Probiotics for women is one of the most impactful and beneficial ways to support your overall health, increase microbiome efficiency, support digestive health, and decrease inflammation levels within the body.
The scientific literature is just now beginning to fully understand the beneficial impacts of premium probiotic supplements on a women’s body. What the research suggests is that a probiotic supplement is essential for any woman looking to increase their overall health and wellbeing.
With probiotics for women, it’s important to know:
- An effective probiotic supplement should consist of a large spectrum of strains and healthy bacteria to increase the diversity of the gut microbiome within a woman’s body.
- It is critical that a probiotic is encapsulated within a protective capsule to ensure that the probiotic is not destroyed throughout the digestive process.
- The minimal effective dose of an effective probiotic serving is 20 billion colony forming units (CFU’s). It is important to note that more CFU’s provide the best results but a probiotic supplement below 20 billion CFU should be avoided.
- Premium probiotics will often contain additional prebiotics, vitamins, and minerals to enhance the effectiveness of a probiotic.
Our Winners
Best Overall Probiotics for Women: 1MD BiomeMD Probiotics for Women
Best Natural Probiotics for Women: Wholesome Wellness Organic Probiotics
Best Probiotics for Women Over 50: 1MD BiomeMD Probiotics for Women
Best Probiotics for Pregnant Women: Garden of Life Once Daily Prenatal Probiotics
Best Gummy Probiotics for Women: Align DualBiotic for Men and Women
Rankings
1. 1MD BiomeMD Probiotics for Women
1MD BiomeMD Probiotics for women provides tailored digestive care for women and is only made with the best effective, natural, and potent probiotics to ensure maximum effectiveness.
1MD BiomeMD offers an effective formula specifically made for all women. 1MD BiomeMD contains 60+ Billion CFU’s, 16 unique strains, and 4 potent prebiotics blends that offer additional support for the urinary system and vaginal health.
For these reasons, 1MD Biome MD is our number 1 pick overall.
2. Wholesome Wellness Organic Probiotics
Containing 100% organic and scientifically tested ingredients, Wholesome Wellness Organic Probiotics provides over 100 billion CFU’s to enhance enzymatic functions and overall gut health.
We absolutely love this professional-grade probiotic for women because it contains over 34 strains that have been scientifically proven to be effective while at the same time being non-GMO and vegan safe.
3. Physician’s Choice Probiotics for Women
Packed with over 60 billion CFU’s, this product offers a wide variety of unique probiotic strains that are easily accessible using Procan and D-manniose exclusive to only premium probiotics. Physician’s Choice also contains prebiotics to further aid in absorption and effectiveness.
4. Garden of Life Whole Food Probiotic Supplements
Packed with over 20 billion CFU’s, this product combines homeostatic soil organisms with 12 species of probiotics making it an effective and affordable choice for women seeking a probiotic.
5. Align DualBiotic for Men and Women
If you are seeking an alternative to capsules as your probiotic, this supplement is for you.
Align DualBiotic offers an effective probiotic in the form of tasteful gummies. One of the downsides is that each gummy only contains 1 billion CFU’s.
6. Garden of Life Dr. Formulated Once Daily Prenatal Probiotics
If you are a pregnant woman or a woman actively trying to become pregnant then it can be difficult trying to find supplements for you.
This probiotic is the right choice for you because it ensures optimal gut health for you as well as your baby’s safety.
7. Vitamin Bounty Pro 50 Probiotic
50 billion CFU’s and 15 unique strains of probiotics are exactly the right choices for any woman over the age of 50 seeking an effective and easy stomach probiotic.
This supplement is made with easy-to-digest cellulose capsules making it easily absorbable.
8. Zenwise Health Digestive Enzymes Plus Prebiotics and Probiotics
Zenwise Health Digestive Enzymes is packed with a variety of potent probiotics and prebiotics to help support gut health.
If you are seeking a supplement that does more than any regular probiotic then Zenwise is for you.
9. Culturelle Probiotic
Another alternative for capsules that offers 1 billion CFU’s with 10 additional multivitamins and minerals.
One of the major limitations of Culturelle probiotic is that it only contains 1 billion CFU’s meaning you might have to eat more than one to acquire the recommended dose of probiotics.
10. Naturello Probiotic Supplement
This product offers 50 billion CFU’s with a patented delayed-release capsule making it an effective probiotic but at a rather steep price compared to other supplements on this list.
Best Natural Probiotics for Women
Wholesome Wellness Organic Probiotics
Compact with 100+ billion CFU’s and over 30 strains, Wholesome Wellness Organics Probiotics offers a professional grade probiotic with smart delayed-release designed to ensure that these effective ingredients are used efficiently within a woman’s body.
