The health and wellness industry is enormous, profitable, and largely built on claims that sound compelling and prove very little. That’s not a secret — it’s a structural feature of a market where the barrier to making a health claim is low and the barrier to verifying one is high.
Most people don’t have the tools to evaluate what they’re being sold. They rely on marketing, testimonials, and the authority of whoever is presenting the information. That’s not a criticism — it’s a reasonable response to a complicated landscape. But it leaves people vulnerable to spending money on things that don’t work and missing things that do.
Here’s a framework for evaluating any health product that has served me well.
Start with the mechanism. Every legitimate health product should be able to explain, in plain language, how it works biologically. Not “supports cellular health” or “promotes wellness” — but what specifically it does inside the body and why that would produce the claimed result. If the explanation is vague or relies entirely on proprietary language, that’s a signal worth noting.
Look at the science behind the mechanism, not just the product. This is an important distinction. Any product can commission a study on itself. What carries more weight is whether the biological mechanism the product claims to work through is already established in independent peer-reviewed research. If decades of research at universities and institutions around the world have documented how a particular biological process works, and a product has been verified to engage that process, you’re standing on much firmer ground than a single product study could ever provide.
Evaluate the credibility of verification. Someone has to test whether a product actually contains what it claims and does what it claims. What matters is who does that testing. Reputable research institutions and laboratories have professional reputations built over years — reputations worth more than any payment. They operate under strict scientific protocols. When a credible institution verifies a finding, that verification means something precisely because the institution has too much to lose by publishing false results.
Distinguish between correlation and causation. Testimonials are not evidence. They’re stories — and stories are compelling, which is exactly why they’re used so heavily in marketing. Someone feeling better after taking a product doesn’t prove the product caused the improvement. Look for research where the methodology is sound — controlled, properly designed, with appropriate sample sizes, conducted by researchers following established scientific protocols.
Apply a time test. Real changes at the cellular level take time and hold over time. If a product produces dramatic results quickly and then requires constant use to maintain those results, it’s likely addressing symptoms rather than underlying function. Look for gradual, consistent improvement that persists.
Trust your own experience — carefully. Personal experience matters, but it needs to be evaluated honestly. Give something enough time to work. Pay attention to actual measurable changes rather than how you expect to feel. And be willing to conclude that something isn’t working even if you want it to.
I apply this framework to everything — including what I write about on this site. The reason I’m confident writing about redox signaling and ASEA is that the underlying science stands on its own, the verification comes from credible sources, and my personal experience over 15 years is consistent with what the science predicts. That combination is rare. When you find it, it’s worth paying attention to.