Sure, for gross violations. But claims are essentially unregulated, and I don’t think there is even any product safety testing done, let alone actual effectiveness.
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There are quite a few research studies done on supplements, as well as safety studies. The most well studied supplements like creatine have hundreds or thousands of studies on them.
Michael,
I think he’s referring to the supplement itself, not the individual ingredient. There’s no guarantee that a product actually contains the amount of creatine, DHM, or anything else listed on the label, and there can also be concerns about contaminants or toxicity in the fillers. That’s always what comes to mind for me when looking at the many supplements sold by unknown sources on Amazon and elsewhere. I feel safe with the products you’ve listed and have adopted this protocol.
Cheers,
Warren
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Yeah, that’s always a concern; there are some supplement manufacturers who have their supplements analyzed by outside labs and post the results. This is a bit more common in the fitness space than wellness though.
when I have a question on supplements, I find that the research most often comes from Europe. Supplements are regulated a bit more than in the U.S., but the key point is that EPIC is frequently churning out papers on supplement use and effects (among other studies). Here is the Chat GPT description of EPIC. You can ask for specific findings related to a supplement of interest. I have found studies that support all the supplements I take (whey, creatine, magnesium, iron, collagen, multivitamin, Vitamin D (note that I eat very little meat, my wife is vegetarian). The exception is the multivitamin which really doesn’t have much support-- I don’t know why I take that really.
" The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) is one of the largest and most influential long-term cohort studies in medical history. Launched in 1993, it has tracked more than 521,000 participants across 10 European countries for over 30 years to uncover the links between diet, lifestyle, and chronic diseases like cancer. While the EPIC-Europe study began with a focus on cancer, it has expanded significantly to study non-cancer chronic diseases through sub-cohorts like EPIC-CVD (cardiovascular) and EPIC-InterAct (metabolic/diabetes). While the EPIC study has published over 3,000 scientific papers , there is no official central count for exactly how many are dedicated solely to supplements. However, a significant portion of its research focuses on dietary exposures , which includes the intake of vitamins and minerals from both food and supplemental sources.
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Reading through this thread. Interesting stuff.
I tried NAC at the suggestion of a physician friend a few years back. I noticed increased inflammation and pain in my joints. Particularly my knees, ankles and toes. Very odd. I haven’t taken it since.
Anyone else had joint pain from NAC?
I take it regularly and have not had such issues. If anything I would have expected it to have the opposite impact, thought it has anti inflammatory properties.
If you have issues with inflammation, I find taking tumeric/curcumin daily to be helpful.
I know we’ve been focussing on supplements, hydration and other aspects but have you seen this recent (Oct/2025) European study on exercise? Not alcohol targeted per se, but just a wee bit of “vigorous” exercise can substantially reduce many of the alcohol-related health risks that we worry about. Here’s a quick headline summary, below. here’s a link to the study (pdf available), and this podcaster has a pretty easy to read summary (and she also summarizes other research on how much exercise is needed to show results).
“This large-scale study of 73,485 adults from the UK Biobank over an 8-year study, aged 40 to 79 years… provides, to our knowledge, the first examination of physical activity intensity equivalence with a broad range of major outcomes including all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer incidence and mortality. We found 1-min of vigorous intensity physical activity was equivalent to about 4–9 min of moderate intensity and 53–156 min of light intensity for all-cause mortality and cardiometabolic outcomes (MACE, type 2 diabetes, and CVD mortality).”
I know, it’s crazy
I love that this study exists, but I think it is a symptom of issues of large scale observational trials. You can draw any conclusion you want.
I’m sure the same type of trial could prove that exercise mitigates any number of diseases that we know cause fatty liver and/or obesity. I bet vigorous exercise can substantially reduce many of the cheesesteak-related health risks many Philadelphians worry about.
I love alcohol (any your Marie-Paule reserve) as much as anyone, but this study doesn’t prove much. Similarly, I remember people waiting with bated breath to find out if the GLP-1 drugs were going to reduce risk of cardiovascular outcomes after we knew they caused weight loss.
Take-home lesson here, everyone should exercise. For sure, exercise can mitigate some of the impacts, but it will not make drinking alcohol before bed any better, and there’s other issues. There’s some things it cannot do. I’m waiting for the breakthrough that mitigates the other impacts of alcohol on quality of life, since…fair to say, I enjoy alcohol.
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I’m not sure what you’re trying to say with this. You can’t draw any conclusion you want from large scale observational trials, which in the setting of big data along with metaanalyses are likely far superior to smaller randomized control trials.
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If you’re interpreting this to mean you can exercise for 1min a day at high intensity and get the same benefits as 120mins of light intensity…no.
That’s not what the study is trying to say. It’s saying that for some of those outcomes, high intensity physical activity is much better. I think wearable data is really interesting and we’re going to see a lot more research coming out in the future, especially from products like oura and whoop.
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Yes I know. I’m agreeing with you. I was responding to the comment above. If I had to quibble it would be that “vigorous” exercise is >6Mets which really isn’t that intense; but is a level achievable to most folks so nice to see.
I’m just trying to say you could observe summertime activity and notice that shark attacks and ice cream consumption go up at the same time. It’s not because of one another.
It is a stretch to say exercise mitigates alcohol related deleterious effects outside of the obvious plausible mechanisms that didn’t need a trial. Are we surprised people who exercise live longer than people who don’t when they both consume alcohol? Might those people who exercise also have other beneficial lifestyle differences from those who don’t?
And yes, of course, you can’t draw any conclusion. I was being a little flippant.
It’s really impossible to do a randomized trial with this type of thing anyways. Now, with supplements to perhaps mitigate short term markers like resting HR, HRV, REM, deep sleep, etc…if we studied something like that with an intervention, I’d be interested.
I’m also trying to say I’d rather drink a Marie-Paule Reserve than many other pinots. 
There are ways to remove confounding variables from the equation. The study was published in Nature, I’m sure the methodology was bulletproof. The conclusions you should be drawing from this study is that vigorous exercise is far more efficacious for ameliorating negative health outcomes than previously thought.
Seems like a rabbit hole argument here. I’m pretty sure you and I see eye to eye on the importance of exercise.
The article barely mentions the word alcohol for one. There are plenty of older studies looking at the mitigation of alcohol via exercise.
Do I recommend exercise to everyone, yep.
As to the data: “Our analysis included participants who had a minimum of 3 valid wear days (≥16 h of wear-time per day), with at least one of those days being a weekend day.” I’m not entirely sure how much can be gleaned from this. What about the days people didn’t wear a device? What did they do on those days?
Is it an interesting publication, sure…it’s definitely not earth shattering.
The article isn’t even about alcohol; David was just suggesting it’s a way to ameliorate the ill effects of alcohol.
I think it’s an interesting study because it’s one of the first large studies looking at wearables, which is likely why they got a nature communications (impact factor 15.7) publication out of it.
I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg of this type of research, though.
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Totally think you are correct that it is the tip of the iceberg. And I hope it inspires people to exercise (and continue to partake in alcohol in a reasonable manner to support the industry).
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