Piperine is a biologically active component in black pepper, and is largely responsible for its strong smell and flavor (1).
While most people think of black pepper as being simply a spice used to add flavor to food, the piperine it contains actually makes it useful for combatting a variety of health issues, from upset stomachs to dental problems (2).
The piperine in black pepper slows down some of the processes of the liver and intestines, meaning that it can cause the body to hold certain compounds inside it for longer. This helps the body to absorb more of the nutrients it needs, and it heightens the effectiveness of several supplements and drugs.
Research
Rankings
1. LiftMode Piperine
LiftMode Piperine enhances the absorption and uptake of various supplements, and it’s ideal for vegetarians or vegans since it uses non-GMO ingredients.
There are also no additives or fillers: just pure piperine and other supplementary ingredients. Almost no other pure piperine supplement can compare, which is why it’s BodyNutrition’s #1 choice.
2. Prescribed for Life Piperine Powder
Prescribed For Life piperine powder is easy to mix with food or drink so you can obtain the health benefits with a minimum of effort.
The standardized extract isn’t very hard to mask with other flavors, so don’t worry about making your food too spicy for comfort.
3. Carlyle Bioperine
Carlyle bioperine supplements use a highly concentrated version of piperine to great effect.
The capsules can help your body absorb other nutrients and are made only with gluten-free and non-GMO ingredients.
4. Source Naturals Bioperine
Source Natural’s BioPerine comes with 120 tablets in every affordable purchase; in fact, they’re the most affordable supplements of this type you can find.
They’re great for vegetarians and provide a plethora of natural benefits thanks to their ingredient quality.
5. NuVitality Turmeric Curcumin with Piperine
This piperine supplement uses piperine alongside the powerful antioxidant curcumin, which is one of the most popular piperine combinations. If boosting the absorption of turmeric-derived curcumin is your reason for taking piperine it’s a good pick.
6. DRS Turmeric Curcumin with Bioperine
This pure turmeric supplement also includes a healthy amount of piperine to increase bioavailability.
DRS BioPerine is bolstered by a 100% satisfaction guarantee and curcumin, forming a high-efficiency mixture that can provide a plethora of health benefits.
7. VitaBreeze Turmeric Curcumin Complex with Black Pepper Extract
VitaBreeze’s Curcumin and black pepper extract compound includes 750 mg high quality ingredients per capsule.
There are 180 veggie capsules in total for extra value and to ensure you don’t need to purchase multiple bottles for a single month.
8. Metabolic Maintenance Resveratrol with Piperine
This supplement mixture, featuring piperine and several other antioxidants and cardiovascular support supplements, is great for boosting your metabolism and providing other health benefits.
The ingredients used are all-natural and don’t make use of preservatives or fillers to ensure quality.
9. BioSchwartz Turmeric Curcumin with Bioperine
These supplement capsules are improved with bioperine, with 1500 mg per serving for extra potency and power.
Each capsule makes use of high-quality ingredients and is professionally formulated and created in the USA to ensure product quality and consistency.
10. Secrets of the Tribe Black Peppercorn
Secrets of the Tribe makes one of the few piperine supplements that comes in liquid form. While it’s useful in a couple of niche applications, most people would be better-suited by powder or capsule-based piperine supplements due to their greater versatility, ease of use, and standardized piperine concentration.
Category winners
Best piperine overall: LiftMode Piperine
LiftMode Piperine is a powder-form piperine supplement that’s ultra-simple and ultra-pure. It’s well-suited for adding to custom supplement blends, shakes, and smoothies, and it’s this flexibility that brings LiftMode to the top of our rankings.
Best piperine for boosting supplement absorption: LiftMode Piperine
Beyond its first-order effects, piperine is a popular addition to supplementation stacks because of its ability to augment the absorption of other compounds with low bioavailability. For this use case, our pick is LiftMode Piperine: its potent formulation and ease of mixing with other powder-form supplements ensures the other supplements in your stack get absorbed as effectively as possible.
Best piperine with turmeric: NuVitality Turmeric Curcumin with Piperine
Piperine and turmeric make a great combination, thanks to the ability of piperine to accelerate the absorption of the active compounds in turmeric. For those looking for this antioxidant and anti-inflammatory combination, Turmeric Curcumin with Piperine from NuVitality is the way to go thanks to its high dose of both supplements.
Best piperine capsules: Carlyle Bioperine
Don’t have the equipment for measuring out precise doses of piperine powder? Carlyle Bioperineis a great option for you. With 10 mg per capsule you get a reliable and consistent dosage every time–it’s our favorite capsule-based piperine supplement.
