How We Review Supplements
Most supplement review sites ask you to trust their conclusions. We would rather show you our working. This page explains exactly how every review, comparison and score on Natural Health Supplement is produced — what we check, in what order, what earns points, what loses them, and the things we will never do. If a page on this site ever falls short of this standard, the standard is this page, and we want to know.
First, What We Do Not Do
We do not run a laboratory, and we do not hands-on test the products we review. We have no medical review board, and nobody here is a doctor. Any site in our position that claims otherwise should not be trusted — so instead of pretending, we built a method that does not need those claims: a documentary audit. Every claim a maker publishes — its formula, its studies, its prices, its guarantee — is a document that can be checked. Checking them, carefully and on the record, is the whole of our method.
Our Sources
For each product, our primary source is the manufacturer's own official product page and the material it publishes — the label, the study reports, the pricing and the guarantee terms — because that is the page a buyer is asked to trust, and it is where the maker's claims must stand or fall. Where a maker publishes a study, we read what is actually reported: the design, the number of participants, who ran it, and what it measured. Secondary material from the maker's own retail channels is used only for supplementary detail, and where two maker sources conflict, the product's own page prevails.
The Five-Step Audit
Step 1 — Label audit. We list every ingredient the maker names, and mark whether the amount is published. A formula with disclosed amounts can be checked; a proprietary blend can only be trusted, and our scores say so.
Step 2 — Evidence trace. We find the study behind the product and grade how close it gets to the bottle. Our hierarchy, strongest first: a trial of the finished product; a study of the product's exact compound at the exact dose sold; a study of one ingredient among many; a maker's claim with no study at all. We record who sponsored the study and how large it was.
Step 3 — Dose check. We compare the dose used in the research with the dose the label actually delivers per day. A study run at twice the label dose is reported as exactly that — it is one of the most common gaps in this industry, and one of the easiest to hide.
Step 4 — Timeline and guarantee fit. We set the maker's own results timeline against its refund window. If the evidence was gathered over 84 days but the guarantee closes at 67, the review says so, and gives you the practical decision point.
Step 5 — Price of a fair trial. We calculate what it actually costs to test the product for as long as its own evidence says it takes — at the dose its own evidence used — rather than quoting the cheapest sticker on the page.
How Scores Are Calculated
Every product is scored out of 10 on the same published rubric:
| Criterion | Weight | What earns points |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredient quality | 30% | Named ingredients at published, research-relevant amounts |
| Evidence | 25% | Studies close to the finished product, honestly reported |
| Maker credibility | 20% | An accountable maker, published terms, a guarantee that exists in writing |
| Safety | 15% | Published exclusions, no reckless claims, checkable contents |
| Value | 10% | The cost of a fair trial, not the cost of a first box |
Scores are never sold, never negotiated, and never adjusted because a product converts well. A product we do not sell can still beat one we do — and where we have found something unflattering in a maker's own fine print, we have published that too.
What We Will Never Do
- Invent testimonials, review counts, ratings or reader results.
- Claim we tested, tasted, or clinically evaluated a product we did not.
- Present a supplement as a medicine, or repeat a health claim the maker's own material does not support.
- Hide the affiliate relationship: links on this site may earn us a commission, at no extra cost to you, and every article says so at the top.
- Let a manufacturer see, approve, or pay to change a review before publication.
Updates and Corrections
Prices, formulas and guarantee terms change. We re-check the products we cover and mark every review with a "Last reviewed" date; when we find an error of ours, we correct the page and, where the error was material, we say what changed. If you spot something we got wrong, contact us through this site's Contact page — corrections from readers are the cheapest quality control there is, and we use it.
The content of this site is for general information only and is not medical advice. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.