"Meanwhile, Dr. Steven Newcomer, lead author of the original study, has had one of his other DNA barcoding papers retracted for suspected fraud. " <- is this a deliberate spellcheck-style mistake shortly after a reference to the scientist's alleged spellcheck-style mistake? Or was this a legitimate flub? (The scientist's name seems to be Steven Newmaster, not Steven Newcomer).
This seems more troubling to me than if the amount is slightly off relative to what is claimed. If people in the comments have more information I would love to see reputable tests.
What I would find helpful is an idea of what supplements are actually likely to be effective and what are hooey. A supplement that increases strength or decreases heart attack risk sounds great! But the impression I get of some of the nootropic or anxiolytic supplements is that results seem more anecdotal than anything else.
A somewhat amusing datapoint is that Buzzfeed took Alex Jones's supplements to be tested, and found they are "more or less — accurately advertised. They don't contain significantly more or less of a particular ingredient than listed on the bottles, and there are no surprise ingredients. They're also reasonably safe, meaning they passed heavy metal contaminant screenings..." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-sent-alex-jones-infowars-supplements-to-a-lab-heres (Of course, they fail on other metrics, like cost and the efficacy of the advertised ingredients.)
Getting some update on the object-level issue is helpful and appreciated...I still end up wondering if there's some argument to be made for "okay, we were wrong about widespread sugar pills, but supplements should be more stringently regulated anyway!" Good ideas can be accidentally stumbled upon from bad reasoning, sometimes. (Yes, I know, FDA Delenda Est.)
I think the bigger issue is that the industry as a whole sort of exists as solutions-in-search-of-problems...deficiencies really aren't that common, or even meaningfully health-affecting unless dire. (Fairly-arbitrary worldwide differences in target levels of IUs also remains puzzling.) Discerning Customers can benefit from targeted supplementation. But that's not the median supplement purchaser, far from it. The median supplement user is more like...my former coworker who claimed he never got colds because he took 1000% vitC pills every single day, or whatever. At some point, the explanatory process for That's Not How It Works At All is just too long, so...let people believe things. Supplements are surely an easier way to sell hope and agency than most options. At least he picked something water-soluble and cared about proper hydration.
(Now, homeopathy on the other hand...I sure hope that's mostly sugar pills!)
Europe's pharmacopoeia includes a fairly vast amount of empirical based -mostly simple ( tinctures, sirups) or no extraction ( flowers, seeds, compressed tablets), etc. Entering a german pharmacy is a different experience ( and expectation).
Oh, and no coke, chocolate , processed tin cans, milk, postcards, toiletries or perfume. Nor post office. Fairly refreshing.
So, as supplements goes, there's fewer players. The odd thing is the ( weaning lately) presence of homeopathic sugar balls with various labels.
Excellent. Been following the industry since working for Smart Basics in the 90s, and frankly this is the most unbiased summary on purity I've read. TY! Dr. Concrescence
On Choline supplementation, per the earlier post on pregnancy, I was surprised to see just how hard it is to reach Scott’s recommended doses. Most supplements seem to have 1/5th or so of the lower end Scott recommended, with the higher dose ones actually just telling you to take three pills. And the pills aren’t small! They’re even well below the standard adequate intake level. Is choline just bulky? I always hear, like in this post, that a lot of the pill is filler, but I guess not for choline? So are people just taking five or more of these pills a day while pregnant? Too bad the studies all used a different form of choline than one can buy. Anyway, it makes me worry that the ones claiming high choline content are just the ones that fudge the label more.
"Meanwhile, Dr. Steven Newmaster, lead author of the original study, has had one of his other DNA barcoding papers retracted for suspected fraud. Science magazine did an investigative report on him, claiming that:
" An investigation by Science found the problems in Newmaster’s work go well beyond the three papers. They include apparent fabrication, data manipulation, and plagiarism in speeches, teaching, biographies, and scholarly writing. "
If your Mama says she loves you, check it out.
Trust in God, everyone else pays cash.
Nullius In Verba
“It’s a basic truth of the human condition, that everybody lies.” Dr. Gregory House
My sister company manufactures supplements and cosmetics. That is, we formulate our own recipes, and then have a reputable manufacturer create the recipes as supplements.
We are the only ones I am aware of that send the supplements to a third party independent lab that tests them for microbial contamination, heavy metal content, and the presence and amounts of key ingredients.
Testing is expensive and takes a few weeks so nobody wants to do it.
The manufacturers all claim they test, and perhaps they do. But when we test the product independently before taking delivery, we sometimes find that they are not within spec. We work with a company that will remake the product without charge when this happens.
This industry is full of charlatans. However, that said, it’s like the Garden of Eden compared to the Hell of Big Pharma.
There should be no regulation of supplements at all. Let consumers depend upon third party organizations that the supplement companies will license, like Underwriters Laboratory, or some of the Certified Organic companies.
Government needs to stay out. The only reason that there are calls for more regulation is to bow to Big Pharma and take smaller companies out of the marketplace entirely, so that the big companies continue to promote their dangerous drugs, AND so they can sell their own supplements at much higher profit margins by crowding out the smaller firms like mine.
You seem extremely credulous (uncharitably, “gushing like a fanboy”) about MYASD’s claims. Coming into this with no dog in the fight (I take no supplements and this is the first time I’ve heard of this dude), my inclination is to be more skeptical. His claims may be accurate, but he’s also somebody whose livelihood involves selling a premium product to a niche market of Grey Tribe Redditors. And “scientifically serious little guy with edgy Reddit handle rails against the sloppiness and damn-the-consumer profit seeking of Big Supplement” is great ad copy for that niche market. And indeed, you’re eating it up.