Best piperine for boosting energy levels: Prescribed for Life Piperine Powder
Prescribed for Life is a great option if you’re looking for a piperine supplement for lifting your energy levels. It’s sourced from non-GMO black pepper, has zero extra ingredients, and blends up easily into shakes and smoothies.
Best piperine for weight loss: Carlyle Bioperine
Some research has found that bioperine can suppress hunger cravings; for this application we like the simplicity and convenience of the capsule-form bioperine in Carlyle Bioperine. It’s easy to take in the morning or afternoon to cut down on mid-morning or mid-day hunger cravings when you’re on a diet for weight loss.
Who should buy piperine?
Piperine is generally considered safe for most of the population, and can help improve the absorption of supplements to improve their efficacy. It’s also a great choice if you want to boost some mental abilities; while not explicitly a neurological enhancer, piperine can increase your energy levels and improve productivity. This makes it a great alternative to something like caffeine, which carries with it the possibility of light addiction or jitteriness.
It’s also recommend for people who don’t normally eat black pepper in your diet. This provides you with the same health benefits without having to change your palette or eat dishes that aren’t your favorite.
Persons who are taking more than 40mg of lomatopide per day should avoid Piperine, as their can be serious interaction. Furthermore, people who are on any sort of medication, should speak to their doctor before consuming a piperine supplement, as it may alter the absorption or the efficacy of the drug in your body.
Pregnant and nursing women, as well as children, should avoid piperine unless otherwise directed by a doctor. If you have blood sugar issues, it’s best to avoid piperine as well, as it may affect blood sugar levels. People who are undergoing surgery, should avoid piperine 2 weeks before and after surgery, as it may cause blood clotting and blood sugar issues.
How We Ranked
The first thing we looked for, when ranking the best piperine supplements, was purity. While piperine does come included in some products, we did prefer products that were just pure piperine. This was because we wanted piperine products to be an add-on to your other supplements, to maximize benefits – a main reason why XX ranked so highly.
We did make an exception for turmeric products because these high-quality supplementary compounds are well known natural remedies that are nonetheless difficult for most people’s digestive systems to fully absorb
In terms of the delivery method, capsules and powder were ranked equally. The real selling point for us, was value. Most of our top choices, contained more than a month’s worth of tablets, which allows you to really see the long-term health benefits of these supplements without having to make multiple purchases.
Lastly, we looked at the overall ingredient quality. High-quality ingredients derived from natural sources and healthy extraction methods are key if you want the best supplement available. For instance, while piperine is always a natural ingredient, some manufacturers use less than stellar extraction methods and may include harmful ingredients as a result.
Above all else, we made sure that each supplement company used environmentally and human-safe extraction methods as well as non-GMO ingredients.
Benefits
Piperine inhibits a process in the liver known as glucuronidation. This process normally involves a signal being sent to the liver to expel medicinal drugs and supplements as urine (3).
Piperine, however, stops this process, which means that the body retains the drug for longer. Piperine also changes the rate of metabolism in the body by slowing down the intestinal transit rate, giving the body more time to absorb certain compounds (4).
This is beneficial to the body because piperine keeps certain chemicals from being released before the body is finished absorbing them (5).
One important example of this is curcumin. Curcumin is an anti-inflammatory molecule that is not unlike fish oil in its benefits and purpose (6).
It has a low bioavailability, which means that when it is administered, not much of the compound remains in the body before being expelled in urine or feces (7).
Piperine can increase the bioavailability of supplements. Piperine works well with curcumin, in that it keeps the body from metabolizing it so quickly – enabling the body to hold the curcumin inside longer, which allows it to be better absorbed. Studies have shown that taking curcumin with piperine increases the bioavailability of the curcumin by 2000% (8).
Piperine provides these same effects for several other supplements as well. Some of these supplements include vitamin B6, vitamin C, and EGCG (9).
It enhances the benefits of these compounds by changing the way the body processes them, which increases their absorption and allows the body to accrue more of the benefits from them before they are expelled from the body (10).
Piperine has long been known as an anti-inflammatory agent (11). Aside from its use as a magnifier for other dietary supplements, piperine can also benefit the body on its own. It also works as a pain reliever by blocking the expression of a gene that causes arthritis pain. Specifically, piperine reduces the amount of pain the body feels, making things like arthritis and other injuries easier to withstand (12).
A 2008 study recorded in Food and Chemical Toxicology also touted the benefits of piperine on the brain. Although the reasons behind this outcome were not clear at the time, the results of the study showed a significant improvement in mental processes, increased attention span, and heightened reasoning skills after taking piperine (13).
