Health Topics

Pillar guides organized by health goal, each linking to the supporting research and ingredient monographs behind it.

All health topics

  • Immune Health — Build resilience with evidence-backed strategies
  • Sleep and Stress: The Complete Guide — Most bad sleep is a timing problem or an arousal problem, and the fix with the strongest evidence is a behavioral program called CBT-I, not a pill. When a supplement does help, it is usually low-dose melatonin for timing, magnesium for people who eat too little of it, or a standardized ashwagandha extract for stress, given 6 to 10 weeks. The most common mistake is taking 5 or 10 mg of melatonin at bedtime, many times the 0.3 to 1 mg that worked in the MIT sleep-lab trials.
  • Heart Health and Blood Pressure: The Complete Guide — Blood pressure is the heart number you can measure at home and change fastest, and nearly half of American adults (47.7%) read at or above 130/80, the high-blood-pressure line, or take medication for it. Food and exercise move it most: in a 2023 trial, a low-sodium week left systolic pressure 8 mmHg below a high-sodium week, while the best-studied supplements move it 2 to 5. The most common mistake is trusting a single reading taken with the wrong cuff size or with your arm resting in your lap.
  • Brain Health and Focus: The Complete Guide — Focus and memory depend first on sleep, exercise, and vitamin B12, and only after those on a supplement. Between 30% and 46% of adults, depending on the state, sleep under seven hours, and one in eight has borderline-low B12. For healthy adults with those handled, two ingredients have consistent trials: citicoline at 250 to 500 mg and standardized bacopa at 300 to 320 mg, judged at 12 weeks. The most common mistake is buying a nootropic to fix a sleep debt or an untested B12 shortfall.
  • NAD+ and Cellular Energy: The Complete Guide — NAD+ is the molecule your cells spend to make energy and repair DNA, and it falls with age in human skin, brain, and blood. The precursors NMN, NR, and plain niacin all raise it in blood, reliably, within two weeks. What they have not done is make anyone live longer: the trials run 10 weeks to a year and measure blood chemistry, walking distance, and insulin sensitivity, not lifespan. The most common mistake is buying capsules of NAD+ itself, which your gut digests before it absorbs.
  • Urolithin A: The Complete Guide — Urolithin A is a compound your gut bacteria are supposed to make from pomegranates, walnuts, and berries, and it is the best-studied natural trigger of mitophagy, the process cells use to clear out damaged mitochondria. The most important fact: in human trials, 500 mg a day for four months raised leg strength about 12% in sedentary adults aged 40 to 64. The most common mistake: assuming pomegranate juice gets you there. Only about four in ten adults convert it, and most of those make a fraction of a supplemental dose.
  • Mitochondrial Health: The Complete Guide — Mitochondria make most of the chemical energy your cells use, and NAD+, the molecule that carries electrons into that process, falls with age in human tissue. The supplements in this guide reliably raise blood NAD+, but no human trial we checked showed a clear gain in mitochondrial function itself. Training and calorie restriction have their own human data on mitochondrial markers. The most common mistake is paying for a result the trials never measured, such as a higher dose, a blood number, or a feeling.
  • The Complete Guide to Vitamin D — Vitamin D is both a nutrient and a hormone precursor that affects bone health, immune function, mood, muscle strength, and dozens of other body systems. This guide covers what the clinical evidence actually shows, who is most at risk for deficiency, how to test and supplement effectively, and how to cut through the noise around one of the most researched nutrients on the planet.