Buyer's guides
Two long guides, written to be useful on any product in this category and then applied to our own.
Two guides: how to read a Supplement Facts panel in five minutes, and how to choose a cognitive supplement. Both are written to work on any label, and both end up pointed back at CogniMary's own.
The guides
What these three have in common
Each one is written so that it is useful on a product we do not sell, and each one ends by applying its own method to CogniMary's label. Where our label fails the test, the guide says so.
| Guide | The question it answers | Reading time |
|---|---|---|
| How to read a panel | What is this label actually telling me? | 10 min |
| Choosing a cognitive supplement | Which of these products is worth buying? | 10 min |
| What a proprietary blend hides | Why will nobody tell me the amounts? | 8 min |
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How these guides are written
Every guide here follows the same three rules, and they are worth stating because most supplement content does not follow them.
We name the source or we drop the claim
If a number came from a trial, the trial is in the references with its identifier. If we could not open a source, the sentence that needed it does not get published.
No unsourced numbers
We apply the method to our own product
Every guide here ends up pointed back at CogniMary. When our own label fails the test the guide describes, the guide says so rather than quietly changing the test.
Including when it fails
We separate what is known from what is marketed
An ingredient having a trial behind it and a product containing a useful amount of that ingredient are two different claims. Most category writing merges them.
Two different questions
That is a slower way to write and it produces shorter guides than the ones that do not bother. It also means you can check us, which is the only reason to trust anything written by a company about its own product.
Who these are for
These assume you are an adult buying a supplement for yourself, that you are not treating a diagnosed condition, and that you have a normal amount of patience for detail — which is to say, some, but not unlimited.
- If you are holding a bottle and want to know what its label is telling you, start with how to read a panel.
- If you are choosing between products, start with choosing a cognitive supplement.
- If you already know the category and want the specific arithmetic on this product, skip both and read the 635 mg ceiling.
None of these is a substitute for a conversation with a clinician, particularly if you take prescription medication or have a diagnosed condition. They are written to make you a better-informed buyer, not to replace medical advice.
The shortest version of all of it
- Turn the bottle over. If there is no Supplement Facts panel, you have learned the most important thing about the product already.
- Read the serving size first. Everything else on the panel is measured against it, and a two-capsule serving in a 60-capsule bottle is a thirty-day supply.
- Find the blend. If there is one, divide its total by each ingredient's position to get a ceiling.
- Compare those ceilings with researched doses. One search each. This is where most formulas come apart.
- Divide the price by the number of days. Cost a day is the only number that compares across products.
Five steps, about five minutes, and they work on every product in this category including ours. Applied to CogniMary they produce the ceiling page, which is why that page exists.
Order CogniMary from the official website
Sixty capsules, thirty days, and a panel you can read before you buy. Start with one bottle so you can see the price and the guarantee term before you commit to six.
No price was published to this website. The figure is on the checkout page.
Why we publish guides at all
A retailer publishing a guide to buying in its own category is a conflict of interest, and pretending otherwise would undermine everything else on this site.
The usual version of this content is a funnel: a guide whose criteria happen to describe the product the site sells. You can spot one quickly — it praises exactly the features the seller has and never applies its own test to its own product.
The test we set ourselves is the opposite. Each guide here ends by running its method on CogniMary's label. On the choosing guide our own product scores partial, mostly no, mixed and unknown across four questions. That table is the reason the guide is worth reading.
How to check us
Take any guide on this site and apply it to a competitor's label. If the criteria only make our product look good, the guide is a funnel and you should stop trusting the rest of the site. If they work on any label, it is a guide.
The five numbers worth knowing
Across every guide here, five figures come up repeatedly. They are worth having in one place.
| Figure | What it is | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 350 mg | Upper intake level for supplemental magnesium | NIH Office of Dietary Supplements |
| 1,000 µg | Upper intake level for folic acid in adults | NIH Office of Dietary Supplements |
| 800 mg | The EGCG level at which EFSA saw raised liver enzymes | EFSA scientific opinion, 2018 |
| 1.7× | The folic acid to dietary folate equivalent conversion | FDA guidance for industry |
| T ÷ k | The ceiling for the k-th ingredient in a blend totalling T | Derived from 21 CFR 101.36(c) |
Scroll this table sideways →
The last row is the only original thing on this site, and it is only arithmetic. The other four are public figures that almost no product page in this category prints.
What to read in what order
If you are holding a bottle
Start with how to read a panel. Five minutes, and it works on whatever is in your hand.
If you are comparing products
Start with choosing a cognitive supplement. Four questions, and the first one eliminates most of the market.
If a label has a proprietary blend
Read what a proprietary blend hides, then do the division.
If you want this product specifically
Skip all three and read the 635 mg ceiling, which is the method applied in full.
There is no order in which these have to be read, and none of them assumes the others. Each is written to be the first thing someone reads.
What is deliberately not here
Three kinds of guide are missing from this page on purpose.
- A “best nootropics” ranking. A retailer ranking its own category is a sales page with a table in it. We are not going to write one.
- A stack builder. Combining supplements raises interaction and upper-intake questions that need a clinician, not a web page.
- A dosage calculator. The amounts on most labels in this category are not published, which is the whole problem, and a calculator would imply a precision that does not exist.
What is here instead is method: how to read a label, how to compare products, and how to work out what a blend can hold. Those transfer. A ranking goes out of date and was never neutral.
Corrections to the guides
Guides age faster than product pages, because the research behind them moves. Two commitments.
- If a cited review is superseded, the guide gets updated and the date at the top of it moves.
- If we were wrong about something, the correction is made in the text rather than added as a footnote at the bottom.
If you spot something out of date, [email protected] with the page and the source. That is genuinely useful to us and we will say so.
One more resource
Two public sources are worth more than any guide a retailer writes, and both are free.
- The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements health professional fact sheets, which give Daily Values, upper intake levels and an honest summary of the evidence for most nutrients. They are cited throughout this site.
- PubMed, where you can read the abstract of almost any trial referenced on any supplement label, free, in about a minute.
If those two become a habit, nothing on this site is necessary. That is a strange thing for a retailer to write and it is true.
In short
Two guides and a regulation explainer, all written so they work on a product we do not sell, all ending with the same method applied to the label we do. If that combination is unusual for a retailer, it is because the alternative — criteria that happen to flatter our own product — would not survive a single reader checking it against a competitor.