To be clear I’m not saying that their factual claims are bullshit. And they are probably spot on about some of the really sketchy Chinese stuff. Just that we ought to be skeptical of their conclusions (particularly those against the generally honest but allegedly less rigorous other companies). Sure, maybe the rest of the industry is being unduly sloppy in their manufacturing process. Maybe the industry is using one standard for expensive mushroom juice that lets them get away with selling less expensive mushroom juice without technically lying.
But given that the evidence for therapeutic efficacy of most of these supplements, let alone evidence that precise dosing of them matters therapeutically, is often pretty sparse, how do we know this isn’t all just a veneer of scientism for marketing purposes? “My snake oil is much more pure and precise than the snake oil sold by greedy, sloppy Big Snake Oil! Sure, it costs a little more, but do you really want to RISK YOUR HEALTH with snake oil that might contain +/- 25% the advertised amount of snake?”
That's great and highly interesting, but I can't help, whenever I read about the question of supplements (are they overpriced in order to fund your favourite grifter podcast? are they actually needed? do they contain the stuff? are they actually processed by the body? etc etc), being left wanting for a "alright, fuck supplements, but what should you eat instead?".
Want some magnesium/vitamins/god knows what? Eat that much of this, or this much of that.
Of course a quick google search gets me 50 website with such list, but how trusthworty are food list websites, really?
Also, I suspect 90% of it can be summed up as "eat livers & fruits". But still, I wonder what obvious ingredient I may be passing unknowingly.
Would you ever be interested in using your super rationalist MD skills to take a look at SARMS?
I mean, I am going to keep using them no matter what you say because they totally kick ass. But if a third arm grows out of the middle of my back, I will have been warned.
For anyone interested in actually buying supplements, you should never buy from Amazon given its commitment to low quality. I usually order from iHerb instead, but Nootropics Depot is also good (but expensive). Just to elucidate, there are over 20 brands trying to sell Fadogia agrestis on Amazon right now, but none on iHerb.
Caveat emptor should be the first thing you think of when shopping for supplements and find yourself under the influence of influencers. Honestly, a majority of men in their 20s and 30s really only need a decent and tested multi-vitamin and some supplements (like L-carnitine) as a daily. If you're healthy (with no comorbidities or genetic issues), are reasonably physically active, eat health and don't overdue the vices. A lot of these supplement companies target men because while we, by and large, think we are highly rational animals, we're highly susceptible to the marketing of increasing our masculine attributes via magic pills and powders without having to adjust our daily habits. Which indicates that we're not the rational animals we think we are.
If you want to really understand where you are physiologically as a guy in your 30s, 40s and 50s. Get a routine physical and have blood work done to check for T-levels, cholesterol levels and then make adjustments to your dieting and exercise routines before you jump on the supplement snake-oil train.
When my wife and I were having issues conceiving our 1st child , I had a sperm count test done and bloodwork done. It appeared my motility levels were affected by a high white blood cell count. Dr. put me on a mild steroid and antibiotic for 10 days. Then a prescription multivitamin that contained 1000mg of L-carnitine. I retested 3 weeks later and had normal & health sperm counts. I've got 3 kids now because I found a GNC multivitamin and L-carnitine supplement that mirrored the prescription version for half-the price. I get bloodwork done on a yearly basis to have a baseline understanding of where I'm at and adjust my lifestyle and diet accordingly.
Researching products and reading customer reviews will give you some indicator of product efficacy and reliability. I'm sure placebo effects play into many positive reviews but duration of use will be a better indicator over time if a product is working for you.
I've also found that extracts closer to the source vs pure chemical derivatives appear to have better efficacy. I stay away from Chinese manufactured supplements because their QC is terrible. Take the baby formula fiasco as an indicator that cutting corners is part of their manufacturing process. So again...caveat emptor.
> "A lot of herbal supplements are similar. If this is your strategy, a 25% labeling error isn’t going to matter much, is it? If my patients get their Lexapro from a sketchy company that actually has only 4 mg in a 5 mg pill, they’re still going to go up to 20 mg or down to 2 mg or whatever it is the end up needing, based on how it affects them."
Wait but I read MYASD's complaints\* as largely being about poor quality control. Thus the concern isn't just the mean being off, but also high variance in measured products.
High variance is what will mess with the learn-by-doing approach you mention. To be clear, stochastic gradient descent/Kiefer-Wolfowitz algorithms still work! But variance is the enemy, all else equal you want that to be low. is high
In the 25% off example from the quote, the concern would be if one pill from the bottle is X mg, but another is X*1.25 mg (or it could happen at the batch level, depending on where the QC is poor; this might look like "found the right dose but uh oh, now things are weird again in a way that looks like too low/high of a dosage, and all that really happened was starting a new bottle. But bad enough QC could be pill-to-pill I suppose)
This probably suggests a strategy like you mention, plus being extra cautious around finishing one bottle and starting the next. Depending on the severity of the consequences of a change (like, did it take forever to find the right dose?), maybe even keeping a couple pills from a bottle that worked "to the side" so if really desperate could test them. But honestly I suspect that what is natural is just restarting the 'search' process if things seem weird with a new bottle, which maybe is what happens anyway. So maybe once again human locally optimizing intuition us already doing basically the right thing.
