Method
Sleep debt: why you cannot feel it, and how to measure it
I go to bed late by choice and I do not feel tired. The laboratory says that is exactly what people feel while their alertness collapses.
9 min
Théo Sans grew up in Port-Leucate, in a modest family. Early on he understood one thing: in a world where systems dictate reality, whoever masters how the parts connect gets the big picture and takes back control.
Top of his class in Communication, he moved into electronics engineering out of necessity: to stop depending on other people's tools. He gathered up to 26,000 people around his online communities before building Helix alone, at 19.
He writes here about what he documents while building the product: molecule interactions, multi-domain scoring, health data sovereignty, and designing communities that do not monetise attention.
What he works on
- Founder and sole developer of Helix Health
- Hand-built health base: 1,300+ facts, 1,370+ references (PubMed, Examine)
- 243 profiled molecules, 4,142 tracked interactions
- Online communities gathering up to 26,000 members
More context on the mission: the About page.
25 published articles
Method
HRV: why your number is not comparable with anyone else's
I will not give my HRV number. Not out of modesty: because compared with yours, it means nothing. Compared with mine from yesterday, it says a lot.
8 min
Supplements
Iron: why your supplement is not working, and how to absorb it
Three months of tablets, a ferritin that has not moved, and the conclusion that "iron does not work". Most of the time, it is the intake that does not work.
9 min
Method
Taurine and ageing: the biomarker that collapsed in two years
A level that drops with age, mice that live longer, a headline in Science. Two years later, the level does not drop. The story of a biomarker, and of what is left when it falls.
7 min
Supplements
Bacopa: memory effects, dose, and why it takes three months
At first, nothing. Then, months later, the drawer opens faster. Bacopa is the only nootropic whose literature clearly says to wait, and for how long.
7 min
Supplements
Creatine and sleep deprivation: the single dose that holds the brain
The day creatine gets noticed is the morning after a short night. Two recent trials say why, and at what dose. It is not the one on the box.
8 min
Supplements
Ashwagandha: effects, dose, liver, and what it switched off in me
Three months without a break, without knowing. A lead-heavy calm, emotions switched off, and no desire left to build anything. What the trials say, and what they do not.
9 min
Supplements
Melatonin: the right dose is 0.3 mg, and it can drag your mood down
Sleep came. My mood sank week after week. Three days after stopping, it was back. What the literature says about what I saw.
10 min
Nutrition
Kefir: proven benefits, alcohol, and how it differs from yoghurt
The international standard requires kefir to carry at least 10,000 live yeasts per gram. Yoghurt requires none. Everything else follows from that.
6 min
Nutrition
Olive oil: polyphenols, the heart, and which one to buy
Across 1,239 extra virgin olive oils, phenolic content ranges from 1 to 2,850 mg/kg. The label does not tell you where yours sits.
8 min
Method
How to sleep better: light, meals and regularity
Sleep regularity predicts mortality better than sleep duration. Which moves the most repeated piece of advice of them all.
10 min
Supplements
Citicoline: benefits, the dose tested, and the real price
Twenty-five euros for 90 capsules of 125 mg. On a fifty-euro monthly supplement budget, that is not one more line, it is a trade-off.
6 min
Supplements
Zinc: not just for immunity, it is helping my beard grow
Five years without those patches moving. Since I started taking zinc, they are filling in. It is not what I came for.
8 min
Supplements
Glycine and deep sleep: what 3 g actually do
Nothing happens at the time. No drowsiness, nothing resembling a sleeping pill. The difference shows up the next morning.
9 min
Supplements
Vitamin B3: niacin and NMN, what their promises are worth
HDL went up, triglycerides came down, LDL too. The trial was stopped early for lack of efficacy.
8 min
Nutrition
Vitamin B12: the deficiency that looks like early dementia
My father is 62. He was forgetting details I had just repeated to him, and he had become slow. I thought it was early dementia.
6 min
Supplements
Lion's Mane: my dreams changed, and that proves nothing
In one dream I read the text on a classmate's screen. Not the impression of text: the text. Here is what that is worth, and what it is not.
7 min
Supplements
Vitamin D: your dose means nothing on its own
A single annual dose of 500,000 IU increased falls by 15% and fractures by 26%. The trial was looking for the opposite.
6 min
Supplements
Creatine, not quite the perfect molecule...
Hundreds of trials, five decades of hindsight. That is exactly why it gets made to say anything. Sorted by strength of evidence.
6 min
Supplements
Magnesium: you are not taking the dose you think
A «magnesium 500 mg» capsule can deliver as little as 70 mg of magnesium. And the most concentrated form is the worst absorbed.
5 min
Method
Biological age: what the calculation actually measures
Two methods go by the name biological age. The expensive one is not the more predictive, and the founding study says so.
5 min
Community
Your motivation is not the problem
Three weeks, then life takes over. We blame willpower. The data point elsewhere, and the number is bigger than you would guess.
4 min
Sovereignty
Health data: GDPR gives you rights, not guarantees
In March 2025 a company holding millions of customers' DNA filed for bankruptcy. The right to erasure had existed all along. It had to have been used first.
7 min
Method
The best validated health score does not use your watch
A validated holistic health score already exists. It contains no HRV, no recovery score, no sleep stages. And it cuts stroke risk by two thirds.
5 min
Supplements
Supplement interactions: I was wrong about omega 3
An earlier version of this article told you to stop omega 3 before surgery. A trial on 1,516 patients says otherwise.
5 min
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