Second anecdote, I take between 10 and 15 grams. I don’t experience cognitive effects at lower doses (though my weightlifting endurance is still higher on lower doses). I also don’t eat meat so don’t have any incidental consumption
One of her creatine videos mentions that your muscles will take up ingested creatine faster than the brain. So for any creatine to make its way to the brain, your muscular creatine stores must be topped up first.
I think dosage would depend on the amount of daily physical activity. If you work out a lot, you'd have to replenish your muscular creatine stores before the brain could access any/much.
She also mentions boosting creatine dosage after bouts of mental exertion.
To add another data point, a 2024 study [1] on the mental effects of single doses of creatine was using 0.35g/kg of creatinemonohydrate, or about 28g for a typical adult male. Though obviously high doses are safer if you just do them once
And an earlier 2018 article [2] argued that "Evidence suggests that the
blood–brain barrier is an obstacle for circulating cre-
atine, which may require larger doses and/or longer
protocols to increase brain creatine as compared to
muscle. In fact, the broad spectrum of creatine sup
plementation studies that span different dosing pr-
tocols (e.g. high-dose short-term, low dose longer-
term), co-ingestion of other nutrients/compounds
(e.g. carbohydrate, protein, insulin), different popu
lations (e.g. vegetarians, elderly, patients, athletes)
is unavailable for brain creatine adaptations"
Meat is one of the primary sources of dietary creatine, but still provides overall very little (~2g/pound of uncooked red meat). There isn't much to make up for in a non-meat eater and the 5g should still be fine.