Related, does anyone try to apply stochastic optimization techniques to finding good dosages amounts in the way you describe? May not add much, but maybe there are practical variance reduction insights that would be useful, like figuring out how to "subtract off a stochastic constant" (can't remember the right term). Will chew on this a little.
\* as quoted here, I didn't read the supplement links
Part III has many points I also often hear from other areas of industry. Some think this is has to be overcome by more regulation (some call for less regulation). But I think this is just symptoms of our economy optimizing for growth and revenue instead of good products and serving society. These may have been good proxies for producing enough for everyone and doing so efficiently in times when production had to be ramped up fast. Perhaps they are still working in some areas were there is a working and transparent market. But we have to acknowledge that these are just proxy measures that have no value in it's self for society. So we have to check were they work and were we have to change to, or at least add, other proxies that track use for society in another, complementary way.
This is also true for companies selling snake oil: if we judge companies mostly by revenue they can get really good. To change this we don't need regulations to ban one snake oil after the next or to demand proof of effect what the EU tried with the 'health claims regulation'. It would be much better to look for the root cause and reduce the incentives to make money no matter how. What we need is a intelligent regulation that sets the right incentives with general rules that are really enforced then. I don't know these rules have to look like, but I really miss the discussions about them.
Most people are just pro or contra regulation and by regulation they think of micromanaging the symptoms, as if the can't even think that we could modify the rules of the game called economy.
I'm a little late to this article, but I'm a little confused about what happened with respect to Labdoor. Did this post every contain the statement "Many people have pointed out that Labdoor is a bad company"? I ask because I see it in the Labdoor response, but not in this post. I'm also a bit frustrated, because the response doesn't actually respond to any of the criticisms leveled against them.
Recently I've been researching Performance enhancing drugs and finding PEDs that are even remotely reputable is surprisingly hard. The drugs worth looking at (Stanozolol, Erythropoietin, Human Growth Hormone, Testosterone, Clenbuterol and Drostanolone propionate) have suppliers that range from extremely sketch to "just get a corrupt doctor and actual western medicine will give you it". (I trust my local pharmacy and hospitals a lot). The unfortunate reality is that the reputable companies like Johnson and Johnson don't deal in anabolic steroids so you're left with shady egyptian/russian suppliers. Your post seems to be line with my experience that for anything that you can buy at walgreens the companies that supply those supplements/drugs are extremely reputable, but for the things you can't the companies are dubious.
It's unfortunate that the amount of research I've done on these substances isn't enough yet, but at some point it would be worth making a "much less than I wanted to know" post on the topic.
I feel like this is one of those “other universes” from a recent post. I have never heard of any of these substances except magnesium. There is clearly a “supplements universe” out there, but no one I know is a resident.
>But at least Attorney General Schneiderman, while not doing very well scientifically, hasn’t been completely discredited as a human being, right?
The substantial section on this feels like an ad hominem; the fact that dating this guy is a bad idea doesn't seem to add much information about whether his study is good beyond the stuff you'd already noted.
A short parenthetical note is probably warranted, but the lengthy quote involving some unrelated fetish content + whole paragraph of gloat feels kind of like an SJ-style character assassination.
I don't understand why Schneiderman's sexual misconduct allegations are there at all. Was that exclusively build up to the joke that he might recommend supplements? At worst it seems to be trying to paint the whole idea as bad because a person behind it might be bad.
Note that anti-supplement scientists still benefit from having the claim that supplements don't contain the advertised ingredients discredited. If this claim held up, then it would call into question all the studies claiming that supplements are ineffective, on the grounds that we have no way of knowing whether the supplements used in those studies actually contained the active ingredients.
an impressive assemblage of facts, though (as you hint at the start) it may help to ratify the legitimacy of herbal supplements that IMHO are worthless placebos supported by junk science. One sentence in your commentary that really spoke to me was "...as far as I know none of the media sources that signal-boosted the original false information have ever apologized or covered any of this..." Not only is it exactly on-target, but it's phrased wonderfully; good job!
Short answer: If it comes from China doubtful it has any actual ingredients. Hopefully no drugs to mimic its effect. If the assay was done with supplied drugs- it is fake. Chinese and Indian drug manufacturers have been caught doing that to the FDA. If they are "just" adding the "active" ingredient that would be called a drug and should be regulated by the FDA. Since they are dodging proving effectiveness one should assume they are lying about what they are doing.
I am unconvinced that in 2022, the most efficient way to produce any organic substance involves cultivating some rare plant and extracting the molecule you want through chemistry.
While I understand that most supplements are not proteins (because most proteins would get denatured in the stomach), I suppose that the supplements are at least produced in plants through enzymes. If we could get E. Coli to synthesize insulin in 1978, I feel that we ought to be able to make E. Coli produce the relevant enzymes to produce melatonin or THC or whatever the active ingredient of a supplement is with 44 years later.
I can think of some reasons that this is not the case. On the one hand, the market volume may be so small that the upfront investment is not worth it. "Sure, we could CRISPR E. Coli to produce $SUBSTANCE, but with the upfront costs, the break-even point with plant extraction is only at 100g per person on earth. As each customer only consumes half a gram a year, that is not worth it, especially if we can't even patent it."
On the other hand, it could also be a regulatory thing, in that marketing some random chemical for human consumption is illegal (especially if you claim health benefits), while there is no general rule against marketing plant/fungi extracts unless explicitly prohibited (like for the coca plant).
