Choosing which product to buy?
Guidance from EBE’s independent assessment of specific evidence
Independent advice
It can be extremely confusing trying to choose natural health products. There are thousands of products on the shelves containing what looks like the “same substance”. They are all different – different price, different owners, different packaging, different composition and different biological effects on the body.
This makes it almost impossible to make the product choices for you and your family. It is difficult to know who to turn to for advice. Often the advice is confusing and contradictory. This is where transparency, independence and scientific evidence can make the difference.
Empowering YOU to be guided by specific evidence
Empowered By Evidence helps you find products with evidence that they work clinically and that they are made the same each batch. Because evidence is product specific, we have a assembled a team of independent specialists that:
- assess the specific clinical evidence for the finished product, AND
- that the product you can buy is the same as the one used in the clinical evidence.
Can you find specific evidence products yourself?
It is possible, if you have the time, to search for the specific products that have been used in clinical trials. To do this you need to search databases of published literature like PubMed.
To get details of the specific product used sometimes you need to pay for the article. Inside the article the exact product used should be described.
Sadly, very few of the thousands of clinical trials on natural health products properly describe the product! Even if they did, it is not possible to be certain that the product we can buy today is the same as the product used in the clinical trials, usually conducted years ago.
Which products are independently assessed?
The challenge of finding natural health products which have specific evidence has been taken on by Empowered By Evidence (EBE). In 2022, applications for our independent assessment were received for 14 products. Most applications did not reach our standards, but hopefully this will improve over time.
The great news is that 5 products achieved the EBE standard, and they are available in 39 countries under 32 brand names. Their details can be found here:
