I've had issues where I've reacted to what I assumed were differences in the 'inert' materials in pills, getting horrid bloating from some brands and no side effects from nominally the same thing from another brand. (I do react to a lot of things, my gut is not healthy)
ETA: that is to say, I totally agree that switching brand can sometimes have significant effects even if the nominal dose of active ingredient is identical
IIRC, the FDA standard for a generic equivalent is 80%-120% of the base formulation. This is fine for most drugs because they usually have a wide therapeutic range. Unfortunately, some small number of drugs are less fortunate and the allowed variance is greater than the minimum to show differences in therapeutic effects. Then you get to the cases where changes in the "inert" ingredients have resulted in changes in absorption rates, allergic reactions, etc. Fortunately, the FDA has clued into this issue.
That's because they're mostly made in India and China, which have um interesting quality control methods. I read a long Bloomberg piece years ago I'm now too lazy to look up, that said how the Indian contract manufacturers keep the quality just low enough to turn a good profit, but just high enough that the American pharma companies don't get mad enough to dump them entirely. So it's probably factually accurate that they do have different dosages
"I've heard that some of those gas station sex pills actually (illegally) contain sildenafil, meaning they are actually more effective than you'd expect. ..."
Random factoid because I find it interesting and it is almost relevant.
The British stopped making British Sovereign coins in 1932 but there was still a demand for them. Counterfeiters stepped up to the plate and began making fake Sovereigns. Some of them were quite good and the best matched the authentic British Sovereigns in gold content:
" The Italian counterfeits were considered to be of a better quality than the Syrian coins. It was suspected by the British authorities that the so-called Swiss counterfeits were merely the best examples of the Italian coins that had been trafficked through Switzerland. During this time the Royal Mint assayed a large number of the counterfeits. The Italian coins, probably mainly from Beraha’s organisation, were found to usually contain between 91.2 to 91.7% gold whereas the Syrian/Lebanese coins, attributed to Chatile and others, varied between 88.0 to 91.5% gold. Genuine sovereigns always contain between 91.6 and 91.7% gold. Beraha was to later boast (Note 1) that he used more gold in his coins than the Royal Mint. The Royal Mint’s assays proved this boast to be as untrustworthy as his sovereigns."
"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.
I've also heard that, though at least as often about spices as with supplements. I think it is occasionally a problem, but LabDoor and ConsumerLab tested for heavy metals and I couldn't find any products on their site that failed. You can look through and see if you can spot anything I missed.
I'm not sure why your paper found something so different from the labs I checked. One possibility is they looked at sketchier products - for example, they mentioned that Chinese medicine sometimes just uses cinnabar (a mercury-containing rock) as a treatment - if they have more of that than of reputable herbal preparations, that would be one possibility.
The FDA loves their press releases as it gives them justification for their huge budgets but I wouldn’t put any faith in what they come out with. Certain compounds naturally have high heavy metals and the consumer has to be aware of that.
People continue to love “Himalayan Pink Salt” which is loaded with heavy metals and toxins, and actually comes from Pakistan. But so what. They can buy and use what they want and if they are interested in learning more about what they consumer, information is out there.
Most diets people are on are far more toxic than any supplement they could possibly ingest. And drugs they take, well, these drugs are shortening life dramatically (statins, anti depressants, blood thinners…)
It might be that we are not funding the FDA enough as they are unable to meet their statutory requirements without a billion + in fees from drug companies. Otherwise their budget is about 3 billion. 2/3 from the govt so about $6 per person per year in the US. Seems like a bargain.
Considering the bulk of the supplements are of Chinese manufacturing origin, the QC of source materials for supplements would be questionable especially the TCM variety.
When you say none "failed", is having eg. "half the daily max" a 'pass'? because the sort of people who take supplements frequently take many supplements, and if you have 3 or 4 pills a day that are each in the 1/3 - 1/2 dangerous amount of heavy metals....
There are not going to be a lot of heavy metals in supplements. There are a lot of naturally occurring heavy metals in some, such as shilojit and mushroom extracts. The consumers can get a Certificate of Analysis from the makers, and select a product with lowest heavy metals. I have asked for these Certificates and usually the makers send them via email quite happily. At least the reputable makers do.
I wonder how easy it is to get tests done for supplements one is buying? I found one $25 kit that appears to be able to go down to 10 ppb which is a little above the level considered harmful in foods. https://osumex.com/product/heavy-metals-test-lead-kit/
I’d be more comfortable sending it to a lab if the price were reasonable.
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.
Will second creatine as being the first noticeably effective addition to a dialed-in diet personally.
AFIK from my studies in second-hand broscience, it was the first big (still legal) supplement that had a widespread impact - to the degree that supp companies were in the awkward spot of explaining how unlike everything else they sold, it actually worked.
It’s all anecdotal and subjective but nothing stops anyone from doing their own research via scholar.google.com
“Decreasing heart attack risk” sounds like something that the right diet is going to do, and a lifestyle of activity and fun.
People who view supplements as drugs are really doing everyone a disservice. Supplements are designed to support the body’s natural health and healing, not to treat medical conditions, as the FDA constantly reminds us. And it’s true, basically.
I don't think there's really a clear dividing line here. Drugs are also designed to "support the body's natural health", in many cases; perhaps all cases, depending on our definitions. I.e., no matter what you're taking, you're attempting to weaken or strengthen some particular element of your body, to be healthier.
I don't think "well you can look them up yourself" is very helpful, either — you can find a couple studies saying good (or bad, more rarely) things about anything you look for. Analyzing every study for every supplement is a monstrously time-consuming endeavor; what the original poster asked for was merely a starting point.
