How To Store Your Probiotics For Ultimate Gut Health Benefits

Board-certified internist Vincent M. Pedre, M.D., says that there's a really easy way to figure it out: Check the label. If your probiotic needs to be refrigerated, the manufacturer will generally state that somewhere on the bottle or package.

Another good indication of how to properly store your probiotic is how it was stored when you bought it. If you found it in the refrigerated section of your local health food store, or it was shipped from the manufacturer with an ice pack, chances are, it'll probably need to stay refrigerated.

As far as efficacy goes, you're getting probiotic benefits with either option.*

The reason some probiotics need refrigeration and others don't mainly comes down to the fact that different strains of probiotics have different sensitivity levels, and not all strains can be freeze-dried—the process used to make them shelf-stable—successfully. Some probiotic bacteria, like Lactobacillus delbrueckii, are highly sensitive to certain processing methods1, like freeze-drying, while others, like Lactobacillus paracasei and spore-forming strains like Bacillus2, come out live and ready to populate your gut on the other side.*

While you might assume that refrigerated probiotics contain fewer additives, this isn't true in all cases. Pedre recommends checking your labels to make sure whatever probiotics you choose are free of additives.

Like all living things, probiotics eventually die—or expire—at some point. And because probiotics need to be alive to work, considering the expiry date of your probiotics is especially important.

When looking at a probiotic supplement, you'll see that each one contains a specific number of organisms per capsule. For example, one probiotic may have 5 billion colony-forming units (or CFUs) per dose, while another has 25 billion CFUs. But, as Pedre points out, those numbers only represent what's in the capsule up to their expiration. After that, the probiotic numbers can go down and the supplement becomes less effective over long periods of time.

While this is true no matter how you store your probiotics, the less closely you follow the storage instructions, the more quickly it happens. For example, if your probiotic calls for refrigeration but you leave it out on the counter in the middle of the summer, the heat and moisture from humidity can kill some, or all, of the bacteria, even before the expiration date.