Carl and Suzanne LaFlamme are Shaklee Ambassadors at All’s Well Health. Note: this post contains our product recommendations and links, so we may earn a commission on purchases but at no extra cost to you.
Should Women Over 60 Take Creatine? Is It Safe, and Which One to Buy
Should women over 60 take creatine? If you’ve gone looking for an answer, you’ve probably noticed something. Nearly every creatine article out there is written for a 25-year-old in a gym, and it assumes you want bigger arms.
For years, that’s where the research was too. Creatine was studied mainly as a sports supplement for athletes. That’s changing. Researchers are now asking what it does for women, and especially for women as they get older, when holding on to muscle and strength stops being about the gym and starts being about everyday life. Lifting a suitcase into the overhead bin. Climbing the stairs. Getting up off the floor after playing with the grandkids.
Suzanne and I have taken creatine every morning since the day Shaklee launched Creatine+ Power Blend. We stir it into our Life Shake. Here’s what we’ve learned since: whether it’s safe at our age, whether it’s worth taking if you don’t work out, and how to read a creatine label so you don’t waste your money.
What Creatine Is (and What It Isn’t)
The first question we usually hear is some version of “Isn’t that for bodybuilders?” The second is “Isn’t it basically a steroid?”
It isn’t a steroid, and it isn’t a hormone. Creatine is a compound your body already makes every day from three amino acids: arginine, glycine and methionine. You get more of it from food, mainly meat and fish.
Your body stores most of its creatine in your muscles, and it uses it for one job: recharging energy fast. Every muscle movement runs on a molecule called ATP. When you stand up, lift something or take a step, your muscles burn through ATP in seconds. Creatine helps rebuild it quickly so the muscle can keep going.
Think of ATP as the cash in your wallet and creatine as the ATM on the corner. The more creatine you have stored, the faster you can refill.
Creatine is also one of the most researched ingredients in sports nutrition, with hundreds of clinical studies behind it. That long record is a big part of why we’re comfortable with it. (If you’re an athlete and want the training side of the story, our sports nutrition review covers it. This article is about the rest of us.)
Why Creatine Matters More for Women After 60
Two things work against us as we age.
The first is muscle. Starting in midlife, we slowly lose it, and the pace picks up in our 60s and beyond. Less muscle means less strength for the ordinary things: opening a jar, carrying the laundry, getting out of a low chair, catching your balance when you trip on the edge of a rug.
The second is that women start with less. A 2021 review in the journal Nutrients found that women naturally carry lower creatine stores than men and tend to eat less of it, too. The same review noted that in older women, creatine paired with resistance training showed benefits for muscle, strength and bone.
The strongest evidence for our age group comes from a 2017 analysis that pooled 22 studies of adults aged 57 to 70. Everyone in those studies did resistance training. The people who added creatine gained about three more pounds of lean tissue than the people who trained without it, and they got stronger in both their upper and lower body.
In plain terms, creatine helps preserve lean muscle, supports the strength you need for everyday movement, and supports your performance when you exercise. Protein matters here too, and so, it turns out, does your gut. We’ve written about how probiotics fit into keeping lean muscle if you want to go further.
Researchers are also looking at creatine and the aging brain. A 2025 review of studies in adults over 55 found early signs of benefit for memory and attention, and its authors say better trials are needed before anyone draws firm conclusions.
Should Women Over 60 Take Creatine? What the Safety Research Says
“Is it safe at my age?” That’s the real question underneath all the others, so let’s take it head on.
In 2025, a team of researchers pulled together the side effects reported across 685 clinical trials, covering nearly 13,000 people who took creatine and more than 13,000 who took a placebo. Side effects were reported by 4.6% of the creatine group and 4.2% of the placebo group, a difference too small to be meaningful. A companion analysis by the same group found no difference in markers of kidney function either. A separate 2025 paper from the same research group put its conclusion right in the title: creatine supplementation is safe, beneficial throughout the lifespan, and should not be restricted.
Those trials covered a wide range of people, from children through older adults. That tells us a great deal about creatine in general and nothing about your health history or your prescriptions. That’s what this next part is for.
Who Should Check With Her Doctor First
Shaklee’s own guidance is that anyone with a medical condition, or anyone taking prescription medication, should talk with a physician before starting. We’d go a step further and name the situations that matter most:
- Kidney disease or reduced kidney function. This is the big one. The safety research above was done in people with healthy kidneys.
- Medications that affect the kidneys. That includes diuretics (“water pills”), taking ibuprofen or another NSAID every day, and some diabetes and blood pressure medications.
- Diabetes.
If one of these describes you, it doesn’t necessarily mean no. It means ask first, and bring the label with you.
One Thing to Tell Your Doctor Before Your Next Blood Test
Here’s something most creatine articles leave out. Your body breaks creatine down into creatinine, and creatinine is exactly what a standard kidney panel measures. Taking creatine can nudge that number up without anything being wrong with your kidneys, which can make an estimate of your kidney function look worse than it really is.
The fix is simple. Tell your doctor you take creatine before your next lab work, so a higher reading gets read in context. If there’s any question, there are other kidney tests that aren’t thrown off the same way.
Creatine for Women Over 60 Without Working Out
“I’m not going to a gym. Is it still worth taking?” It’s a fair question, and the honest answer has two parts.
Even without exercise, creatine tops up what your muscles store. But nearly all the strength research was done in people who paired it with exercise, so if you add even simple strength moves, you’re doing what the studies did.
You don’t need a gym. You need your muscles to push against something.