Or it might be more of a customer acceptance thing? "I don't want to poison my body with dangerous chemicals with scary names like dihydrogen oxide, but instead prefer safe naturally occurring ingredients like At. Belladonna." I can't really imagine that the set of men looking for prescription-free testosterone boosters is mostly a subset of the people who believe "plants good, chemicals bad".
You know, I've been curious about the whole class of "male enhancement" supplements recently, ever since I realized that, despite what blog spambots had led me to believe, there were actually no erectile dysfunction drugs available OTC in America. Previously I'd been thinking, since people could just go out and buy ED drugs proven to work, anything in the whole class of "male enhancement" pills was probably just useless woo. But a lot of people probably don't want to go through the (likely embarrassing) process of getting a prescription, or maybe don't feel like they meet the standards for diagnosis with a disorder, but still feel dissatisfied with their current condition. And hormones may be pretty complicated, but they're still one of the easiest levers to get noticeable effects on the human body, so it wouldn't be surprising if some of these supplements do *something.*
I've also recently encountered some people online who've discussed taking these sorts of supplements and reporting highly noticeable effects. You can chalk a lot up to the placebo effect, but in a couple cases I've encountered people discussing accidentally taking too much and getting a stronger response than they wanted, or taking them at an inopportune time and having to weather the effects with discomfort. That seems unlikely if it were all *just* placebo, at least given a not-insignificant prior of their actually doing something. And it doesn't seem unlikely that compounds with those sorts of effects might exist, or that they would go unexamined by the FDA if they did.
So, now I'm wondering what the evidence base for these sorts of supplements is actually like, and if there's anyone trustworthy in pharmacology who's really examined that.
Uh oh, I'm currently taking magnesium threonate, fadogia agrestis and tongkat Ali from barlowes herbal elixirs (recommended by Andrew huberman). Anyone know if these are reputable? I was feeling effects especially from the mag T and fadogia but who knows, could be placebo or something else in it ?
He talked about maybe turning this into a company, and wanting to hear back from people who'd tried it. Was there ever an update?
I'm interested in trying the sampler kit, but I haven't made the effort to spend $100+ getting 6 different bottles of pills.
Also really unlucky timing .. I just bought my first ever supplements on Amazon. Now I've read this I'm regretting it, but I just didn't know which companies were trustworthy or not before today.
> If my patients get their Lexapro from a sketchy company that actually has only 4 mg in a 5 mg pill, they’re still going to go up to 20 mg or down to 2 mg or whatever it is the* end up needing, based on how it affects them.
Do we have any way to determine the -consistency- of the inaccuracy? Just as an armchair observer, if a company can't get the dosage correct, what I perhaps naively consider to be the primary metric for chemical interventions, how can I trust that their QA processes will catch an accidental, massive change in either direction? If the next bottle of pills is actually 6 mg instead of 5 mg that will surely frustrate any efforts to self-titrate the dose.
*also, there's a typo in that quote, 'the' instead of 'they'
Hello. I'm a bit late on this but I'm the founder of Illuminate Labs. My name is Calloway Cook. I just received word of this article today. I appreciate you referencing our reviews of Labdoor and ConsumerLab.
I want to clarify to readers that we do not have any commercial partnership with ConsumerLab, and that the founder of Labdoor's comments asserting such are baseless and are libel. We have never even spoken with that company; we just believe they have a better service than Labdoor.
The study with DNA barcoding is completely ridiculous.
- There is no reason an extract of small molecules should have any particular amount of DNA, that is a different fraction. Even the small pieces of DNA we are talking about are several hundred nucleotide bases long. That is huge as compared to the active ingredients that are called "small molecules" for a reason (as compared to macro molecules).
- DNA degradation seems entirely plausible. We kept our desiccated leaves whole right until DNA extraction, the first step of which was pulverizing a small part of the sample. We would be told to not do that until we were ready to do the extraction. DNA is relatively fragile. Thinking chemical processes and heat destroy DNA is entirely reasonable.
- DNA barcoding is based on universal primers and will detect the most common sequence from the chloroplasts (in this case) present. Of course the filler will dominate your result. If this was not so, it would be impossible to work with universal primers with samples collected from the wild. Some pollen grains having fallen on your sample are not a problem, unless you are working with ancient DNA which would require a special lab with positive air pressure to keep things floating in the air out. (Universal primers: some parts of the genome are "highly conserved", i.e. the same in many species and are used as a jumping off point for obtaining specific parts of the DNA sequence).
A genuine supplement can, but doesn't have to have DNA from the plant in it.
"Meanwhile, Dr. Steven Newcomer, lead author of the original study, has had one of his other DNA barcoding papers retracted for suspected fraud. " <- is this a deliberate spellcheck-style mistake shortly after a reference to the scientist's alleged spellcheck-style mistake? Or was this a legitimate flub? (The scientist's name seems to be Steven Newmaster, not Steven Newcomer).
I'm not sure where I heard this and my Google-fu is weak, but I've heard that there are literal heavy metals in supplements and this is not regulated in the slightest? This is what I found offhand: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/analysis-some-natural-supplements-can-be-dangerously-contaminated
This seems more troubling to me than if the amount is slightly off relative to what is claimed. If people in the comments have more information I would love to see reputable tests.
What I would find helpful is an idea of what supplements are actually likely to be effective and what are hooey. A supplement that increases strength or decreases heart attack risk sounds great! But the impression I get of some of the nootropic or anxiolytic supplements is that results seem more anecdotal than anything else.
