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8 Health Benefits of Probiotics for Women’s Health

Written by Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC on January 8, 2025

Written by Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC on January 8, 2025 — Reviewed by Hilary Watts

• Improve Gut Health|
• Improve Mood|
• Balance Female Hormones|
• Improve Thyroid Function|
• Improve Skin|
• Increase Fertility|
• Promote Vaginal and Urinary Tract Health|
• Support Pregnancy|
• How to Use Probiotics for Women’s Health|

Probiotics are good for just about everyone, but they have a few unique benefits for women. Probiotics are live cultures of good bacteria and yeasts taken as a dietary supplement or in fermented foods to support your overall health and well-being. While there aren’t specific probiotics for women, it’s a good idea to take a variety of species and types to maximize the benefits.

In addition to improving digestive health, mood/mental health, and skin health generally, using probiotics may also improve vaginal and hormonal health for women specifically. 

These benefits include maintaining urinary tract health (preventing UTIs) and a healthy vaginal microbiome (to reduce yeast infections and other irritations). Probiotics can also help keep thyroid and sex hormones in balance, which play an important role in feminine health issues like fertility and menopause.

Let’s take a look at eight ways probiotic supplements can benefit women’s health.

1. Improve Gut Health

Your digestive health depends on the balance of bad and good bacteria in your intestinal tract. An imbalance can lead to digestive disorders like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and leaky gut and can also cause digestive symptoms like bloating and constipation. Poor digestive health can also negatively impact your immune health.

Women have a greater incidence of IBS than men and also experience more IBS symptoms, so gut health improvements may be specifically beneficial to women 1.

Using probiotics can help restore a healthy balance in the gut and support the digestive system. Research shows that probiotics are an effective treatment for IBS and other digestive disorders, with no side effects  2 3. 

Probiotics can:

• Improve the bacterial diversity in the gut microbiome 4
• Fight pathogens (bad bacteria) and their toxic byproducts 
• Promote a more rapid recovery from imbalances in your gut organisms
• Promote a healthy immune system response in your digestive tract 5
• Reduce gut inflammation (excessive inflammation is what causes digestive symptoms) 6
• Encourage the growth of good bacteria in your gut 7  
• Reduce damage to your gut lining 8 9 10
• Put simply, probiotics can help improve the balance of microorganisms in your gut, reduce gut inflammation, and improve immune function.

The beneficial bacteria and fungi in your gut also impact other areas of health and wellness, like mood, hormones, skin, and even fertility. 

2. Improve and Balance Mood and Mental Health

If you experience depression or anxiety, you’re not alone. Women are twice as likely to be depressed as men, and twice as likely to have anxiety disorders as men. The good news is, if you are depressed, probiotic supplements may help support your mood.

• Two meta-analyses (the highest quality scientific data) found that probiotics improved depression, with no negative side effects 11 12. 
• Though the data about anxiety are not as strong, there is some evidence that probiotics can improve anxiety 13. 

If you experience depression and anxiety, it may be worth trying a daily probiotic to improve your mood.

Another study looked at the effects of probiotics on women experiencing depression who were already taking an SSRI (serotonin reuptake inhibitor, a common medical treatment for depression). The group receiving probiotics alongside SSRIs reported greater improvements in libido, sexual satisfaction, and marital satisfaction. Depression improvements were similar between the groups receiving the SSRI alone and the SSRI with the probiotic 14.

3. Balance Female Hormones

You’ve likely experienced at least one episode of symptoms related to your monthly hormonal cycle—cramps, irritability, bloating, sleep disturbances, or mood swings.

These frustrating symptoms can be caused by hormonal fluctuations that occur throughout the month. 

Your gut bacteria play an important role in the breakdown of hormones and their removal from your bloodstream.

This is especially important for women because, if this process slows down, imbalances in estrogen are likely. Too much estrogen contributes to conditions like PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), endometriosis, reproductive cancer, and cardiovascular disease 15. 

There is some evidence that these types of hormonally influenced conditions may improve from increased diversity in your gut microbiome 15. Taking a probiotic may help women with painful periods need less pain medications like aspirin and ibuprofen, and also boost mood, as results from a 2024 randomized control trial showed 16.

4. Improve Thyroid Function

According to the American Thyroid Association, women are 5 to 8 times more likely than men to experience thyroid issues. If you have a thyroid condition, probiotics may help augment your medical regimen.

Research suggests a correlation between low thyroid function, thyroid autoimmunity, and gut health disorders. Correlations were found for SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) 17 18 and H. pylori overgrowth 19. 

Since we know that probiotic supplements can be effective in treating these gut imbalances, it’s plausible that improving your gut health with probiotic supplements may be helpful for those with low thyroid function.

In fact, in one interesting randomized controlled trial, an 8-week course of probiotics reduced thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) levels, allowed for lower dosing of T4 hormone medication, and reduced fatigue compared to placebo 20. This implies that probiotics may play an important role in balancing thyroid health.

Importantly, if you struggle with symptoms like fatigue and brain fog, despite taking thyroid hormone supplements and getting normal thyroid lab test results, it’s very possible that your thyroid is not the problem. Low thyroid symptoms and symptoms of poor gut health are very similar. In this case, it’s important not to focus exclusively on your thyroid health. A 30-day trial of probiotics may start to resolve symptoms that may be caused by your gut.

5. Improve Skin

Do you struggle with skin blemishes that pop up, seemingly without explanation? Skin issues like acne and rosacea have been shown to be interrelated with the gut and skin microbiome, and allergic skin conditions are connected to the immune system in the gut 21 22. 