For instance, there are some studies that show that antioxidants can lower inflammation and premature aging of the skin (14). Another found that oxidative stress, or stress caused by free radical oxygen molecules, is one of the lower common denominator sources for a variety of big diseases.
Antioxidant protection, according to the study, is responsible for lower incidences of cancer, mirror genitive diseases, and general bodily dysfunction (15).
Piperine can help with blood sugar management. Piperine may be able to help you with lower blood sugar, at least according to a study involving male Swiss albino mice.
In the study, scientists provided the mice with daily oral administrations of piperine serum. At the end of the study, they found that blood sugar levels were lowered across the board. Piperine, it’s thought, can affect thyroid function in mammals like mice. This same benefit could easily extend to humans, although more research is required to be sure (16).
Piperine can help improve metabolic syndrome. Piperine can enhance insulin resistance and even cause favorable changes in plasma levels after consuming the substance for a few months. One randomized and double-blind study taking place over eight weeks found that there were positive metabolic changes for subjects that took piperine supplements.
Specifically, consuming piperine resulted in significant decreases in insulin resistance, better LDL-cholesterol levels, better respiratory quotients, and statistically significant differences in regard to norepinephrine levels. Suffice it to say that the full effects of piperine when it comes to losing weight and diabetes are wide-ranging and largely positive (17).
Piperine may enhance appetite suppression. For instance, a small study involving 16 people found that those who drank water with black pepper experienced significantly reduced appetites than those who drank regular water.
However, scientists note that the study results are small, and more research is needed to guarantee a connection between piperine and lower appetite (18).
Piperine may help support a healthy gut flora. Many people have trouble with weight because of bad gut bacteria. A healthy gut microbiome with probiotics is important for general health and for weight control.
Piperine may be able to help on this point, as there is some evidence that black pepper can inspire the growth of more good bacteria – which can then progressively push out bad bacteria.
This doesn’t just help with weight loss, it also helps with other health issues, since your microbiome can affect your mood, immune system, and even hormones (19).
Piperine may act as a natural pain reliever. Piperine seems to exhibit pain-relieving effects, which is thought to be related to its anti-inflammatory properties.
Some studies involving mice suggest that even low doses of piperine and additional components like ethanol can cause significant pain relief effects. This makes piperine supplements potential alternatives to regular medication (20).
Side effects
Piperine is widely considered safe for human consumption, but it does have a few possible side effects (21).
Piperine may have trace carcinogens. One of the most worrisome of these possible side effects is the fact that black pepper (including the piperine it contains) is a possible carcinogen (22).
There have been several preliminary studies that list cancer as a side effect of long-term use of piperine, but this side effect was most commonly noted when the piperine was used as a topical agent, not as a food product (23).
This was not found to be the case when the product was tested on rats, which are hypersensitive to the effects of piperine, but for human beings, oral consumption of piperine appears to be completely safe in this context (24).
Piperine may hinder the body’s ability to block the absorption of certain toxins. The same processes that piperine employs to aid in the absorption of curcumin and other supplements are also processes that can cause major problems in the body (25).
While piperine can make curcumin 2000% more effective in the body, it can also stop a particular protective measure the body takes against toxic xenobiotics (26).
Piperine can cause a lot more side effects than black pepper. Ingesting piperine in the form of black pepper does not present as many of these side effects, but taking it in its pure form as a dietary supplement can cause problems if not taken in the direct dosage (27).
While the benefits of piperine are backed by more research than the possible side effects, one must always check with a doctor before adding it to their diet.
Recommended dosage
While piperine is most commonly ingested via black pepper added to various food dishes, it is also available on its own as a dietary supplement. In order to make this supplement, the piperine is extracted from the black pepper using an organic compound called dichloromethane (28).
Companies such as BioPerine sell piperine in capsules or tablets that one can swallow one to two times a day (29).
The recommended dosage of piperine is 5-15mg per day. It is fast-acting, and the effects of the piperine on the bioavailability of other supplements in the body usually begins in fifteen minutes, with the short-term effects peaking at around two hours. The long-term effects on the metabolism last much longer than this, however.
It is best to take piperine around the same time that one is taking the supplement whose effects they want to enhance.
FAQ
Are piperine and black pepper the same? No, they are not the same. Piperine is a part of regular black or white pepper. It’s an extract that can be taken from the regular substance through a variety of means. Therefore, just eating black pepper or mixing pepper with an existing food or drink item isn’t usually enough to get the health benefits mentioned above unless you make black pepper a big part of your diet.