To put this into context: most of my friends do illegal drugs. I do drugs. I drink alcohol to excess most nights. Supplements? If it's not meth or coke am I supposed to care?
When you do illegal drugs or alcohol, it is assumed that you know about the potential toxicity or harmfulness of the substances.
Some people do illegal drugs, but only rarely (like monthly, or few times a year). Some people don't drink alcohol. Supplements are supposed to be used frequently, like daily or weekly. That means the amounts add up quickly over time, and just like "drinking alcohol to excess" every day, it would be harmful. But supplements are not supposed to be harmful at all to begin with(!), rather quite the opposite.
I think in your comment you are making a categorical error. Consider the fact someone is taking drugs AND supplements, and instead of one of those being a source of "chemical damage" and the other one a source of "chemical help" that someone ends up with twice the sources of chemical damage.. yes, you then should probably care?
Do you care that the illegal drug you are taking is the one you think you're taking? That the dosage is the one you think it is? I would think taking drugs would make you far more sensitive to the importance of purity and accurate dosage, since the risks are much higher than with supplements! The vast majority of drug deaths are due to dosage or purity issues, IIUC
Absolutely. Compare opioid-related deaths from pharmaceuticals to street heroin, for example. I love drugs, illegal and otherwise, and the only reason I have only ever had one bad experience or health effect is that I have been very, very careful in making sure what I consume is what it's supposed to be — a friend died due to "heroin" that was adulterated with benzodiazepines, and the one bad experience mentioned above was literally the one time I didn't verify.
May I ask how you do your verification? I find this very interesting. It is a major holdback for me, but I also admit that I haven't put in much research into the verification options available for someone "regular" like me (no direct access to a lab through my own work or friends).
Unless you're drinking moonshine it's the government assuring you're getting the amount of alcohol on the label and it's ethyl alcohol not wood alcohol. And you may not care.
It's not just the government. The Coca-Cola corporation isn't going to go out and start poisoning their product without government inspection. One of the reasons they have a cash cow is that they have a reliable product.
Major stores (notably Walmart) have their own separate farm and safety inspection regime for fresh produce above and beyond the FDA. Why? Because a news story about eg. E.Coli in lettuce at Walmart would substantially hurt their brand. So they actually care about what they get in and can't trust the government for their needs.
Yeah coffee in the morning, beer and pot after work. I limit the coffee, but probably too much beer and pot. I really liked this post though I don't use other 'supplements'.
What do I like about it? It's a good insight/ review of some area I don't care about now...
I'm trying to think of a good analogy.. local used car salesmen?
I think Jack Wilson was being reasonably polite, and mostly relevant. The truth value is not particularly important but then I think that's usually the case with comments on the internet.
Wouldn’t they rather have found 80% relevance, but because of inferior methodology a neighboring, but unrelated relevance peak boosted the relevance signal for this comment? ND‘s high resolution spectroscopy identified afterwards that this comment actually only had 0.17% relevance.
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.
I distinctly remember Rossmann having a fairly extensive selection of wines. Or is this about the Apothek/Drogerie distinction? Presumably ultimately about regulations regarding who can dispense prescription medicines.
Sometimes there are "weak" homeopathic pills that aren't diluted very much and advertise containing multiple mg of active ingredient, which would for some things be a not insignificant dose.
Hilariously, there have also been scandals when a producer skipped the whole homeopathic method for the fully diluted ones and just produced pills that contained nothing the easier way by not even going through the motions.
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.
100mg (at least per label) used to be standard in many B-vitamin mixes. Since covid, I've noticed along with supply chain interrupts, that my old formula now has 30mg (per label). So now I buy straight choline from a reliable manufacturer and take it separately.
"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.
> Let consumers depend upon third party organizations that the supplement companies will license, like Underwriters Laboratory, or some of the Certified Organic companies.
What you'd get is the sketchy companies starting their own third party organization that says they're all great. And the average consumer is not going to know which third party organization to trust.
True, but do these certification schemes always end up reliably as scams? In some areas they seem to work, but I am not knowledgeable enough.
"Bio"/Organic-Labels for food come to mind. Or safety certs for various equipment, tools and electronics. What would be the discerning factors between a successful and a failing certification market? Why would the Nootropics or Drug market cert fail in your opinion, but does not seem to fail in many other high-stakes areas where people can be harmed?
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?”
Not only in tension with the quotes, but the way Scott frames the quotes as “these are amazing and I’d post way more but I just don’t have room”. Maybe I’m missing some double secret sarcasm there, but Scott’s fandom of MYASD seems sincere.
Ironically enough, MYASD basically says the same. On several occasions he mentions that he only discusses chemistry and does not suggest or deny efficacy of anything. But as it is just mixed in like fine print, I agree with your broader point of a sciency cloak for something that might amount to effectively homeopathy.
"The results from the consumer lab companies seemed very promising - almost everyone was good. MYASD’s experiences seem like the opposite - almost everyone seems bad. How do we reconcile these?"
We reconcile it by not trusting the marketing guy who says "everyone but my company is trash".
Which is almost exactly what the “DNA sequencing” guy was doing, basically creating a product and using “science” to “prove” that everybody needed to buy his product (instead of the status quo industry standard).
So that’s part of why I’m a bit surprised by Scott’s credulousness of MYASD compared to the DNA guy.