Here’s what that looks like for us. I take a strength training class for seniors and an aqua aerobics class, and I’ve started playing pickleball. On days I don’t make it to the gym, I do a few basic exercises at home for leg strength and balance. Suzanne walks more than 10,000 steps a day.
You don’t have to do any of that. What counts is giving your muscles some resistance, and everyday life is full of it:
- Standing up from a chair and sitting back down ten times, without using your hands
- Carrying the groceries in yourself
- Yard work that means lifting, digging or hauling
- A set of resistance bands you use while the TV is on
- Heel raises at the kitchen counter while the coffee brews
Walking is wonderful for your heart and your mood. For creatine, though, it’s the pushing and lifting that count.
How to Choose a Creatine: What to Look for on the Label
After more than 30 years of reading supplement labels, here’s what I look for, in order.
1. Micronized creatine monohydrate. Monohydrate is the gold-standard form, the one used in nearly all the research. Newer forms with fancier names usually cost more without better evidence behind them. “Micronized” means the powder is ground finer, so it mixes smoothly instead of settling at the bottom of your glass.
2. About 5 grams per serving, and check what a serving is. Three to 5 grams a day is the amount the research supports. Some labels reach that number with two or three scoops, so read the fine print.
3. Be wary of gummies. They’re convenient, but creatine doesn’t hold up well in a gummy. The moisture used to make them can break creatine down into creatinine before it ever reaches you. In one 2024 round of lab testing, commissioned by a supplement maker, half of the 12 creatine gummy brands tested didn’t contain what their labels claimed.
4. Nothing you don’t need. No added sugar, no artificial sweeteners, and no “proprietary blend” that hides how much creatine you’re actually getting.
5. Proof of purity. Look for an independent testing seal, or a company with a long, public record of testing what it sells.
What to Expect, and When
You won’t feel it the way you feel coffee. It builds up in your muscles over a few weeks, which is why taking it every day matters more than when you take it.
We won’t pretend we can point to a particular morning and say that was the creatine. We take a lot of Shaklee products. What we can tell you is that it’s been part of our mornings since the day it came out, and it isn’t leaving.
Give it at least a month. At 5 grams a day, it takes about three to four weeks to fill your muscle stores.
If you’d like to get there faster, there’s an option called loading. Shaklee suggests two servings a day (10 grams) for one week, then one serving a day after that. It isn’t required. One thing to know if you’re considering it: the loading week is when temporary water weight is most likely, so if you watch the scale, don’t let a pound or two in week one scare you off.
We didn’t load. We started with one scoop a day and gave it a month.
Morning, noon or night doesn’t much matter. As long as it’s consistent daily use, you’re good.
Why We Chose Creatine+ Power Blend
Every scoop of Creatine+ Power Blend gives you 5 grams of micronized creatine monohydrate, so it checks the first two boxes on my list. It’s unflavored, with no sugar and no artificial flavors, sweeteners or preservatives, and it’s vegan and gluten-free.
What sets it apart is what comes alongside the creatine. Most creatine products are creatine and nothing else. Creatine+ adds two things:
- 100 mg of magnesium citrate. Your body can’t put ATP to work on its own. It has to be bound to magnesium first.
- A polyphenol blend from muscadine grapes and pomegranate. Shaklee included it to help protect your mitochondria, the parts of your cells that make ATP in the first place, from oxidative stress.*
Shaklee calls this fueling the full energy cycle: creatine recharges ATP, the polyphenols support the cells that generate it, and magnesium helps put it to use. It designed Creatine+ to support all-day energy, stamina during activity, and faster recovery between busy days.*
“Why Not Just Buy the Cheap Tub?”
There’s always a cheaper version of anything, and you usually get what you pay for. We can’t vouch for a tub we’ve never looked into. We can tell you what’s in this one: 5 grams of micronized creatine monohydrate, magnesium your body needs to put that energy to work, a polyphenol blend, and every ingredient purity-tested by a company with more than 100 clinical studies behind its products. We call that the Shaklee Difference.
It has been a steady seller for us since the day it launched, including with our older customers, and people come back for it. You can read what other customers say on the product page. And it’s backed by Shaklee’s guarantee: every Shaklee product is 100% guaranteed, and if you’re not satisfied, you can send it back for a full refund, even if the container is empty.
How We Take It
We add one scoop to our morning Life Shake. It’s unflavored, and we haven’t noticed any change in the taste. Suzanne sometimes stirs it into coconut water instead. The label calls for one scoop in 8 to 10 ounces of liquid, so water, juice or your morning shake all work.
Pairing it with protein makes sense beyond convenience. Creatine helps your muscles do the work; protein gives them the raw material to rebuild afterward. If you’re not sure you’re getting enough protein each day, our free protein tracker makes it easy to find out.
We’re Not Getting Any Younger
If you asked me across the kitchen table whether you should take creatine, here’s what I’d tell you.
We’re not getting any younger. Now’s the time to make our health a priority, so we get more years of the fun stuff: travel, pickleball, walking the dog, a good hike. Creatine+ is one small thing we do every day to support the muscle and energy all of that runs on, because we plan to stay active for a long time. Vivix+ is another. Here’s why NAD+ matters after 50.
If any of the situations above apply to you, check with your doctor first. Then give it a month, give your muscles something to push against, and see how you feel.
And if you’d rather just ask someone, that’s what we’re here for. We’ve been doing this since September 1992, and we’d rather talk you through it than sell you something you don’t need. Ask us a question.
Carl and Suzanne LaFlamme are Shaklee Ambassadors at All’s Well Health.
*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.
This article is general nutrition information and not medical advice. Talk with your doctor or pharmacist before starting any new supplement, especially if you have a medical condition, including kidney disease or diabetes, or take prescription medication.
