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Evidence Based

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5 Signs Probiotics Are Working: Science-Backed Reassurance

Written by Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC on October 29, 2024

Written by Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC on October 29, 2024 — Reviewed by Aimee Gallo

• 5 Signs Probiotics Are Working|
• What to Look for In Your Probiotic|

You’ve likely been taking probiotics for a while now, knowing about the variety of health benefits they offer. But how do you know whether or not they’re working?

Beneficial microbes are already living in your gut, but chances are they could use a boost—or at least a rebalancing. Supplementing your natural supply can help improve your digestive health, mental health, mood, immunity, and skin. That’s because your gastrointestinal system and the gut microbiota that live there are the seat of your overall health and wellness. Each of these seemingly unrelated health categories are all, in fact, intimately tied to gut health.

You don’t have to understand every detail of how probiotics work to reap the health benefits, but knowing the basics might help motivate you to keep taking them to maintain a healthy gut. An even greater motivation is to actually notice and experience the real benefit of taking probiotics consistently: symptom relief.

So what are the signs probiotics are working? Let’s dive in.

5 Signs Probiotics Are Working: Gut, Brain, Immunity, and Skin

The most obvious way you can tell if your probiotics are working is that your symptoms are improving. Sometimes you’ll notice improvements within a week, while in other cases, it may take a month or more to see changes. 

Reducing inflammation is a key component in relieving symptoms, which probiotics can help with. Inflammation is at the root of just about every chronic illness we know of. Since your gut is so integral to your overall health and well-being, it makes sense that reducing inflammation in the gut would benefit your whole system. Furthermore, an inflamed gut can develop microscopic holes in its lining, leading to leaky gut syndrome, a condition that’s linked to countless chronic health challenges.

1. Improvements in Digestion

Improvements in digestion—reduced irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptoms, acid reflux, and gas—are good signs probiotics are working for you.

Probiotics boast a number of incredible direct benefits to your digestive tract and other systemic health problems. Part of the reason for those benefits is that probiotics help reduce inflammation in the intestines 1 2 3 4. Less inflammation in your intestine and gut means health benefits for the entire body.  

Because probiotics help balance the gut microbiome, improvements to your lower gut health are a good sign that probiotics are working.

Probiotic supplements work wonders for crowding out bad bacteria that may have taken hold in your gut. This is why probiotics are at the top of the list for healing gut dysbiosis and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). 

By healing the gut with high doses of good probiotic strains and fungi, you can expect the following digestive problems (which all overlap with IBS and SIBO symptoms) to improve:

• Constipation, diarrhea, or other bowel movement changes 5 6 7 8 9
• Abdominal pain, excessive gas, and bloating 9 10 11 12 13
• Acid reflux and heartburn 14 15 16

Including probiotic-rich foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, and kombucha are a great addition to probiotic supplements when it comes to improving digestion. 

2. Improved Mood and Cognitive Function

You’ll know your probiotic is working if you’re experiencing less brain fog, improved mood, and lower stress levels.

In addition to the direct benefit to gut health that probiotics offer, they can also provide some positive benefits to your mood, mental health, and cognition.

There’s a well-established connection between the gut and the brain—the gut-brain axis—that helps explain why so many psychological challenges are accompanied by digestive issues (like IBS, IBD, and celiac) 17 18. 

And since probiotic bacteria are anti-inflammatory, studies show the effects of probiotics include improvements in concentration, depression, anxiety, insomnia, brain fog, and other cognitive issues, all of which have been linked to gut health.

3. Lower Stress and Better Sleep Quality

Interestingly, stress can also lead to gut hypersensitivity, meaning that when there are problems in a stressed-out digestive system, they’re likely felt more intensely by the owner of that digestive system 19. Unfortunately, those experiencing these symptoms may be caught in a feedback loop of stress and digestive upset (which is stressful), and the cycle repeats.

The same goes for sleep—poor sleep can upset the balance of beneficial bacteria in your gut, and an imbalanced gut can negatively impact sleep.

Taking a multi-species probiotic supplement for six weeks improved sleep quality, mood, and energy levels in a recent placebo-controlled clinical study of healthy adults 20. 

We know that stress is directly linked to inflammation and increased digestive symptoms like bloating and nausea 21.

While research seems to be mixed, what’s agreed upon is the correlation between gut health and mental health. The question of chicken and egg—which causes which, or whether one causes the other at all—remains unanswered 22 23. 

