# @mackinprof on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DeMGGfYiPVw
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/71321068-mackinprof-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/c393e9b54f.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-10-07T10:00:43.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Stuart Phillips (@mackinprof) — https://gondola.cc/mackinprof

## Caption

Part 2. Same respect, same yardstick. The Buck Institute is a serious place with serious scientists, and their supplement guide ranks by human evidence, which is the right way to do it. This is their Tier 2, the "promising" tier.

Their own definition of Tier 2 is "encouraging early human data". Their Tier 3 is where "the human data is limited, observational, or mixed". Hold the nine Tier 2 supplements against those two sentences, and most of them read like Tier 3.

Where there's a specific job, they're right that human data exists. CoQ10 in heart failure. Probiotics when you're on antibiotics. NAC as a drug. Rehydration salts for diarrhea. Curcumin for sore knees, maybe.

For a healthy adult chasing healthspan it's thinner. Urolithin A missed its primary endpoint in both main trials. Ketone esters don't improve performance, and the one aging trial was a 30-person tolerability pilot. Glycine, NAC and glutathione are three entries built on one idea, and in 114 healthy older adults glycine plus NAC didn't raise glutathione. Curcumin has 103 trials, which is hardly "early", with most outcomes graded low or very low. And if you're healthy and not sweating hard, I couldn't find a trial showing electrolytes beat water and food.

Promising for patients. Unproven for healthspan. My ask is the same as last time: say who each grade is for, and what for.

With respect to the Buck, whose own scientists are running some of the trials that could move these up. It's a first pass. Now challenge mine.

References
Dao 2026 Front Nutr; Valenzuela 2020 Int J Sports Physiol Perform; Stubbs 2025 J Frailty Aging; Lizzo 2022 Front Aging; Mangkalopakorn 2024 J Curr Sci Technol; Rhodes 2017 Sports Med; Al Saadi 2021 Cochrane Database Syst Rev; Jafari 2024 Phytother Res; Halegoua-DeMarzio 2022 Am J Med; Goodman 2021 BMJ Open; Éliás 2026 BMC Med; Munos 2010 Int J Epidemiol; Maughan 2016 Am J Clin Nutr

#evidencebased #supplements #healthspan #longevity

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 102
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 10

## Tags

supplements, healthspan, evidencebased, longevity

---
Copyright (c) Gondola