Clarity Micronized Creatine Monohydrate
Clarity Micronized Creatine Monohydrate
Clarity Micronized Creatine Monohydrate — single ingredient, no fillers
The most-researched supplement in existence — and it isn't really about muscle. Creatine is the substrate in the phosphocreatine system, the fastest energy buffer your body has, and the mechanism your cells use to rapidly regenerate ATP. Skeletal muscle depends on it. So does the heart. So does the brain.
Key Benefits:
- Supports cellular energy production through the phosphocreatine/ATP system
- Supports strength and power output during short, high-intensity exercise
- Supports lean muscle mass when combined with resistance training
- May support memory — the strongest research signal appears in adults over 65
- Micronized for easier mixing, with no sugar, fillers, or proprietary blends
Why I Carry This One
I don't manufacture this product — I selected it. Creatine monohydrate is a commodity, and I mean that as a compliment: the molecule is identical everywhere, so the only things that matter are the form, the dose, and whether the label tells you the truth. This is straight micronized creatine monohydrate with nothing else in the tub. No stimulants, no "matrix," no proprietary blend hiding the amounts. That simplicity is the entire point — there's nothing here to dress up.
Suggested Use: One scoop daily, mixed into water, coffee, or a smoothie. No loading phase necessary. Consistency matters more than timing. Talk with your physician first if you have kidney disease or reduced kidney function.
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.
The most-researched supplement in existence — and it was never really about muscle. It's about how your cells make energy.
Creatine has been studied for more than a century, across a very large body of human trials. Most people know it as a gym supplement. That framing sells it short.
Creatine is a substrate in the phosphocreatine system — the mechanism your cells use to rapidly regenerate ATP, the molecule that powers essentially every process in the body. Skeletal muscle depends on it. So does the heart. So does the brain, which makes up about 2% of your body weight and consumes roughly 20% of your energy at rest.
One ingredient. Micronized. No sugar, no fillers, no proprietary blends.
What creatine actually does
The short version: it's a rechargeable battery for your cells.
Your cells run on ATP (adenosine triphosphate). When a cell does work, ATP loses a phosphate group and becomes ADP. To keep working, the cell has to put that phosphate back — fast.
That's where creatine comes in. Roughly two-thirds of the creatine in your body is stored as phosphocreatine, which holds a phosphate group in reserve and donates it to ADP almost instantly. It's the fastest energy-buffering system your body has.
The tissues that rely on it most are the ones with high and rapidly fluctuating energy demand:
- Skeletal muscle — during short, intense effort
- Cardiac muscle — which never gets to rest
- The brain — a metabolically expensive organ that maintains ion gradients around the clock
Your body synthesizes roughly 1–2 grams of creatine per day, and you get more from meat and fish. But most people's tissue stores are not saturated. Supplementation reliably raises muscle phosphocreatine content — studies generally show increases in the range of 20–40%.
What the research actually shows
Most supplement pages tell you what a product does. This one is going to tell you what the studies found — including the parts that didn't work.
Strength and muscle: the strongest evidence in the category. Creatine increases muscle phosphocreatine stores, supports strength and power output during short high-intensity effort, and supports gains in lean muscle mass alongside resistance training. This is among the most replicated findings in all of sports nutrition. It isn't controversial.
Memory: a real but modest signal, concentrated in older adults. Two independent meta-analyses converge on a small-to-moderate benefit to memory performance, at moderate-certainty evidence. The effect is not uniform across age — it's substantially larger in adults roughly 66–76 than in younger adults, where it sits close to zero. That pattern is consistent with a ceiling effect: if your brain's energy status is already good, there's less room to move.
Global cognition and executive function: no reliable effect. The most rigorous recent meta-analysis found no significant pooled benefit for overall cognitive function or for executive function. Creatine is not a general-purpose brain booster, and we're not going to sell it as one.
Sleep deprivation: the most internally consistent cognitive finding. The clearest cognitive signal in the entire literature comes from studies of sleep-deprived people. Under those conditions, creatine measurably improved processing speed, word memory, and reaction time, and reduced subjective mental fatigue — with effects appearing within hours. This fits the mechanism precisely: sleep loss depletes cerebral ATP and phosphocreatine, and creatine buffers exactly that.