Companies that sell piperine products extract the substance in greater concentrations so that the good stuff can be added to regular food or supplements efficiently.
What’s BioPerine and is it different than piperine? Bioperine is a proprietary type of piperine extract. There are a few different companies that use the Bioperine label, meaning that they get their extract from the manufacturer of the substance.
Although it’s a variety of regular piperine, it’s still generally recognized as safe and is still a natural ingredient. So there’s no risk of it being “synthetic” or otherwise harmful to your body.
Can piperine improve the immune system? Yes, piperine has been shown to improve the functioning of the immune system. Specifically, it helps keep it from over-reacting and cause mayhem in the body.
How pure are most piperine products? Regular piperine only constitutes about 5 to 9% of regular black or white pepper. However, bioperine products contain concentrations of 95 to 99% pure piperine. This makes many bioperine products more robust or effective at smaller amounts due to this greater concentration.
Note that this isn’t necessarily to say that only bioperine products are worth your time. It depends on how intense you want the health benefits or what you are using the piperine products for.
Where are most piperine products sourced? Technically, you can get piperine wherever you can grow black pepper fruits, which are grown all throughout the world and especially in tropical or humid climates.
However, most bioperine products are grown in southern India and then shipped around the world for manufacturing and extraction.
Is pipeline bad for your liver? No piperine is not bad for your liver. In fact, piperine has shown to protect the liver from bile duct damage in rats.
Does piperine enhance the body’s absorption of all kinds of drugs? Not all drugs, but many. Piperine and bioperine are “bio-enhancers” which are admittedly a new kind of drug. These effects aren’t as well understood or studied as other supplements. But there is some evidence (some of which is listed above) that bio-enhancers can help the body absorb other supplements or drugs for greater effect.
Some nutritional ingredients’ bioavailability, or ability to be absorbed by the body, is increased over time. These include: several herbal extracts like curcumin, water-soluble vitamins like B1, B2, B6, and B12, fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K, several antioxidants like vitamins A and C, amino acids like lysine, valine, leucine, and minerals like calcium, zinc, iron, chromium, and selenium.
Overall, the big reason to take a piperine supplement is to increase other nutrients’ absorption by the body. However, piperine provides its own potential benefits even disregarding the other nutrients it might assist with.
Does piperine influence brain hormones? Yes, piperine can influence brain hormones such as dopamine and serotonin. This helps to influence mood, cognition, memory, and even energy.
When was piperine first discovered? Piperine as a distinct substance was first isolated in 1820. Laboratory synthesis in 1882 in 1894 resulted in the first piperine supplements, though it was still several decades before people began seeking out this substance in earnest. Bioperine is much more recent and has only hit the market in the last few years.
Are turmeric and curcumin the same thing? Turmeric is a spice derived from a plant that grows in Central America and Asia. It can produce a curry that’s yellow in color and is still a part of traditional Indian home remedies, and has been for thousands of years.
Turmeric has key components called curcuminoids, which is where curcumin comes from. Therefore, they’re technically slightly different things but one is derived from the other. This does make packaging claiming to include both turmeric and curcumin a bit disingenuous.
Does all black pepper contain piperine? Yes, all black and white pepper contains piperine.
Can you get enough piperine from normal black pepper to increase the bioavailability of some nutrients? Yes, regular diets containing black pepper in normal amounts can still provide some of the aforementioned health benefits.
However, most diets don’t include enough black pepper for you to see as big of health benefits as you would get from a dedicated supplement.
What is bioavailability, and how does piperine influence it? Bioavailability refers to how much of a compound actually makes it into the body’s bloodstream, to then be metabolized.
Piperine, in a sense, helps more of the product get into the bloodstream so that more of it can be used by the body, and the effects, per dose, are stronger. This also helps you get more value out of a product and more bang for your buck.
When is the best time to take piperine? The best time to take piperine is with a supplement. If you are taking in on its own, you can take it on an empty stomach.
Does piperine affect your metabolism? Yes, piperine can influence your metabolism. Specifically, it can help increase thermogenesis, supporting weight loss and weight maintenance effortlessly.
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Recap
The primary benefit of piperine is the fact that it amplifies the effectiveness of other supplements, especially curcumin. It helps supplements that would normally pass through the body without being effectively absorbed to stay in the body longer, and to metabolize slower. This way, the body gets what it needs, and gets the maximum benefits from the supplements ingested.
While there are some potential side effects of piperine, these are much rarer than the benefits it provides. If taken as a part of a larger dietary supplement routine, piperine can be very good for one’s health.
For BodyNutrition’s #1 recommend piperine supplement, click here.
