If you are performing on broken sleep, high stress and a full mental load, there is a good chance you are under supported. One of the most overlooked tools in that conversation, particularly for women, is creatine.
In this deep dive episode of Stay at the Top, I unpack why creatine is no longer just a supplement for muscle and strength. We now understand it through a broader lens that includes brain energy, cognitive performance, fatigue resistance, recovery and support during high demand seasons of life.
I break down what creatine is, why women may need to pay more attention to it, and how to think about using it in a way that is simple, practical and relevant to real life.
I also go into more detail on this in my book For the Long Run, which is now available on pre sale here:
In this episode I share:
- What creatine actually is and how it supports ATP and the body’s immediate energy systems
- Why creatine is no longer just a sports supplement
- The role creatine may play in brain energy, cognitive performance, fatigue and resilience under stress
- Why women may synthesise and consume less creatine than men
- Why creatine may become more relevant across the female lifespan, including the menstrual cycle, motherhood and perimenopause
- How creatine may help during demanding seasons marked by poor sleep, high stress and mental load
- Practical guidance on dosing, consistency, loading phases and gut tolerance
- What type of creatine to look for and how to choose a quality product
Key Quotes
“Creatine is one of the most overlooked tools in the conversation around women’s energy, fatigue and cognitive performance.”
“This is no longer just a sports supplement. It is increasingly being viewed as a tool for strength, resilience, vitality and long term performance.”
“This is not about a replacement for sleep because nothing replaces sleep, but it is a possible support tool when you are under more load than usual.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess Spendlove (00:03.936)
If you’re trying to perform at a high level on broken sleep, high stress and a full mental load, there’s a good chance you’re under supported.
And one of the most overlooked tools in that conversation, particularly for women, is creatine. Now, when most people think of creatine, they think muscle and strength and power and the gym and people chasing strength. And yes, there is a role for that. But that view alone is outdated. Because creatine is one of the most researched tools we have for supporting energy, recovery, cognitive performance, resilience,
also now sleep deficiency. And so if you’re tired, mentally stretched, sleep deprived, or you simply want to stay stronger and sharper for longer, then today’s deep dive episode is for you.
Jess Spendlove (00:08.662)
If you were tired, mentally stretched, waking in the night a few too many times, or you just feel like your brain and your body are not quite keeping up.
This is the episode for you. Now today I’m doing something a little bit different. I am doing a deep dive on a specific topic and that topic is creatine. Most people when they think of creatine they associate it with muscle strength and going to the gym. But the conversation has moved and you may have picked up on this thanks to your social media feeds. Now we are looking at creatine through the lens of brain energy, cognitive performance, fatigue, recovery and how we
function during demanding high stress seasons of life. For me, I first understood the context of creatine in professional sport. Yes, originally from a muscle and a strength and a power perspective, but for over a decade, we’ve been using creatine when it comes to protocols around concussion. Now in this new season of life as a new mom, I have a whole new appreciation for that conversation and anything that helps us better understand brain
energy and sleep disruption and how to support the brain gets my attention. Now this is not about a replacement for sleep because nothing replaces sleep but this is about a possible support tool. I’ve personally been getting a lot of questions around creatine lately which is why I wanted to record this episode.
My goal is to give you clarity on what it is, why women are using it, why women should be using it, and how to think about whether or not this is right for you. Now for me, I have used creatine on and off for a few years, but I have never been especially consistent with it until more recently. After all, I am human too.
Jess Spendlove (02:05.838)
And admittedly, even earlier on, I was thinking about this more from a performance lens and a strength and a power output and a recovery perspective. But over time, seeing the use in the concussion protocols and now understanding the application from a fatigue and a brain energy and operating under high stress, high demand seasons, I’m seeing it through a much broader lens. When I was pregnant with Millie in 2024, I was personally cautious and I
stop taking it as many products carry general warning statements around pregnancy and breastfeeding. But what is interesting is what we are seeing from discussions and emerging research is around creatine across the female lifespan. And this includes the increased requirements during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Although this is still an area where more guidance and nuance is definitely needed. And it is a case by case and what the individual is comfortable with.
But the reality he creating is definitely
Jess Spendlove (03:13.432)
The reality is creatine is definitely growing in popularity. More people are talking about it, more women are asking questions about it, and more people are taking it. So if creatine has been on your radar, this episode will help you understand what it is, what it may help you with, and whether it is something worth considering for your own life and performance.
