Creatine’s benefits may go beyond the gym for older adults

New research suggests creatine may help aging adults maintain lean tissue and strength—even without structured exercise.

Creatine has become one of the most talked-about supplements for building muscle, boosting performance, and supporting healthy aging.

The new research suggests its potential benefits may be especially relevant as maintaining muscle becomes more important with age.

In a 12-week study in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, researchers found adults ages 45 to 65 who took creatine gained lean tissue and strength, even without participating in a structured exercise program. Those who combined creatine with exercise saw greater gains.

The findings add to growing interest in creatine beyond its familiar role as a supplement popular with athletes, including its potential role in supporting muscle health as people get older.

The study’s principal investigator, Richard Kreider, professor and director of the Exercise and Sport Nutrition Lab at Texas A&M University, has studied creatine for more than 30 years. The naturally occurring compound helps replenish cellular energy and has been extensively studied for its effects on exercise performance, muscle, and strength. Kreider’s previous research has pointed to potential benefits for health across the lifespan.

The latest study included 64 healthy adults who completed the 12-week intervention. Participants chose whether to take part in a structured exercise and diet-induced weight-loss program or remain in the non-exercise group, then were randomly assigned to take either 10 grams of creatine monohydrate or a placebo each day.

Among those who weren’t in the exercise program, participants taking creatine gained about 2.4 pounds of lean tissue over 12 weeks. They also improved their leg and bench press strength. Participants in the exercise program completed resistance training and aerobic training three times a week. Adding creatine to the diet led to greater gains in leg and bench press strength and time to exhaustion.

One area where creatine did not appear to provide an added benefit was aerobic capacity, which is consistent with creatine primarily enhancing muscular strength and power.

The study also looked at a common challenge with weight loss: losing fat without losing muscle along with it.

Participants in the exercise program followed a diet designed to create a modest calorie deficit. After 12 weeks, those taking creatine had gained nearly three pounds of lean tissue and reduced their fat mass. The exercise-and-diet group taking a placebo showed little change in lean tissue.

Those taking creatine also had a greater reduction in body fat percentage. To the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first study to show that adding creatine to an exercise and diet-induced weight-loss program can produce a greater reduction in body-fat percentage than exercise and diet alone.

The latest findings build on decades of research into creatine’s potential uses beyond athletic performance.

Kreider has previously pointed to its importance throughout the lifespan, including its potential benefits for older adults as they experience age-related declines in muscle mass and cognitive function. The body produces creatine naturally, and it can also be obtained through foods such as meat and fish, though Kreider says many people don’t get enough through diet alone. He notes you would have to eat about five to 10 pounds of meat or fish each day to obtain 10 grams of creatine, making supplementation a more practical and less expensive option.

Creatine is also one of the most extensively studied sports and nutritional supplements. In a 2025 analysis, Kreider and colleagues reviewed 685 clinical trials and found no significant difference in the rate of reported side effects between participants taking creatine and those taking a placebo.

This study was funded by the WoodNext Foundation through the Texas A&M Foundation.

Source: Texas A&M University

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Most kids bounced back after COVID disruptions

Six years after COVID-19 disrupted childhood around the world, new research following the same children from before and after the pandemic found that the damage was far less widespread than early warnings predicted.

The University of Texas at Austin helped organize a collection of 17 long-term studies from six countries, published together in the journal Child Development, that show most children’s health, learning, social development, and well-being recovered substantially over time.

Early studies of COVID-19, based on short-term data collected during the pandemic itself, warned of widespread and lasting harm to child development.

This new research, which tracked children over a longer period, tells a different story: Pandemic impacts were real and wide-ranging, but not as severe as initially feared, and many effects diminished over time. When lasting setbacks did persist, they were most common among children who were already facing challenges such as financial hardship, limited resources, or other disadvantages before the pandemic began.

“This means children’s resilience ensured the pandemic’s consequences were not universally catastrophic, and they weren’t uniform either, which is a cause for optimism,” says Gabriela Livas, coeditor of the special collection of studies and professor and chair of the human development and family sciences department.

“In fact, children, including some of the most vulnerable kids, weathered the experience in a variety of ways, and there were many factors beyond the pandemic that affected their trajectory in the years before and after COVID-related shutdowns.”

Livas coauthored one of the 17 studies published in the special section, which focused on children from low-income families in three US cities. She looked specifically at vulnerable children in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who had participated in early childhood programs before the pandemic and were later tracked through elementary school. Teachers reported that most behavioral issues remained stable before and after the pandemic, with no increase in attention problems or aggression and only a modest decline in prosocial skills such as sharing, cooperation, empathy, and understanding others’ emotions.

The researchers concluded that early reports about the pandemic’s effects on children may have been overly pessimistic. This was a common theme that emerged across the various studies.

“Overall, the evidence in this special section challenges dominant narratives of universal ‘learning loss,’ suggesting instead that COVID-19 interacted with existing inequalities,” says coeditor Anna D. Johnson of Georgetown University.

“The research highlights the resilience in children and shows the importance of context in shaping their physical, cognitive, and emotional skills over time.”

