Berberine is an herbal supplement with a history that’s thousands of years long.
It’s been used and researched to treat everything from joint pain to weight loss to controlling diabetes in people with insulin insensitivity.
Berberine’s mechanism of action is complex, but it appears to alter the way your body’s mitochondria generate energy, which might indicate why it’s helpful for such a wide variety of ailments.
If you’re looking for a quality weight loss supplement sourced from an herbal remedy, berberine is worth a look.
We’ve examined what’s available on the market right now and come up with the top ten, ranked according to efficacy.
Our advisory panel and our research team rank the best health products and supplements based on performance, label accuracy, and the efficacy of the ingredients in the products.
- Best Overall: Nuzena Berberine Pure +
- Best for gut health: Thorne Research Berberine
- Best for women: aSquared Nutrition Berberine
- Best for weight loss: Integrative Therapeutics Berberine Complex
- We Like Vitamins Berberine
Research
Rankings
Last updated: September 22, 2022
Berberine supplements considered: 25
Hours of research: 45
Experts reviewed: 10
Scientific papers referenced: 32
| IMAGE | PRODUCT | |
|---|---|---|
Best Overall  | 1. Nuzena Berberine Pure +
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Best for gut health  | 2. Thorne Research Berberine
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Best for women  | 3. aSquared Nutrition Berberine
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Best for weight loss  | 4. Integrative Therapeutics Berberine Complex
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 | 5. We Like Vitamins Berberine
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 | 6. Divine Bounty Berberine
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 | 7. Naturebell Berberine Plus
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 | 8. Dr. Whitaker’s Clinical Grade Berberine
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 | 9. EzyAbsorb Berberine
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 | 10. Sunergetic Berberine
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1. Nuzena Berberine Pure +
If you want to leverage the benefits of berberine for better heart health, blood sugar control, and gastrointestinal function, look no further than Nuzena Berberine Pure +.
Each veggie capsule boasts 600 mg of highly pure and highly concentrated berberine, putting it at the top of our list thanks both to its high dosage and to its high purity. On top of that, its purity is independently verified by third-party lab testing, and it’s certified non-GMO, gluten-free, and vegan-friendly.
For all of these reasons, Berberine Pure + by Nuzena is our number one pick for 2021.
2. Thorne Research Berberine
Thorne Research is a well-known name in the rarer, less common herbal extracts because they almost always make a quality, pure product with a minimal amount of extraneous ingredients.
That’s certainly the case here, as this is one of the best berberine supplements out there that comes in a vegetarian capsule. At 500 mg per capsule, it doesn’t skimp on the dosage either.
3. Integrative Therapeutics Berberine Complex
Unlike many other companies, Integrative Therapeutics is doing something innovative with its berberine supplement. It uses three different plant species as sources of berberine, and one of them is combined with several of the other related compounds in the plant that are bioactive.
This means that this berberine supplement could be more likely to work if others have failed you, though if all you want is 100% pure berberine, there are better options on the market.
4. NOW Supplements Berberine Glucose Support
NOW Supplements makes a pretty solid berberine supplement that’s specifically geared towards using berberine for blood sugar control.
It accomplishes this by delivering its berberine content in MCT oil, an excellent deliver platform for the lipid-soluble biologically active compounds in berberine.
The only downside? This method of delivery puts a limit on the dosage; each capsule delivers only 400 mg of berberine
5. We Like Vitamins Berberine
The dosage of berberine in this supplement (600 mg per capsule) is middle-of-the-road, but its simplistic design and its allergen-free certification make it a very solid choice.
The only other ingredients are gelatin (for the capsule–sorry, vegetarians) and rice flour, and the fact that it’s gluten, dairy, egg, and soy free are all to its benefit.
6. Divine Bounty Berberine
For those looking for a high dosage berberine supplement, Divine Bounty is a good choice. With 600 mg per capsule, it provides 20% more berberine per serving than most of its other competitors.
Add to that the fact that it comes in a vegetarian capsule and doesn’t have much in the way of extra fillers and stabilizers, and you’ve got a winning formula for those who need a higher than usual dose of berberine.
7. Naturebell Berberine Plus
Naturebell provides a solid berberine supplement with a high dose of 600 mg per capsule, which is nice for more aggressive supplementation routines shooting for 1200 mg per day in two separate doses. Aside from this, the purity and supplement design is good but not the absolute best.