And just to be clear, this is definitely not an ad for creatine. This is simply about giving you the facts, the context, and what I’m hoping to do is have a more useful conversation than the one that you might have heard or the 30 second, 60 second reels that you’ve been getting fed on your social media platform of choice.
Jess Spendlove (04:10.382)
I thought a great place to start for today’s conversation was around the history and acknowledging that yes, creatine has been used in the sports performance world for a really long time, particularly when we look at strength, power, muscle and recovery. So in particular, anything really high intensity, so like 100 meter sprints, but also in the gym where there is that rapid recovery element.
This is where most people have heard about it, what most people associate it with, and up until the last five to 10 years is largely where the conversation has been focused on.
But over time and particularly more recently, the conversation has expanded. In sport and also in the military settings, and I think about my work in both of these environments for the last decade or so, creatine has been looked at through a different lens. It’s not just from a physical output perspective, although there is that benefit. And for that reason, a lot of elite athletes and operators are already on creatine. But in more recent years, there’s been this evident, and it’s not even emerging now, there has been solid evidence
around creatine and how this has a role in concussion and brain energy and cognitive performance and how people function under stress and fatigue. And a lot of this has to do when there is a concussion, which we call a traumatic brain injury or even a mild traumatic brain injury, there is a drop in creatine levels. So one of the schools of thought and the research around this is if we supplement with creatine, it helps mitigate that risk. And so now if we look at the research that’s emerging,
not just in those environments, but around brain energy and mental fatigue and cognitive performance and mitigating some of the disruptions and symptoms from not getting enough sleep. This is how we can start to understand the application of this really well researched, robust sports performance supplement. And we start to think about it not just as that, but as a tool.
Jess Spendlove (06:15.074)
for women in particular at any and all stages of life.
Jess Spendlove (06:23.758)
And so to be clear, creatine really is no longer just a sports supplement. It is increasingly being viewed as a tool that may support strength, resilience, vitality and long-term performance. So what is creatine? You might be thinking this. Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that is stored…
So what actually is creatine? Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that is stored mainly in the muscles and also in other organs of your body like your brain. 95 % of the creatine in our body is in our muscles. And its main role is to help regenerate ATP, which is adenosine triphosphate. Now this is your body’s immediate energy currency.
Basically ATP is the fuel for high demand tasks that can be physical work like lifting in the gym or sprinting. But what we are now understanding is it’s also cognitive work like concentrating, processing information, making decisions, functioning when you are retired, under pressure or mentally stretched. So I guess when we’re talking about career team, what we are really talking about is supporting one of the body’s key energy systems.
Jess Spendlove (07:55.66)
And when we think about women, I think this is one of the key reasons why it’s such an important conversation. Because if we look at the demands, particularly as we move through our corporate careers or we move through different life phases, maybe we move into motherhood or we are going through the perimenopause menopause transition, there are a lot of physiological processes happening, particularly with shifts in hormones, which actually changes
creatine requirements.
Jess Spendlove (08:31.822)
And then on top of that, women may be relatively under fueled by creatine. And this is not intentionally, this is by default. So what we know is that women have about 20 % lower endogenous synthesis of creatine in our body.
Then on top of that, approximately women consume 30 to 40 percent lower dietary intake of creatine compared to men. And when we dive into that deeper, that really comes down to the fact that creatine is naturally occurring in animal products such as beef, fish, chicken.
And then if we compare consumption of those types of foods compared to women, compared to women, men eat more. And so this is a two pronged effect.
Jess Spendlove (09:38.604)
And if I think about this in clinical settings, so in terms of the male clients that I work with and also the women clients.
I definitely see this. Women are consuming more plants or more plant-based meals or being more flexitarian, eating more vegetarian-based meals or potentially their overall consumption of meat is overall lower or they might be plant-based or vegetarian. And so there are a lot of upsides to that. But when we specifically then look at creatine intake,
default because we are not consuming those foods either at all or at lower amounts than men, we are therefore consuming less. And so when we layer those two things together, plus that plus we also wanna layer on top of that, we’re going through high stress, high cognitive load, we may have poor sleep, whether that’s due to a life reason or a life season.
or hormonal transition, some of the hormonal shifts that we see and then on top of that a lot of competing demands, we can see that
there’s a lot happening here, particularly for women. And so yes, if you’re sitting there thinking women always seem to have a steeper mountain to climb, that is definitely not an unreasonable thought. This is something that I can sit here thinking as well. It’s like this is another thing that we need to know that we need to manage. And that is exactly why this conversation matters. And I wanted to cover it in its own dedicated deep dive episode today.
