Curcumin vs Probiotics for mood
Short answer: For mood, users rate them about the same: 96% report improvement with Curcumin (45 reports) and 100% with Probiotics (54 reports).
Curcumin has 538 meta-analyses and 553 randomized trials on PubMed; Probiotics has 2,293 and 2,235.
Based on 544 reports about Curcumin and 479 about Probiotics. Not medical advice.
| Curcumin Supplement | Probiotics Supplement | |
|---|---|---|
| Users say it helped | 61%helped180 reports · high confidence | 63%helped144 reports · high confidence |
| Verdict | Mostly positive | Mostly positive |
| Research | AResearch: Strong | AResearch: Strong |
| Meta-analyses / RCTs | 538 / 553 | 2,293 / 2,235 |
| Mainly used for | ||
| Pain & inflammation % reporting improvement | 91% (104) | — |
| Mood % reporting improvement | 96% (45) | 100% (54) |
| Digestion % reporting improvement | 50% (2) | 84% (86) |
| Anxiety % reporting improvement | 93% (15) | 90% (29) |
| Focus % reporting improvement | 78% (9) | 70% (10) |
| Common side effects | vivid dreams, headache, nausea, dht suppression | stomach issues, brain fog, diarrhea, withdrawal |
| Typical dose reported | 1000 mg / daily | 2 capsules / daily |
Curcumin and Curcuma longa Extract may improve symptoms and inflammation levels in people with arthritis. However, due to the low quality and small quantity of RCTs, the conclusions need to be interpreted carefully.
Front Immunol, 2022 ↗“I recently stopped taking Curcumin because of its affect on DHT and I was looking for an alternative measure to deal with inflammation as I feel it really helped with anxiety/depression.”
Some combinations of probiotics or strains may be beneficial in IBS. However, certainty in the evidence for efficacy by GRADE criteria was low to very low across almost all of our analyses.
Gastroenterology, 2023 ↗“What finally made a difference was taking probiotics...I felt better fairly quickly.”
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Percentages come from first-hand user reports and are not clinical outcomes. Talk to a doctor before starting, stopping or combining anything. How we rate