I find that a very interesting question. I looked into some of MYASD's posts and he shows a lot of screenshots from UPLC spectrographs and assays. He does it quite consistently, seemingly for years. It just seems to me (and maybe to Scott as well) that it would be harder to fake this and maybe even impossible to do it for so long without anyone calling you out. So maybe the industry is just as shitty as MYASD shows it to be, simply because the potential for harm is low to non-existent with these nootropics? An easy game for a chemist/lab-owner with a solid understanding of quality control and the right tools?
So I don’t think MYASD is actually engaging in outright fraud, which Newmaster was accused of. I suspect MYASD’s data is probably accurate - it’s the conclusions / relevance of those findings that I think deserve more skepticism.
The parallel to Newmaster is that Newmaster was apparently “making up his own definitions” and performing DNA assays that weren’t fake so much as irrelevant (as in, the findings of the DNA assays were perfectly consistent with good supplements, not dispositive of “supplements did not contain what they said”). And using that to parlay his own business of running DNA assays.
Likewise, MYASD is in some cases basically making up his own purity standards and then accusing the industry of being shady for not meeting them, and using this claim to market his own product.
Nope. Check Mushroom supplements in particular, where MYASD uncovered widespread use of mycellium instead of fruiting mushrooms in supplements. And note his site sells ANOTHER COMPANY'S product, and does so in a number of cases where others meet his standard. He also manufactures his own, and obviously it's more profitable for ND to do so. But other companies meet his standards.
I don’t see how the fact that he profits from selling other people’s stuff in addition to his own changes anything about what I said - it doesn’t prove the therapeutic value of the higher standards he places on what he sells.
As far as “uncovering” mycellium vs fruiting body mushrooms, I don’t see how that fact makes warrants dismissing my whole post with a “Nope”.
I’m not denying that he might occasionally have a point. The concern about totally fake stuff from China is absolutely warranted.
But the whole “I can’t BELIEVE how sloppy everyone else in the industry is and they JUST DONT CARE” schtick is just fluff until he has proof that the extra precision he touts is therapeutically relevant.
I mean hell, you coming here and defending him proves just how effective his marketing is.
he's not the "marketing guy", he's a CEO, who headed up a company previous to Nootropics Depot, Ceretropics. He has a long public record that can be examined. If you actually read the article, you'd know that. The problem is the OP is overgeneralizing. I have followed MYASD for over a decade! It's a lot easy to shoot down someone then actually do any research though, isn't it?
Pretty sure the CEO is involved in marketing. What he’s doing on Reddit is marketing, or at the very least PR. The point is that his statements, true or not (and for like the 5th time, I’m not saying they are false!) cannot be separated from the fact that he runs a company whose market niche is selling extra-sciencey-seeming supplements to Grey Tribers. I mean, it’s called “Nootropics Depot” for crying out loud.
He has a direct financial interest in his findings about the other companies being seen as relevant and indicative of the superior quality of what he sells.
And again (and again) I don’t actually have a dog in this fight. I’m just saying Scott seems to have turned off all his usual skepticism when it comes to this guy, without giving a compelling reason for doing so.
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.
"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."
Operationally, what are worried about? I expect that human bodies are fairly robust against eating non-optimal diets so if you feel fine I'd expect that things are okay. Maybe your body could be running a little bit better, but things must be mostly okay.
Is the concern that you are only 90% healthy and could be 100% healthy with just the right mix of micro-nutrients? Or that things are fine, but could collapse suddenly with the right stimulus? Or something else?
Can't post the link, but googling "usda food excel" gives a link to spreadsheets with informations about all the vitamins, minerals and so on found in basically all the food available in the US.
Like everything else, I think it depends. I take multivitamins for various reasons (including past lab tests actually showing me to be deficient). I also take Kelp tablets because they're the only way to get isolated guaranteed assays of iodine.
Some other supplements have actual medical research support behind them (notably St. John's Wort and Red Yeast Rice extract), though I'd personally avoid them. I trust GMP chemical synthesis far more.
When I go looking for that kind of information, I look at an OLD FDA publication called something like "Nutritional Qualities of Foods". (That's not the exact title, and it's currently is storage.) But they don't seem to publish that anymore. For particular foods, I can often look them up on the FDA sites, but doing comparisons can be tricky.
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.
Interesting. No chest pains here. Big gains and other benefits. A little rough on the gut so I cycle off after about 6 weeks and restart after about a month
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.
> 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.
Why do you think a multivitamin is necessary? I would say most people don't need any supplements. Eat vegetables. And it's no different for women, unless you are trying to conceive or pregnant, in which case take folic acid.
A multivitamin supplements diet. It's not a cure-all. And not everyone is eating 15 pounds of spinach and broccoli every day of their lives. My diet can be all over the place on a weekly basis.
As I said, most people don't need them but they can be an assist to those who do need them.
>I would say most people don't need any supplements. Eat vegetables
The problem with 'you don't need supplements' argument is increasing evidence that modern foods are less nutritious than in past generations. This was discussed in the weekend Open Thread. So you may be getting less essential vitamins than people a hundred years ago did from their vitamins, due to nutrient depletion. See for instance https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/
I don't think anyone's disputing that locally grown food from non-nutrient depleted soil is great for you. But take a look at the labels on your vegetables next time you buy them from the supermarket- they were probably picked hundreds or thousands of miles away, weeks or longer ago. This isn't conducive to maximum nutrition
This is true not just of the nutritional values in many cases but it can affect taste as well. Wild salmon vs farm-raised salmon may have similar nutritional value but the quality is vastly different as well as the taste. Locally grown/home grown tomatoes are far superior to the hydroponic/hothouse tomatoes.
