Does creatine cause hair loss? What the first real trial found

September 4, 2026

Man holding supplement bottles in kitchen

No. The first trial designed to test whether creatine affects hair, a 12-week randomized trial of 38 resistance-trained men, found no significant difference between creatine and placebo in DHT, testosterone ratios, or hair health measured directly on the scalp. The fear traces to a single 2009 study that measured hormones only, and never looked at hair at all.[1][2]

The question keeps resurfacing because most of the internet is repeating half of a study. Search for it and you'll find a hormone that went up, measured on a rugby team, in 2009. What gets left out is that nobody actually checked anyone's hair until 2025.

Where did the creatine hair loss myth come from?

The whole thing comes from one paper: 20 college-aged rugby players in South Africa, given 25 g of creatine a day for a week, then 5 g a day for two weeks, with a matched placebo group and a crossover design.[2] After the loading week, DHT was up 56%. It stayed about 40% above baseline through the maintenance phase. The DHT-to-testosterone ratio moved too, up 36% after loading and still 22% elevated by the end.[2]

Those numbers are real, and they're also the entire basis of the myth. What the study didn't do is just as important. It never assessed hair. No density count, no trichogram, no scalp photography, nothing. It's a blood-hormone study that got read as a hair study, because it's the only paper anyone had for 16 years.

The dose matters too. The loading phase used 25 g a day, five times AUROM's 5 g scoop. Total testosterone in that study didn't move at all, and a 2021 review by a panel of creatine researchers points out that free testosterone was never measured and the DHT rise "remained well within normal clinical limits."[3] The result has never been reproduced.[3][5]

The 2025 trial that actually checked hair

In 2025, a team published the first study built specifically to close that gap: does creatine change DHT enough to matter, and does it change anything you could actually see on someone's scalp.[1]

The trial enrolled 45 resistance-trained men; 38 finished the full 12 weeks, 19 taking 5 g of creatine monohydrate a day and 19 taking a matching 5 g dose of maltodextrin as placebo, double-blind. Everyone was required to train at least three times a week and told to keep eating as they normally did.[1]

They drew blood for total testosterone, free testosterone, and DHT. Then, separately, they measured hair itself: a trichogram and a FotoFinder scan for hair density, the total number of follicular units, cumulative hair thickness, and what percentage of hairs were in the growth phase, at the start and again at week 12.[1]

The result, in the authors' own words: "There were no group-by-time interactions observed for any hormones or hair-related outcomes."[1][1] Total testosterone did rise over the 12 weeks in both groups, creatine and placebo alike, a time effect the authors describe as independent of supplementation; they speculate, without settling on it, that it may relate to the time of year the trial ran.[1] DHT showed no meaningful difference between the two arms. Every hair measurement, density, follicle count, thickness, growth phase, came back the same way: no effect from group, no effect from time, no interaction between them.[1] The authors call it "the first study to directly assess hair follicle health following creatine supplementation," and their conclusion is blunt: it's "strong evidence against the claim that creatine contributes to hair loss."[1]

It isn't a perfect study. It ran in men only, for 12 weeks, and it didn't screen anyone for family history of hair loss going in, which the authors flag themselves as a limitation.[1] But it's the first time the actual question got asked instead of inferred from a hormone panel.

One trial of 38 people isn't the last word on anything, and it shouldn't be treated that way. What it does is shift the burden of proof. Until 2025, the study behind the entire claim was a three-week hormone trial that never looked at a single hair, while a dozen other studies that did examine creatine and testosterone reported no significant hormonal increases.[5] Now there's a study built specifically to check hair, at the dose people actually take, over 12 weeks, and it found nothing. That doesn't prove creatine can never affect anyone's hair under any circumstance. It does mean the specific claim behind the myth, that a standard dose measurably changes DHT or visible hair health, didn't survive being tested directly.

A hormone moving isn't the same as hair falling out

Even if you take the 2009 numbers at face value, a DHT increase and hair loss aren't automatically the same claim, because of how hormone-driven hair thinning actually works. DHT affects a follicle by binding to androgen receptors inside its dermal papilla cells, and that binding is what can shrink the follicle over time.[4] Susceptibility tracks with the receptor, not just the hormone level: the same review reports that elevated 5-alpha-reductase activity and increased androgen receptor-DHT complexes were found in most people with androgenetic alopecia, but not in people without it.[4] In plain terms, whether DHT does anything to your hair depends a great deal on whether you are someone predisposed to respond to it, not on the DHT number by itself.

That's a separate myth from the one we've covered before on this blog: raising a downstream hormone slightly doesn't make creatine a steroid any more than it makes it a hair-loss drug. Both claims lean on the same trick, treating a hormone shift as proof of an effect nobody actually measured.

What AUROM's creatine has to do with any of this

AUROM's creatine monohydrate is 5 g of micronized creatine monohydrate, one ingredient, nothing else in the tub. That happens to be the exact dose used in the 2025 trial that found no hormone or hair effect, and a fifth of the loading dose used in the 2009 study that started the worry in the first place. A Certificate of Analysis is available for every batch, so you can check the contents against the label rather than take our word for it.

We're not going to tell you creatine is "hair-safe" or make any claim beyond what the research actually says. Creatine monohydrate has been studied in healthy and clinical populations at doses well above a standard scoop, for up to five years, without those studies turning up adverse health risks.[6] The research on this specific fear says the trial built to test it didn't find it.

What if you already have androgenetic alopecia?

If you already have diagnosed androgenetic alopecia, or hair loss runs heavily in your family and you're worried about anything that touches hormones, this is a conversation for a dermatologist or your doctor, who can look at your actual history and labs. That's true whether or not you take creatine at all.

Frequently asked questions

Does creatine raise DHT? One small 2009 study found DHT rose 56% during a 25 g/day loading week and was still about 40% above baseline after two more weeks at 5 g/day, with total testosterone unchanged. The study ran only three weeks, so it never showed whether the rise persists, and no study since has reproduced it. The 2025 trial, using a standard 5 g daily dose for 12 weeks, found no significant difference in DHT between creatine and placebo.[1][2][3]

Is DHT itself the problem? Not on its own. Hormone-driven hair thinning works through DHT binding to androgen receptors in the hair follicle, and elevated receptor activity is found in most people with androgenetic alopecia but not in people without it. Susceptibility is not a function of the DHT number alone.[4]

Did the 2009 study actually look at hair? No. It measured blood hormones over three weeks and never assessed hair density, count, or shedding in any way.[2]

Does creatine cause hair loss in women? The 2025 trial only enrolled men, so it doesn't answer that directly, and its authors note that research in women is still needed. Extending a male-only result to women isn't something the evidence supports either way.[1]

Should I stop creatine if my hair is already thinning? That's worth a conversation with a clinician who can look at your family history and your labs, rather than something to settle from an article. If you do stop, the change is about your own situation, not something the current research links to creatine itself.

The short version

A rugby-team hormone panel from 2009 is not the same thing as a hair-loss study, and for 16 years, it was treated like one. Now there's an actual trial that measured hair instead of guessing at it from a blood draw, and it came back clean. That's not a guarantee for every person forever; it's what the best available evidence says today, at a standard 5 g dose, over 12 weeks, in the population studied.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.