Typo? "A few less reputable brands might differ by 25%, rarely 50%, practically never less than that."
I guess that should be "practically never more than that"?
I think I enjoyed this a bit too much because it hits a couple of the right biases (MSM and a NY DA getting shown up).
"Newmaster"
-- Nomative determinsm misfire?
Is it OK if I say who cares?
Good to know.
A somewhat amusing datapoint is that Buzzfeed took Alex Jones's supplements to be tested, and found they are "more or less — accurately advertised. They don't contain significantly more or less of a particular ingredient than listed on the bottles, and there are no surprise ingredients. They're also reasonably safe, meaning they passed heavy metal contaminant screenings..." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-sent-alex-jones-infowars-supplements-to-a-lab-heres (Of course, they fail on other metrics, like cost and the efficacy of the advertised ingredients.)
Getting some update on the object-level issue is helpful and appreciated...I still end up wondering if there's some argument to be made for "okay, we were wrong about widespread sugar pills, but supplements should be more stringently regulated anyway!" Good ideas can be accidentally stumbled upon from bad reasoning, sometimes. (Yes, I know, FDA Delenda Est.)
I think the bigger issue is that the industry as a whole sort of exists as solutions-in-search-of-problems...deficiencies really aren't that common, or even meaningfully health-affecting unless dire. (Fairly-arbitrary worldwide differences in target levels of IUs also remains puzzling.) Discerning Customers can benefit from targeted supplementation. But that's not the median supplement purchaser, far from it. The median supplement user is more like...my former coworker who claimed he never got colds because he took 1000% vitC pills every single day, or whatever. At some point, the explanatory process for That's Not How It Works At All is just too long, so...let people believe things. Supplements are surely an easier way to sell hope and agency than most options. At least he picked something water-soluble and cared about proper hydration.
(Now, homeopathy on the other hand...I sure hope that's mostly sugar pills!)
Europe's pharmacopoeia includes a fairly vast amount of empirical based -mostly simple ( tinctures, sirups) or no extraction ( flowers, seeds, compressed tablets), etc. Entering a german pharmacy is a different experience ( and expectation).
Oh, and no coke, chocolate , processed tin cans, milk, postcards, toiletries or perfume. Nor post office. Fairly refreshing.
So, as supplements goes, there's fewer players. The odd thing is the ( weaning lately) presence of homeopathic sugar balls with various labels.
Homeopathy presumably does great, not in fact containing anything of an "active ingredient" they are indeed expected not to contain anything of? :-)
Excellent. Been following the industry since working for Smart Basics in the 90s, and frankly this is the most unbiased summary on purity I've read. TY! Dr. Concrescence
On Choline supplementation, per the earlier post on pregnancy, I was surprised to see just how hard it is to reach Scott’s recommended doses. Most supplements seem to have 1/5th or so of the lower end Scott recommended, with the higher dose ones actually just telling you to take three pills. And the pills aren’t small! They’re even well below the standard adequate intake level. Is choline just bulky? I always hear, like in this post, that a lot of the pill is filler, but I guess not for choline? So are people just taking five or more of these pills a day while pregnant? Too bad the studies all used a different form of choline than one can buy. Anyway, it makes me worry that the ones claiming high choline content are just the ones that fudge the label more.
"Meanwhile, Dr. Steven Newmaster, lead author of the original study, has had one of his other DNA barcoding papers retracted for suspected fraud. Science magazine did an investigative report on him, claiming that:
" An investigation by Science found the problems in Newmaster’s work go well beyond the three papers. They include apparent fabrication, data manipulation, and plagiarism in speeches, teaching, biographies, and scholarly writing. "
If your Mama says she loves you, check it out.
Trust in God, everyone else pays cash.
Nullius In Verba
“It’s a basic truth of the human condition, that everybody lies.” Dr. Gregory House
With bacopa being a super accumulator, I am much more worried about heavy metals than strength
My sister company manufactures supplements and cosmetics. That is, we formulate our own recipes, and then have a reputable manufacturer create the recipes as supplements.
We are the only ones I am aware of that send the supplements to a third party independent lab that tests them for microbial contamination, heavy metal content, and the presence and amounts of key ingredients.
Testing is expensive and takes a few weeks so nobody wants to do it.
The manufacturers all claim they test, and perhaps they do. But when we test the product independently before taking delivery, we sometimes find that they are not within spec. We work with a company that will remake the product without charge when this happens.
This industry is full of charlatans. However, that said, it’s like the Garden of Eden compared to the Hell of Big Pharma.
There should be no regulation of supplements at all. Let consumers depend upon third party organizations that the supplement companies will license, like Underwriters Laboratory, or some of the Certified Organic companies.
Government needs to stay out. The only reason that there are calls for more regulation is to bow to Big Pharma and take smaller companies out of the marketplace entirely, so that the big companies continue to promote their dangerous drugs, AND so they can sell their own supplements at much higher profit margins by crowding out the smaller firms like mine.
You seem extremely credulous (uncharitably, “gushing like a fanboy”) about MYASD’s claims. Coming into this with no dog in the fight (I take no supplements and this is the first time I’ve heard of this dude), my inclination is to be more skeptical. His claims may be accurate, but he’s also somebody whose livelihood involves selling a premium product to a niche market of Grey Tribe Redditors. And “scientifically serious little guy with edgy Reddit handle rails against the sloppiness and damn-the-consumer profit seeking of Big Supplement” is great ad copy for that niche market. And indeed, you’re eating it up.
