SmartHealthCompass reviews and compares dietary supplements sold in the United States. We exist because the supplement aisle is unusually hard to shop honestly: labels are loosely regulated, marketing claims outrun the evidence behind them, and most “top 10” lists are written to sell rather than to inform.
We can’t fix that market. What we can do is be specific about what we checked, what we found, and what we don’t know.
What we actually do
We look at three things, and we keep them separate on purpose:
What’s on the label. The ingredients, doses, and serving format a manufacturer states publicly. We record this as fact, and we mark it as unverified until we can point to a source.
What the published evidence says about those ingredients. Not whether a product “works” — that’s a claim we’re not in a position to make — but what the research literature reports about the ingredient at the dose in question, and how strong that body of evidence is. We label that strength explicitly on every review.
What buying it actually involves. Price, where it ships from, whether the seller is the manufacturer or a reseller, and whether the offer we link to is still live. We re-check the links; the details are on our Methodology page.
What we don’t do
We don’t test products in a lab. We don’t have samples analyzed for purity or label accuracy. When we say a label claim is “verified,” we mean we found third-party documentation and we cite it — not that we tested it ourselves.
We don’t diagnose, treat, or advise. Nothing here is medical advice, and no one on our team is a clinician. See the section below.
We don’t rank by commission. Our affiliate relationships are disclosed on every page that has one, and they don’t determine what we recommend. How that’s enforced is described in our Editorial Policy.
Who writes this
SmartHealthCompass is published as a brand rather than under an individual byline.
We want to be straightforward about the trade-off, because you should factor it into how much weight you give us: we are not doctors, dietitians, pharmacists, or researchers. No one here holds a clinical credential, and we don’t have a licensed professional reviewing our content.
That’s a real limitation on a health site, and we’d rather name it than paper over it with vague appeals to “our team of experts.” What we offer instead is process transparency: every review states its criteria, its sources, its evidence rating, and its limitations, and you can check our reasoning against the sources we cite. Where our conclusions depend on judgment rather than evidence, we say so.
If that isn’t enough for a decision that matters to your health — and for many decisions it shouldn’t be — talk to a qualified healthcare professional. We say that on every page for a reason.
How we make money
Right now, it doesn’t. This site carries no affiliate links and earns no commissions. There is nothing here you can click that pays us if you buy something.
We intend to change that: the plan is to fund the site through affiliate commissions, where some links carry a tracking code and we earn a percentage if you buy through one, at no additional cost to you. When that starts, we’ll say so — on this page, on the Affiliate Disclosure page with the date, and on every page carrying a commercial link.
The full explanation of how that arrangement will work, and what it does and doesn’t influence, is on our Affiliate Disclosure page. It’s published in advance, before there’s any money involved, so the standard is on the record and you can hold us to it.
Corrections
If we’ve got something wrong, we want to know, and we’ll fix it and say that we did. Our correction process is described in the Editorial Policy, and you can reach us through the Contact page.
This page describes our current practices. When they change materially, we update this page and note the date.