How we review | Supplement Magazine

Every article on Supplement Magazine is built on the same rule: trace each health claim to a primary source before we publish it. Articles are researched and written byEmrah Sümer, the founding editor, who is not a clinician. This page sets out what that rule means in practice.

Primary sources only

We cite the study, the label or the agency page itself, not a summary of it. In practice that means PubMed-indexed trials and reviews, Cochrane reviews, NIH Office of Dietary Supplements fact sheets, and drug and supplement labels as filed with the FDA and published on DailyMed.

Every citation is checked

Before an article goes live, every PubMed ID in it is looked up in the NCBI database to confirm that it points to the study we name, with the right authors and year. Numbers and quotes are copied from the abstract, full text or label rather than from memory, and each source in an article’s source list carries the date we last checked it.

We count labels ourselves

When a question is about what products actually contain, we go to the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database and count. Each of these articles states its search, what we included and excluded, and where the count stops. Examples:

Melatonin dosage: 917 labels compared with the doses used in trials.
Best lion’s mane supplement: 92 single-ingredient labels, of which 3 reach the trial dose.
Pure Encapsulations magnesium glycinate: 146 glycinate labels checked against the upper limit.
Citrus bergamot supplements: 47 labels, and which ones state the amount studied.

How we judge a supplement

We report effect sizes in plain numbers, including “barely” and “no.” When evidence is weak, comes from small or observational studies, contradicts itself, or was funded by a manufacturer, we say so on the page. We do not give star ratings or scores.

When the evidence does not support buying something, the article says so and carries no product box. For example, our pages onglucosamine sulfate vs HCl andCoQ10 for leg cramps link to no product at all.

Independence and money

Some articles carry affiliate links or a clearly labelled advertisement. A product box appears only when the article’s own conclusion supports a purchase, and the disclosure sits next to the link. Commissions never change what an article concludes. See ouraffiliate disclosure, ourmedical disclaimer, and the corrections log on oureditorial standards page.