8. Dr. Whitaker’s Clinical Grade Berberine
Though it’s branded as clinical grade, this berberine supplement doesn’t appear to be of higher dosage or quality than anything else on the market.
It has the usual 500 mg of berberine per capsule, and the capsules are made of gelatin along with a few extra fillers and stabilizers not found in the competitors, making it hard to justify ranking this supplement any higher.
9. Toniq Berberine
Toniq delivers a highly purified version of berberine extract at a solid 500 mg dosage. It’s a great go-to option if you want a simple and pure berberine supplement at a typical dosage, though the capsule has a few more binders and fillers than we’d like to see.
10. Sunergetic Berberine
Sunergentic has a high-dose 600 mg berberine supplement that is delivered in a vegetarian capsule.
It’s also certified free of many common allergens like gluten and soy, though the main downside of the berberine supplement from this lesser-known supplement manufacturer is its reliance on silica as a filler for its capsules. Higher-quality brands will opt for something more natural, like rice flour.
Category winners
Best berberine overall: Nuzena Berberine Pure +
With 600 mg of berberine per capsule, independent lab verification for purity, and no extraneous ingredients, Nuzena is a great choice. High dose, super-pure, and easy to use.
Best berberine for gut health: Thorne Research Berberine
If you are using berberine for gut problems, like the bacterial overgrowth linked to SIBO, you want a berberine supplement that’s free of any extraneous ingredients. That’s why we recommend Thorne Research Berberine for gut health—its ultra-simple supplement design makes it well-suited for this application.
Best berberine for weight loss: Integrative Therapeutics Berberine
Integrative Therapeutics provides berberine alongside two other herbal extracts for digestive and metabolic health: goldenseal and Oregon grape extracts. These could be useful for preventing some of the troublesome gastrointestinal side effects that can come along with starting a weight loss diet.
Best berberine for women: NOW Supplements Berberine Glucose Support
Women benefit from the highly bioavailable delivery of berberine in this supplement, with easier absorption thanks to the MCT oil used to dissolve the active compounds in berberine. The 500 mg dosage is a good fit for many women as well.
Best berberine for heart health: Thorne Research Berberine
Berberine has been used in a few scientific studies to reduce blood lipids and blood pressure, which can help decrease your risk of heart disease. To follow the protocols from these studies as closely as possible, go for a pure and concentrated berberine supplement like Thorne Research Berberine, which boasts 500 mg of 85% berberine extract.
Best berberine for blood sugar control: Nuzena Berberine Pure +
One of berberine’s most popular applications is helping to control blood sugar, and the high-dose formulation of Nuzena Berberine Pure + is perfectly suited for this use case: its 600 mg of concentrated berberine extract per capsule leads the industry in dosage.
Who should buy berberine?
Berberine appears to modulate the way your body processes and uses energy. That means berberine supplements are tailored for a few specific use cases:
People who want to control their blood sugar more effectively. Berberine has been studied most intently as a way to help treat insulin insensitivity in people who have type two diabetes or who have metabolic syndrome. Berberine might help you improve blood glucose regulation and fight back against metabolic dysfunction.
People who want to combat the negative health effects of obesity. On its own, berberine is not a fantastic weight loss supplement, but it does do a fairly good job helping to ameliorate the negative health effects associated with being overweight.
It might help lower your body fat percentage, but it’s far stronger at improving health issues commonly associated with an unhealthy diet and excessive body weight, such as high cholesterol and high blood lipids.
Some research suggests that berberine works for weight loss, but not as well as some of the more high-powered compounds for weight loss like green tea extract.
People with irritable bowel syndrome. Interestingly, berberine also has a dedicated core of advocates among people who have irritable bowel syndrome.
While the mechanism of action here is not entirely clear, clinical research does support the use of berberine to reduce some of the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, so if you have gastrointestinal problems attributable to IBS, you may have success using berberine as well.
How we ranked
Berberine’s specialized uses informed our ranking procedure: since there are several clinical trials on using berberine, we were able to compare the delivery mechanism, dosage, and purity of the products we considered to the gold standard of what’s used in scientific research. Specifically, we looked for:
A focus on delivering berberine. Because berberine is specifically geared towards certain health problems, and because most of the evidence for it comes from clinical trials that used pure berberine extracts in their experiments, we required the berberine supplements in our rankings to deliver only berberine as their active ingredient.
While it’s not necessarily true that berberine must be taken to the exclusion of all other supplements, this is how it is usually prescribed in clinical research. No products that included non-berberine active ingredients made it into our rankings.