It is no shock that Wholesome Wellness Organic Probiotics takes our #1 spot as the best natural and organic probiotic for all women.
Best Probiotics for Women Over 50
1. 1MD BiomeMD Probiotics for Women
This product offers a tailored formula and probiotic design that is specifically made for all women but offers maximized effectiveness for women over the age of 50.
1MD BiomeMD contains 60+ Billion CFU’s and 4 potent prebiotics that offer additional support for the urinary system and vaginal health.
Best Probiotics for Pregnant Women
1. Garden of Life Once Daily Prenatal Probiotics
Garden of Life provides a safe and effective probiotic tailored towards women who are pregnant or actively trying to become pregnant.
The gut biome changes dramatically through pregnancy; therefore, it is crucially important to use a probiotic tailored for pregnant women to ensure the safety of your baby. Garden of Life Prenatal Probiotics works by supporting lactation, and immune support during pregnancy.
Best Gummy Probiotics for Women
1. Align DualBiotic for Men and Women
As an alternative to capsules, Align DualBiotic offers easy-to-eat gummies that contain potent probiotics to ensure and support proper gut health.
Align DualBiotic takes our number 1 spot because of the effectiveness and great taste.
Who Should Use Probiotics for Women?
Probiotic supplements are a safe, effective, and accessible way to support proper gut health and build a strong microbiome for both men and women.
The reason why it is crucially important for females to take advantage of probiotic supplements is because of the unique anatomical and physiological differences that women possess. For example, probiotics can help prevent vaginal infections, urinary tract disease, and vaginosis.
Pregnant women also benefit from the addition of a probiotic within their diet. With the onset of pregnancy, a women’s physiology changes quite tremendously. One way this occurs is through the digestive tract. To supply the baby, a pregnant woman’s digestive tract will respond differently to food.
It is important to note that a pregnant woman should seek a probiotic designed for pregnant women after consulting their healthcare provider. premium prenatal probiotics will offer additional vitamins and minerals to support proper immune system function.
Although probiotics are generally safe for pregnant women, advising your healthcare provider is the best option to ensure the safety of the baby.
Methodology
Colony-forming unit (CFU) count. The most effective and potent probiotic won’t necessarily have the highest CFU count. If this were the case, the market would be bombarded with probiotics that claim to have over 100’s of billions of CFU’s.
Generally, the higher the CFU, the greater effectiveness of the probiotic but only up until a certain point. The minimum effective dosage of CFU’s is 20 billion CFU’s, anything lower than this seems to be less effective. In contrast, there seem to be diminishing returns for the effectiveness of a probiotic, microbiome, and gut health when CFU counts are above 100 billion.
For these reasons, 1MD BiomeMD takes the best overall pick and is the best choice for women seeking an effective probiotic.
Strain Diversification. As one of the most important factors in determining the effectiveness of a probiotic, strain diversification is the variety of different strains found within a probiotic. Different strains have unique impacts on the body.
In the case of the best women’s probiotic, it was important to seek probiotics that had relatively high lactobacillus which functions to help digest certain molecules, ultimately supporting vaginal health and UTI prevention.
When it comes to strain diversity, it is best to have a wide spectrum of varying strains than a large CFU count of limited strains which is why Wholesome Wellness Organic Probiotics containing 34 unique strains, took our second-best overall probiotic for women.
Prebiotics & additional nutrients. With the addition of prebiotics and a variety of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, the microbiome can thrive. Probiotic supplements that contain these prebiotics and additional nutrients work better than other probiotics because they provide additional energy and nutrients to support a woman’s microbiome.
This is another reason why we decided 1MD BiomeMD takes our #1 spot.
Strictly Probiotic. Our list is composed of only premium probiotics that are equipped with only essential ingredients to support proper microbiome health and gut health. It was important to eliminate probiotics that contained additional synthetic compounds which may be harmful to a woman regardless if she was pregnant or not.
Additionally, it is common practice for supplement companies to include extra “fluff” ingredients to increase the price of the product. All the premium probiotics on this list do not contain “fluff” ingredients.
Protective capsule coating. To ensure the safety of the probiotic formula throughout the digestive system, it is crucial that a probiotic has a capsule designed to withstand the impact of the digestive system. In contrast, poor probiotics will simply not work if they are destroyed within the stomach or other areas of the digestive system.
Our top 10 list is comprised of only the best premium probiotics that contain a protective capsule coating.