Considering that it takes something like 2-3 months for new sperm to be produced by your testes, it’s unlikely that the supplements you were taking changed your sperm quality in 3 weeks.
When talking about motility and morbidity rate, lowering the white blood cell count can have immediate effects on sperm count, which is why the blood test was required and why I had to take a low dose steroid and antibiotic. The MV was/is a long-term support base.
True, and therefore be a skeptical and informed experimenter. After 10 years of so-so effects with Rx antidepressants (including gray-market Indian generic bupropion), I did some nootropic research and tried N-acetyl L-tyrosine. Mood magic within a few very low doses. L-tyrosine also works, but it's less euphoric. 2+ years later, slightly higher doses (the therapeutic window on amino-acids is very wide), better mood than in 15 years, despite a very stressful move. Bonus result was controlling my progressing tremor (my dad had one). YMMV.
Thanks for the tip. I take Indian bupropion also. Have tried tyrosine with bromantane before without success but will give nalt a shot after reading up on it. You can get bromantane on Newmind if it's something you're interested in trying.
Also, NALT was not my first amino acid success. Based entirely on a suggestion from some rando in the BAP bodybuilding community on Twitter, I tried Glycine for my tendonitis. It was pretty close to a miracle cure--I'm dancing again after 10 years off for plantar fasciitis and PTTD. Watch out for the dream enhancement on the first few doses, however--I like technicolor dreaming, but it's off-putting to many. Added glutamine for recovery. The nice things about amino acids is the LD50 is nearly infinite and they are all cheap in bulk (BulkSupplements is a great brand)--I buy these by the kilo, lol.
Nice, I'll keep that in mind for others. I also take 5-10g of glycine daily as a possible counter against some of the negative effects of methionine. Not entirely sold on th rather sparse research in this area but it's cheap enough and the sweetness helps some of the other powders I take go down easier.
> "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
there's a very wide variety of products from both. I imagine some products NOW is better, some Swanson. I buy regularly products from both. I also think both have some products that are of high quality, and some poor. I also regularly buy from Nootropic Depot and have followed MYASD for over a decade. They really do have superior products and do a lot of public education.
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.
This also reminds me to the discussion about Bezos and how much and important the invention of amazon was. People realized implicitly that company size and value are just proxies for effectiveness and business talent, but didn't get that these are only poor proxies for adding value society. There are many ways you can use your extraordinary business talent to effectively get very rich by actually harming society, scams, snake oil, selling drugs, insider trading, exploiting people, corruption or spreading fear and selling the 'protection' to name just a few.
Paul Stamets is a self-taught mushroom hunter and not a chemist, nutritionist, or doctor. I'm sure he's a nice guy. I've listened to his TED talks, interviews with Rogan, and other videos and I trust him on foraging and such. At the same time I think he could easily be bamboozled by manufacturers. MYASD is an accomplished chemist and you can take a virtual tour of Nootropics Depot's lab on the website. I don't think you can tour Stamets' lab, or should I say lab(s) he contracts.
I've had issues where I've reacted to what I assumed were differences in the 'inert' materials in pills, getting horrid bloating from some brands and no side effects from nominally the same thing from another brand. (I do react to a lot of things, my gut is not healthy)
ETA: that is to say, I totally agree that switching brand can sometimes have significant effects even if the nominal dose of active ingredient is identical
IIRC, the FDA standard for a generic equivalent is 80%-120% of the base formulation. This is fine for most drugs because they usually have a wide therapeutic range. Unfortunately, some small number of drugs are less fortunate and the allowed variance is greater than the minimum to show differences in therapeutic effects. Then you get to the cases where changes in the "inert" ingredients have resulted in changes in absorption rates, allergic reactions, etc. Fortunately, the FDA has clued into this issue.
That's because they're mostly made in India and China, which have um interesting quality control methods. I read a long Bloomberg piece years ago I'm now too lazy to look up, that said how the Indian contract manufacturers keep the quality just low enough to turn a good profit, but just high enough that the American pharma companies don't get mad enough to dump them entirely. So it's probably factually accurate that they do have different dosages
"I've heard that some of those gas station sex pills actually (illegally) contain sildenafil, meaning they are actually more effective than you'd expect. ..."
Random factoid because I find it interesting and it is almost relevant.
The British stopped making British Sovereign coins in 1932 but there was still a demand for them. Counterfeiters stepped up to the plate and began making fake Sovereigns. Some of them were quite good and the best matched the authentic British Sovereigns in gold content:
" The Italian counterfeits were considered to be of a better quality than the Syrian coins. It was suspected by the British authorities that the so-called Swiss counterfeits were merely the best examples of the Italian coins that had been trafficked through Switzerland. During this time the Royal Mint assayed a large number of the counterfeits. The Italian coins, probably mainly from Beraha’s organisation, were found to usually contain between 91.2 to 91.7% gold whereas the Syrian/Lebanese coins, attributed to Chatile and others, varied between 88.0 to 91.5% gold. Genuine sovereigns always contain between 91.6 and 91.7% gold. Beraha was to later boast (Note 1) that he used more gold in his coins than the Royal Mint. The Royal Mint’s assays proved this boast to be as untrustworthy as his sovereigns."
https://goldsovereigns.co.uk/sovereignfakesin20thcentury.html
"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).
Sorry, not a deliberate mistake, just an ordinary mistaken mistake.
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.
I've also heard that, though at least as often about spices as with supplements. I think it is occasionally a problem, but LabDoor and ConsumerLab tested for heavy metals and I couldn't find any products on their site that failed. You can look through and see if you can spot anything I missed.
