In a 1999 survey of high school athletes conducted at the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center, over 8% respondents reported using creatine and most users believed the supplement improved their performance.
Researchers from the Mayo Clinic questioned 328 high school athletes, between 14 and 18 years of age, on creatine use. According to the survey results, the athletes seem to be using creatine in ways that reflect that they don't know what they are doing.
Seventy-eight percent of the creatine users either took more than the recommended dosage or did not know how much creatine they were taking, and 74% of the users listed friends as their main source of information on the supplement.
The typical creatine user is a 16-year-old male involved in several sports, indicating football as his primary sport," the researchers write.
The study team notes that performance improvement from creatine supplementation has not been proven at the high school level. In addition, no long-term investigations have documented the effects or side effects of creatine use in adolescents.
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