Using oral and topical probiotic products (soaps or creams) has been shown to improve acne and eczema 23 24 25 26. And because acne is often related to your hormones, oral probiotics may help balance this hormonal trigger as well.

6. Increase Fertility

Improving your gut health with probiotic supplements may lead to improvements in fertility. Fertility is complex, but thyroid hormones, sex hormones, and the cascade of stress hormones all play a role in a woman’s ability to get pregnant.

Though the data aren’t yet clear, consider this:

• In one observational study, women with elevated thyroid antibodies had more miscarriages and fewer live births 27.
• A randomized-controlled trial showed that an 8-week course of probiotics improved thyroid lab markers 20. 
• In a systematic review and meta-analysis (the highest quality data), probiotics improved hormone and inflammatory markers in women with PCOS , who often struggle with infertility 28. 
• I have seen improvements in gut health improve my clients’ fertility experiences. For example, I had a 29-year-old client with IBS and PCOS who wasn’t menstruating after coming off the birth control pill. As part of her treatment plan, I included probiotics and female support herbs and encouraged some diet changes. Over the next several months, her digestive symptoms improved, her cycle returned, and she became pregnant naturally.

If you are struggling with infertility, improving your gut health with probiotics may be worth a trial.

7. Promote Vaginal Health and Urinary Tract Health

Uncomfortable vaginal infections are no fun.  Using probiotics to support your vaginal flora may help. If you get frequent bacterial vaginosis or yeast infections, probiotics may help you resolve and prevent them. If you get recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs), it’s important to understand that this may be connected to bacterial vaginosis 29. Taking cranberry may get you part of the way there, but prevention and even treatment with probiotics is a great idea.

• In a systematic review, a Lactobacillus probiotic blend applied vaginally showed promise for treating bacterial vaginosis 30.
• In another systematic review, oral probiotic supplementation improved outcomes for bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections, urinary tract infections, and human papillomavirus (HPV) 31.

8. Support Healthy Pregnancy

There may be no more important time in life for optimizing health than when you are pregnant and breastfeeding. The good news is that probiotics may help you during this time.

Women who took probiotics during pregnancy had fewer incidences of 32: 

• Gestational diabetes
• Pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy)
• Excessive weight gain
• Vaginal bacteria infections

Talk to your medical provider about including probiotics as part of your prenatal dietary supplements to support a healthy pregnancy.

How to Use Probiotics for Women’s Health

With so many science-backed health benefits, probiotic supplements should be a regular part of your general health maintenance program. Whether you choose powders, gummies, or probiotic capsules, taking something daily is a good idea if you’re experiencing health challenges related to what we’ve discussed so far.  

The best probiotics for women aren’t a specific strain or species, but a blend of the three categories.

• Category 1: Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium blends, including species such as Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus rhamnosus.
• Category 2: Saccharomyces boulardii
• Category 3: Soil-Based Blends, usually Bacillus species

Using one category is good, but using all three together is most likely to provide the maximum benefit—we see these benefits play out with clients in our clinic all the time. When purchased individually, you’ll often find types 1 and 2 in the refrigerator at your health food store. Type 3 is shelf-stable. However, we have developed a powder formula that includes all three categories and doesn’t require refrigeration at all.

You should choose products with colony-forming units (CFUs) in the billions. You can take your probiotics any time of day, with or without food.

Eating a diet rich in prebiotic fiber, like inulin found in root veggies, bananas, and alliums, may support the live cultures in your probiotic supplements, but some people are sensitive to prebiotics. They can be a symptom trigger for those with IBS and other digestive disorders.

You may also want to augment your diet with fermented foods like kimchi, kombucha, and kefir for their probiotic content. These foods are beneficial, but may not be compatible with everyone’s digestive system, and you’d need to eat them consistently every day in order to reap the same or similar benefits of a daily supplement.  

Choosing the Best Probiotics for Women

Choosing probiotics for women isn’t any different than choosing probiotics for men. Your main objective is to make sure you are getting a quality probiotic product. Because probiotic pills and supplements aren’t heavily regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you need to do your own quality control to make sure your probiotics will give you the benefit you’re hoping for.

High-quality probiotic supplements will have:

• Independent lab analysis to guarantee the claims on the package
• Probiotic species that are clearly labeled across multiple species, strains, and categories
• Potency guaranteed by independent lab analysis
• No major allergens (gluten-free, dairy-free)
• Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) in place in the product facility

You may also want to make sure the product uses vegetarian capsules, or is vegan, if this is important to you.

For more on how to use probiotics, see our Probiotics Starter Guide.

Start Benefiting from Probiotics for Women

Whether you’re trying to improve acne, reduce your PMS, stop bloating, or feel less depressed, probiotics are a valuable and effective strategy to help you with your women’s health concerns.

Including high-quality probiotic supplements in your regular routine is easy and is likely to provide you with numerous benefits to your gut health, hormone health, skin, and mood. Always ask your healthcare professional before starting something new, especially if you’re taking prescription medication.

We would love to help you get started on your gut health journey. Reach out to our clinic to set up a time to talk to one of our trained clinicians. Or you can go at your own pace with my book, Healthy Gut, Healthy You.

The Ruscio Institute has developed a range of high-quality formulations to help our clients and audience. If you’re interested in learning more about these products, please click here. Note that there are many other options available, and we encourage you to research which products may be right for you. The information on DrRuscio.com is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.