1. Are the amounts printed, ingredient by ingredient?
The single most useful check. If the label shows a “proprietary blend” with one combined figure covering eight ingredients, you cannot know whether any of them is present at a researched amount. That structure exists to prevent you knowing.
Any product that prints each ingredient with its own milligram figure has already separated itself from most of the shelf.
1b. Is “natural” doing any work in the claim?
A botanical brain supplement, a herbal brain supplement and a plant-based brain health supplement are, in practice, the same shelf. The word tells you where an ingredient came from and nothing about whether it was tested. Willow bark is natural; so is caffeine. What natural brain support should mean is that the plant extract in question has human trial data at the amount on the label — and that is a question the word itself never answers.
The same applies to a product described as a healthy brain function supplement or sold for brain function support. Those are category labels, not findings. Ask which ingredient, which trial, how many people, how long.
2. How many ingredients have human trials behind them?
Not animal studies. Not cell cultures. Randomised trials in people. In a six-ingredient formula, four with human data is a reasonable ratio; two is thin; none is a packaging exercise.
Ask the seller which ones. A seller who cannot tell you, or will not, has answered the question.
3. Does the seller admit anything?
A page that only tells you the good half of each story is not informing you. The tell is whether the negative evidence gets named — and in this category there is always some. The two largest ginkgo trials are negative. Anyone citing ginkgo without mentioning them is managing your impression.
4. Is there a timeline, and is it realistic?
Different ingredients act on different clocks. Theanine with caffeine: hours. Ginkgo's trial evidence: six weeks. Curcumin's cognitive trial: eighteen months. Lutein's: twelve.
A product promising noticeable results in seven days is not describing anything in the published literature.
5. What does the refund actually cover?
Check three things: how long, when the clock starts, and whether opened bottles are accepted. A thirty-day window starting at purchase, requiring unopened product, is not a guarantee — it is a returns policy for people who changed their mind before trying it.
6. Are the interactions disclosed?
Ginkgo and blood thinners. Glucosamine and shellfish allergy. Caffeine content for people who sleep lightly. A label that lists ingredients without flagging any of this is leaving you to find out on your own.
7. Is it claiming to treat something?
If a supplement page uses the words Alzheimer's, dementia or cognitive decline near a buy button, stop. No dietary supplement treats or prevents those conditions, and marketing them that way is the specific pattern regulators act on.
8. Is the price structured to trap you?
Read the checkout before confirming. A one-time package is a one-time package; a plan that bills monthly until cancelled is something else, and the difference is usually a line of small text.
Our own label, run through the same eight
- Amounts printed: yes, each ingredient listed separately. No proprietary blend.
- Human trials: four of six. Ginkgo, curcumin, lutein, and the theanine-caffeine pairing. Bamboo silica and D-Glucosamine have none.
- Negative evidence named: the GEM and Snitz results are on this site, as is the fact that the positive ginkgo trial found no recognition-memory advantage.
- Timeline: hours for one pairing, six weeks for ginkgo, a year or more for the antioxidants. Set out on the mechanisms page.
- Refund: sixty days from delivery, opened bottles accepted.
- Interactions: the safety page leads with the blood-thinner question rather than burying it.
- Disease claims: none, and the pages that discuss Alzheimer's and dementia on this site carry no purchase links at all.
- Pricing: one-time packages, no subscription.
Run the same eight on whatever else you are considering. That is the point of the list.