The Honest Truth

The supplement aisle runs on confident marketing. We try to do the opposite. Every post in this series starts with a question we actually want answered — does fish oil reduce heart attack risk, is ashwagandha effective for sleep, how much vitamin D do you really need — and then walks through the published evidence to whatever answer the research actually supports.

Our standard for inclusion is peer-reviewed human research, with a preference for systematic reviews and meta-analyses over single-study claims. Where evidence is mixed, we say so. Where benefits are real but smaller than the marketing suggests, we say that too. Where a supplement is promising in animal or in-vitro studies but hasn't been tested in humans, we flag it as preliminary and stop there.

We write in FTC- and FDA-compliant language. Supplements support, promote, and help maintain — they don't treat, cure, or prevent disease. That's not a legal hedge; it's how the underlying science actually works. A finished post should leave you confident about what a supplement can reasonably do, what dose the research used, and what you should ask your doctor about before adding it to a routine.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.