Whenever I see someone touting the merits of, say, neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman’s $370 supplement stack, I’m tempted to go full PubMed on them. You really think the herbal extract Fadogia agrestis is going to boost your “healthspan and muscle performance” based on an obscure study of male albino rats published by the Asian Journal of Andrology back in 2005? A grand total of zero human trials is what Huberman means by a “robust foundation of science”?
But this kind of gladiatorial approach is likely to miss the mark. For one thing, there’s an ocean of weak and biased supplement research out there, so many popular supplements do have at least superficial backing from what looks at first glance like science. The real problem runs deeper, though. The quest for a silver-bullet performance boost presumes that these pills, potions, and hacks will improve your life in some meaningful, measurable way. And there’s reason to doubt this is true even when the supplements do what those who peddle them claim. Here’s why.
The first issue to consider is margins. There are a small handful of elite…
