For how we live.
A final FDA guidance sets out the safety information companies should provide when notifying the agency of a new dietary ingredient, replacing the old 'comprehensive safety profile' with a single 'safety narrative.'
The large trials built to confirm vitamin E's promise came back null, and a meta-analysis tied 400 IU a day or more to a small rise in all-cause mortality.
Cohort data link green tea drinking to lower cardiovascular death, but trials show only surrogate changes and concentrated extracts have caused liver injury at everyday catechin doses.
An analysis of 50 top-selling 'T booster' products found only 24.8% contained an ingredient with data showing it raises testosterone — and 10.1% contained something shown to lower it. Two herbs are partial exceptions.
A JAMA Dermatology review found the best-evidenced products — Viviscal, Nutrafol and a few others — but flagged weak studies and industry funding. For people who eat normally, the case is thin.
A critical review went looking for clinical proof that commercial detox diets remove toxins or keep weight off. It found almost none, and no randomised trial of a commercial detox diet in humans at all.
The bestselling herbal for an enlarged prostate flopped in the trials: even at triple the usual dose it beat placebo by nothing. The hair-loss claim rests on a handful of small, weak studies rather than proof.
True dietary magnesium shortage in healthy people is rare, and reference guidance does not currently advise supplements. The clear deficiencies come from illness, alcohol and certain drugs, not a missed daily pill.
VITAL, with 25,871 adults, and D-Health, with 21,315, both tested vitamin D against placebo. Neither cut cancer incidence or cancer death — and one saw a signal pointing the wrong way.
The fear that soy fuels breast cancer is not supported by the human data; if anything, soy food intake tracks with lower recurrence and death after diagnosis. Its other health claims are weaker.
The DO-HEALTH sub-study is the first randomised evidence that a supplement can nudge DNA-methylation ageing clocks. The effect was tiny, and the parent trial found no benefit on health outcomes that matter.
Dietary spermidine tracks with markedly lower mortality in one population study. The first year-long randomised trial of a spermidine supplement found no effect on memory.
The NAD+ precursors sold to slow ageing reliably raise NAD+ and are well tolerated. What the randomised trials do not show is a benefit to muscle, metabolism or how old you are.
Bodybuilding steroids, green tea extract and multi-ingredient blends are the products most often implicated. A liver injury from a supplement often can't be traced to a single named ingredient.
An analysis of the FDA's voluntary reporting database finds herbal and weight-loss products carry the highest serious-outcome rate. The author is explicit that these are flags for investigation, not proven risks.
The line saying a product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent disease must sit beside each health claim. Industry asked for that to change; the FDA says it may propose a rule.