To be clear I’m not saying that their factual claims are bullshit. And they are probably spot on about some of the really sketchy Chinese stuff. Just that we ought to be skeptical of their conclusions (particularly those against the generally honest but allegedly less rigorous other companies). Sure, maybe the rest of the industry is being unduly sloppy in their manufacturing process. Maybe the industry is using one standard for expensive mushroom juice that lets them get away with selling less expensive mushroom juice without technically lying.
But given that the evidence for therapeutic efficacy of most of these supplements, let alone evidence that precise dosing of them matters therapeutically, is often pretty sparse, how do we know this isn’t all just a veneer of scientism for marketing purposes? “My snake oil is much more pure and precise than the snake oil sold by greedy, sloppy Big Snake Oil! Sure, it costs a little more, but do you really want to RISK YOUR HEALTH with snake oil that might contain +/- 25% the advertised amount of snake?”
That's great and highly interesting, but I can't help, whenever I read about the question of supplements (are they overpriced in order to fund your favourite grifter podcast? are they actually needed? do they contain the stuff? are they actually processed by the body? etc etc), being left wanting for a "alright, fuck supplements, but what should you eat instead?".
Want some magnesium/vitamins/god knows what? Eat that much of this, or this much of that.
Of course a quick google search gets me 50 website with such list, but how trusthworty are food list websites, really?
Also, I suspect 90% of it can be summed up as "eat livers & fruits". But still, I wonder what obvious ingredient I may be passing unknowingly.
*attorneys general
"Anyway, as far as I know none of the media sources that signal-boosted the original false information have ever apologized or covered any of this..."
This is mostly true in almost any context, right?
Would you ever be interested in using your super rationalist MD skills to take a look at SARMS?
I mean, I am going to keep using them no matter what you say because they totally kick ass. But if a third arm grows out of the middle of my back, I will have been warned.
For anyone interested in actually buying supplements, you should never buy from Amazon given its commitment to low quality. I usually order from iHerb instead, but Nootropics Depot is also good (but expensive). Just to elucidate, there are over 20 brands trying to sell Fadogia agrestis on Amazon right now, but none on iHerb.
Caveat emptor should be the first thing you think of when shopping for supplements and find yourself under the influence of influencers. Honestly, a majority of men in their 20s and 30s really only need a decent and tested multi-vitamin and some supplements (like L-carnitine) as a daily. If you're healthy (with no comorbidities or genetic issues), are reasonably physically active, eat health and don't overdue the vices. A lot of these supplement companies target men because while we, by and large, think we are highly rational animals, we're highly susceptible to the marketing of increasing our masculine attributes via magic pills and powders without having to adjust our daily habits. Which indicates that we're not the rational animals we think we are.
If you want to really understand where you are physiologically as a guy in your 30s, 40s and 50s. Get a routine physical and have blood work done to check for T-levels, cholesterol levels and then make adjustments to your dieting and exercise routines before you jump on the supplement snake-oil train.
When my wife and I were having issues conceiving our 1st child , I had a sperm count test done and bloodwork done. It appeared my motility levels were affected by a high white blood cell count. Dr. put me on a mild steroid and antibiotic for 10 days. Then a prescription multivitamin that contained 1000mg of L-carnitine. I retested 3 weeks later and had normal & health sperm counts. I've got 3 kids now because I found a GNC multivitamin and L-carnitine supplement that mirrored the prescription version for half-the price. I get bloodwork done on a yearly basis to have a baseline understanding of where I'm at and adjust my lifestyle and diet accordingly.
Researching products and reading customer reviews will give you some indicator of product efficacy and reliability. I'm sure placebo effects play into many positive reviews but duration of use will be a better indicator over time if a product is working for you.
I've also found that extracts closer to the source vs pure chemical derivatives appear to have better efficacy. I stay away from Chinese manufactured supplements because their QC is terrible. Take the baby formula fiasco as an indicator that cutting corners is part of their manufacturing process. So again...caveat emptor.
> "A lot of herbal supplements are similar. If this is your strategy, a 25% labeling error isn’t going to matter much, is it? If my patients get their Lexapro from a sketchy company that actually has only 4 mg in a 5 mg pill, they’re still going to go up to 20 mg or down to 2 mg or whatever it is the end up needing, based on how it affects them."
Wait but I read MYASD's complaints\* as largely being about poor quality control. Thus the concern isn't just the mean being off, but also high variance in measured products.
High variance is what will mess with the learn-by-doing approach you mention. To be clear, stochastic gradient descent/Kiefer-Wolfowitz algorithms still work! But variance is the enemy, all else equal you want that to be low. is high
In the 25% off example from the quote, the concern would be if one pill from the bottle is X mg, but another is X*1.25 mg (or it could happen at the batch level, depending on where the QC is poor; this might look like "found the right dose but uh oh, now things are weird again in a way that looks like too low/high of a dosage, and all that really happened was starting a new bottle. But bad enough QC could be pill-to-pill I suppose)
This probably suggests a strategy like you mention, plus being extra cautious around finishing one bottle and starting the next. Depending on the severity of the consequences of a change (like, did it take forever to find the right dose?), maybe even keeping a couple pills from a bottle that worked "to the side" so if really desperate could test them. But honestly I suspect that what is natural is just restarting the 'search' process if things seem weird with a new bottle, which maybe is what happens anyway. So maybe once again human locally optimizing intuition us already doing basically the right thing.