Source: University of Texas at Austin

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Listen: How brain-machine interfaces could help paralyzed patients

What if your thoughts could allow you to feel the texture of an object, type a message, or move a robotic arm?

How does the brain translate thought into physical movement, and can technology bridge the gap for paralyzed patients, whose pathways are broken?

University of Chicago neuroscientist Nicholas Hatsopoulos is transforming that fundamental neuroscience into life-changing medical technology.

By implanting microelectrode arrays directly into the brain, his team decodes the neural patterns that fire when a person intends to move. This brain-machine interface technology is allowing patients who are paralyzed or have ALS the ability to control robotic limbs, reach for objects, and regain touch sensation through their thoughts.

Listen to Hatsopoulos break down his work on this episode of the Big Brains podcast:

Read the transcript for this episode.

Source: University of Chicago

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Most older adults with dementia don’t report their diagnosis

In a new study, researchers discovered that most older Americans who have a dementia diagnosis in their medical records don’t report having one.

Most research on the diagnosis of dementia focuses on people who are never diagnosed. But in the new study, Yale researchers look at the other side: people who have been diagnosed but do not know it, or do not acknowledge it.

“Diagnosing dementia is only the first step.”

In an analysis of US survey data of older Americans with probable dementia, the researchers found that about two-thirds (67%) of respondents who’d answered questions for themselves reported that no doctor had ever told them they had dementia, even though Medicare claims indicated such a diagnosis. That is far higher than for other conditions among the very same people, such as high blood pressure (23%) or arthritis (17%).

Such levels of underreporting suggest that many of these patients are also likely not pursuing critical medical services related to their diagnosis, the researchers say.

“A diagnosis that sits in a chart but never registers with the patient delivers almost none of the benefits that early detection is supposed to bring,” says Xi Chen, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of public health and economics at Yale University.

The study appears in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Many people with dementia go undiagnosed. While a few small, cross-sectional studies had previously suggested that even diagnosed patients are often unaware, nobody had tracked it over the course of the disease, compared it to other conditions in the same patients, identified who is most affected, or asked whether it matters for the care people actually receive.

For the new study, researchers wanted to fill in those gaps. They used the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative survey of older Americans that has followed the same people every two years since the 1990s, and which is linked to their Medicare claims. Using that data, they identified people aged 65 and older with probable dementia based on validated cognitive testing, then found the specific survey wave in which their Medicare records contained a dementia diagnosis.

The researchers checked whether the individuals reported, in that same period, that a doctor had told them they had dementia or a memory-related disease. They investigated the same information for four other conditions (arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, and depression) for comparison, examined which patient and health-system factors predicted underreporting, and looked at whether underreporting was linked to doctor visits, flu shots, and having a will or trust in the year after diagnosis. In all, they analyzed thousands of observations from about 3,300 people.

Through their methods, the researchers found that two-thirds of self-reporting patients with a documented dementia diagnosis did not report it, compared with an average of about 31% for the other conditions. Underreporting was highest (82%) in the earliest years after diagnosis, before measurable cognitive decline, and was more common among people living alone, with less education, or with lower incomes, and among Black older adults. It was less common among patients who saw a dementia specialist, were diagnosed in an outpatient clinic rather than a hospital, or were enrolled in Medicare Advantage, a comprehensive plan offered by some private companies as an alternative to the traditional fee-for-service Medicare plans.

Patients who underreported were also about 30% less likely to visit a doctor for a health problem, 37% less likely to receive a flu shot, and 30% less likely of having a will or trust in the following year. Importantly, the same patients still reported their other conditions at normal rates, the researchers found, indicating that a lack of reporting is not related to memory loss.

Taken together, the findings suggest a mix of stigma, difficulty accepting the diagnosis, and, above all, inadequate communication by the health system, the researchers say.

“Diagnosing dementia is only the first step,” Chen says. A diagnosis is only useful if the patient and family understand it and can act on it. Clinicians need the time, training, and support to deliver this news clearly and compassionately, and patients and families should feel empowered to ask.”

Chen adds: “Reducing the stigma around dementia is a shared responsibility: the more openly we talk about it, the easier it becomes to accept a diagnosis and get the help that is available.”

The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging.

Source: Yale

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AI interviews affect how job candidates act

Using AI to conduct first-round interviews saves time and money, but it also changes how job candidates act—and not always for the better, according to a new study.

A firm handshake used to be all a job candidate needed to make a good first impression, but today a growing number of firms are relying on artificial intelligence to screen applicants.

In the new study, researchers found job seekers often overcompensate for nervousness during one-way interviews when they know they’ll be evaluated by AI. And AI candidate rating systems can’t tell when candidates are stretching the truth.

“We spoke to a lot of people who were interviewing with AI recruiters, and it was affecting the way they would behave during the interview,” says Akshat Lakhiwal, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor in University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. “So naturally, that affects the outcome of the interview.”

During a “one-way” asynchronous video interview, a job seeker records answers to basic interview questions such as “Why should we hire you?” or “Can you tell us about yourself?” When the practice was first introduced, the tool made it easier to schedule initial interviews, and the sorting process made it easy for recruiters to compare how multiple candidates answered the same question.

Today, many companies save time by allowing AI systems to grade and sort candidates’ responses. The change has left candidates feeling somewhat disoriented and helpless, Lakhiwal says.

“If you’re applying for a job at your dream company and your dream company wants to interview you using AI, you really don’t have a lot of choice,” he says. “You don’t really want to say no to it, but you also don’t know how it works.”

That leads many applicants to change their behavior to fit whatever they imagine the criteria might be.

In a study of hundreds of online job seekers, Lakhiwal found a considerable increase in applicants’ self-reported “exaggerations” or “deceptive embellishments” when candidates knew their videos would be evaluated by an AI agent rather than a human. An analysis of their videos and answers confirmed what they reported.

When participants were asked whether embellishing qualifications was ethical, they says it was necessary to perform well in an unpredictable environment.

“A lot of embellishment was happening,” Lakhiwal says. “They seemed to be throwing the kitchen sink at the situation to try to give the ‘evaluator’ what it was looking for.”

On the hiring end, the industry-favored AI agent Lakhiwal used in the study didn’t penalize job applicants who stretched the truth and scored them as well as those who earnestly described having the same qualifications.

When human evaluators saw the videos, they seemed able to discern this behavior. They generally penalized those candidates and gave their highest ratings to those who seemed to engage in more authentic behaviors.

Lakhiwal’s team found a way to curtail candidates’ tendency to exaggerate for AI evaluators was to explain the interview process.

In an experiment, one group of interviewees was told their videos would be reviewed by AI and then given specific details about what the AI was looking for.

They were told the system would look for facial expressions, verbal sentiment and specific keywords, and that it would rate their videos based on teamwork, job-related abilities, work style and personality.

This group reported and displayed the same amount of authentic behavior as those being told they were being reviewed by a human.

“Traditionally, companies have refrained from transparency in the hiring process,” Lakhiwal says. “They don’t like that word because they feel if participants know how they will be evaluated, the applicants may game the system. And there is research that has showed this. But here we found that telling applicants more about the process allows them to be more authentic.

“We’re advocating transparency in terms of someone’s ability to understand the process. I don’t really need to know which model they are using to analyze my video, but as a candidate, what matters is to be able to make sense of the process the same way I understand what it means to be interviewed by a human.”

Understanding how humans interact with and react to automated systems in the workplace is key to keeping these types of technologies from backfiring on organizations.

The research appears in Information Systems Research.

he study was co-authored by Che-Wei Liu of Arizona State University, Hillol Bala of Indiana University and Hung-Yue Suen of National Taiwan Normal University.

Source: University of Georgia

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Vitamin D may improve cognition for people at risk of dementia

New research suggests that higher vitamin D supplement intake may be associated with better cognitive function in adults with an elevated risk of dementia.

More than 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s dementia. That’s a number projected to reach nearly 13 million by 2050.

In the study of 54 adults with sleep disturbances and mild cognitive impairments (MCI), two hallmarks of early dementia, participants taking at least 5,000 IU of vitamin D daily showed better cognitive function compared to those who didn’t.

The study in Sleep Medicine found that participants who reported taking 5,000 IU or more of vitamin D daily scored more than 13% higher on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) than those who didn’t, even after accounting for other factors. A screening tool to detect risk of developing dementia, MoCA is widely used to assess memory and thinking skills. In this study, lower daily doses of vitamin D were not associated with higher cognitive scores.

The study also emphasizes the significance of timing. MCI is an intermediate stage between normal cognitive aging and dementia.

“In older adults experiencing both sleep disturbance and mild cognitive impairment, this may represent a critical window for intervention, when cognitive changes are emerging, but opportunities to support brain health may remain,” says Victoria Pak, senior author of the study.

“Identifying accessible and modifiable factors, such as vitamin D supplement intake, during the earlier stages of cognitive decline may become increasingly important, particularly as rates of Alzheimer’s disease continue to rise,” adds Pak, associate professor at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.

In addition to the timing of the intervention, the study also found that cognitive performance did not differ based on the form of vitamin D—D2, typically derived from plants or fungi, or D3, produced after sun exposure or consuming animal-based foods.

Vitamin D, an essential nutrient, is not only necessary for muscle and nerve function, but also influences sleep quality and sleep-wake cycles. Additionally, 50% of those with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease report having sleep disturbances, indicating a bidirectional relationship between sleep deprivation and cognitive decline.

While vitamin D deficiencies have been implicated in sleep disorders, such as insomnia and more nighttime awakenings, this preliminary study is the first to assess the relationship between vitamin D supplement intake and cognitive function in a high-risk population with both MCI and sleep disturbances.

This study was funded by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health.

Source: Emory University

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Listen: What people get wrong about volcanoes

On a new podcast, volcanologist Arianna Soldati digs into some of the biggest misconceptions around volcanoes and volcanic eruptions.

She covers whether you can divert a lava flow, what’s really going on at Yellowstone, and what color textbook publishers should use when indicating the Earth’s mantle:

Read the transcript of this podcast.

Source: North Carolina State University

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