TUDCA and medications.
TUDCA is in the Distil supplement database, evidence Grade C. The page below lists every medication we have explicitly assessed it against.
TUDCA is a water-soluble bile acid taken for liver and metabolic support, rated Grade C. On our reading of the novel food rules, TUDCA would need authorising before it could be sold as a food in Great Britain, and it is not authorised, so it should not be on sale here as a supplement, although you may still see it sold, and the duty to follow that rule sits with the seller, not with you. It may help regulate bile flow and reduce a form of cellular stress in the endoplasmic reticulum, which is the proposed route behind its suggested effects on cholestasis, fatty liver and insulin sensitivity. The evidence is genuinely early, and two things about it are worth knowing. The liver trials were run in people with diagnosed cholestatic liver disease rather than in well people: the one at the usual 500mg supplement dose compared TUDCA against another bile acid with no placebo group, and the placebo-controlled liver trial in our records found no effect. The liver enzyme and steatosis results often quoted for TUDCA come from trials of ursodeoxycholic acid, which is a related but different compound. On the metabolic side, a four-week trial in 20 people found liver and muscle insulin sensitivity around 30 percent higher, but it used 1,750mg a day, well above the usual supplement dose, and it found no effect in fat tissue. There are no significant interactions at standard doses, but it must be avoided in complete biliary obstruction.
We have not yet completed an explicit assessment of medications for TUDCA in the Distil interactions database. We surface this distinction deliberately: the Distil checker tells you when we have explicitly assessed a pair and when we have not, because both are useful information. If you take TUDCA alongside a medication, the checker below will surface anything already in our database, and the missing-item form at the bottom of the page routes uncatalogued pairs into our next curation pass.
What this list does not say. Pairs not flagged here are not implicitly safe. They are either not yet in our database, or fall outside our inclusion scope. Use the checker below to surface any medication, and submit a missing item if you take something we have not catalogued.
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How we grade severity, choose what's in scope, and what we exclude.
Every call on this page is reasoned. We publish the full rubric for severity tiers, the medication inclusion logic, the evidence grades we accept, and what we deliberately leave out. About three thousand words. Worth reading once if you use this tool more than occasionally.
Read the full methodologyA full supplement review, built around you, not a generic stack.
The free checker answers one interaction question at a time. A Distil report reviews the bigger picture: your goals, diet, medications, current supplements and any blood results you provide, then shows what appears worth keeping, changing, adding or leaving out.
- what your diet already covers, so you are not adding a capsule for something food is already handling
- which evidence-graded compounds are worth considering for your goals, and which were considered but left out
- what to keep, change or stop from what you already take, plus the order to introduce anything new
- how your medications and complete supplement stack fit together, with daily timing and a clear point for reassessment
The interaction check is one section of the full report. You also get the reasoning behind each recommendation and the evidence references used.
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Something missing?
If a supplement or medication you take isn't in our autocomplete, tell us. We go through what people flag every week and add what's missing.