Does creatine cause hair loss or increase DHT?

Does creatine cause hair loss? In the first study built to answer that question directly, it did not. Researchers gave 45 resistance-trained men aged 18 to 40 either 5 grams of creatine monohydrate a day or 5 grams of maltodextrin, a bland carbohydrate powder used as a dummy treatment, and followed them for 12 weeks [1]. Thirty-eight finished.

Hair was measured, not asked about. The researchers used a trichogram, a test in which a small tuft of hair is pulled and the roots examined under a microscope, alongside a photographic scanning system that counts hair density, the number of follicular units (the small clusters the scalp grows hairs from) and total hair thickness [1].

None of those measures separated the creatine group from the placebo group [1].

Does creatine increase DHT? That is the question sitting underneath the hair question, and the two trials answer it differently.

The 2009 rugby study is the one everybody cites. Twenty college-aged players in South Africa took creatine and a dummy powder in turn, each for three weeks, with six weeks in between to clear the first out of their systems [2]. On creatine they loaded 25 grams a day for seven days, then dropped to 5 grams a day for fourteen more [2]. Their DHT rose 56% during the loading week and was still 40% above where it started at the end [2]. Testosterone itself did not budge, so the amount of DHT relative to the testosterone it is made from climbed as well, by 36% and then 22% [2]. The authors read that as creatine possibly speeding up the conversion of one into the other [2].

The 2025 trial found none of that. DHT did not differ between the creatine and placebo groups, and neither did the DHT-to-testosterone ratio [1].

Two differences between the studies could matter. The rugby players took five times the daily amount for their first week, and their blood was drawn after three weeks rather than twelve [1][2].

The rest of the blood work agreed. Total testosterone rose in both groups over the 12 weeks, and it rose more in the men on the dummy powder: about 216 nanograms per decilitre of blood against about 124 in the creatine group, a nanogram per decilitre being a measure of how much hormone sits in a set volume of blood [1]. Individual changes were spread widely enough in both groups that the gap between those averages is noise, not a creatine effect, which is how the researchers read it [1].

Until the 2025 trial, nobody had looked at hair follicles in people taking creatine at all [1]. The concern rested on hormone theory, and it stuck around long enough that an international panel of creatine researchers put "does creatine cause hair loss or baldness" among the twelve misconceptions it set out to examine in 2021, then came back with sixteen more questions in a follow-up review [3][4].

The idea that creatine thins hair is a chain of three links: creatine raises DHT, higher DHT shrinks hair follicles, and shrunken follicles grow thinner hair until they stop.

The middle link is the solid one. Male pattern baldness is driven by androgens, the family of hormones that includes testosterone and DHT, shrinking the hair follicles on the scalp [5]. The clearest proof runs backwards. Finasteride, a drug that blocks the enzyme turning testosterone into DHT, was given to 1,553 men aged 18 to 41 with male pattern hair loss for a year: hair counts rose by about 107 hairs in a one-inch circle of balding scalp, while the men on placebo kept losing [5]. Cut DHT and hair comes back, which is good evidence DHT was taking it away.

So the argument stands or falls on the first link, and that is exactly where the two creatine trials disagree [1][2].

The third link needs time. Pattern baldness progresses slowly, reaching up to 80% of men by the age of 80 [6], so even a real hormone change would not show up as visible thinning inside a three-month trial.

Both trials are small, and they point in different directions.

The 2025 hair trial finished with 38 men, enough to catch a large effect on hair and not enough to rule out a small one. A study that size can miss a modest difference by chance, so "no difference found" is weaker evidence than "no difference exists" [1]. Twelve weeks is short next to the thing being measured: pattern hair loss builds over years [6], and a scalp that looks unchanged after three months says little about a decade of daily use [1].

The 2009 hormone study is smaller still, at 20 men, and it never looked at hair [2]. It reports a hormone moving, not a follicle shrinking. It also used a loading dose of 25 grams a day in the first week, which is not what most people take [2].

The evidence does not cover several groups of people:

• Women. Every participant in both trials was male [1][2].
• Men over 40, and men who do not lift weights. The 2025 trial recruited healthy resistance-trained men aged 18 to 40 [1], and the 2009 study used college-aged rugby players [2].
• Anyone already losing hair. These were men with healthy follicles at the start, not men with diagnosed pattern baldness [1].
• Anyone taking a high dose for longer than a week. Neither trial ran one past the loading phase [1][2].

None of it applies to alopecia areata either, a separate autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks hair follicles and hair falls out in patches. That one is treated with prescription drugs and has its own trial evidence [7].

One gap sits under both trials. Each measured DHT in blood [1][2], and it is DHT in the scalp that is implicated in pattern hair loss [5].

A 26-year-old man starts creatine, and six weeks later notices more hairs than usual in the shower drain.

Neither trial can tell him whether those two things are connected. Both measured group averages rather than individuals, and hair sheds for plenty of reasons that have nothing to do with a supplement tub.

What they can tell him is narrower. When researchers measured density, follicle counts and thickness in men his age taking the same 5 grams a day, the creatine group's scalps came out looking like the placebo group's [1]. If he loaded at 25 grams a day for his first week, he took the dose that went with a 56% DHT rise in the rugby players - a hormone reading, in men whose hair nobody examined [2].

Hair loss gets diagnosed by a doctor looking at the scalp, not by working backwards from what someone started taking.