That being said, it’s generally agreed in the scientific medical community that the two are intimately linked 24. That’s why your mood and mental state are good signs probiotics are working.

4. Reduced Autoimmunity

While I can’t claim that probiotics can definitively cure an autoimmune disease, you’ll know your probiotic is working if you begin to experience fewer flare-ups and fewer hyper-immunity reactions.

Your immune system is a major source of information in your body, meaning it’s a good indicator of your overall health (much like the state of your gut). 

When your gut has been overrun by harmful bacteria or is in a state of chronic inflammation, this can manifest as autoimmune flare-ups, allergies, or food sensitivities.

A large percentage of your immune system lives in your gut, and inflammation is one of the primary tools the immune system employs to protect you against harmful or toxic microorganisms that may pass through (your body produces a fever to kill a cold bug, or you cut yourself and it gets red and inflamed to fight infection, for example).

Importantly, the balance of healthy gut flora regulates the outflow of inflammation, allowing a healthy immune system to turn on when needed and turn off when not needed. It’s when your immune system doesn’t turn off properly that problems like celiac, atrophic gastritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune conditions arise.

When your immune system feels like it’s working in a balanced manner—you know your probiotics are working.

5. Skin Improvements

A tell-tale sign probiotics are working for you is if your skin condition clears up.

If you’ve seen a dermatologist about acne or rosacea, you’ve likely been prescribed an antibiotic that made it worse—or, at best, cleared the problem temporarily, only for it to return with a vengeance. This happens because one of the side effects of antibiotics is the killing of all manner of good bacteria in your gut and on your skin that help keep your skin’s natural protective barrier intact.

The relationship between gut dysbiosis and skin health is well-studied and established 25 26 27.

Related to the previous section, some skin conditions are indicators of an autoimmune disease (psoriasis, vitiligo, eczema, etc.), in which case, all the information I’ve already shared about immunity relates to the connection between the gut and the skin as well.

However, while not all skin conditions indicate an autoimmune condition, they do all indicate a gut imbalance or dysbiosis 28. Listen to this case study of one of my clients who experienced relief from skin rash, acid reflux, and loose bowels after changing his diet and adding in HCl (hydrochloric acid—to help with stomach acid) and probiotics. 

Certain skin conditions are trickier than others to treat, but adding a high-quality probiotic into whatever other efforts are being put forth to address it is definitely a good idea.

What to Look for in Your Probiotic

There are three categories of probiotics, all of which are beneficial in restoring your gut health by reducing inflammation and reversing dysbiosis. 

The category you’re most likely to find at a grocery store, health food store, or pharmacy is the Lactobacillus/Bifidobacterium type. This type almost always needs to be refrigerated (unless the label explicitly says otherwise), and a good one should come with quantities in the billions of CFUs (CFUs are colony-forming units).

In the clinic, we recommend a quantity of 1 billion CFU or greater. Here is a dosing strategy that we typically recommend to clients:

You have trillions of microbes living in your gut at any given time, so your supplement should have a high enough dose to compete with what’s already in there. You’re also looking for a diversity of bacterial species. Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are what’s called the genera, and the words that come after those words on the label indicate the species. 

If you see a number after that second word, it indicates specific strains of bacteria within that species. Strains are like breeds of dogs. They’re all dogs, but a poodle is distinct from a pit bull. Also, like dogs, the more the merrier. Look for variety across species and strains in your probiotic supplement. 

Here at our clinic, we find a triple-probiotic approach to be most helpful—that is, using all three categories. With this approach, you use probiotics from the Lactobacillus/Bifidobacterium, the Saccharomyces boulardii category (a type of beneficial fungus), and the soil-based category, which generally consists of bacteria from the Bacillus genus. This approach offers therapeutic levels of diversity and quantity in probiotics that we’ve seen accomplish incredible results in our patients.

Pay Attention to Your Body

Your gut is the seat of your overall health and well-being. Without a balanced gut microbiome, all manner of inflammatory issues can arise, leading to mood and cognitive changes, autoimmunity, and skin troubles. Taking probiotics will, over time, improve these areas of health, and these improvements are signs probiotics are working for you.

Positive changes from taking a probiotic product won’t happen overnight. They’ll be gradual as the bugs in your supplement begin to push out the bad bacteria in your gut. But they’ll definitely shift your overall health and well-being in the right direction when taken consistently over time. Track your symptoms to help yourself and your healthcare provider see the full picture of the changes over time. 

We’d love to help you get started. Reach out to our clinic for more information.

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