Benefits
Probiotics for women provide health support for your body. By taking a probiotic supplement, you empower your body with the protection it needs to prevent certain bowel diseases, immune system inhibition, and prevent oral and vaginal infections.
Probiotic supplements provide essential healthy bacteria that may not otherwise be found within foods. Probiotics supplements fill in the gaps within your diet to help support overall health.
Probiotics for women improve immune system function. In today’s culture, it is important for all women to maintain proper immune system function to help protect against outside pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and toxins. Especially during pregnancy, a woman’s immune system may become compromised which can not only e harmful to the woman but also harmful to the baby.
In a study performed to investigate the relationship between immune system function and probiotics, researchers found that the use of probiotic supplements enhanced the barrier function of epithelial cells. Epithelial cells are an important type of cell for proper immune system function because they provide antibodies and self-cleaning protocols that allow them to eliminate pathogens (1).
Probiotics for women prevent obesity. The gut microbiota plays a critical role in how nutrients and energy are extracted from foods. This is crucially important as energy use and storage play an important role in obesity. As a reminder, the function of strain types caries tremulously, the full list of functions of probiotics are still being developed by researchers today.
There have been a variety of new researchers suggesting that varying strains of probiotics and the gut microbiome as a whole may play an important role in body weight management and obesity indicators (2).
In a 2017 research study, researchers assessed the effects of oral probiotics on body weight and body fat in overweight individuals. The researchers were specifically interested in the Lactobacillus strain and its effect on weight and body fat in overweight individuals. They found that when combined with a hypocaloric diet, probiotics helped decrease body weight and body fat levels (3).
Probiotics for women provide protection against urogenital infections. Partly due to the anatomical differences in genitalia, women may be more susceptible to infections. The vagina is a self-cleaning sex organ that has the capabilities to self-regulated ensuring that it stays healthy. As we know, this is not always the case. It is completely normal for women to acquire at least one urogenital infection over a lifetime.
Probiotics allow for a woman to keep a consistent balance between healthy bacteria within their vaginal microbiome to help support urogenital health.
In a research study done in 2018, researchers investigated the link between probiotics and urogenital health. Researchers compared oxidative stress therapy with daily oral probiotic intakes and measured histological features of urogenital infections. What they found was that women who took oral probiotics daily were better at preventing and reducing urogenital infections (4).
Probiotics for women decrease insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is often overlooked by many Americans but poses a threat to not only women but the general population. When you ingest foods high in carbohydrates, your body naturally secretes insulin which instantly helps utilize the sugars in many ways.
The problem is that when your body becomes conditioned to extremely high levels of sugar, the cells sensitive to insulin begin to decline which inhibits the use of insulin causing resistance. Insulin resistance has been linked to a large number of negative health impacts, illnesses, and diseases.
Probiotic supplements decrease insulin resistance. In a 2019 research study, researchers found that people who were assigned to take oral probiotics should significantly fewer signs of insulin resistance when compared to a placebo group. The researchers suggest that this is in part due to glucose metabolism rates due to a variety of strains found within probiotics supplements (5).
Probiotics for women help decrease blood pressure. In 2014, researchers conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the impact of probiotics on systemic blood pressure. What the researchers found was that probiotics help decrease blood pressure when the probiotic contains a large variety of strains and moderate to high amounts of CFU’s (6).
For the best blood pressure results, it is best to take probiotic supplements consistently for at least 2 months. The researchers suggest that it took a minimum of 8 weeks for these results to begin showing which suggests that the effect of probiotics on blood pressure may take time to manifest.
Probiotics for women help prevent respiratory tract infections. Probiotics can offer a solution to common reparatory tract infections such as the common cold, cough, runny nose, and nasal congestion. Researchers from the American Journal of Nursing concluded that probiotics are more likely to be beneficial in preventing respiratory tract infections, especially in children (7)
Additionally, it has been found that children who were ingesting more probiotic milk were significantly less likely to contract respiratory infections, and intestinal infections resulting in few sick days.
This link is not fully understood by researchers but it is suggested that due to the increase of probiotics, the gut microbiome may play an important role in protecting against respiratory tract infections (8). Although this research was conducted on children, the results can be generalized to a wider population.
Probiotics for women reduce total body cholesterol. The impact of unhealthy amounts of cholesterol can be very dangerous for a female’s body. High amounts of cholesterol may lead to many health problems, including heart attack and stroke. The scary part about elevated levels of cholesterol is that there are often no signs of symptoms.
