Molecules, dosages, interactions and intake timing.
Each article starts from one molecule and what the trials actually measured: the dose, the marker, the duration, the number of participants. European upper limits are recalled where they exist, interactions are flagged, and price is counted whenever it decides the protocol more often than the science does.
When the founder takes the molecule himself, his observation is placed on an explicit scale, impression, repeated observation or convergence, and confronted with the published result that troubles it most, without being withdrawn.
I am on the autism spectrum and when I stop my probiotic for one or two weeks, I become permanently bloated. In terms of volume it feels like I have eaten a big meal after eating almost nothing. And a gas smell like having eaten something completely off. It is not just a comfort detail, it eats at your physical self-confidence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sleep came. My mood sank week after week. Three days after stopping, it was back. What the literature says about what I saw.
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.
Five years without those patches moving. Since I started taking zinc, they are filling in. It is not what I came for.
Nothing happens at the time. No drowsiness, nothing resembling a sleeping pill. The difference shows up the next morning.
HDL went up, triglycerides came down, LDL too. The trial was stopped early for lack of efficacy.
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.
A single annual dose of 500,000 IU increased falls by 15% and fractures by 26%. The trial was looking for the opposite.
Hundreds of trials, five decades of hindsight. That is exactly why it gets made to say anything. Sorted by strength of evidence.
A «magnesium 500 mg» capsule can deliver as little as 70 mg of magnesium. And the most concentrated form is the worst absorbed.
An earlier version of this article told you to stop omega 3 before surgery. A trial on 1,516 patients says otherwise.