A weekly look at what the research actually says about the health topics everyone has an opinion on — supplements, sleep, nutrition, longevity, and the marketing sold alongside them. Where the evidence is strong, where the hype outruns the data, and how to tell the difference. Opinionated, never sponsored, 15–20 minutes, no filler. Educational content — not medical advice.
7 episodes
Two major clinical trials tested omega-3 fatty acids in comparable high-risk patient populations, at comparable doses, and reached opposite conclusions on cardiovascular outcomes. The gap between them turns on a disputed placebo choice, a competing hypothesis about which specific compound actually matters, and a risk signal running in the wrong direction. That is what this episode examines.
The vitamin D story most people have heard goes like this: widespread deficiency is driving cancer and heart disease, and generous supplementation will fix both. The largest randomised trial ever run on that question found it is mostly wrong — but the details of exactly where the evidence landed, and for whom it might still matter, are more interesting than either conclusion suggests.
The sleep supplement industry is worth billions, and the shelves are full of magnesium, glycine, L-theanine, and melatonin. The evidence for some of these compounds is real — but it applies to specific mechanisms and specific people. This episode works through what that evidence actually shows, and why melatonin in particular may be one of the most widely misunderstood supplements on the market.
More than half of American adults fall short of the daily magnesium requirement — and the supplement industry has responded with a dozen competing forms, each claiming superiority for sleep, cognition, or cardiovascular health. But before the form debate makes any sense, there's a prior problem: the deficiency numbers in the scientific literature range from 1.5 percent to 67.8 percent, and both figures are peer-reviewed. Understanding why takes you somewhere the marketing never goes.
The NAD+ supplement market is now worth billions of dollars, built on a chain of reasoning that runs from aging biology through animal studies to the pills people are actually buying. Some of that chain holds up. Some of it doesn't. And a regulatory dispute with the FDA reveals something important about how this entire product category reached consumers before the human clinical evidence was in place to support it.
Berberine has been used in traditional medicine for over a thousand years. In the last few years, it found a new identity: "nature's Ozempic." That single comparison drove enormous sales and a wave of TikTok content. This episode looks at what berberine actually does metabolically, how strong the clinical evidence really is — and why the GLP-1 comparison tells you almost nothing accurate about either compound.
Creatine monohydrate has been studied continuously for about 25 years — and unlike most supplements, the evidence has held up. This episode covers what the research actually shows about physical performance, emerging findings on the brain, and what's genuinely known versus still unresolved about women and older adults. The science is more settled in some areas than others, and the distinction matters.