How we review
The method, the scoring, and the honest limits of what this kind of review can tell you.
First, who does the reviewing: Alice Hess, a health researcher and wellness writer. She is not a doctor, a nurse, a nutritionist or any kind of licensed clinician, and nothing on this site is medical advice. What follows is document work: labels, published research and guidelines, checked and linked so you can verify every step.
The five criteria we score
Every product review on this site carries a rating out of 5, and that rating is the average of five sub-scores. We publish all five, because a single number hides which part failed.
- Dose transparency. Does the label state milligram amounts per ingredient, or does it hide behind a proprietary blend? This is the criterion most products fail hardest.
- Evidence behind the ingredients. Not whether studies exist, but whether they tested the same form, at the same dose, in the same population. An ingredient with fifty studies at a dose the product does not deliver scores low here.
- Formulation and delivery. Does the format the company chose actually carry the amount that matters? A tincture and a softgel of the same botanical are not interchangeable, and laboratory data shows the difference can be twentyfold.
- Price against alternatives. Compared against what a pharmacy shelf charges for the same active ingredient at a studied dose.
- Guarantee and refund mechanics. Not whether a guarantee is advertised, but how it actually works: who processes it, what the window is, and whether opened bottles qualify.
What we check, source by source
- Ingredient claims against the National Institutes of Health, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, PubMed and Cochrane
- Mineral and vitamin loads against the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements recommended intakes and tolerable upper limits
- Thyroid-relevant compounds against the American Thyroid Association
- Clinical guidance against the American Urological Association
- Drug interactions against MedlinePlus and the National Cancer Institute
Every number we publish carries the source it came from. If we cannot source a number, we do not publish it, and we say that we could not find it. An absence is itself information.
Document review is not a clinical trial
This is the limit, and we would rather state it than have you discover it.
Reading a label carefully tells you what a product can and cannot plausibly deliver. It does not tell you how a specific product will affect a specific person in a specific body. Nobody who writes a review can tell you that, including the reviewers who claim they can. When a review promises you a personal outcome, you are reading marketing.
Where a product has a refund guarantee, we say so plainly, because the guarantee is the only honest way to answer the question a document review cannot.
What we refuse to do
- Publish a side effect rate for a product with no published safety trial
- Present ingredient research as if it were research on the finished product
- Describe a personal experience that did not happen
- Present a manufacturing certification as if it were regulatory approval of the product
- Let a commission rate influence a score
See also our editorial guidelines and affiliate disclosure.