Why 'clinical doses' matter (and how brands fake it)

Open most supplement labels and you'll see an impressive list of ingredients. But quantity of ingredients isn't the same as quantity of each ingredient — and that's where a lot of products fall apart.

Fairy dusting

'Fairy dusting' is adding a tiny, sub-effective amount of a trendy ingredient just so it can appear on the label. It looks good; it does little.

Proprietary blends

Proprietary blends list ingredients but hide the individual amounts behind a single total. That makes it impossible to know whether any single ingredient is at a researched dose. We don't use them — every dose is printed.

The fix is simple: show the dose of every active ingredient, and match it to what studies actually used. If a label won't tell you the amount, assume the worst.