GLP-1 medications are changing the conversation around weight. Creatine may need to be part of it.

There is a number buried in the clinical literature on GLP-1 receptor agonists that I keep coming back to. In trials of medications like semaglutide, up to 40% of total weight lost may come from lean mass (from skeletal muscle) rather than from fat tissue.

For most people reading the headlines, that number does not appear. The story is about dramatic weight loss, improved blood sugar, and reduced cardiovascular risk. All of that is real. All of it matters.

But skeletal muscle is not a bystander. It is one of the body's most metabolically active tissues. It governs how we process glucose, how we maintain insulin sensitivity, and how we sustain energy and functional capacity across a lifetime. When we lose it, we lose more than mass.

This is the problem our advisor, Felipe Ribeiro, RD (a researcher at the University of São Paulo with deep expertise in creatine science), has just formally placed into the peer-reviewed record. His editorial, published this month in The Journal of Nutritional Physiology, is one of the first scientific papers to ask the question directly: Can creatine supplementation help protect muscle in people taking GLP-1 medications?

What the paper argues

Felipe and his co-authors (including Darren Candow and Scott Forbes, two of the world's leading creatine researchers) are careful not to overclaim. This is a perspective piece, not a trial. The data from GLP-1 populations doesn't yet exist. That is precisely the point.

What the paper does is map the mechanistic case. Creatine supplementation has a well-established body of evidence in other populations: it increases intramuscular phosphorylcreatine stores, supporting higher training output; it activates pathways involved in muscle protein synthesis and satellite cell activity; it may improve glycaemic control through AMPK activation and enhanced glucose uptake in skeletal muscle.

If these mechanisms operate in people taking GLP-1 medications and the authors argue there is good reason to think they might, creatine could represent one of the most practical and evidence-grounded nutritional strategies available to protect lean mass during treatment.

No randomised controlled trials have yet investigated creatine supplementation specifically in people taking incretin-based medications. Felipe's paper is a call for that research to exist. It specifies what those trials should look like: dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry or MRI to measure fat-free mass precisely, strength assessments including 1-RM testing, inflammatory markers, and stratification by age, sex, and baseline creatine status.

Major nutritional advisory bodies have begun issuing guidance on what people taking GLP-1 medications should prioritise. Protein is at the top of every list. Vitamin D, calcium, B12. The conversations are happening. Creatine is not yet in them at scale.

This paper begins to change that. It places creatine in the clinical conversation… not as a sports supplement, not as a gym-adjacent product, but as a molecularly plausible strategy with a credible mechanistic rationale and an urgent need for further investigation.

We have always said that the mainstream hasn't caught up to where the creatine science actually is. This is one of those moments where that is visible.

Felipe joined the Jenerise advisory team because he represents exactly the kind of scientific credibility and intellectual honesty we want to be associated with. He doesn't overclaim. He reads the data carefully and says what it can (and cannot) support. This paper is that in published form.

We will continue to follow the research as it develops. If you're working with a clinician on a GLP-1 medication and thinking about how to protect your muscle mass, this is a conversation worth having. Resistance training remains the foundation. Creatine, particularly alongside it, may be a meaningful addition.

The full editorial is open access. Read it. Share it with your practitioner if it's relevant to you.

We all rise together,

Rachael Jennings | Co-Founder + CBO, Jenerise