Brain creatine: measurably raised, but less than muscle. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy shows that oral supplementation raises total brain creatine by roughly 8–11%. That's real and measurable — and notably smaller than the muscle response, because transport across the blood-brain barrier is more limited.
The honest summary: the effects on the brain appear largest when the system is under energetic stress, and smallest in well-rested, well-fed young adults. That's a rescue pattern, not a universal enhancement pattern.
What we won't claim
Four things you'll see other brands say that the evidence does not support.
"Creatine prevents dementia." No completed trial has ever measured dementia incidence or long-term cognitive trajectory as an endpoint. Not one. Every claim in this space is extrapolated from short-term test scores in small studies. There's an ongoing trial that may tell us more in a few years. Until it reports, nobody knows.
"Vegetarians get a bigger brain benefit." This traces to a single 2003 study. The largest attempted replication, with nearly three times the participants, found no significant effect and no vegetarian advantage at all.
"Creatine makes you smarter." The reasoning and global-cognition data don't support it in healthy, rested adults.
"More is better for your brain." Across a 2.2 to 20 gram per day range, the meta-analytic memory benefit was not moderated by dose. Higher chronic doses have not outperformed standard ones in the data we have.
How to actually evaluate a creatine
The supplement industry is regulated after products reach the market, not before. Nobody checks the bottle on the way out the door. So here's what's worth looking at — on any brand, including this one.
- Form. Creatine monohydrate is what nearly all of the research used. The "advanced" versions — HCl, buffered, liquid — cost more and haven't demonstrated a meaningful advantage.
- Dose. 3–5 grams per serving. Plenty of products list creatine on the label and then deliver a fraction of what the trials actually used.
- Ingredient list length. For creatine, shorter is better. A long list usually means a small amount of the thing you came for.
- No proprietary blends. If a label groups ingredients into a "matrix" with one combined weight, you can't tell how much of anything you're getting. That's the point of the format.
- Marketing terms that mean nothing. "Pharmaceutical-grade" has no legal definition for dietary supplements. Neither does "clinical strength." Read the panel, not the adjectives.
Why I carry a brand I don't own
I make NeuroAxis. I don't make this.
Creatine monohydrate is a commodity, and I mean that as a compliment. It's a single, well-characterized molecule. There's no formulation cleverness to add, no proprietary angle worth chasing. Putting my label on someone else's creatine would let me charge more without making the product any better. I'd rather carry one that meets the standard and tell you exactly what I checked.
What I verified: it's creatine monohydrate in the micronized form, as a single ingredient, with no sugar, fillers, stimulants, or proprietary blends. Nothing on the label is hidden behind a blend name.
What I did not do: I have not toured the manufacturing facility, and I have no ownership stake in the manufacturer. I do earn a margin when you buy it here, the same as with anything else in this store.
A note on shipping: this product ships directly from the manufacturer, so if you order it alongside NeuroAxis, the two will arrive separately with their own tracking numbers.
A note from Dr. Fitzmaurice: creatine and your lab work
Read this before your next physical.
Creatine supplementation raises serum creatinine, a routine marker on standard blood panels. This trips people up constantly, so it's worth understanding.
Creatinine is a breakdown product of creatine. Take more creatine, and more creatinine circulates — that's arithmetic, not a signal of injury. Systematic reviews of kidney function find no adverse effect on glomerular filtration rate, blood urea nitrogen, or urinary protein, even with long-term use. But because creatinine is one of the inputs used to estimate filtration rate, a mildly elevated value can look concerning on a printout, and it has led to unnecessary workups.
What to do: tell your physician you take creatine, ideally before the draw. If there's any question about kidney function, cystatin C is an alternative marker that isn't affected by supplementation.
Who should check with their physician first: anyone with existing kidney disease or reduced kidney function, anyone with a single kidney, and anyone taking medications that affect renal function. In people with healthy kidneys the safety record across decades of trials is strong. In people with existing renal impairment, that data doesn't apply, and the conversation should happen with your own doctor who knows your labs.
