Chelation: A Real Treatment Sold for the Wrong Reason
Chelation is genuine medicine for genuine poisoning, given under supervision after a diagnosis. Its wellness version borrows the…
Sarika Bhandarkar
Editor, Bad Detox
Sarika edits Bad Detox and cuts anything that overstates what a study found.
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43 articles
Parasite Cleanses and the Worms That Were Never There
Intestinal parasites are real, common in some regions and treatable with specific medicines. The cleanse industry has attached that…
Fixing a Deficiency and Adding a Boost Are Different Claims
Almost all the good evidence in nutrition comes from correcting a shortfall. Extending it to people who already have enough is the…
Fat-Soluble Vitamins Do Not Wash Out Like the Others
The reassurance that excess vitamins simply leave in urine applies to one family and not the other. The difference is the main…
Proprietary Blends Hide How Little Is Actually In There
A blend total tells you the combined weight of a list of ingredients and nothing about any single one. That ambiguity is the reason…
The One Thing Every Diet That Works Has in Common
Head-to-head comparisons of named eating patterns keep producing an unhelpfully similar answer. The variation that matters turns…
Fibre Is the Boring Thing That Actually Has Support
A sceptical site owes its readers the things that hold up as well as the things that do not. Fibre is the clearest example in the…
Sleep Trackers Measure Movement and Infer the Rest
The device reports deep sleep in minutes with an air of certainty. It is estimating from motion and pulse, and the estimate is…
EMF Stickers on a Phone That Answers by Turning Up the Power
Anti-radiation stickers are sold to sit over a phone antenna. If they blocked anything, the phone would respond by transmitting…
Ear Candles and the Wax That Came From the Candle
The residue in the tube afterwards is presented as material drawn from your ear. Burn one over an empty jar and the same residue…
Grounding Mats and the Electron Story
There is a real, measurable electrical effect at the heart of this product. The distance between that effect and the health claims…
A Mechanism in a Dish Is Not an Effect in a Person
Shown to kill cancer cells in the laboratory is the most reliably misleading sentence in wellness writing. Bleach does that too, at…
What a Surrogate Endpoint Is and Why It Flatters a Product
Most nutrition and supplement research measures a marker rather than an outcome. Sometimes the marker tracks the thing you care…
Statistically Significant Does Not Mean Big Enough to Notice
The phrase sounds like an endorsement and is closer to a technical footnote. It concerns whether an effect exists, not whether it…
Preprints, Peer Review and What Each One Guarantees
Peer reviewed is treated as a stamp of truth and preprint as a warning label. Both descriptions overstate what the process actually…
The Placebo Effect Is Real and Smaller Than Advertised
Placebo is invoked to explain everything that alternative medicine does and to defend it at the same time. What it actually moves…
Animal Studies, Dose and the Body-Weight Problem
A compound that extended life in mice is a reason to keep researching and not a reason to buy anything. The dose alone usually…
Publication Bias and the Trials You Never Get to Read
The published literature is not a random sample of the research that was conducted. Studies finding nothing are systematically…
How to Read a Study Someone Has Waved at You
Somebody has sent you a link and a confident summary. Ten minutes with the paper itself will usually tell you whether the summary…
Testimonials Are Selected, Not Collected
Every quotation on a sales page passed through at least three filters before you saw it. The people it filtered out are the ones…
Chemical-Free and the Periodic Table
The phrase describes an empty vacuum and nothing else. What people mean by it is real enough, and the words chosen make the concern…
Ancient Wisdom as a Sales Frame
Age is offered as though it were evidence, and a practice surviving for centuries tells you it was memorable rather than that it…
How a Product Earns the Words Clinically Proven
The phrase implies a standard that the underlying study frequently did not meet. In many cases the clinical evidence is a…
Protocols, Phases and the Language of Compliance
Wellness programmes are increasingly structured as protocols with phases, rules and tracking. That architecture makes them feel…
The Question an Advertisement Never Answers: Compared to What
Almost every health claim omits the comparison that would make it interpretable. Better than nothing is a remarkably low bar for…
Influencers, Affiliate Links and the Disclosure You Missed
A recommendation from a person you follow feels like advice from a friend, and it is frequently a paid placement. The economics are…
Why Every Wellness Brand Has an Origin Story
The founder was ill, nobody could help, and then they discovered the thing they now sell. The arc is so consistent that it…
Ketone Strips Measure Something, Just Not What You Want
A colour change proves you are in ketosis, which is a metabolic state rather than an achievement. What it does not prove is that…
Inflammation Is Not One Thing You Can Eat Away
The word covers a swollen ankle, a marker in a blood test and a vague sense of being unwell, and these are not the same phenomenon.…
Infrared Saunas and the Heat That Is Only Heat
Sauna bathing has a respectable observational literature behind it, which infrared cabins borrow wholesale. The wavelength claims…
Whole-Body Cryotherapy and the Cold That Is Sold as Medicine
Three minutes in a chamber of nitrogen vapour produces an unmistakable experience, which is most of the product. The injuries…
Massage Guns, Soreness and the Range of Motion Number
Percussive devices produce a measurable short-term increase in how far a joint moves, which is the finding they are sold on. The…
Smart Scales and the Body Fat Number That Is a Guess
A scale cannot see inside you, so it sends a small current through your feet and estimates the rest with an equation. The equation…
Blinding Is Harder Than It Sounds and Often Fails
A double-blind trial is the standard everyone cites, and it is easier to declare than to achieve. Whether participants could guess…
Twenty Outcomes and the One That Reached Significance
Measure enough things and something will look impressive by chance alone. The defence against this is declaring what you will…
If More Does Not Do More, Something Is Wrong
Real effects usually get bigger with a bigger dose until they plateau or turn harmful. A treatment that works identically at any…
Number Needed to Treat and the Headline It Deflates
A treatment that halves your risk sounds transformative until you ask how many people have to take it for one to benefit. That…
The Countdown Timer That Resets When You Reload
Urgency is the most reliable way to stop someone comparing prices or asking a question. The techniques are standard, cheap to…
Why the Same Product Claims Different Things in Different Countries
A supplement sold identically in three markets may carry three sets of claims, and none of them describes a different formula. The…
The Symptom Quiz Everybody Fails
Tired, bloated, irritable, poor sleep, brain fog: a list broad enough that almost nobody scores zero. Failing the quiz is the…
Lab Coats, Molecules and the Design Language of Proof
Packaging can look like evidence without containing any, and the visual vocabulary is remarkably consistent across the category. It…
As Seen In, and What That Logo Actually Cost
A row of media logos looks like a row of endorsements and is usually a row of mentions. Some of them were purchased outright…
Patented, Trademarked, and What Each One Certifies
A patent number on a supplement box looks like an official verdict on the product. A patent certifies novelty and a trademark…