Cordyceps and Creatine: Differences, Benefits and Taking Both

Cordyceps and creatine support exercise in different ways, so they can be taken together. Creatine helps muscles remake ATP during short, hard efforts such as sprints and lifts, while cordyceps, a functional mushroom, has been studied for aerobic measures such as oxygen uptake and breathing thresholds over 3 to 12 weeks. Here is what each one does, how cordyceps vs creatine compares, and how to take them together.

Key Takeaways

• Creatine helps your muscles make ATP, the energy molecule they spend during short, intense efforts, and its benefit is greatest for repeated bursts such as sprinting and weightlifting (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements).
• Creatine is one of the most popular sports supplements, and a sports nutrition position stand describes it as safe and well tolerated in healthy people over the short and long term (Kreider et al., 2017).
• In 20 healthy adults aged 50 to 75, a cordyceps preparation called Cs-4, 333 mg three times a day for 12 weeks, raised the metabolic threshold by about 10 percent, while the placebo group showed no significant change (Chen et al., 2010).
• In young adults, 4 g a day of a mushroom blend containing Cordyceps militaris for 3 weeks raised VO2max, the most oxygen the body can use, by 4.8 ml/kg/min in the group that continued that long (Hirsch et al., 2017).
• Neither one contains caffeine, both are taken every day, and they work through different routes, which is why people pair cordyceps and creatine together.

How Cordyceps and Creatine Work

Creatine: a ready store of energy in muscle

Your liver and kidneys make about 1 g of creatine a day from amino acids, and beef, pork and salmon add more. Almost all of it sits in your skeletal and heart muscle. There it helps generate ATP, which supplies muscles with energy, particularly for short efforts. Extra creatine is thought to raise the phosphocreatine stored for the start of intense exercise and help rebuild it between efforts (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements). That is why creatine is studied most for sets, sprints and intervals.

Cordyceps: a mushroom studied for oxygen use

Cordyceps is a functional mushroom with a long history of use for energy and stamina. Human trials have looked mainly at aerobic measures: VO2max, the metabolic and ventilatory thresholds (the points where breathing and energy use shift up as exercise gets harder) and time to exhaustion. Trials used different preparations, including Cs-4 (Cordyceps sinensis) and blends with Cordyceps militaris, so check the species and form on any label. Our cordyceps ingredient page covers the mushroom itself.

Cordyceps vs Creatine at a Glance

	Cordyceps	Creatine
What it is	A functional mushroom	A compound your body makes from amino acids, also found in meat and fish
What studies measured	VO2max, breathing and metabolic thresholds, time to exhaustion	Muscle creatine, strength, power, repeated sprints
Best fit	Aerobic work and tolerance to hard efforts	Short, repeated, high-intensity bursts
Amounts studied	About 1 g a day of Cs-4, or 4 g a day of a cordyceps blend	3 to 5 g a day, with an optional 20 g a day loading phase for 5 to 7 days
Time frame in studies	3 to 12 weeks of daily use	5 to 7 days with loading, 3 to 4 weeks without
Caffeine	None	None

So cordyceps vs creatine comes down to your training. For lifting, sprinting or intervals, creatine is the closer match. For steady cardio and harder aerobic sessions, cordyceps is the one studied. Many people do both, which is where the pairing comes in.

Creatine Research: What Trials Found

Taking creatine raises the creatine stored in muscle, which may explain the better high-intensity exercise performance and greater training adaptations seen in studies. A sports nutrition position stand reviewing this research found short and long term use safe and well tolerated in healthy people, at intakes up to 30 g a day for 5 years (Kreider et al., 2017).

Short-term use of 5 to 7 days often improves strength, power and sprinting, and use over weeks or months supports training adaptations as workouts get heavier. The benefit is greatest for repeated short bursts, because steady aerobic work beyond about 150 seconds relies mostly on a different energy system (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements). For the full list of what creatine does, see creatine benefits.

Cordyceps Research: What Trials Found

Two placebo-controlled trials are the ones most often cited for exercise:

• Older adults, 12 weeks. Twenty healthy adults aged 50 to 75 took Cs-4, 333 mg three times a day, or a placebo. The metabolic threshold rose from 0.83 to 0.93 L/min and the ventilatory threshold from 1.25 to 1.36 L/min in the Cs-4 group, with no significant change on placebo (Chen et al., 2010).
• Young adults, 3 weeks. Twenty-eight adults with an average age of about 23 took 4 g a day of a mushroom blend containing Cordyceps militaris, or a placebo, for 1 week, and 10 of them continued for 2 more weeks. After 3 weeks, VO2max rose by 4.8 ml/kg/min with the blend compared with 0.9 on placebo, and time to exhaustion improved by about 70 seconds (Hirsch et al., 2017).

Our guide to cordyceps for athletes goes deeper on endurance, dose and timing.

Taking Cordyceps and Creatine Together

Cordyceps and creatine together make sense because they support different parts of exercise. Creatine adds to the energy store your muscles draw on in the first seconds of a hard effort. Cordyceps has been studied for the aerobic side: oxygen use and how long you can keep up demanding work. The trials so far gave each one on its own, so the case for pairing them comes from how differently they work rather than from a combined trial.

Both are taken every day, and neither contains caffeine. If you also drink coffee, our guide to cordyceps vs caffeine covers that combination. For how muscle energy and the mitochondria fit together, see our hub on cellular energy and mitochondrial health.