Related, does anyone try to apply stochastic optimization techniques to finding good dosages amounts in the way you describe? May not add much, but maybe there are practical variance reduction insights that would be useful, like figuring out how to "subtract off a stochastic constant" (can't remember the right term). Will chew on this a little.
\* as quoted here, I didn't read the supplement links
Is the NOW brand better than Swanson?
DNA Barcoding applied to fish in restaurants and markets resulted in similar "you're being duped" headlines. Presumably it's more appropriate in this context since there shouldn't be active ingredients or really any other ingredients at all in a piece of fish. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-dna-testing-can-tell-you-what-type-of-fish-youre-really-eating-378207/
This is my view on 95% of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPtXHh3lgiE
Part III has many points I also often hear from other areas of industry. Some think this is has to be overcome by more regulation (some call for less regulation). But I think this is just symptoms of our economy optimizing for growth and revenue instead of good products and serving society. These may have been good proxies for producing enough for everyone and doing so efficiently in times when production had to be ramped up fast. Perhaps they are still working in some areas were there is a working and transparent market. But we have to acknowledge that these are just proxy measures that have no value in it's self for society. So we have to check were they work and were we have to change to, or at least add, other proxies that track use for society in another, complementary way.
This is also true for companies selling snake oil: if we judge companies mostly by revenue they can get really good. To change this we don't need regulations to ban one snake oil after the next or to demand proof of effect what the EU tried with the 'health claims regulation'. It would be much better to look for the root cause and reduce the incentives to make money no matter how. What we need is a intelligent regulation that sets the right incentives with general rules that are really enforced then. I don't know these rules have to look like, but I really miss the discussions about them.
Most people are just pro or contra regulation and by regulation they think of micromanaging the symptoms, as if the can't even think that we could modify the rules of the game called economy.
"or selling mushroom mycelium instead of fruiting body."
Paul Stamets openly uses mycelium in his supplements and argues that this is better for health benefits.
https://hostdefense.com/blogs/host-defense-blog/mycelium-explained
I'm a little late to this article, but I'm a little confused about what happened with respect to Labdoor. Did this post every contain the statement "Many people have pointed out that Labdoor is a bad company"? I ask because I see it in the Labdoor response, but not in this post. I'm also a bit frustrated, because the response doesn't actually respond to any of the criticisms leveled against them.
>withanolamides
Should this be withanolides? If I recall correctly, "Withanolamides" was a 1987 British movie starring Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann.
Recently I've been researching Performance enhancing drugs and finding PEDs that are even remotely reputable is surprisingly hard. The drugs worth looking at (Stanozolol, Erythropoietin, Human Growth Hormone, Testosterone, Clenbuterol and Drostanolone propionate) have suppliers that range from extremely sketch to "just get a corrupt doctor and actual western medicine will give you it". (I trust my local pharmacy and hospitals a lot). The unfortunate reality is that the reputable companies like Johnson and Johnson don't deal in anabolic steroids so you're left with shady egyptian/russian suppliers. Your post seems to be line with my experience that for anything that you can buy at walgreens the companies that supply those supplements/drugs are extremely reputable, but for the things you can't the companies are dubious.
It's unfortunate that the amount of research I've done on these substances isn't enough yet, but at some point it would be worth making a "much less than I wanted to know" post on the topic.
I feel like this is one of those “other universes” from a recent post. I have never heard of any of these substances except magnesium. There is clearly a “supplements universe” out there, but no one I know is a resident.
>But at least Attorney General Schneiderman, while not doing very well scientifically, hasn’t been completely discredited as a human being, right?
The substantial section on this feels like an ad hominem; the fact that dating this guy is a bad idea doesn't seem to add much information about whether his study is good beyond the stuff you'd already noted.
A short parenthetical note is probably warranted, but the lengthy quote involving some unrelated fetish content + whole paragraph of gloat feels kind of like an SJ-style character assassination.
I don't understand why Schneiderman's sexual misconduct allegations are there at all. Was that exclusively build up to the joke that he might recommend supplements? At worst it seems to be trying to paint the whole idea as bad because a person behind it might be bad.
Note that anti-supplement scientists still benefit from having the claim that supplements don't contain the advertised ingredients discredited. If this claim held up, then it would call into question all the studies claiming that supplements are ineffective, on the grounds that we have no way of knowing whether the supplements used in those studies actually contained the active ingredients.
an impressive assemblage of facts, though (as you hint at the start) it may help to ratify the legitimacy of herbal supplements that IMHO are worthless placebos supported by junk science. One sentence in your commentary that really spoke to me was "...as far as I know none of the media sources that signal-boosted the original false information have ever apologized or covered any of this..." Not only is it exactly on-target, but it's phrased wonderfully; good job!
Short answer: If it comes from China doubtful it has any actual ingredients. Hopefully no drugs to mimic its effect. If the assay was done with supplied drugs- it is fake. Chinese and Indian drug manufacturers have been caught doing that to the FDA. If they are "just" adding the "active" ingredient that would be called a drug and should be regulated by the FDA. Since they are dodging proving effectiveness one should assume they are lying about what they are doing.
I am unconvinced that in 2022, the most efficient way to produce any organic substance involves cultivating some rare plant and extracting the molecule you want through chemistry.
While I understand that most supplements are not proteins (because most proteins would get denatured in the stomach), I suppose that the supplements are at least produced in plants through enzymes. If we could get E. Coli to synthesize insulin in 1978, I feel that we ought to be able to make E. Coli produce the relevant enzymes to produce melatonin or THC or whatever the active ingredient of a supplement is with 44 years later.