It does look like this is a problem in some supplements:
- The FDA recalled some supplements due to high levels of lead: https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplement-products-ingredients/fda-advises-consumers-stop-using-certain-life-rising-dietary-supplements
- And some random study found that 5% of supplements were above the daily exposure to arsenic in their sample: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0049676
I couldn't find information about the supplements in your article. This seems like a real concern for supplements in general though.
I'm not sure why your paper found something so different from the labs I checked. One possibility is they looked at sketchier products - for example, they mentioned that Chinese medicine sometimes just uses cinnabar (a mercury-containing rock) as a treatment - if they have more of that than of reputable herbal preparations, that would be one possibility.
I would also like to look more into how this compares to heavy metal levels in fruits and vegetables - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91554-z and https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/arsenic-and-lead-are-in-your-fruit-juice-what-you-need-to-know/ say this is high, and naive comparison of the numbers suggests a similar problem, but I'm not sure I'm reading it right or how many strawberries people eat a day compared to supplements or whatever.
The FDA loves their press releases as it gives them justification for their huge budgets but I wouldn’t put any faith in what they come out with. Certain compounds naturally have high heavy metals and the consumer has to be aware of that.
People continue to love “Himalayan Pink Salt” which is loaded with heavy metals and toxins, and actually comes from Pakistan. But so what. They can buy and use what they want and if they are interested in learning more about what they consumer, information is out there.
Most diets people are on are far more toxic than any supplement they could possibly ingest. And drugs they take, well, these drugs are shortening life dramatically (statins, anti depressants, blood thinners…)
It might be that we are not funding the FDA enough as they are unable to meet their statutory requirements without a billion + in fees from drug companies. Otherwise their budget is about 3 billion. 2/3 from the govt so about $6 per person per year in the US. Seems like a bargain.
Considering the bulk of the supplements are of Chinese manufacturing origin, the QC of source materials for supplements would be questionable especially the TCM variety.
When you say none "failed", is having eg. "half the daily max" a 'pass'? because the sort of people who take supplements frequently take many supplements, and if you have 3 or 4 pills a day that are each in the 1/3 - 1/2 dangerous amount of heavy metals....
There are not going to be a lot of heavy metals in supplements. There are a lot of naturally occurring heavy metals in some, such as shilojit and mushroom extracts. The consumers can get a Certificate of Analysis from the makers, and select a product with lowest heavy metals. I have asked for these Certificates and usually the makers send them via email quite happily. At least the reputable makers do.
Ayurvedic medicine is infamous for this, and is very likely the most actively harmful of supplements.
I wonder how easy it is to get tests done for supplements one is buying? I found one $25 kit that appears to be able to go down to 10 ppb which is a little above the level considered harmful in foods. https://osumex.com/product/heavy-metals-test-lead-kit/
I’d be more comfortable sending it to a lab if the price were reasonable.
Just not buying them in the first place seems a lot easier? It's not as though they work even when they contain what they're "supposed" to.
Even if they don't work (the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence says they work), you can at least take advantage of the placebo effect.
Could a handheld x-ray spectroscope pick up heavy metals in the relevant quantites?
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.
Will second creatine as being the first noticeably effective addition to a dialed-in diet personally.
AFIK from my studies in second-hand broscience, it was the first big (still legal) supplement that had a widespread impact - to the degree that supp companies were in the awkward spot of explaining how unlike everything else they sold, it actually worked.
re: nootropics, you might like this ACX post: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/link-troof-on-nootropics
and also the 2020 SSC survey https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/nootropics-survey-2020-results
"Anecdotal" is a complicated term - the more common situation is that we have many studies but don't know how much to trust them! See my post on silexan for an example - https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lavenders-game-silexan-for-anxiety
This is the sort of thing the website Examine is useful for, which Scott has written about positively, with some reservations.
It’s all anecdotal and subjective but nothing stops anyone from doing their own research via scholar.google.com
“Decreasing heart attack risk” sounds like something that the right diet is going to do, and a lifestyle of activity and fun.
People who view supplements as drugs are really doing everyone a disservice. Supplements are designed to support the body’s natural health and healing, not to treat medical conditions, as the FDA constantly reminds us. And it’s true, basically.
I don't think there's really a clear dividing line here. Drugs are also designed to "support the body's natural health", in many cases; perhaps all cases, depending on our definitions. I.e., no matter what you're taking, you're attempting to weaken or strengthen some particular element of your body, to be healthier.
I don't think "well you can look them up yourself" is very helpful, either — you can find a couple studies saying good (or bad, more rarely) things about anything you look for. Analyzing every study for every supplement is a monstrously time-consuming endeavor; what the original poster asked for was merely a starting point.
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"?
Thanks, fixed.
>whatever it is the end up needing, based on how it affects them
"the" should be "they"
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?
To put this into context: most of my friends do illegal drugs. I do drugs. I drink alcohol to excess most nights. Supplements? If it's not meth or coke am I supposed to care?
When you do illegal drugs or alcohol, it is assumed that you know about the potential toxicity or harmfulness of the substances.
Some people do illegal drugs, but only rarely (like monthly, or few times a year). Some people don't drink alcohol. Supplements are supposed to be used frequently, like daily or weekly. That means the amounts add up quickly over time, and just like "drinking alcohol to excess" every day, it would be harmful. But supplements are not supposed to be harmful at all to begin with(!), rather quite the opposite.
I think in your comment you are making a categorical error. Consider the fact someone is taking drugs AND supplements, and instead of one of those being a source of "chemical damage" and the other one a source of "chemical help" that someone ends up with twice the sources of chemical damage.. yes, you then should probably care?