I'd rather tell you this up front than have you find out from a confused lab result.
— Michael Fitzmaurice, MD
How to use it
Daily dose: 3–5 grams. One scoop, mixed into water, coffee, or a smoothie. That's the range used in the trials this evidence rests on, and the range where the dose-response data land.
Loading is not necessary. Older protocols called for 20 g/day split into four doses for 5–7 days to saturate tissue stores faster. You don't need it. Taking 3–5 g daily reaches the same place in about three to four weeks, without the gastrointestinal discomfort that higher doses can cause.
About the higher doses you may have read about. Some brain-focused research has used substantially higher intakes — roughly 20 g/day in a small feasibility study in a diagnosed patient population, and single doses of about 15–25 g in acute sleep-deprivation experiments. Those are specific clinical research protocols in specific populations, not general recommendations, and no study has compared them head-to-head against standard dosing for everyday use. The chronic dose-response data we do have show no added benefit above 5 g/day. If you've read about high-dose protocols and think they might apply to you, that's a conversation for your physician, not something to decide from a product label.
- Timing: Doesn't meaningfully matter. Consistency does. Take it whenever you'll actually remember.
- Cycling: Not necessary. There's no evidence that continuous use downregulates anything.
- Fluid: Creatine pulls water into muscle cells, which is a feature, not a side effect. Drink normally.
- Micronized: Finer particle size, mixes more easily, less grit at the bottom of the glass.
Who this is for
A good fit if you're:
- Doing resistance training and want the most evidence-backed addition to it
- Focused on maintaining muscle mass as you get older
- Eating little or no meat, since dietary creatine intake is low on plant-based diets
- Interested in cellular energy metabolism and want the version that's actually been studied
Talk to your physician first if you:
- Have kidney disease or reduced kidney function
- Are pregnant or nursing
- Take medications affecting the kidneys
- Are under 18
Common questions
Is creatine a steroid?
No. Creatine is a compound your body already makes from three amino acids, and it's present in meat and fish. It doesn't act on hormone pathways. The confusion is mostly cultural — it's associated with lifting, so people assume the worst.
Do I need to load?
No. Loading saturates your stores faster and offers no long-term advantage. Taking 3–5 g daily gets you to the same place in three to four weeks with less chance of GI upset.
How much should I take for brain-related reasons specifically?
The honest answer is that the dose-response data don't support taking more. Across the studies analyzed, memory benefit didn't increase with higher doses — even intakes near 2 g/day performed comparably to much larger ones. Standard 3–5 g/day is where the evidence sits.
Will it make me gain weight?
You may see a small increase on the scale early on, largely from water drawn into muscle cells. That's the mechanism working, not fat gain.
Monohydrate vs. HCl, buffered, or "advanced" forms?
Monohydrate is what nearly all of the research used. The alternative forms are more expensive and haven't demonstrated a meaningful advantage. Monohydrate is what the evidence supports.
What does "micronized" mean?
The particle size is reduced, so the powder disperses more easily in liquid and leaves less grit at the bottom of the glass. It's a mixing and comfort improvement, not a different molecule.
Is it safe long-term?
Creatine monohydrate has one of the longest safety records in the supplement category, with trials running for years in healthy adults, including good tolerability data in older adults. If you have existing kidney disease, that literature doesn't apply to you — talk to your physician.
Does it need to be taken with carbs?
Insulin modestly aids creatine uptake, so taking it with a meal may help slightly. It's not required.
Are there side effects?
The most commonly reported are gastrointestinal discomfort and a small amount of water weight. Worth noting honestly: at least one well-run trial found self-reported side effects were more common with creatine than placebo, so "no significant safety concern" is not the same as "zero side effects."
Can I take this with NeuroAxis™?
Yes. They address different things — NeuroAxis is a targeted nutrient formulation, creatine is a single-ingredient cellular energy substrate. There's no overlap in ingredients.
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. Consult your healthcare provider before beginning any supplement, particularly if you have a medical condition or take prescription medication.