Femipro Official Website › Choosing a urinary supplement
Choosing A Urinary Supplement: A Ten-Point Checklist
Ten questions to ask of any urinary or bladder supplement label: are individual amounts printed, is a colony count printed, are strains named, what do the seals actually certify, is there third-party testing, and is there a refund route that works. Scored against our own product at the end, with three failures.
Take the checklist to any label in the aisle. The scorecard at the end applies it to the product this website sells, and three rows come back as failures.
The checklist, one question at a time
Ten questions, and the first two carry most of the weight.
1. Are individual amounts printed for every ingredient?
A proprietary blend total is a ceiling, not a recipe. Without individual figures you cannot compare any ingredient with the amount used in any study of it, and you cannot compare the product with a competitor.
2. Is a colony forming unit count printed for each probiotic strain?
For a probiotic, viable organisms are the dose. Milligrams measure powder, including growth medium and carrier, and 50 mg of one preparation can hold a hundred times the organisms of 50 mg of another.
3. Are the probiotic strains named, not just the species?
Effects are strain-specific. A label saying "Lactobacillus" tells you almost nothing; a label naming the strain at least lets you look for its trial record.
4. Is the full ingredient list published, including non-actives?
The Other Ingredients line is where capsule shells, allergens and bulking agents live. It changes more purchasing decisions than the actives do, and the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements covers what a label must carry in one consumer page.
5. Do the seals mean what a buyer would assume?
Process marks, sourcing statements and formulation claims all appear in one row of badges and mean three different things. A formulation claim can be checked against the ingredient list.
6. Is there third-party testing?
NSF, USP or Informed Choice verify that what is in the bottle matches the label. This is the only kind of mark that tests contents rather than process.
7. Is the claim set inside what a supplement may say?
Structure and function claims describe support for a normal function. Disease claims are not permitted. A label crossing that line is a warning about everything else on it.
8. Is the dose realistic against the trials?
A blend far below the amounts used in research is not necessarily useless, but it cannot inherit the research. This is the question a label with no figures makes impossible to answer.
9. Is there a refund route that works?
A guarantee is only as good as the route to claiming it. A window, a telephone number, a return address and named terms are what make it real.
10. Is the seller contactable and identifiable?
A telephone number, a return address and a named trading entity. A supplement site with none of those has told you how a dispute will go.
Not all ten count equally
Two questions decide most of it. The rest refine.
| Weight | Questions | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Decisive | 1 and 2, the amounts and the colony count | Without these, nothing else on the label can be checked against any research. A product that fails both is asking for trust rather than offering evidence |
| Important | 6 and 8, third-party testing and dose realism | These are how you distinguish a well-made product from a well-marketed one. In practice most of the aisle fails both |
| Useful | 3, 4 and 5, strains, non-actives and seals | These tell you who the product is not for, which is often the fastest way to rule something out. The Other Ingredients line does more work than buyers expect |
| Necessary but not sufficient | 7, 9 and 10, claims, refunds, contact | A product failing any of these should be avoided outright. A product passing all three has only cleared the floor: a guarantee is protection for your money and says nothing about whether the capsule works |
A useful shortcut: if questions 1 and 2 both come back no, you are being asked to buy on trust. That can still be a reasonable decision. It should be a conscious one.
The trap this checklist is built to catch is the row of badges. Eight seals on a bottle look like eight pieces of evidence and are usually three process statements and five assertions, none of which tests what is in your capsule. Question five exists because a formulation claim, unlike the other kinds, can be checked against the ingredient list, and doing so takes about ten seconds.
The scorecard for the capsule sold here
Five passes, one partly, one unanswerable, three failures.
| Question | Result | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Are individual amounts printed for every ingredient? | No | Two blend totals, 350 mg and 50 mg, across nine ingredients. No individual figure anywhere. |
| 2. Is a colony forming unit count printed for each probiotic strain? | No | No CFU figure appears on the label or the sales page. This is the single most important missing number on this product. |
| 3. Are the probiotic strains named, not just the species? | Yes | LCr86, LA88, N13, LG08 and LC16 are all named. Worth crediting, although we could find no published trial under the LCr86 or N13 designations. |
| 4. Is the full ingredient list published, including non-actives? | Yes | Gelatin, brown rice flour, magnesium stearate, olive oil and silicon dioxide. The gelatin is the one that matters. |
| 5. Do the seals mean what a buyer would assume? | Partly | GMP and FDA-registered are genuine process marks. The vegetarian mark fails: the capsule shell is gelatin. |
| 6. Is there third-party testing? | No | None of the eight seals is a third-party content verification. True of most of this category, and still a gap. |
| 7. Is the claim set inside what a supplement may say? | Yes | Three claims, all structure-function. The bonus guide's description of a flatter stomach goes further, and is the seller's wording rather than the label's. |
| 8. Is the dose realistic against the trials? | Cannot be assessed | Unanswerable by design. 350 mg across four botanicals could carry a studied cranberry dose or a tenth of one. |
| 9. Is there a refund route that works? | Yes | 60 days from purchase, a working telephone number, a New York returns address, buyer pays postage. The window is shorter than the typical wait, which we say on the timeline page. |
| 10. Is the seller contactable and identifiable? | Yes | Femipros, a New York office, a separate returns address, a telephone desk and an email desk, all in the footer of every page. |
Three outright failures, one partly, one unanswerable, five passes. That is the honest score and it is printed on the website that sells the product.
