Considering the hype around Symprove, particularly from celebs and wellness influencers, I wanted to find out for myself whether the supposed benefits were true. I was diagnosed with IBS (IBS-D) 2 years ago, so I am the prime candidate for properly testing it out.
I took Symprove consistently for 6 months and kept track of all my symptoms throughout this time, to assess any changes it did and didn’t have on my gut health. Spoiler alert: rather surprisingly, Symprove not only benefited my gut health but also my general health, but more on that below.
Disclaimer: This Symprove review was initially written after I purchased Symprove. I was not compensated for writing it. However, since then, I have been gifted products by Symprove.
The benefits
- I experienced less bloating
- My digestion improved
- It reduced skin inflammation
- My poo schedule improved
- It encouraged better eating habits
The drawbacks
- Didn’t cure the root cause of my problems
- It didn’t fix poor diet choices
How I benefited from Symprove
Throughout the 6 months of taking Symprove, I experienced a variety of benefits to both my gut health and my general health. I will go into more detail about each benefit below, with information on how the initial detox period (typically lasts 1-2 weeks) affected it and how long it took to see that improvement.
I experienced less bloating
- Initial detox period: Made the bloating worse
- When it improved: After 1 month
Bloating had become a daily occurrence for me. Within 30 minutes of waking up, I would get a painful bloat. This would be aggravated by the food I was eating throughout the day. The bloating itself was uncomfortable and made wearing tight clothing near impossible, but it was also accompanied by painful stabbing pains and spasms. I was at a loss for how to break this vicious bloating cycle.
During the first few weeks of taking Symprove, I experienced more regular bloating but around the 1-month mark, I noticed considerably less bloating in my day-to-day life. This only improved over time! However, if I went on a binge eating session or ate a particularly unhealthy takeaway, I would still bloat – I have learnt that I have a very sensitive gut and I’m now actually quite thankful for it telling me when it isn’t happy!
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My digestion improved
- Initial detox period: Made digestion worse
- When it improved: After 2 months
I have a whole array of digestive issues, including IBS and GERD. Ultimately, this leads to heartburn, pain, and nausea. And of course, the nasty bloat (as mentioned above). The causes of these digestive issues are largely unknown, although my experience suggests most of it has to do with my mental health. So, finding a ‘cure’ may be near impossible, but I did find respite in Symprove.
Most of these digestive issues would occur straight after eating. They could be so intense that I would avoid eating anything out of the house. Thankfully, after a couple of months of taking Symprove, I found that my digestive issues had significantly improved, to the extent that I could go out for a meal without coughing my guts up afterwards, or eat a doughnut whilst on the move without an intense burning pain emanating from my chest. I suspect the good bacteria had been getting to work rebalancing my gut microbiome.
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It reduced my skin inflammation
- Initial detox period: No noticeable effects
- When it improved: After 3 months
I have struggled with eczema most of my life and it tends to get inflamed whenever my gut does. It’s a double whammy blow to my confidence when my gut is causing me to look 9-months pregnant and my skin decides it wants to flake off and make me look like a crusty snowwoman.
At first, I didn’t notice any change to my skin when taking Symprove and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting it to help. But after 3 months I started to notice the crusty patches disappearing and I could see the sore red skin that lives underneath (see picture above). I still get the occasional bit of crustiness on my elbows whenever I’ve eaten poorly, but my ears and eyelids have completely cleared up.
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My poo schedule improved
- Initial detox period: Temporarily increased my schedule
- When it improved: After 2 months
This may be something of a taboo subject but I know I am not alone in struggling with poo issues! I have IBS-D, meaning I can spend a lot of time on the toilet with poos varying between Type 6 and Type 7 on the Bristol Stool Form Scale.
Whilst the initial detox period did a number on my poo schedule (making it a lot worse than before), after 2 weeks this evened back out again and within 2 months I had a consistent poo schedule – 2 a day! They had also begun to look like Type 3 and Type 4 stools on the Bristol Stool Form Scale.
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It encouraged better eating habits
- Initial detox period: No noticeable effects
- When it improved: After 3 months
Whilst I wouldn’t say this is a direct effect of Symprove, it did help me to form better and healthier eating habits. When I was experiencing the worst of my digestive issues I would try all sorts of diets and nothing would help, so I just found it easier to give up and eat unhealthy foods. I would assume this has something to do with my poor mental health, which worsens when my IBS flares up.
With all the improvements that happened to my gut health, I found myself craving healthier foods that would feed my microbiome with friendly bacteria. This definitely helped me to see even more sustainable results with Symprove over the 6 months and is what ultimately ensured I didn’t need to continue taking the supplement anymore (more on that below).
What Symprove didn’t do
Navigating wellness advice online is tough, particularly when supplement companies tout a whole variety of benefits with very little science to back it up. Therefore, I want to get real with you and challenge the idea that supplements can fix all our problems. Because, likely, they can’t! Symprove gave me a helping hand when I needed it most and without it, I may not be in such great health, but the work didn’t stop at taking Symprove!
It didn’t cure the root cause of my problems
What I came to learn was that at the core of all my health problems was poor mental health. I have struggled with anxiety, depression and a dissociative disorder for as long as I can remember. It is become increasingly evident that our mental health affects our gut health. Just think of any times you were nervous or anxious and try to remember how this made your gut feel. I’d guess you may have felt a butterfly sensation in your tummy, maybe looser stools, and even flatulence.
To top this all off, my poor mental health fuels my binge eating. I could eat multiple takeaways each week on top of plenty of UPF foods, like fake meats, on top of regular sweet treats and my usual whole foods diet. Evidently, this was doing very little for my gut health.
There are many reasons why you may be experiencing issues with your gut, including a one-off experience with taking antibiotics (which kill off all bacteria in your gut), but if you feel like you closely align with my experience detailed above then you may also want to consider looking at the root cause. Starting therapy alongside improving my diet has done wonders for my gut health. This was made a lot easier with the help of Symprove!
Get 50% off your first 3 months by clicking the button above, or use this code at checkout:
EDIBLEETHICS50
It didn’t fix poor diet choices
Whilst Symprove benefits your gut, by feeding it a dose of friendly gut bacteria every day, there is only so much it can do if you are also eating a poor diet with lots of fried food and UPFs. I had done a few courses of Symprove before this review and never saw long-term sustainable benefits because I hadn’t also fixed my diet. I would see some great results at first but the bad foods that I was still eating would continue feeding my gut bad bacteria and as a result, trigger my IBS.
Symprove isn’t a miracle cure for a bad diet. So unless you are committed to taking Symprove for the rest of your life as a way of rebalancing the bad effects of your bad diet, then you will want to work on your nutrition alongside taking their liquid probiotic.
Side note: This doesn’t mean that your gut issues are definitely due to a poor diet, but more often than not, certain trigger foods make our gut issues worse. These are different for every individual, so it will be worthwhile figuring this out in the long term. Mine just happen to be fried food, UPF foods (like sweeteners and gums which are now found in most food), and sizeable amounts of gluten. Science shows that many gut issues are caused by convenience foods, typically UPF.
The best fix for my gut has been cutting down portion sizes (yes, we eat far too much food in the West), and following a healthy whole foods plant-based diet. This has been so beneficial in the long run that I was able to quit Symprove.
Get 50% discount off your first 3 months by clicking the button above, or use this code at checkout:
EDIBLEETHICS50
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