Who writes here, and what this site will not tell you
The Supplement Digest reads supplement labels for people who are about to spend money on one. This page explains who does that reading, how it is paid for, and where the limits of it are.
Sarah writes every review on this site. She works from the printed Supplement Facts panel, the official checkout, and the published research on the individual ingredients. She is not a physician, a dietitian or a pharmacist, and nothing she writes here is medical advice.
What this site actually does
Most supplement reviews online are written from the manufacturer's own sales page. You can tell, because they repeat the marketing language, they quote the ingredient list without amounts, and they never mention what the refund terms require you to send back.
This site starts one step earlier, at the label. That means transcribing the Supplement Facts panel in full, including the parts that are inconvenient. It means going to the checkout to read the real price, the real shipping charge and the real refund conditions, rather than copying a price table. And it means going to the primary research for the ingredients, which usually means PubMed rather than another review site.
The result is not always flattering to the product, and it is not always unflattering either. A formula can be genuinely well built and still carry a label that will not let you verify it. Both of those things get said.
Sarah Mitchell is a pen name
It is the name this site publishes under, and we would rather say so on the About page than have you find out somewhere else. The person behind it is real, the analysis is done by a person rather than generated, and the same person answers the email address at the bottom of this page. What is behind the name is a working background in building and analysing content for the web, not a clinical qualification, which is exactly why the boundary in the next section exists.
What this site is not qualified to tell you
- Whether a supplement will work for you. Nobody who has not examined you can answer that, and any page that does is selling you something.
- Whether a supplement is safe alongside your medication. That belongs to a pharmacist or a physician who can see your full list.
- What is causing your symptoms. Urinary, digestive and hormonal symptoms have causes that need a doctor rather than a capsule, and a persistent or worsening symptom should be looked at by one.
- Whether to stop, start or change a prescription. Never on the basis of anything read here.
How this site is paid for
Through affiliate commissions. When a reader orders a product through a link on a review, this site earns a commission from the seller at no extra cost to the reader, and that commission is larger on larger packages. Every page that carries such a link says so above the article, not in small print at the bottom.
Two things follow from that, and they are worth stating rather than assuming. Scores and criticisms are decided before any commercial arrangement is considered, and no manufacturer sees a review before it is published or has any right to change one afterwards. The full terms are on the disclosure page, and the scoring method is on the how we review page.
Corrections
Supplement prices, package structures and refund terms change, sometimes without notice, and research moves. If something on this site is wrong, we would rather fix it than defend it. Write to editor@thesupplementdigest.com with the page and the specific claim, and a correction will be made and dated at the top of the article. Reviews carrying price information are rechecked against the live checkout at least every 60 days.
Contact
Reader questions, corrections and press enquiries all go to the same place: editor@thesupplementdigest.com. More detail on what we can and cannot answer is on the contact page.