Comments on: Creatine and Anxiety?

By: EricM

EricM — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:02:39 +0000

It’s 3AM here and several hours early for me to be up (obviously!). Waking up in the middle of the night has not been an issue for me in a very long time. Sure, I’ve been woken by unusual loud noises, but have always been able to fall back to sleep almost immediately. Not this time.

Trying to return to sleep was at first difficult and quickly became impossible due to an unshakeable anxiety. I felt overwhelmed with a floating fear that raised my heart rate and roused me from bed to find some outlet for this level of unwanted, negative energy. So here I am.

I haven’t felt this level of anxiety since my return from a trip to SE Asia (I live in western Canada) early last year that saw me suffer midnight panic attacks for over a week. Finally I surrendered due to the lack of sleep and visited the medical clinic to complain of my symptoms. The doc prescribed some Ativan, which fortunately helped to quell the anxiety the next few times it struck. Finally it went away. My guess there was that a combination of dehydration (despite hot temps I didn’t drink much water) and jet lag conspired to mess my wiring up.

This time around, the past few months have been uneventful and very routine. The major break from that routine started yesterday morning when I began loading Creatine *and* increased water consumption. The only symptom I noticed til then was an need to piss (every couple of hours). I had loaded 20g.

I’m going to scale it back to 5g servings first thing in the morning, right before my workout, and see how that serves. Apparently loading only helps to speed up creatine saturation in muscle tissue, which will happen with lower, single daily doses albeit take a bit more time. After this ‘morning’s rude psychological awakening, I can definitely wait!

Hopefully anyone else who notices these symptoms is able to allay them quickly.

By: jason

jason — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 04:44:18 +0000

this is completely true for me. i’ve been getting feelings of anxiety and lots of negative thoughts/emotions after consumption of 20g. i only came across this website because i googled it, as i was wondering if i was the only one, and apparantly i’m not. incredible..

trust me, this is real.. i feel it right now

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 21:15:45 +0000

Holy moly I never thought creatine had this much of an effect on anxiety. I had heard that Kava and other substances could. Wow, I’ll be staying away from creatine now.

By: Darren Wilson

Darren Wilson — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 21:45:46 +0000

I experience serious anxiety heart palitations and sleep
apnea, also insomnia. It was 100 recent
to do with creatine. It would only hapen on the
nights that I took creatine on the day.
Sometimes I would wait months , no symptoms
then I would try creatine again and the same symptoms
would happen. I think it has caused long term damage .
Not worth it. Stick to just protein shakes

By: Darren Wilson

Darren Wilson — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 21:44:32 +0000

By: StevenJ

StevenJ — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:48:16 +0000

You absolutely need to be concerned about dehydration when taking creatine. In terms of anxiety – you could get anxiety from the constant worry about not drinking enough water and this could lead to some potential health problems. Creatine when administered correctly is safe- you just have to be careful.