That's a good point.
Do you care that the illegal drug you are taking is the one you think you're taking? That the dosage is the one you think it is? I would think taking drugs would make you far more sensitive to the importance of purity and accurate dosage, since the risks are much higher than with supplements! The vast majority of drug deaths are due to dosage or purity issues, IIUC
Absolutely. Compare opioid-related deaths from pharmaceuticals to street heroin, for example. I love drugs, illegal and otherwise, and the only reason I have only ever had one bad experience or health effect is that I have been very, very careful in making sure what I consume is what it's supposed to be — a friend died due to "heroin" that was adulterated with benzodiazepines, and the one bad experience mentioned above was literally the one time I didn't verify.
May I ask how you do your verification? I find this very interesting. It is a major holdback for me, but I also admit that I haven't put in much research into the verification options available for someone "regular" like me (no direct access to a lab through my own work or friends).
I assume they're using something like this:
https://dancesafe.org/product/complete-set-of-all-9-testing-kits/
Unless you're drinking moonshine it's the government assuring you're getting the amount of alcohol on the label and it's ethyl alcohol not wood alcohol. And you may not care.
It's not just the government. The Coca-Cola corporation isn't going to go out and start poisoning their product without government inspection. One of the reasons they have a cash cow is that they have a reliable product.
Major stores (notably Walmart) have their own separate farm and safety inspection regime for fresh produce above and beyond the FDA. Why? Because a news story about eg. E.Coli in lettuce at Walmart would substantially hurt their brand. So they actually care about what they get in and can't trust the government for their needs.
Given that’s your context, is it OK if I say who cares about your opinion about whether anyone should care?
Being flip but… you’re not really the median consumer / target audience here.
That's fair.
Am I supposed to care if other people are homeless? I've always had a home and always will, so all this homeless talk is irrelevant to me.
Yeah coffee in the morning, beer and pot after work. I limit the coffee, but probably too much beer and pot. I really liked this post though I don't use other 'supplements'.
What do I like about it? It's a good insight/ review of some area I don't care about now...
I'm trying to think of a good analogy.. local used car salesmen?
No. "ACX rules are that comments should be at least two of polite, relevant, and plausibly-true-according-to-me." Per https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-210.
I think Jack Wilson was being reasonably polite, and mostly relevant. The truth value is not particularly important but then I think that's usually the case with comments on the internet.
So I'd say yes, it's fine if he asks 'Who cares?'
At least, it's fine with me.
And no, I don't.
Labdoor tested your comment and found 0.0% relevance.
+/- 20%
Wouldn’t they rather have found 80% relevance, but because of inferior methodology a neighboring, but unrelated relevance peak boosted the relevance signal for this comment? ND‘s high resolution spectroscopy identified afterwards that this comment actually only had 0.17% relevance.
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.)
Definitely. Still, some credit to them for publishing the null result.
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.
I distinctly remember Rossmann having a fairly extensive selection of wines. Or is this about the Apothek/Drogerie distinction? Presumably ultimately about regulations regarding who can dispense prescription medicines.
Not the wines. ( debatable supplements too)
It's the Apotheke ( Apothecary) /Drogerie ( Toiletries and mainstream perfumes) distinction.
Homeopathy presumably does great, not in fact containing anything of an "active ingredient" they are indeed expected not to contain anything of? :-)
You’d think so, but they still manage to have problems: https://www.rn.com/headlines-in-health/zicam-alert/
Sometimes there are "weak" homeopathic pills that aren't diluted very much and advertise containing multiple mg of active ingredient, which would for some things be a not insignificant dose.
Hilariously, there have also been scandals when a producer skipped the whole homeopathic method for the fully diluted ones and just produced pills that contained nothing the easier way by not even going through the motions.
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.
Choline, choline, choline
I'm begging of you please don't fudge your label.
Choline, choline, choline
Please don't fudge it just because you're able.
Underrated comment
Underrated reply.
I can't get this (in Dolly's voice, of course) out of my head, every time I reach for the choline bottle.
100mg (at least per label) used to be standard in many B-vitamin mixes. Since covid, I've noticed along with supply chain interrupts, that my old formula now has 30mg (per label). So now I buy straight choline from a reliable manufacturer and take it separately.
"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
"And I said in my ecstasy, all men are liars...."
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.
> Let consumers depend upon third party organizations that the supplement companies will license, like Underwriters Laboratory, or some of the Certified Organic companies.
What you'd get is the sketchy companies starting their own third party organization that says they're all great. And the average consumer is not going to know which third party organization to trust.
True, but do these certification schemes always end up reliably as scams? In some areas they seem to work, but I am not knowledgeable enough.
"Bio"/Organic-Labels for food come to mind. Or safety certs for various equipment, tools and electronics. What would be the discerning factors between a successful and a failing certification market? Why would the Nootropics or Drug market cert fail in your opinion, but does not seem to fail in many other high-stakes areas where people can be harmed?
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?”
I wish we had likes for this comment.
That said, Scott’s top line takeaway is actually in at least some tension with all the things he quotes from this guy.
Not only in tension with the quotes, but the way Scott frames the quotes as “these are amazing and I’d post way more but I just don’t have room”. Maybe I’m missing some double secret sarcasm there, but Scott’s fandom of MYASD seems sincere.
Ironically enough, MYASD basically says the same. On several occasions he mentions that he only discusses chemistry and does not suggest or deny efficacy of anything. But as it is just mixed in like fine print, I agree with your broader point of a sciency cloak for something that might amount to effectively homeopathy.
