Last modified on September 7th, 2023
What is the best berberine supplement, who should take this supplement, and how do you compare products? These are all questions people have about this powerful, pharmaceutical-like supplement. Below is a guide that answers which berberine supplement is the best and provides everything else to know before you try it.
The Benefits of Berberine
Before going into who sells the best berberine supplement, it’s important to understand how it works and why it’s so popular.
Berberine is a compound naturally occurring in many plants that may help with weight loss, blood sugar control, and other chronic health conditions. Berberine can potentially help with heart health as well.
The bioactive compound can be extracted from various plants, including a grouping of shrubs known as Berberis. It’s a bright yellow color, so along with a long history of use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, berberine has also been used as a dye.
There are numerous studies, hundreds, to back up many of the purported berberine benefits.
The way that it works is unique from other supplements. Berberine activates an enzyme located within cells called AMP-activated protein kinase or AMPK. The enzyme regulates energy levels and metabolism and is located in cells throughout the body.
There are other ways berberine can affect cellular molecules and may even be able to impact the genes turned on and off.
Blood Sugar Regulation
As far as choosing the best berberine supplement, one of the primary reasons people use it is its effects on blood sugar levels.
Several studies demonstrate berberine’s ability to significantly lower blood sugar in people who have type 2 diabetes, working through multiple mechanisms.
Specifically, berberine may help blood sugar because it can decrease insulin resistance and sugar production in the liver.
Berberine may help with glycolysis, the process where your body breaks down sugars in your cells, and it can slow the rate at which carbs are broken down in your gut.
Weight Loss
As a weight loss supplement, berberine can have significant benefits. Several studies show that berberine supplements helped participants reduce body mass index, belly fat and body weight.
The plant-based alkaloid might also prevent the molecular growth of fat cells to help lose weight.
Heart Health
Many factors play a role in the increased risk of heart disease, and many of these are improved by berberine. For example, based on a review of more than a dozen studies, as a supplement, it may help lower total cholesterol, including LDL or so-called bad cholesterol. It may increase HDL or good cholesterol and lower blood triglycerides.
Diabetes, obesity, and high blood sugar also contribute to the risk of heart disease, and berberine can potentially improve all of these markers.
Additional Benefits
Other benefits of taking this supplement might include the following:
- Antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects
- Anticancer effects
- May reduce the risk of infections
- Could reduce the buildup of fat in the liver
- May improve symptoms, reducing the risk of death for people with heart failure
- May help induce autophagy which can slow the accumulation of damaged cells
What Is the Best Berberine Supplement on the Market?
Below, we detail what we consider the best berberine supplement. In our decision of which berberine supplement is the best, some of the considerations we kept in mind include:
- Effectiveness and absorbability
- Potency
- Customer reviews
- Price
- Brand reputation
- Accessibility
Renue Liposomal Berberine
Our choice for the best berberine supplement is Renue Liposomal Berberine. We chose this as our top pick because it’s incredibly bioavailable.
Unfortunately, people often feel like the supplements they take aren’t effective. In reality, they aren’t well-absorbed and liposomal formulations help with this.
This product uses Advanced Liposomal Technology, which improves the effectiveness of the actual berberine and the amount of it absorbed.
With liposomal supplements, some liposomes serve to encapsulate active ingredients in phospholipids. This can help protect them from breakdown during the digestive process so that more ingredients reach your bloodstream.
Another reason we feel that this is the best supplement with berberine is that it is third-party tested. The manufacturing facility where it’s made is certified by NSF International and is cGMP certified.
The one downside of this particular supplement is that the price tag is higher than most other brands, but for the liposomal formulation, which is hard to find for this particular supplement it can be worth it.
How Do You Take It?
You take one pill daily and can take it with or without food.
What’s The Dosage?
The dose for this product is one capsule, with 150 mg of berberine.
You get 90 capsules in a bottle.
What’s The Price?
The price for this product on Amazon is currently $49.95, which is $0.56 per capsule.
What To Know About the Brand
Renue is an excellent supplement brand with a strong reputation for quality and standardizing its products.