Jess Spendlove (11:40.002)
The other thing that is really interesting when you start to look into this in more detail is that when we look at creatine across the different stages of a woman’s life, its relevance may actually increase, not decrease.
And so I wanted to take you through a few different life phases and some of the emerging evidence or some of the evidence that we have out there around our creatine requirements and why it is not static and why that it actually changes in different hormonal phases or different seasons of life.
So the first one is looking at the menstrual cycle and the hormonal phases that come with that. So there’s hormonal fluctuations across the menstrual cycle and this can influence energy, training response, hydration, fatigue, and how we feel physically and mentally. Now, this is still an emerging area of research, but there is growing interest in whether creatine may help support performance, cellular hydration, and also fatigue.
resistance during phases of the cycle where women are more prone to feeling flat, fatigued or not quite themselves which often for most is in the later part of the cycle. This is
really interesting and they’ve even come out saying that when they’ve looked at creatine usage in women, they haven’t always historically controlled for or not even controlled for but noted the phase they’ve been at in the cycle and the phase they’ve been at in their cycle. so research moving forward is going to be factoring that in because women are not static across the month, their hormones are not static across the month and we’re starting to understand
Jess Spendlove (13:31.708)
these hormones really play a role in how we use or how much creatine that we need. So this is definitely a watch this space.
Jess Spendlove (13:45.612)
The second, which I can attest to at the moment, is being in a demanding season where there’s sleep disruption potentially due to motherhood or potentially due to some hormonal transitions that are going on.
Jess Spendlove (14:07.234)
The next stage where this becomes especially relevant is during demanding seasons of life. When sleep is disrupted, stress is high, recovery is compromised, and the brain is being asked to do a lot with less recovery and less sleep.
So for you like me that could be motherhood. It could also be a busy job Maybe you are having to navigate time zones or maybe you were just on a stretch where you being asked to do a lot and you’ve got an important project to deliver or maybe it could be both and Now this is where creatine becomes really interesting and it’s not just about the muscle and strength and power But it is about brain But it is for your brain
and it is for fatigue and it is for brain energy. And so what is really
The to know here is that it helps regenerate ATP, the brain’s immediate energy source. And that may help support cognitive resilience, mental energy, and also fatigue resistance when life is stretching you or you’re being asked to do more commitments. Now again, this is not about a replacement for sleep because nothing is going to replace sleep, but it is a possible support tool when you are under more load than usual.
to see the demands for creatine potentially increase a lot, increase across a woman’s lifespan and life stage rather than decrease. And so depending on where you’re at, this is definitely something that you may want to consider or experiment with if you haven’t already.
Jess Spendlove (15:56.514)
The third phase that I wanted to dive into a bit more is looking at perimenopause and midlife. And this is where I think creatine becomes especially relevant. As we spoke about last…
In last week’s episode with Ange Clark, we covered a lot of ground and background information on this. So if you haven’t already listened to that episode, encourage you to go back. But during perimenopause and midlife, many women start noticing shifts in various areas of their life, in their body composition, in their strength, in their energy, in their recovery, in their cognition, and in their mood. Now a big part of all of
this is that the decline and the undulation of estrogen changes and this begins to decline and from there muscle becomes harder to maintain. Not impossible again listen to last week’s episode with Ange and her dexa scan so we need to not think that it’s impossible but it definitely does get harder because estrogen has a protective effect.
What can also happen is that recovery starts to feel slower. We have more brain fog and things that once felt easy can suddenly feel like more of an effort. And for all of these reasons, this is why creatine deserves attention here. Particularly when we think about the upside, it’s actually helping in many of those areas. So if we’re pairing it with our resistance training,
it’s going to help support muscle mass and strength and the exercise performance and also recovery.
Jess Spendlove (17:48.908)
But there might also, but there’s also research to show that there is benefits from a bone health perspective through improved strength function and overall reducing our falls risk as we age. And then there are the cognitive sides, the cognitive upsides, which is support for your energy metabolism, focus, memory, mental fatigue, and potentially mood as well. And so in midlife, creatine starts to look like a practical support tool for many of us.
for these focus areas that we’ve just touched on, whether it’s from a physical aspect, whether it’s from a cognitive aspect, whether it’s from a mood, whether it’s from a fatigue or an overall healthy aging lens. And so if you’re sitting there thinking, okay, this is interesting, but how do I actually use it? This is where we’re getting into the practical components.