I can think of some reasons that this is not the case. On the one hand, the market volume may be so small that the upfront investment is not worth it. "Sure, we could CRISPR E. Coli to produce $SUBSTANCE, but with the upfront costs, the break-even point with plant extraction is only at 100g per person on earth. As each customer only consumes half a gram a year, that is not worth it, especially if we can't even patent it."
On the other hand, it could also be a regulatory thing, in that marketing some random chemical for human consumption is illegal (especially if you claim health benefits), while there is no general rule against marketing plant/fungi extracts unless explicitly prohibited (like for the coca plant).
Or it might be more of a customer acceptance thing? "I don't want to poison my body with dangerous chemicals with scary names like dihydrogen oxide, but instead prefer safe naturally occurring ingredients like At. Belladonna." I can't really imagine that the set of men looking for prescription-free testosterone boosters is mostly a subset of the people who believe "plants good, chemicals bad".
How is momentus? https://www.livemomentous.com/
You know, I've been curious about the whole class of "male enhancement" supplements recently, ever since I realized that, despite what blog spambots had led me to believe, there were actually no erectile dysfunction drugs available OTC in America. Previously I'd been thinking, since people could just go out and buy ED drugs proven to work, anything in the whole class of "male enhancement" pills was probably just useless woo. But a lot of people probably don't want to go through the (likely embarrassing) process of getting a prescription, or maybe don't feel like they meet the standards for diagnosis with a disorder, but still feel dissatisfied with their current condition. And hormones may be pretty complicated, but they're still one of the easiest levers to get noticeable effects on the human body, so it wouldn't be surprising if some of these supplements do *something.*
I've also recently encountered some people online who've discussed taking these sorts of supplements and reporting highly noticeable effects. You can chalk a lot up to the placebo effect, but in a couple cases I've encountered people discussing accidentally taking too much and getting a stronger response than they wanted, or taking them at an inopportune time and having to weather the effects with discomfort. That seems unlikely if it were all *just* placebo, at least given a not-insignificant prior of their actually doing something. And it doesn't seem unlikely that compounds with those sorts of effects might exist, or that they would go unexamined by the FDA if they did.
So, now I'm wondering what the evidence base for these sorts of supplements is actually like, and if there's anyone trustworthy in pharmacology who's really examined that.
Uh oh, I'm currently taking magnesium threonate, fadogia agrestis and tongkat Ali from barlowes herbal elixirs (recommended by Andrew huberman). Anyone know if these are reputable? I was feeling effects especially from the mag T and fadogia but who knows, could be placebo or something else in it ?
Just curious what ever happened with Scott's old post about an anxiety sampler kit. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/11/anxiety-sampler-kits/
He talked about maybe turning this into a company, and wanting to hear back from people who'd tried it. Was there ever an update?
I'm interested in trying the sampler kit, but I haven't made the effort to spend $100+ getting 6 different bottles of pills.
Also really unlucky timing .. I just bought my first ever supplements on Amazon. Now I've read this I'm regretting it, but I just didn't know which companies were trustworthy or not before today.
I worked @gnc for 19 years ... Don't have much to add really except this was one of the better blogs about supplements I've read.
> If my patients get their Lexapro from a sketchy company that actually has only 4 mg in a 5 mg pill, they’re still going to go up to 20 mg or down to 2 mg or whatever it is the* end up needing, based on how it affects them.
Do we have any way to determine the -consistency- of the inaccuracy? Just as an armchair observer, if a company can't get the dosage correct, what I perhaps naively consider to be the primary metric for chemical interventions, how can I trust that their QA processes will catch an accidental, massive change in either direction? If the next bottle of pills is actually 6 mg instead of 5 mg that will surely frustrate any efforts to self-titrate the dose.
*also, there's a typo in that quote, 'the' instead of 'they'
Hello. I'm a bit late on this but I'm the founder of Illuminate Labs. My name is Calloway Cook. I just received word of this article today. I appreciate you referencing our reviews of Labdoor and ConsumerLab.
I want to clarify to readers that we do not have any commercial partnership with ConsumerLab, and that the founder of Labdoor's comments asserting such are baseless and are libel. We have never even spoken with that company; we just believe they have a better service than Labdoor.
I used to work with plant DNA.
The study with DNA barcoding is completely ridiculous.
- There is no reason an extract of small molecules should have any particular amount of DNA, that is a different fraction. Even the small pieces of DNA we are talking about are several hundred nucleotide bases long. That is huge as compared to the active ingredients that are called "small molecules" for a reason (as compared to macro molecules).
- DNA degradation seems entirely plausible. We kept our desiccated leaves whole right until DNA extraction, the first step of which was pulverizing a small part of the sample. We would be told to not do that until we were ready to do the extraction. DNA is relatively fragile. Thinking chemical processes and heat destroy DNA is entirely reasonable.
- DNA barcoding is based on universal primers and will detect the most common sequence from the chloroplasts (in this case) present. Of course the filler will dominate your result. If this was not so, it would be impossible to work with universal primers with samples collected from the wild. Some pollen grains having fallen on your sample are not a problem, unless you are working with ancient DNA which would require a special lab with positive air pressure to keep things floating in the air out. (Universal primers: some parts of the genome are "highly conserved", i.e. the same in many species and are used as a jumping off point for obtaining specific parts of the DNA sequence).
A genuine supplement can, but doesn't have to have DNA from the plant in it.