"The results from the consumer lab companies seemed very promising - almost everyone was good. MYASD’s experiences seem like the opposite - almost everyone seems bad. How do we reconcile these?"
We reconcile it by not trusting the marketing guy who says "everyone but my company is trash".
Which is almost exactly what the “DNA sequencing” guy was doing, basically creating a product and using “science” to “prove” that everybody needed to buy his product (instead of the status quo industry standard).
So that’s part of why I’m a bit surprised by Scott’s credulousness of MYASD compared to the DNA guy.
I find that a very interesting question. I looked into some of MYASD's posts and he shows a lot of screenshots from UPLC spectrographs and assays. He does it quite consistently, seemingly for years. It just seems to me (and maybe to Scott as well) that it would be harder to fake this and maybe even impossible to do it for so long without anyone calling you out. So maybe the industry is just as shitty as MYASD shows it to be, simply because the potential for harm is low to non-existent with these nootropics? An easy game for a chemist/lab-owner with a solid understanding of quality control and the right tools?
So I don’t think MYASD is actually engaging in outright fraud, which Newmaster was accused of. I suspect MYASD’s data is probably accurate - it’s the conclusions / relevance of those findings that I think deserve more skepticism.
The parallel to Newmaster is that Newmaster was apparently “making up his own definitions” and performing DNA assays that weren’t fake so much as irrelevant (as in, the findings of the DNA assays were perfectly consistent with good supplements, not dispositive of “supplements did not contain what they said”). And using that to parlay his own business of running DNA assays.
Likewise, MYASD is in some cases basically making up his own purity standards and then accusing the industry of being shady for not meeting them, and using this claim to market his own product.
Nope. Check Mushroom supplements in particular, where MYASD uncovered widespread use of mycellium instead of fruiting mushrooms in supplements. And note his site sells ANOTHER COMPANY'S product, and does so in a number of cases where others meet his standard. He also manufactures his own, and obviously it's more profitable for ND to do so. But other companies meet his standards.
I don’t see how the fact that he profits from selling other people’s stuff in addition to his own changes anything about what I said - it doesn’t prove the therapeutic value of the higher standards he places on what he sells.
As far as “uncovering” mycellium vs fruiting body mushrooms, I don’t see how that fact makes warrants dismissing my whole post with a “Nope”.
I’m not denying that he might occasionally have a point. The concern about totally fake stuff from China is absolutely warranted.
But the whole “I can’t BELIEVE how sloppy everyone else in the industry is and they JUST DONT CARE” schtick is just fluff until he has proof that the extra precision he touts is therapeutically relevant.
I mean hell, you coming here and defending him proves just how effective his marketing is.
he's not the "marketing guy", he's a CEO, who headed up a company previous to Nootropics Depot, Ceretropics. He has a long public record that can be examined. If you actually read the article, you'd know that. The problem is the OP is overgeneralizing. I have followed MYASD for over a decade! It's a lot easy to shoot down someone then actually do any research though, isn't it?
Pretty sure the CEO is involved in marketing. What he’s doing on Reddit is marketing, or at the very least PR. The point is that his statements, true or not (and for like the 5th time, I’m not saying they are false!) cannot be separated from the fact that he runs a company whose market niche is selling extra-sciencey-seeming supplements to Grey Tribers. I mean, it’s called “Nootropics Depot” for crying out loud.
He has a direct financial interest in his findings about the other companies being seen as relevant and indicative of the superior quality of what he sells.
And again (and again) I don’t actually have a dog in this fight. I’m just saying Scott seems to have turned off all his usual skepticism when it comes to this guy, without giving a compelling reason for doing so.
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.
"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."
Operationally, what are worried about? I expect that human bodies are fairly robust against eating non-optimal diets so if you feel fine I'd expect that things are okay. Maybe your body could be running a little bit better, but things must be mostly okay.
Is the concern that you are only 90% healthy and could be 100% healthy with just the right mix of micro-nutrients? Or that things are fine, but could collapse suddenly with the right stimulus? Or something else?
Careful there. Liver is high in heavy metals and various other toxic ingredients. After all, one of the purposes of the liver is to detox things.
Some liver is desireable. Hearts are probably better though, or gizzards. (That latter, though, is just opinion, not something I've checked.)
Can't post the link, but googling "usda food excel" gives a link to spreadsheets with informations about all the vitamins, minerals and so on found in basically all the food available in the US.
Like everything else, I think it depends. I take multivitamins for various reasons (including past lab tests actually showing me to be deficient). I also take Kelp tablets because they're the only way to get isolated guaranteed assays of iodine.
Some other supplements have actual medical research support behind them (notably St. John's Wort and Red Yeast Rice extract), though I'd personally avoid them. I trust GMP chemical synthesis far more.
When I go looking for that kind of information, I look at an OLD FDA publication called something like "Nutritional Qualities of Foods". (That's not the exact title, and it's currently is storage.) But they don't seem to publish that anymore. For particular foods, I can often look them up on the FDA sites, but doing comparisons can be tricky.
*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.
To my understanding there's simply no research one way or another yet on SARMS, so there's nothing to take a look at.
I tried ostarine twice, but it gave me immediate chest pains both times so I stopped
Interesting. No chest pains here. Big gains and other benefits. A little rough on the gut so I cycle off after about 6 weeks and restart after about a month
You running any PCT post-cycle? From what I've heard you're supposed to treat a SARMS cycle like a normal steroid cycle, gotta run Clomid or something
I just go “natural.”
