We describe each substance from five sides: studies, safety, legal status, doping and risk of fakes. There is no overall score and no ranking of "best" substances, because something can have good studies of one effect and no safety data at all.
1. Studies
A grade covers one substance and one effect, such as strength.
| Grade | What it means |
|---|---|
| A | At least three studies in people with random groups, or a medicine approved for exactly this use |
| B | At least one study in people with random groups |
| C | Studies in people without random groups or without a comparison group |
| D | Animal studies only |
| E | Only lab experiments or users' stories |
We lower the grade by one level when:
- a review of studies calls the results in people very uncertain
- studies give conflicting results
- studies measure only indirect signs, such as blood results, and not the effect itself
- the people studied differ from the people the question is about, such as patients instead of healthy adults
We also show who paid for a study, but that alone does not change the grade.
A grade says how strong the studies are, not whether a substance works. So each grade comes with a result: effect in studies, conflicting results, no effect in studies, harm in studies, or not clear. A high grade with "no effect in studies" means fairly firm data that the substance does not help.
We do not colour grades green or red on purpose, because green reads like a recommendation.
2. Safety
- Well known: large studies, or long medical use with an official label. This describes the pharmacy medicine, not a product sold elsewhere.
- Little data: studies in people exist, but they are small, short or in different people.
- Serious warning: serious harm has been described, a study was stopped, or an authority has warned.
- Not known: we found no data that allow an assessment. That is never good news.
Each level says what it rests on and gives the sources.
3. Is it legal
We show this separately for Poland, the EU and the US: approved medicine, prescription only, made by pharmacies, no approval, or banned. Every entry links to an official document and has the date it was checked. We never take this from blogs.
For Poland and the EU we use the European medicines database (EMA), which collects EU and national approvals. When the Polish medicines register is down, the entry says so. The database covers medicines only. It leaves out supplements and cosmetics, and it does not show whether a prescription is needed.
4. Doping
We check the WADA list of banned substances for the stated year.
- Banned in sport: the substance is on the list.
- May be banned: it is not on the list, but WADA also bans substances that no health authority has approved. This is our reading, not a ruling.
- Allowed, being watched: not banned, but WADA collects data on its use in sport.
- Not on the list: the list does not name this substance.
5. Risk of fakes
This says whether products turn out fake, hold too little of the substance, or are contaminated. We rely on published tests. We give numbers, never names of sellers.
- High: tests of purchased or seized products with this substance, or with the group it is sold in, found mismatches with the label, or an authority has warned.
- Medium: it is known to be sold outside the legal supply, but nobody has tested the quality of those products.
- Not known: we found no tests. That is missing data, not good news.
No substance has been given the low level so far.
Reported side effects
The card also shows what happened to people after taking a substance. This part is separate and changes no grade, because a report does not prove the substance was the cause.
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Reports to the FDA. Doctors, patients and companies report side effects to the US FAERS database. We take them from the public openFDA database: the number of reports, how many were serious, and the side effects listed most often. We leave out entries that do not describe health, such as dosing mistakes or faulty packaging. The numbers do not say how often something happens, because nobody knows how many people took the substance. A popular medicine gets more reports, and almost nobody reports substances bought outside a pharmacy.
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Case descriptions. We search PubMed for descriptions of single patients who were harmed after taking the substance. We show the newest ones and link to the full list. The editors read them when they assess safety.
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What users write online. We do not collect forum posts ourselves. We summarise published studies in which researchers analysed users' posts, for example on Reddit. We show side effects and the study's limits, without user names, doses or sellers. A summary goes on the site only after a person has checked it. These are accounts, not measurements, so they change no grade.
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Popular videos. We pick YouTube videos that many people watch and set them next to our grades. We leave out videos whose description sends people to sellers of the substance, that are dosing guides, or whose description does not say what they cover. For each video we say who is speaking, whether the description has ads and whether the video gives doses. We cannot read the transcripts, so we summarise only what the title, description and chapters say. Thumbnails are stored on our server, so your browser does not connect to Google.
We do not check nutrients and cosmetics in the FDA database. In those reports they almost always appear as something the person happened to take, not as the suspected cause.
How we stay current
Automated scripts look for new studies, withdrawn papers and notices from authorities every day. AI models help pick papers and write first drafts. A program checks every quote against the source text. A person approves each change, so no grade or legal information reaches the site automatically.
We recheck legal information after 90 days and study grades after 180 days. After that, an entry shows a warning instead of pretending to be current.
Limits
We read many papers first as a summary, and the most important ones in full. Grading takes judgement, so changes to the criteria and corrections are public. We do not give personal advice.
Short entries and full descriptions
A full description has a study grade for each effect and text based on specific papers. A short entry holds facts from official registers: what the substance is, whether it is a medicine, how WADA treats it and how many scientific papers exist. It may also carry study, safety and fakes ratings with sources, but it has no full text yet. Every substance with a grade appears in the studies table.
The numbers are search results on the date shown with the entry. They show how much exists, not how good the studies are.
"To be checked" means we have not confirmed the information in a register.
We do not cover solvents or accessories.
Words we cannot avoid
- Peptide: a short chain of amino acids, the building blocks of protein. Many hormones are peptides.
- SARM: a synthetic substance that acts on the same places in cells as testosterone. No SARM is an approved medicine in the EU or US.
- Placebo: an injection or pill with no active substance. Comparing with placebo shows how much comes from the substance and how much from expecting an effect.
- Study with random groups: people are placed by chance in the group taking the substance or in a comparison group. That makes a difference easier to pin on the substance.
- Stages of studies: stage 1 checks safety in a small group, stage 2 looks for an effect, stage 3 is the large testing before a medicine is approved.
- Review of studies and pooled analysis: a summary of many papers on one topic. A pooled analysis also combines their results into one number.
- Body mass without fat: muscle, water, bones and organs. A rise does not have to mean more muscle.
- EMA and FDA: the authorities that approve medicines in the EU and the US.
- WADA: the World Anti-Doping Agency.