Jess Spendlove (18:48.844)
The first thing you should know here is that it’s all about consistency. And so it’s not about do I take it in the morning? Do I take it in the evening? It’s less about that. And it’s more about choosing a time where it will actually work for your routine. There are a lot of products coming out now where it is included in there. Or if you’re using a drink, whether you’ve got a smoothie or whether you’re looking at electrolytes drink or something that you either start or end your day, a magnesium drink that can be
good way to combine it. And so with my clients, generally we’re looking at the front end or the back end of the day, or for people on a higher dose, we’re looking at both and splitting the dose. So in the morning, as I mentioned, that might be adding it to a smoothie if you have that for breakfast, or it might be adding it to your electrolytes. And then in the evening, if you have like a magnesium drink before you go to bed, that can be a great way to combine that there.
Really, you don’t need to over complicate this. You really just need to think about where is this going to fit my life consistently.
The other thing I used to see is people typically only taking creatine on the days that they went to the gym. And so I guess this is associating creatine from that side of things. But even with clients who are taking it from not only the physical upside, but the cognitive upside, I would still notice that pattern. That is not what we want. We want to be taking it every single day. Because what you want to do is you want to actually saturate the stores within your body.
which takes around a few weeks if you’re taking it daily for that to occur. So if you are new to creatine, I would start with quite a low level dose. I would start with three grams per day. Depending on the product that you’ve bought, it will come with a scooper so you can use that. Otherwise, a teaspoon is a really universal metric that you can use. And so three grams is a level teaspoon, whereas five grams is a heat teaspoon.
Jess Spendlove (20:57.636)
So typically you wanna start between three and five. I tend to err on the side of caution, simply because I have had clients or elite athletes or special forces soldiers even who I’ve presented to, who have reported being quite sensitive from a gut tolerance perspective. And so I always say start small, start low, make sure you tolerate it and then you can increase it.
Jess Spendlove (21:30.39)
Now, you might have heard of a creatine loading phase. I thought it was worth mentioning this here. And so this creatine loading phase is usually around 20 grams per day for five to seven days. So this is about…
increasing the rate at which you saturate out those stores. And so if you’re starting with a teaspoon between the three to the five grams, it will take around three weeks to saturate out those stores. But if you go with a load phase where you have this higher dose, 20 grams per day for five to seven days, you will reach that point faster. Now, if you want to do that,
please do not take 20 grams in one go. And if you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you. But what you ideally want to do, not only from a gut tolerance perspective, but also from a better utilization and an uptake perspective, is you are better off having still that three to five grams, so that teaspoon, spread out across the day. And so if you’re looking at the 20 grams, what we would be talking about there is maybe doing four
five grams per day for the five to seven days and then once that finishes you then go to a maintenance dose of around five grams per day. Although we are starting to see research where it is indicating that potentially sitting on a higher dose around 10 grams per day might be helpful but
I realize in doing this episode, I am probably talking to people who have never used it, who were thinking about using it, who have dabbled in it, who might be taking it daily. And so there’s a big broad range out there. And so I think it’s if you haven’t tried and you want to start with a three to five, if you’re taking it at the moment, but not taking it daily, move to daily. And then once you’ve already integrated it and you’ve got the three
Jess Spendlove (23:32.424)
to five grams, then you can consider about increasing that daily dose. Or if you’re someone who just wants those fast results and you want to saturate those stores quickly, maybe you move to the loading phase. So there’s a few options there for everyone, but the one option that I am saying do not do is to take 20 grams in one go if you’ve never done it before or you’re not consistently taking it, you still want to space it out. And so
For women listening to this, a simple sustainable approach, looking at that three to five grams in the morning or in the evening is probably the best place to start. You know I am all about the path of least resistance and reducing that friction. Some of you might have also seen,
on social media or heard on other podcasts that there is some emerging and exciting research around the benefits of creatine when it comes to reducing the symptoms of sleep deficiency.