The company uses 3rd party testing on all products. Every product goes through stability, purity, and raw material testing, and then the final product is also tested. The raw material testing ensures there aren’t things like heavy metals or mold in the ingredients.
Product assurance testing measures how much active ingredient is in each capsule or bottle. Stability testing is done periodically on products to ensure minimal degradation.
After the product is finished, it’s sent so the capsules or jars are tested to ensure the amount specified on the bottle is present. Then with the product assurance test, customers can confirm what they bought has the active ingredients specified.
This is one of my biggest reasons for preferring Renue’s liposomal berberine.
The Downsides
There are downsides to this product, even though it’s one of the few available liposomal formulations. The first is the price.
The second is that each capsule only has 150 mg of berberine. Most studies use 1,000 to 1,500 mg of berberine a day. However, since this is liposomal, you only need a lower dose, and more will be absorbed and used by your body, so that’s not necessarily a dealbreaker.
Integrative Therapeutics Berberine
Our other pick for who sells the best berberine supplement is Integrative Therapeutics. First, this brand is fantastic, and second, it has excellent customer reviews on Amazon.
How Do You Take It?
The instructions for this type of supplement indicate that you take one capsule twice or three times daily.
You can take it with or without food.
What’s The Dosage?
The strongest feature of this supplement compared to Renue’s berberine is that each capsule has 500 mg of berberine HCL. If you want a higher dose, even though this isn’t liposomal, it’s a good option.
What’s The Price?
This supplement costs $31.50, which comes out to around $0.53 per capsule.
What To Know About the Brand
I like Integrative Therapeutics products pretty much universally. Clinicians develop them, and again, quality’s a big emphasis. The brand has been around for over 35 years, focusing on potency, accuracy in its ingredients, and purity.
Integrative Therapeutics thoroughly reviews its vendors and tests all its raw materials for potency and purity. They also test the finished products.
The facility where supplements are made has a third-party Good Manufacturing Practices Certification.
The Downsides
The downside with the Integrative Therapeutics product is that it’s not liposomal, but the higher dose in each serving can counteract that negative.
Thorne Berberine
The third and final product I recommend when discussing which berberine supplement is the best is Thorne. Thorne is one of my favorite supplement companies overall, and their berberine product is excellent because each serving has 1,000 mg of the alkaloid.
There are thousands of customer reviews, most of which are incredibly positive about the product.
This is a great choice if you’re looking for the best berberine supplement for weight loss or PCOS.
There aren’t any fillers or additives unnecessary in Thorne’s supplements, either.
How Do You Take It?
To take the Thorne berberine supplement, take two capsules with or without food.
What’s The Dosage?
The dosage is one gram or 1,000 mg per two capsules and comes from Indian Barberry root extract.
What’s The Price?
This product costs $36.10 for a bottle with 30 capsules, coming out to around $0.60 per capsule.
What To Know About The Brand
Thorne is a major supplement company focusing on personalized and scientifically-driven wellness. Thorne does enormous amounts of clinical research to ensure they know how every ingredient and supplement works and ensure efficacy and safety.
Thorne thoroughly tests all products, and many are currently being used in clinical trials worldwide.
Thorne works with research organizations, including Cleveland Clinic, Columbia University, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins University, and the National Institutes of Health.
The Downsides
The major downside of this supplement is the price—it’s slightly higher than the other two recommendations on the list.
Final Thoughts
Berberine is arguably one of the most interesting supplements on the market because of its ability to work within the cells of the body, similar to pharmaceutical medications. Our picks for the best berberine supplements above are what we think represent the highest quality, purity, and potency levels, and they’re from some of the best supplement brands in the world.
Our Editorial Process
All of our reviews are completely unbiased. We have an in-depth review and ranking methodology for each of our products. We base our reviews on:
- Peer-reviewed scientific studies and research
- Real customer reviews
- Our own experience using products
- Price and availability
Whenever possible, we review and rank products that we actually use to provide a better understanding of what you can expect.
