Black pepper (piperine)

The pungent compound in black pepper, added to get more from other supplements.

People take it for

Absorbing other supplements
Taken with turmeric
Appetite and energy use
Blood sugar and liver

A plain-English overview, not advice. Written from published reviews and trials and from what people say in public forums.

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What is black pepper (piperine)?

Black pepper is the dried fruit of Piper nigrum, one of the most widely used spices in the world and long a fixture of traditional medicine. Its heat comes from piperine, a pungent alkaloid that makes up somewhere between two and seven and a half per cent of a peppercorn. Supplements sell it as a concentrated extract in which piperine is most of the powder, at doses of a few milligrams rather than grams. Most of it is bought not on its own but as the few milligrams sitting beside turmeric in a capsule, added for what piperine does to absorption.

Why do people take black pepper (piperine)?

Absorbing other supplements

The thinking. Almost nobody buys black pepper for itself. It goes in the capsule beside something else - turmeric above all, but also plant compounds such as resveratrol - because piperine acts on p-glycoprotein, a transport protein in the gut, and on the enzymes that break swallowed substances down. The idea is that a few milligrams leaves more of the main ingredient in circulation.

What research has found. Two trials measured this directly. Black pepper added to a raw vegetable salad, alongside an oil emulsion, raised the carotenoids from those vegetables measured in the blood afterwards. In 24 healthy volunteers given one dose of resveratrol with nothing, with 5 mg of piperine or with 25 mg, blood levels of resveratrol came out much the same. Studies here point in different directions, so this one is still being worked out; the dose, how long people took it and who took part all seem to matter.

Taken alongside turmeric

The thinking. Blood levels only matter because of what the other supplement is meant to be doing, so three trials skip them and go straight to the outcome: two groups get the same turmeric, or the same resveratrol, and one of them also gets black pepper. It is the cleanest way to see what piperine itself adds: it is the only thing that differs.

What research has found. Adults having kidney dialysis, on 3 g of turmeric a day for twelve weeks, ended with lower malondialdehyde, a marker of oxidative stress, and lower ferritin when 2 mg of piperine was added. In 23 adults, one dose of resveratrol with 20 mg of piperine raised blood flow at the front of the brain during mental tasks, though the tasks themselves went no better. In 30 adults with long-standing pain, turmeric in kitchen-sized amounts lowered pain scores whether black pepper went with it or not. Research here is still young: a few studies so far, mostly pointing the same way.

Appetite and energy use

The thinking. Hot spices have been studied for lifting the heat the body gives off after a meal and for taking the edge off how much people eat; chilli has shown both in some trials, and black pepper has been tested the same way. Reviews of piperine also list effects on body weight recorded in laboratory and animal experiments.

What research has found. Two small crossover trials tested it at the table rather than in a capsule. In 22 young men, a brunch spiked with 1.3 g of black pepper changed neither the heat their bodies gave off afterwards, nor their appetite, nor how much they ate later. In 16 healthy adults, a black pepper drink before a white-bread meal lowered ratings of hunger and raised ratings of fullness, while blood sugar, insulin and the gut and thyroid hormones measured alongside were unchanged. The studies disagree, so this is unsettled: dose, duration and who took part all seem to shift the result.

Blood sugar and liver

The thinking. Reviews of piperine describe a clinical interest in it for metabolic syndrome, diabetes and liver complaints, and list effects on blood sugar and on the liver recorded in laboratory and animal work. The thinking is that whatever that activity is, it ought to show up in an ordinary blood test.

What research has found. One trial has measured it. Adults with fatty liver disease and early cirrhosis took 5 mg of piperine a day, on its own, for twelve weeks against a dummy capsule; liver enzymes, blood glucose and blood fats all came down further on piperine, as did a measure of insulin resistance. Few studies have measured this yet, so there is little to go on either way.

What does black pepper (piperine) do in the body?