I drop creatine, extra BCAAs, etc.
I still take a stimulant pre workout but other than that just food and protein shakes.
That's risky dude. I wish you luck, but my understanding is that the best practice is to run PCT after a SARMS cycle
Derek from more plates more dates knows more about them than Scott ever will
I’ll look it up. I’m guessing that’s a substack :)
On the gripping hand...
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.
> 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.
Why do you think a multivitamin is necessary? I would say most people don't need any supplements. Eat vegetables. And it's no different for women, unless you are trying to conceive or pregnant, in which case take folic acid.
A multivitamin supplements diet. It's not a cure-all. And not everyone is eating 15 pounds of spinach and broccoli every day of their lives. My diet can be all over the place on a weekly basis.
As I said, most people don't need them but they can be an assist to those who do need them.
Oh, so we agree most people don't need a multivitamin. I thought you were saying the opposite.
And no, you don't need a crazy amount of vegetables, although having vegetables with almost every meal is a good rule of thumb.
>I would say most people don't need any supplements. Eat vegetables
The problem with 'you don't need supplements' argument is increasing evidence that modern foods are less nutritious than in past generations. This was discussed in the weekend Open Thread. So you may be getting less essential vitamins than people a hundred years ago did from their vitamins, due to nutrient depletion. See for instance https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/
I don't think anyone's disputing that locally grown food from non-nutrient depleted soil is great for you. But take a look at the labels on your vegetables next time you buy them from the supermarket- they were probably picked hundreds or thousands of miles away, weeks or longer ago. This isn't conducive to maximum nutrition
This is true not just of the nutritional values in many cases but it can affect taste as well. Wild salmon vs farm-raised salmon may have similar nutritional value but the quality is vastly different as well as the taste. Locally grown/home grown tomatoes are far superior to the hydroponic/hothouse tomatoes.
Considering that it takes something like 2-3 months for new sperm to be produced by your testes, it’s unlikely that the supplements you were taking changed your sperm quality in 3 weeks.
When talking about motility and morbidity rate, lowering the white blood cell count can have immediate effects on sperm count, which is why the blood test was required and why I had to take a low dose steroid and antibiotic. The MV was/is a long-term support base.
I think of most of these as equivalent to eg antidepressants. It's not that everyone should be taking them - but if you need them, you need them.
That's very true and I think the placebo effect plays a big part in the perceived efficacy of many supplements.
True, and therefore be a skeptical and informed experimenter. After 10 years of so-so effects with Rx antidepressants (including gray-market Indian generic bupropion), I did some nootropic research and tried N-acetyl L-tyrosine. Mood magic within a few very low doses. L-tyrosine also works, but it's less euphoric. 2+ years later, slightly higher doses (the therapeutic window on amino-acids is very wide), better mood than in 15 years, despite a very stressful move. Bonus result was controlling my progressing tremor (my dad had one). YMMV.
Thanks for the tip. I take Indian bupropion also. Have tried tyrosine with bromantane before without success but will give nalt a shot after reading up on it. You can get bromantane on Newmind if it's something you're interested in trying.
Bromantane is new to me--I will check it out, thank you.
Also, NALT was not my first amino acid success. Based entirely on a suggestion from some rando in the BAP bodybuilding community on Twitter, I tried Glycine for my tendonitis. It was pretty close to a miracle cure--I'm dancing again after 10 years off for plantar fasciitis and PTTD. Watch out for the dream enhancement on the first few doses, however--I like technicolor dreaming, but it's off-putting to many. Added glutamine for recovery. The nice things about amino acids is the LD50 is nearly infinite and they are all cheap in bulk (BulkSupplements is a great brand)--I buy these by the kilo, lol.
Nice, I'll keep that in mind for others. I also take 5-10g of glycine daily as a possible counter against some of the negative effects of methionine. Not entirely sold on th rather sparse research in this area but it's cheap enough and the sweetness helps some of the other powders I take go down easier.
> "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
This is a good point, thanks.
Is the NOW brand better than Swanson?
there's a very wide variety of products from both. I imagine some products NOW is better, some Swanson. I buy regularly products from both. I also think both have some products that are of high quality, and some poor. I also regularly buy from Nootropic Depot and have followed MYASD for over a decade. They really do have superior products and do a lot of public education.
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.
This also reminds me to the discussion about Bezos and how much and important the invention of amazon was. People realized implicitly that company size and value are just proxies for effectiveness and business talent, but didn't get that these are only poor proxies for adding value society. There are many ways you can use your extraordinary business talent to effectively get very rich by actually harming society, scams, snake oil, selling drugs, insider trading, exploiting people, corruption or spreading fear and selling the 'protection' to name just a few.
"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
Paul Stamets is a self-taught mushroom hunter and not a chemist, nutritionist, or doctor. I'm sure he's a nice guy. I've listened to his TED talks, interviews with Rogan, and other videos and I trust him on foraging and such. At the same time I think he could easily be bamboozled by manufacturers. MYASD is an accomplished chemist and you can take a virtual tour of Nootropics Depot's lab on the website. I don't think you can tour Stamets' lab, or should I say lab(s) he contracts.
Stamet's company has multiple Ph.D. chemists and botanists working for it.
https://fungi.com/pages/research-and-development
The company grows and packages the mycelium itself. There are no 3rd-party manufacturers or labs involved.
https://fungi.com/blogs/articles/growing-mycelium
He has participated in peer-reviewed studies of the efficacy of mycelium.
https://bmccomplementmedtherapies.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12906-019-2681-7