Do butyrate supplements work?
Eat more fibre first. Butyrate pills have only a few small human trials. And uncoated butyrate is mostly soaked up high in your gut, so it may never reach the part that runs on it.
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Do butyrate supplements work?
It isn’t proven yet. Most butyrate research is in animals, and a 2022 review said human data is urgently needed to back it up.
The human trials are few and short. Most tested people with a blood sugar problem or a gut problem such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). IBS is a long-term condition that causes tummy pain and changes in your poo.
| Who took part | What they took | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 66 people with IBS, still on their usual treatment | Coated sodium butyrate or dummy pills for 12 weeks | Less pain when pooing by week 4, and less urgency and more regular poos by week 12. Tummy pain and wind did not improve significantly, and overall how bad symptoms felt did not change much. |
| People with type 2 diabetes | 600 mg a day or dummy pills for 45 days | A gut hormone called GLP-1 went up, compared with dummy pills. |
| Lean men, and men with metabolic syndrome | 4 g a day for 4 weeks | No change in the calories they burned at rest. |
Sources: Banasiewicz 2013; van Deuren 2022
Metabolic syndrome is a group of health problems that raise your risk of type 2 diabetes or heart and blood vessel conditions. A rise in GLP-1 is a lab result, not proof of better blood sugar.
A 2025 review agreed. It said longer trials with dummy pills are needed before we know if supplements help.
So start with your plate. Beans, lentils, fruit and veg feed the gut bacteria that make butyrate for you.
What is butyrate and why does my gut need it?
Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid, a small type of fat. Your gut bacteria make it when they break down fibre that you can’t digest yourself.
How your body makes its own butyrate
- 1
Eat fibre
It passes through your small bowel largely undigested.
- 2
Bacteria break it down
In your large bowel, gut bacteria ferment it.
- 3
Butyrate is made
It’s one of the short-chain fatty acids they make.
- 4
Your bowel uses it
It’s the main fuel for the cells lining your large bowel.
Sources: BNF; van Deuren 2022
Those lining cells get more than 70% of their energy from butyrate.
Think of fibre as raw stock, and your gut bacteria as a factory next door to the cells that need the fuel. A supplement tries to post the finished fuel in from outside. Whether it arrives is the next question.
Either way, the factory needs fibre every day to keep working.
Why might a butyrate pill not reach my colon?
The part of your gut that runs on butyrate is your large bowel, also called the colon. Butyrate swallowed on its own is taken up almost entirely in the first part of your small bowel. It may never reach the colon.
It’s like a parcel signed for at the first house on the street. Yours, further down, may never get it. So a pill may not feed the cells you bought it for.
Sodium butyrate, the usual form, also has an unpleasant taste and smell. Coated capsules, called microencapsulated, are one way to delay its release in the gut. The IBS trial used this kind.
Have IBS and want to try one? Tell your GP, and keep your usual treatment, as people in that trial did.
How can I get more butyrate from food?
Feed the bacteria that make it. UK adults are advised to eat 30g of fibre a day, but most eat about 20g.
Beans, lentils and chickpeas give fibres that gut bacteria use as food. Fruit and veg do too.
Five ways to give your gut bacteria more fibre
- Choose porridge or a higher-fibre breakfast cereal, such as plain wholewheat biscuits.
- Go for wholemeal or granary bread, and wholewheat pasta or brown rice.
- Eat potatoes with their skins on, such as a baked potato or boiled new potatoes.
- Add beans, lentils or chickpeas to stews, curries and salads.
- Have IBS? Eat oats regularly and avoid beans and onions if they bring on bloating.
Sources: NHS: more fibre; NHS: IBS
Give it time. A 2025 review found that longer studies did better than short ones at raising the butyrate gut bacteria make.
For easy swaps, see high-fibre foods and how much fibre you need a day. Fibres that feed gut bacteria are called prebiotics, explained in prebiotics vs probiotics.
Are butyrate supplements safe?
Few problems have been reported. One review says no side effects at 150 to 300 mg, and no reactions seen at up to 2,000 mg a day.
But the trials in the table lasted 4 to 12 weeks. They can’t tell you about taking it for years.
Supplements are sold as food. UK guidance says they are not medicines and are not meant to treat or prevent disease.
Have a health condition or take medicines? Ask your GP or pharmacist before you start one. Never stop or change a prescribed medicine without your prescriber.
Weighing up other gut products? See do probiotics work?
When to speak to a GP
A supplement is no substitute for getting bowel symptoms checked. The NHS says to see a GP if you have:
- changes in your poo that are not usual for you, such as softer poo, diarrhoea or constipation, or needing to poo more or less often
- blood in your poo, which may look red or black, or bleeding from your bottom
- often feeling you need to poo, even just after going, tummy pain, a lump in your tummy, or bloating
- weight loss without trying, or feeling very tired or short of breath
- IBS where diet changes and pharmacy medicines are not helping your symptoms
Ask for an urgent GP appointment or call 111 if your poo is black or dark red, or you have bloody diarrhoea.
Call 999 or go to A&E if you’re bleeding non-stop from your bottom, or there’s a lot of blood or large clots when you poo. See also blood tests for IBS.