Piperine is what makes pepper hot. Swallowed, its best-documented job is not something it does by itself but something it does to the journey other substances take: it acts on p-glycoprotein, one of the proteins that moves compounds across the gut wall, and on the enzyme systems that break swallowed substances down, the cytochrome P450 family among them. Slow that breakdown, and more of whatever was taken alongside it stays in circulation.

That is why it sits in turmeric capsules. Curcumin, turmeric’s yellow pigment, is absorbed so poorly by mouth that very little of a dose reaches the blood, and adding piperine is the usual way round that. The same machinery cuts both ways: reviews describe piperine altering how the body handles medicines as well as supplements. Beyond absorption, laboratory and animal work credits piperine with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity and with effects on blood sugar, body weight and the ageing brain, little of it followed into trials in people.

What do people say about taking black pepper (piperine)?

These are anecdotes people have shared, not evidence.

What people like

Black pepper never came up on its own. In all six threads read it appears inside a turmeric conversation, as the part that aids absorption.
Posters take that absorption point as settled fact rather than something they tested, and a few say turmeric is not worth buying without pepper in it.
Where anyone describes a change they describe it in the turmeric: easier joints, and in one thread a first pain-free night after about three weeks.
Two threads mention ginger in the same breath, as the other thing posters expect to find in a turmeric capsule beside the pepper.

Common complaints

Two threads carry warnings about prescribed medicines: one about blood thinners, and one from a poster whose prescribed painkillers were affected.
Stomach upset comes up more than once, and one poster gave up on capsules containing piperine because their stomach would not settle.
One poster raised the liver enzyme that piperine acts on as a reason to be careful with the combination.
The smell and the aftertaste of turmeric-and-pepper capsules put one poster off, and that thread expects several weeks before anything can be judged.

How people take it

Nearly everyone takes it as a ready-made capsule with the pepper already in beside the turmeric, rather than buying a pepper extract separately.
The cooking-side posters grind pepper into food with turmeric instead, using rather less pepper than turmeric and eating it with something fatty.
Amounts are rarely named. Where one is, it is a pinch or a quarter teaspoon of ground pepper rather than a figure in milligrams.
Posters take it beside other things for joints, and two threads have it in the same capsule as ginger as well as turmeric.

Read from these public discussions:

Turmeric Tablets (MoneySavingExpert, 2019)
Taking turmeric for aches and pains? (Mumsnet, 2020)
Turmeric? (Mumsnet, 2021)
Supplements for joint pain? What works (Mumsnet, 2021)
Supplements worth taking in 50s (Mumsnet, 2023)
Nutrition - Turmeric/curcumin (StrongFirst, 2016)

What forms of black pepper (piperine) are there?

Form	What’s different	Per serving, on products we list
Black pepper extract (piperine)	Black pepper fruit concentrated until piperine, its pungent alkaloid, is most of the powder, commonly 95 per cent.	not in our price tables yet

What else is worth knowing about black pepper (piperine)?

Reviews describe piperine altering the way the body handles prescribed medicines: changing how much is absorbed in the gut, and shifting the activity of the transport proteins and the drug-metabolising enzymes, cytochrome P450 among them, that clear a drug again. It is the same machinery it is added to supplements for.
Almost every trial of piperine gives it in a fixed blend with curcumin, which cannot separate one from the other. The few that stand it up on its own are small: a spiced brunch, a black pepper drink, a 5 mg capsule.
Labels give the amount per serving, and it is small. Trials used 2 to 25 mg of piperine next to another supplement, and 1.3 to 2 g of black pepper itself where the spice went into food or a capsule.
In the resveratrol trial everyone tolerated what they were given, with little or no toxicity reported and no difference between the three doses.

If you take medication, are pregnant, or have a health condition, check with a pharmacist or GP first.

The research behind this page (14 studies)

How much does black pepper (piperine) cost?

That depends on the form and the pack, so we work out the price of the same dose of every black pepper (piperine) product we can find and rank them.

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