And with this, it is looking at a higher dose. So it is looking at, it’s around 0.35 grams per kilogram of body weight. And so with that, you would take your body weight and you would times it by 0.35. And I mentioned this in my book. So my book for the long run, which is coming out later this year in August, I have actually seen that it is online. It’s on a few websites at the moment, Amazon, Booktopia, et cetera.
And so I will put the link, I’ll start putting the link in the show notes. But this is something I do mention in the book. So the book covers a…
Jess Spendlove (25:18.462)
sustainable high performance philosophy and there are chapters on nutrition, sleep, exercise, recovery and connection. There are a few of the main chapters and in the sleep section I do actually go into sleep supplements and one of the ones that I mentioned is creatine which is less of a direct but it is more around its potential use in reducing the symptoms of sleep deficiency.
And so with that, are looking at an increased dose of around 20 grams, or if you want to get specific, the 0.35 grams per kilogram, which I’ve mentioned here, which I also mentioned in the book. But similarly to exactly what I’ve just said before about introducing it and not going too aggressively, if you were not on a baseline dose, I would not be just increasing and taking an elevated dose because you’ve heard this or you’ve heard somewhere.
that it might help reduce the symptoms of sleep deficiency. You do really want to make sure that your gut can tolerate it and when we do have the higher levels that is when we run the risk. Now in terms of the type of creatine you don’t need to get sucked into the marketing or anything like that. All you are looking for really is creatine monohydrate. So that is the best type of creatine.
I have a few brands that I particularly like. So one is the Coles Perform range, which you are able to access easily. I also like Body Science and also Pillar Performance. So there are three of my and True Protein, I should mention them as well. So they’re kind of three or four of my go-to brands when I am recommending creatine. Another one, sorry, which has come to mind is designed by dieticians, which is Susie Burrell and Leanne Ward’s range. So there are a few.
options there for you to look into but I would stick with them. Otherwise if it is Australian owned, Australian manufactured and added bonus if it is third party batch tested which if you are an elite athlete you need to make sure all of your supplements are third party batch tested. If you are not an elite athlete like myself who is an average punter you don’t need to be taking third party batch tested supplements.
Jess Spendlove (27:44.336)
But maybe you want to know what you’re ingesting and for me, that’s the position that I have and that’s the position I take with my clients. They want to know what they’re taking and the beautiful thing about a third-party batch tested supplement is that it has been tested to make sure that nothing else is in the product, whether that has been deliberately or unintentionally added through cross-contamination with manufacturing and in
Australia where we have the tightest food regulations and supplements regulations.
around 30 % of the supplements on the market are cross contaminated. So there is a risk that if you’re just ordering off the internet or you’re ordering the cheapest one that you don’t necessarily know what is in there. And so for me, they’re my five go-to brands I’ve rattled off or you can do your own research and look for an Australian owned, Australian manufactured and a third party batch tested. And so.
As we get to the end of today’s episode, if you want deeper nuance around dosing or the practical setup about how to apply this,
In your real life, I go into more detail on this in my book for the long run. So you find a link in the show notes if you were interested in ordering on pre-sale. I am going to be talking about it more in upcoming episodes.
Jess Spendlove (29:22.382)
I’m really excited to bring this episode which is a new format a deeper dive on a hot topic That I’m still seeing quite a lot of confusion around and that I wanted to bring clarity to That I wanted to bring clarity to
Jess Spendlove (29:48.332)
And so if creatine has been on your radar, hopefully this episode has given you a clearer lens on what it is, why it matters, and how you might like to think about if it has a place for you. If you decide to try it, keep it simple, keep it consistent.
Think about it as an upgrade, not an overhaul. And if this is something you’re either adding in for the first time or you’re going to be more consistent with over the next few weeks, I would genuinely love to hear how you go after applying this for the next three weeks. I have friends, I have clients, I have recommended this to and the feedback they have provided is incredible. And also myself when I’ve committed to this more consistently.
But with anything, as I always say, change one thing at a time so you can really detect and track how that upgrade has impacted your life. When you change too many things, makes it really hard to separate and see the effect that something is having.
Jess Spendlove (30:58.648)
That brings us to the end of today’s episode. If you’ve liked it, if you’d enjoyed it, share it with a friend, share it with a colleague, share it with someone that you think will find value. If you haven’t subscribed, make sure you do so you don’t miss every time a new episode drops. And on that note, I’ll be back again next week with a guest episode, helping you all not only reach the top, but sustainably stay there. I’ll see you all then.