenergetic mechanism with no direct steroidogenic pathway. The hypothesized DHT link from the 2009 study would require creatine to upregulate 5-alpha-reductase (which converts testosterone to DHT), but no consistent mechanism has been demonstrated, and most trials measuring testosterone find it unchanged.
How one study became a hair-loss scare
van der Merwe 2009 was a small, college-rugby crossover that found total testosterone unchanged but DHT elevated, a single, unreplicated signal. The internet collapsed 'one study showed a DHT rise' into 'creatine causes hair loss and raises androgens,' fueling both bodybuilder hope and hair-loss fear. Neither is supported: the testosterone literature is broadly null, and no robust trial base links creatine to accelerated hair loss. It is a textbook example of a lone result outrunning its evidence.
What people get wrong
Often saidCreatine raises testosterone
ActuallyThe controlled literature broadly shows no meaningful change in total testosterone. Creatine's benefits are bioenergetic, not hormonal.
Often saidCreatine raises DHT and causes hair loss
ActuallyThis rests on one unreplicated 2009 study showing a DHT rise; no robust trial base links creatine to accelerated hair loss.
Who profits, and who pushes back
Nobody is named here yet, because we have not done that work on this entry. Read that as unfinished. Somebody almost certainly sells this, and somebody almost certainly disputes it. Assume both until we have checked.
Set against the alternatives
Creatine inverts the usual supplement problem: its performance evidence is excellent while its hormonal reputation is unfounded, the opposite of T-boosters, which have weak performance/hormone evidence but strong marketing. It belongs in this set as the canonical 'one study, big myth' correction.
What we do not know
- Has any adequately powered trial reproduced the 2009 DHT result?
- Does creatine affect 5-alpha-reductase activity at all?
- Why has a single small study proven so durable in popular belief?
At a glance
- Origin of the claim
- van der Merwe et al. 2009 (rugby players)
- Reported effect
- ~56% DHT increase after loading
- Replication
- Not reliably reproduced
- Testosterone effect (broad literature)
- No meaningful change
What this entry does not yet cover
What follows is unfinished work on our side, not a finding about Creatine and the Testosterone/DHT Myth. A short entry is not a safe entry.
- Timeline. We have not built the dated record of research and regulatory events.
- Cost and market. We have not documented what it sells for or who sells it.
- Supply chain. We have not mapped where it is made.
- Who uses it. We have not documented the user groups.
- What could change. No forward-looking summary yet.
- Children and teenagers. We have not checked what is known about younger people.
- Where we land. We have not taken a position on this yet.
Sources
The studies below are named and described, but not linked. You cannot open them from here and check our reading against them, which means this page is our summary of the literature rather than a document you can verify. Weigh it accordingly until the links exist.
The studies that matter
van der Merwe et al. (rugby players, crossover)2009
Reported ~56% increase in DHT during creatine loading with no change in total testosterone, the single source of the DHT claim, never reliably replicated
Broader creatine-hormone trials (meta-analytic view)2000s-2020s
Controlled studies generally show no meaningful change in total testosterone with creatine supplementation