It is strongly advised that cholesterol levels in the body are constantly in check. One effective way to do this is by utilizing a probiotic supplement. Researchers from the faculty of Medicine Sciences at Baltimore university found that a probiotic that contained a variety of strains was an effective nonpharmacological alternative to reducing elevated levels of total cholesterol within the body (9).
Additionally, the researchers suggest that longer treatment times and capsule forms of probiotics seemed to have contributed to a better curative effect (10).
Probiotics for women prevent diarrhea. Antibiotics are a common cause of onset diarrhea which can be harmful to a female’s body. The use of antibiotic treatment disrupts the intestinal microbiome and, decreases the strain diversification of the microbiome. This can lead to a loss of microbial metabolism, loss of fluids, and loss of colonization of probiotics.
Within any premium probiotic, there should be optimal amounts of Lactobacillus and Saccharomyces. Both of these probiotic strains have been proven to reduce antibiotic-associated diarrhea in individuals aged 18-64 by 51% (11). In this way, probiotics can be used as an alternative to harmful medications aimed at preventing antibiotic-associated diarrhea.
Probiotics for women prevent irregular bowel movements. Constant bowel movements which are often loose and frequent can be harmful to all individuals which can lead to health-related issues, malnutrition, and even death in some severe cases. Most people associate diarrhea with the loss of nutrients and fluids, but most people do not think about the impact on your gut microbiome health.
The use of probiotics can be a safeguard against irregular bowel movements. In a recent 2013 study, researchers found that probiotic use can help by reducing the duration of diarrhea (12). It is important to note that these studies were aimed at pediatric infectious diarrhea.
Probiotics for women prevent irritable bowel syndrome. Irritable bowel syndrome is a common functional disorder of the gastrointestinal tract which can cause bloating, severe abdominal pain, discomfort, and change in stool formation.
Most individuals who have irritable bowel syndrome have a reduction in two main probiotic strains lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. Although irritable bowel syndrome is not fully understood by scientists, the reduction of these two key probiotic strains seems to play an important role.
In a study performed in association with the British Dietetic Association, researchers found that probiotics offered relief to patients that have irritable bowel syndrome. This study suggests that probiotic supplementation may be an effective alternative to drugs to help treat irritable bowel syndrome (13).
Probiotics for women improve mental health. Probiotics may provide a solution to improve mental health problems by reducing the symptoms of mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, and OCD. Recently, researchers have begun to investigate the impact of probiotics on the nervous system which can be linked to the disorders mentioned above.
In a recent 2016 study, researchers concluded that probiotics helped in improving psychiatric disorder-related behaviors including anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), obsessive-compulsive disorder, and memory abilities.
The researchers stress the fact that although the direct cause is unknown, they believe the effect of probiotics on the central nervous system is an area of potential and should be investigated further (14).
Probiotics for women prevent dental decay. Recent studies suggest that probiotics may play a role in painting tooth health, oral health, and preventing tooth decay. In 2017, a team of researchers investigated this further. The study showed that there was a correlation between probiotics and tooth decay (16).
Probiotics for pregnant women decrease the risk for eczema in babies. As a preventive measure, probiotics have been demonstrated to mitigate eczema risk in infants. Taking probiotics in this way is completely safe and effective to decrease the risk of eczema in infants. These results have been found in mothers who were taking probiotics while breastfeeding.
In a study conducted by the journal of allergy and clinical immunology, researchers indicated that infants were at a lower risk of developing eczema within the first months following their birth if the mother was taking a probiotic regimen prenatally (16).
Probiotics for women prevent sepsis in infants. As another beneficial way to ensure your baby’s safety, probiotics have been shown to decrease sepsis rates in infants. Sepsis is a serious illness that elicits extreme amounts of infections causing an infant’s organs and physiological systems to become inhibited. Sepsis rates are highest in children, infants, and elderly adults but infants born prematurely are extremely susceptible to sepsis.
A meta-analysis of over 30 studies and 9,000 participants found that probiotics were extremely helpful in reducing the risk of sepsis in babies who were premature (17).
Recap
Premium probiotic supplements provide a woman with the optimal amount of healthy bacteria and microorganisms that are responsible for a variety of health benefits that include but are not limited to weight loss, enhanced digestion, immune system support, and a reduction in some diseases and illness.
The best probiotic for women will contain a wide spectrum of strain diversification, over 20+ billion CFU’s, additional vitamins & minerals, and a protective capsule coating to ensure optimal absorption.
Take advantage of your body’s healthy bacteria by supplying it with the probiotics it needs to thrive.
For Food4me.org’s #1 probiotic for women, click here