This Is Exactly When To Take Your Probiotics Daily For Optimal Effects

Last updated on June 15, 2020

In an effort to take better care of your well-being, you may be considering adding a daily dose of healthy gut bacteria (aka probiotics) to your routine.* If so, you’ve likely heard these beneficial bacteria have a number of research-backed benefits, like supporting digestion, and promoting gut health.* Plus, probiotics have plenty of other perks, like supporting healthy immune system function, since there is a strong connection between your gut health and immunity.*

In order to maximize all these benefits, you may find yourself wondering: What’s the best time to take a probiotic? You’ve heard that fat-soluble vitamins are absorbed better when you take them with food or some healthy fats, but does the same hold true for probiotic bacteria?

Experts set the record straight on whether or not there’s actually a best time to take probiotics and what other factors affect their effectiveness.

Taking your probiotics when your stomach acid levels are lower (i.e., its concentration, not the pH) can help ensure that more healthy bacteria survive and colonize the gut, where they can support your gut health and immune system.*

So, when exactly is that? While day or night doesn’t really matter, David Perlmutter, M.D. advises taking probiotics on an empty stomach—your stomach churns out more acid to digest the food you eat, after all.

Research seems to support these recommendations as well, with one study finding that probiotics given 30 minutes before a meal or at the beginning of a meal were much more likely to survive than probiotics given 30 minutes after a meal, when digestion is in full swing.*

“With probiotics, it’s all about survival,” Vincent Pedre, M.D., gut health specialist and medical director of Pedre Integrative Health, told mbg. “These delicate microorganisms must survive several obstacles: the manufacturing process, shelf life, and (once you take them) the acid in your stomach environment to reach your intestines, where they do their job.”

To help ensure probiotic bacteria survival, Pedre recommends taking a high-quality, high-potency probiotic supplement with Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains. Although not a necessary feature of probiotic products, the stomach acid piece of the equation can be semi-troubleshooted with enteric-coated or bioshield capsules that are more likely to withstand harsh stomach acid and release their contents within the small intestine.

But as mbg’s director of scientific affairs Ashley Jordan Ferira, Ph.D., R.D.N. points out, these types of capsules come with another consideration: “These enteric-coated delivery formats include more additives (or chemical excipients, you know, the “Other ingredients” section) in the formula in order to achieve this release profile. It’s unavoidable, and thus a less clean formula overall.” Plus, as mentioned, it’s just as easy to be mindful to take your probiotic supplement at a time of day when your stomach acid levels are naturally lower (not mid-or-after mealtime).

Probiotics are very well-tolerated in most people, and timing them right is more about ensuring the survivability of these healthy bacteria than about avoiding side effects. So, whether you take a probiotic day or night, with or without food, you’re not likely to experience any major issues—at least not as a result of when you take them.

While anyone may experience some temporary gas and bloating when first taking a probiotic supplement, probiotics generally don’t cause significant side effects beyond that—and if they do, it’s more of an indicator that you’re not taking the right probiotic supplement with the appropriate strains of bacteria. It may take some trial and error, but by looking for strains that are targeted to the issue you want to treat, you can find the probiotic that’s just right for you.