Evidence-based berberine dosage. Next, after focusing on berberine-specific supplements, we looked at the dosage.
Since the research on berberine typically uses 900-1500 mg daily doses divided up into several smaller tablets, we required that the berberine supplements in our rankings deliver a dose that was easily parsed out into two or three tablets or capsules per day to reach this clinically effective dosage range.
Anything with less than 400 or more than 600 mg per capsule was dropped from consideration.
Quality ingredients and no unnecessary binders or fillers. Beyond just the dosage, we also looked at the purity of the berberine supplements. Did they take advantage of independent laboratory testing for purity, like Nuzena?
Did the capsules have a clean, simple ingredient design, or were they bloated with silica and other binders or coloring agents?
These were the kinds of things we considered when evaluating the remaining berberine supplements. While a cellulose-based capsule as opposed to a gelatin-based capsule was a nice perk (for strict vegetarians and vegans), it wasn’t a core evaluation criteria.
After pooling results from all of these criteria, we had our final rankings of the best berberine supplements on the market.
FAQ
Q: What does berberine do for the body?
A: Berberine primarily acts on your body’s metabolic environment, helping to prevent the stresses of a poor diet and the stresses of being overweight or obese from causing increases in your blood lipids and blood cholesterol.
It also exerts a potent level of control over poorly regulated blood sugar, which is characteristically seen in type two diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
These mechanisms are fairly well-researched, but berberine also appears to exert some direct benefits on weight loss, and may have benefits for controlling irritable bowel syndrome as well—the reasoning behind why it works in these applications are less well-understood.
Q: Can I take berberine and metformin at the same time?
A: Berberine has been studied in combination with metformin in one study (1), and no negative drug interactions were reported.
However, it’s risky to take a prescription medication and a supplement that are supposed to do the same thing (i.e. lower blood sugar) at the same time, since whether these drugs interact, or inhibit each others’ mechanism of action is unknown.
You should talk to your doctor first if you take metformin (or any other prescription drug) and would also like to try berberine alongside it to better control your blood sugar.
Q: Can berberine affect testosterone levels?
A: Some basic biological research conducted in cells on Petri dishes suggests that certain kinds of cells (mostly tumor cells, or ovary cells) may reduce their expression of testosterone and other androgens, but in terms of effects on your body overall, there’s no evidence that berberine will either lower or boost your testosterone levels.
Q: How long should you take berberine?
A: Clinical research suggests that getting the benefits of berberine may take six to eight weeks to achieve its effects, and several studies have found benefits at twelve weeks as well.
Beyond the timeframe of a few months, it’s not clear if you should take berberine indefinitely, and any potential long-term health effects have not been explored in detail.
Q: Does berberine help with weight loss?
A: Some research suggests that berberine may help with short-term weight loss, which is great given that we already know berberine can be helpful at controlling health issues associated with being overweight or obese.
While it’s not as potent of a weight loss supplement as ingredients like green tea extract or green coffee bean extract, the benefits are nevertheless welcome if you are overweight and are taking berberine for metabolic health. Just don’t rely on it to do all of the proverbial heavy lifting for you when it comes to losing weight.
Q: How long does it take for berberine to lower blood sugar?
A: Most studies on berberine for lowering blood sugar have examined their results at six or eight weeks.
That’s not to say that significant differences wouldn’t have emerged if these studies were concluded either, but it does suggest that you may want to be patient when waiting for results from berberine. It’s not necessarily going to be a quick overnight fix, even if it does work.
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Recap
Berberine has been studied as a natural supplement for controlling blood sugar in people with metabolic syndrome and type two diabetes.
Moreover, it has applications in controlling some of the other negative effects of obesity, such as high blood cholesterol and high blood lipids. While berberine shows some promise as a weight loss product as well, its true strength is in controlling the metabolic environment in your body, especially when it’s stressed by an unhealthy diet or carrying around extra weight.
Some emerging evidence even suggests that berberine could be helpful for irritable bowel syndrome, but the causal pathways behind this are not yet clear.
Berberine is fairly safe, with mild gastrointestinal side effects like constipation and stomach pain occasionally reported. Berberine appears to be most effective when taken at dosage levels of 900 to 1500 mg per day, split into two to three equal doses.
Berberine’s potential for controlling blood sugar, blood lipids, and other indicators of your body’s metabolic health is quite strong, making it one of the most exciting herbal supplements on the market right now.
For BodyNutrition‘s #1 berberine recommendation, click here.