How to Take Them

• Creatine: 3 to 5 g a day is the usual maintenance amount. A loading phase of 20 g a day, split into four 5 g portions for 5 to 7 days, fills muscle stores sooner, and 3 to 6 g a day without loading gets there in 3 to 4 weeks. Our guide to how much creatine per day breaks this down by goal.
• Cordyceps: follow your product label and take it daily. The trials ran 3 to 12 weeks, so give it at least that long. Morning or early afternoon suits an energy goal.
• Water: drink enough through the day, which may help limit creatine side effects such as cramps.

Safety

Creatine. The most common change is a small rise in body weight, mainly from water held in muscle; some strength training studies saw a gain of 1 to 2 kg in a month. Nausea, diarrhea and muscle cramps have been reported anecdotally (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements). Creatine is broken down into creatinine, which the kidneys clear, so tell your doctor you take creatine before kidney blood tests, and ask first if you have kidney problems. More detail is in creatine side effects.

Cordyceps. In an 8-week trial of 40 healthy adults who drank a Cordyceps militaris beverage daily, no one withdrew because of side effects, and liver, kidney and blood safety tests stayed in the usual range (Ontawong et al., 2024). Skip it if you are allergic to mushrooms. Talk to your doctor first if you take medicine for blood sugar, blood clotting or immune function.

For both, check with your clinician before starting if you are pregnant or breastfeeding or take prescription medicine.

Where Our Products Fit

Our Creatine Monohydrate gives 5 g of creatine monohydrate in every scoop, with 30 scoops in each 150 g jar. The directions read: mix 1 scoop (5 g) daily, or as directed on the label, stirred into water, juice or a smoothie. It is coming soon: join the list on the product page to hear when it launches.

For cordyceps today, Forage includes 200 mg of cordyceps 8:1 fruiting body extract in every 2-capsule serving, with six other mushroom extracts, Himalayan shilajit and ashwagandha root extract. The suggested use is two capsules daily, in the morning with or without food. If you would rather drink your cordyceps, Mushroom Cacao is a mushroom hot chocolate with 500 mg each of cordyceps and lion's mane 8:1 fruiting body extracts per rounded teaspoon. Cocoa naturally contains a small amount of caffeine, so it is not caffeine free. Both are made with third-party tested ingredients. To compare cordyceps products on species, form and amount, see how to choose a cordyceps supplement.

Benefits build with consistent daily use. Months 1 to 2 can bring early changes, and 3 months and beyond is where the full benefit builds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you take cordyceps and creatine together?

Yes. They work through different routes: creatine refills the energy store muscles use for short, hard efforts, and cordyceps has been studied for aerobic measures such as oxygen uptake and breathing thresholds. Both are taken daily and neither contains caffeine. Check with your clinician first if you take prescription medicine.

Cordyceps vs creatine: which is better for exercise?

It depends on how you train. Creatine is the better match for lifting, sprinting and intervals, where its benefit is greatest. Cordyceps is the one studied for aerobic work, with trials measuring VO2max, breathing thresholds and time to exhaustion over 3 to 12 weeks. People who do both kinds of training often take both.

Is cordyceps a natural form of creatine?

No. Creatine is a compound your liver and kidneys make from amino acids and that you also get from meat and fish. Cordyceps is a mushroom with its own compounds, such as cordycepin. They are different substances, studied for different parts of exercise, which is why one does not replace the other.

Should I take cordyceps and creatine before a workout?

You can, but you do not have to. Both work through steady daily use rather than a single pre-workout dose: creatine builds up in muscle over days to weeks, and cordyceps trials gave it every day for 3 to 12 weeks. Take them at a time you will remember.

How long do cordyceps and creatine take to work?

With a loading phase of 20 g a day, creatine fills muscle stores in 5 to 7 days; at 3 to 6 g a day it takes about 3 to 4 weeks. Cordyceps trials measured changes after 3 weeks and 12 weeks of daily use. In both cases, consistency matters more than the time of day.

Do cordyceps and creatine have caffeine?

No. Neither cordyceps nor creatine contains caffeine, so you can take them without the jitters some people get from coffee. If your cordyceps comes in a cocoa drink, such as a mushroom hot chocolate, the cocoa adds a small amount of natural caffeine.

Are cordyceps and creatine safe to take every day?

Both have been taken daily in studies. Creatine is described as safe and well tolerated in healthy people over the long term, with a small water weight gain the most common change. In an 8-week cordyceps trial, no one withdrew because of side effects. Talk to your doctor first if you have kidney problems or take medicine for blood sugar, clotting or immune function.

Sources

• National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements. Dietary Supplements for Exercise and Athletic Performance: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/ExerciseAndAthleticPerformance-HealthProfessional/
• Kreider RB, Kalman DS, Antonio J, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28615996/
• Chen S, Li Z, Krochmal R, et al. Effect of Cs-4 (Cordyceps sinensis) on exercise performance in healthy older subjects: a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2010. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20804368/
• Hirsch KR, Smith-Ryan AE, Roelofs EJ, et al. Cordyceps militaris improves tolerance to high-intensity exercise after acute and chronic supplementation. Journal of Dietary Supplements, 2017. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27408987/
• Ontawong A, Pengnet S, Thim-Uam A, et al. A randomized controlled clinical trial examining the effects of Cordyceps militaris beverage on the immune response in healthy adults. Scientific Reports, 2024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38580687/

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This content is for education and is not medical advice. Our products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Talk with a healthcare provider before starting a new supplement if you are pregnant, breastfeeding or taking medication.