Guides
Guides
Two longer pieces about the category this product sits in, written without reference to what we are selling. They are here because the questions they answer come up on the order desk more often than questions about the product itself.
Two guides. The men’s sexual-performance aisle covers what is actually in these products, why the evidence is thin, and the one safety problem that is specific to this category. Reading a supplement name covers what a brand name is allowed to imply, and why the rules that govern claims stop at the trademark.
The two guides
Both are written to be useful whether or not you buy anything from this site, and both reach conclusions that cost us money. That is the test worth applying to any seller’s guide, including these two.
Why a retailer writes category guides at all
The honest answer has two halves. The useful half is that the order desk hears the same five questions constantly — what is actually in these things, does any of it work, is it safe, why is it so expensive, and how do I tell a good one from a bad one — and a product page is the wrong place to answer them.
The less flattering half is that guides like these occupy search results for questions people ask on the way to a purchase. That is why most of them exist, and it is why they are usually written backwards from the answer the seller wants.
So apply the test: does the guide ever reach a conclusion that costs the seller money? Does it quote sources you can open? Does it name a specific weakness in the product being sold rather than only in other people’s? On these two, the answers are yes, yes and yes — the category guide says plainly that the evidence for this entire aisle is thin, and the names guide uses this product’s own marketing as its worked example.
What is in both guides
The ingredients that recur
Six or seven botanicals appear in nearly every product in this aisle. The category guide lists them, says which have monographs and which do not, and gives the doses the research actually used.
Why the evidence is thin
NCCIH's summary of the whole category is a single sentence, and it is not encouraging. The guide quotes it and explains what it does and does not rule out.
The hidden-ingredient problem
The FDA maintains a database of products in this category found to contain undeclared prescription drugs. The guide explains what that means for a buyer, and what raises the risk on a product.
How persuasion moves into pictures
The names guide covers what happens when the words on a package are constrained and the icons are not, using the packaging of the product this site sells as the example.
Product pages, if that is what you came for
| If you want | Read |
|---|---|
| What is in the bottle | Ingredients |
| The panel, row by row | Label facts |
| Whether it suits you | Who it is for |
| Safety and interactions | Safety |
| Packs and cost per day | Pricing |
| Our verdict, with the working | Verdict |
What these guides are for
Product pages answer questions about one product. Guides answer the questions that come before that, and those questions are usually more useful, because they transfer: once you can read a Supplement Facts panel you can read all of them.
Both guides here were written from the same four sources this site uses everywhere — the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, NCCIH, Memorial Sloan Kettering and the FDA — and both quote them directly rather than summarising. Where none of the four carries anything, the guides say so, which is why the category guide has two rows in its main table reading “no monograph found”.
The category guide
The seven or eight botanicals that recur across this entire aisle, where each one's research actually sits, the doses the studies used, and the undeclared-drug problem that is specific to this category. It ends on the one piece of advice on the whole site that could prevent a serious event.
The names guide
About the element of a package that does the most persuading and carries the least accountability. Claims are regulated; brand names are trademarks; photographs and roundels are neither. It uses this product's own name and marketing folder as the worked example.
The five things worth knowing before you read either
- No dietary supplement is FDA-approved. In the FDA’s words: “Under DSHEA, FDA does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed.” Any product or page claiming approval is wrong about a checkable fact.
- “FDA registered facility” means a factory is on a list. Not inspected, not approved, not endorsed. This product’s label words it correctly, which is more than many do.
- An itemised panel is meaningfully better than a proprietary blend. A blend gives one total and no individual figures, which makes every claim about it uncheckable. This is the single most useful thing to look for on a package.
- An extract ratio is not a dose. 100:1 describes concentration. The number that would let you compare a bottle with a study is the standardisation to a marker compound, and most labels do not print it.
- Absence of a monograph is absence of information. When the NIH, NCCIH and MSK all carry nothing on an ingredient, that is not a clean bill of health and it is not a condemnation. It means nobody accountable has assembled the evidence.
Those five apply to every product in this aisle, including the one this site sells. Two of them are findings against it.
And three things worth knowing about guides in general
Including these two, and worth applying to any category guide published by anybody selling anything.
- Check whether it ever costs the seller money. A guide that concludes in favour of the product at every turn was written backwards from that conclusion. The category guide here says the evidence for this whole aisle is thin, which includes the product on the shelf beside it.
- Check whether the sources open. Not whether there is a reference list — whether the links go to documents that say what the guide claims they say. This is a five-minute exercise and it is remarkable how often it fails.
- Check what happens at the weakest point. Every product has one. If the guide never reaches it, the guide is an advertisement with footnotes. This site’s weakest point is that two of seven ingredients have no monograph and one of them is the headline, and it is printed on the home page.
A note on the sources both guides use
Four organisations, and the reason the list is short rather than comprehensive.
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements — fact sheets in a consumer and a health-professional version, with intake data and upper limits.
- NCCIH — herbs and practices, plus digests that review whole categories at once. Its digest on supplements marketed for sexual enhancement is quoted in both guides.
- Memorial Sloan Kettering, About Herbs — clinician-facing monographs with explicit do-not-take lists, which is what makes it the most useful of the three on interactions.
- The FDA — for regulatory questions and for the enforcement databases, not for evidence about whether an ingredient works.
Each step down from that list trades accountability for coverage. Beyond these four lie excellent academic sources and, very quickly after them, a large number of pages that look similar, are written by the people selling the ingredient, and cite one another in a loop. A short list applied consistently is more useful than a long one applied when it is convenient.
One more thing worth carrying into any aisle
The most transferable habit in either guide is not a fact. It is turning the package over before reading the front of it.
Everything designed to persuade is on the front: the name, the colour, the icons, the adjective before “formula”. Everything that can be checked is on the back: the panel, the amounts, the other ingredients, the distributor. Reading them in that order means the front sets your expectation and the back is judged against it, which is exactly backwards from how a buying decision should work.
Read the panel cold, decide what you would pay for what is in it, and only then look at the front. On most products in this category the gap between those two readings is the whole of the marketing budget, and on a few it is surprisingly small.
Read the panel first, then decide
Sixty capsules, two a day, seven actives itemised and two extract ratios printed — better label work than most of this aisle. What is missing is standardisation, and two of the seven ingredients have no monograph anywhere we looked. The live price and the 60-day return terms are both on the seller’s checkout screen.
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