Three failures out of ten is roughly typical for this aisle, which is context rather than an excuse. The two that matter most are the two that are decisive: no individual amounts and no colony count. Together they mean the evidence described in the evidence guide cannot be connected to this capsule with any confidence, and that limitation is stated on every product page here.
What the product does have is the best-supported ingredient in the category, a genuinely named strain list, a full non-actives disclosure, a real refund route and an identifiable seller. Whether that is worth $49 to $69 a bottle is a judgement, and this page is intended to let you make it rather than to make it for you.
Question five. If you are vegetarian or vegan, the vegetarian seal on this product is wrong and the gelatin capsule shell makes it unsuitable. That takes ten seconds to check on any label in the aisle and it is the commonest way a buyer in this category wastes money.
Two questions that come before the label
Which problem, and whether you have tried the free thing that works.
The checklist judges a label. Two questions come before it and they matter more.
Do you know which problem you have? Recurrent infection, urge incontinence and stress incontinence are three different things and they have three different first-line answers. MedlinePlus and NIDDK describe them plainly and free. A capsule does not distinguish between them; a clinician does, in one appointment, and it changes what actually helps.
Have you done the thing with the best evidence? For bladder control the ACP guideline puts pelvic floor muscle training and bladder training first, and the Cochrane review found pelvic floor training substantially more likely to produce cure or improvement than no treatment. It costs nothing and the trials ran three months or more. A supplement alongside it is a reasonable thing to try. A supplement instead of it is a worse decision than doing nothing, because it feels like action.
And one habit worth keeping whatever you buy: if you take prescription medicine, take the bottle to a pharmacy counter before the first capsule. It is free, it takes two minutes, and it is the only step on this page that could prevent actual harm rather than wasted money.
Every page, every journal post, the bottle facts and the ingredients go through review by Dr. Jennifer Roelands, MD before they ship. We write these pages from the printed Femipro bottle and from the Supplement Facts panel photographed in our own stock images, cite public research for cranberry, bearberry, berberine, mimosa pudica and the named lactobacillus strains, and print “not published” wherever a figure is not disclosed rather than estimating it. This label publishes two blend totals and no individual amount, and that fact appears on every page where an ingredient is named. Where the seller’s marketing claims more than the bottle supports, we say so on the page. Corrections are made on the page itself and the review date moves forward. Write to [email protected]. Last reviewed September 2026 by Dr. Jennifer Roelands, MD.
Sources for this checklist
- American College of Physicians guideline, 2014. Qaseem A, Dallas P, Forciea MA, et al. Nonsurgical management of urinary incontinence in women: a clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2014;161(6):429-440. View source
- Cochrane review, pelvic floor muscle training, 2018. Dumoulin C, Cacciari LP, Hay-Smith EJC. Pelvic floor muscle training versus no treatment, or inactive control treatments, for urinary incontinence in women. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2018;10:CD005654. View source
- Cochrane review, cranberry and UTI, 2023. Williams G, Stothart CI, Hahn D, Stephens JH, Craig JC, Hodson EM. Cranberries for preventing urinary tract infections. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2023;11(11):CD001321. View source
- Cochrane review, probiotics and UTI, 2015. Schwenger EM, Tejani AM, Loewen PS. Probiotics for preventing urinary tract infections in adults and children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2015;(12):CD008772. View source
- NCCIH, probiotics usefulness and safety. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Probiotics: Usefulness and Safety. National Institutes of Health. View source
- NCCIH, using dietary supplements wisely. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Using Dietary Supplements Wisely. National Institutes of Health. View source
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, what you need to know. National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements. Dietary Supplements: What You Need to Know. Explains what a supplement is, what a label must carry, and that supplements are not reviewed for safety or effectiveness before they are sold. View source
- FDA, current good manufacturing practice, 21 CFR part 111. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMPs) for Food and Dietary Supplements, listing dietary supplements under 21 CFR part 111. View source
- FDA, questions and answers on dietary supplements. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Questions and Answers on Dietary Supplements. "Under DSHEA, FDA does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed." View source
- FDA, dietary supplements. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dietary Supplements. The agency's hub for how supplements are regulated under DSHEA, including what is and is not reviewed before a product reaches the market. View source
- FDA, mixing medicines and supplements. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Mixing Medications and Dietary Supplements Can Endanger Your Health. View source
- FTC health products compliance guidance. Federal Trade Commission. Health Products Compliance Guidance. Requires competent and reliable scientific evidence for health claims, and states that consumer testimonials cannot substitute for it. View source
- MedlinePlus, urinary incontinence. MedlinePlus. Urinary Incontinence. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. View source
- NIDDK, bladder control problems in women. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Bladder Control Problems (Urinary Incontinence). National Institutes of Health. View source