What’s new
Cold and flu season is here: our new guide
Cold and flu season has started, so we wrote a guide to the supplements people reach for. It takes each common remedy in turn, gives the grade we give its evidence, sets out the safety points that matter, and says when to see a doctor. Every graded claim in it links to its study.
What the guide covers
The guide answers the questions people ask most at this time of year, one remedy at a time: zinc lozenges, vitamin D, elderberry, vitamin C, honey for a cough, probiotics, echinacea, and garlic, pelargonium and NAC. It also covers the everyday habits that matter, what we would skip, safety and interactions, and when a cold needs a doctor.
Each answer gives our grade, from A to D, and links to the studies behind it. How we grade explains what the grades mean.
Read it
Cold and flu season supplements: what the evidence says. Like our other evidence guides, it has no shopping links.
Winnowleaf is made by Decosa.
More from the blog
How we work
How we handle retracted research
A study can be retracted years after other papers have built on it. This post explains what a retraction and an integrity concern are, which papers we never let support a grade, why a meta-analysis that leans on a retracted trial can't carry a claim, and how you can check our fixes in the corrections log.
Published
How we work
Why some protocols have no core supplement
Some of our protocol pages now open by saying no supplement has been shown to help, and their stack has no core. This post explains what a core supplement is, why a page can have none, why those pages carry no buy links, and how a page can gain a core later.
Published
How we work
Why some supplements show 'Studies not yet linked'
Some findings on our supplement and condition pages now say 'Studies not yet linked' where they used to show 'Improves' and an arrow. This post explains what the label means, why we stopped showing a benefit with nothing behind it, how a study gets checked and linked to a finding, and what the label does not mean.
Published