DEX Score

DEX score is a weighted score that helps practitioners evaluate whether a supplement is likely to have a real benefit and is worth its cost.

It is based on the best meta-analyses and RCTs we can find for any supplement-condition pairing.

Questions we ask

1. Is a supplement effective?
2. Is there a large body of evidence?
3. Can that evidence be trusted?

Our algorithm combines these factors to provide a rigorous assessment of the evidence. The end result? Supplement clarity.

Three metrics, one score

• Effect Size — How large and clinically meaningful is the benefit when it works?
• Evidence — How much relevant human research exists for this use?
• Trust — How reliable is that research (design, consistency, real-world applicability)?

Want more information about how we weight these values? See our handbook for more details.

Range, Mean, Median, Standard Deviation

For each supplement, DEX Score is calculated per condition. Across those scores we show four summary stats:

• Range: the lowest and highest DEX Score across studied conditions.
• Mean: the average DEX Score across every studied condition for that supplement. One overall number, lifted by strong uses and dragged down by weak ones.
• Median: the middle score when conditions are lined up from lowest to highest. Less skewed by a single excellent or terrible use than the mean.
• SD (standard deviation): how uneven those condition scores are. Like range, it measures spread, but it uses every score rather than just the extremes. Low SD means similar scores across uses. High SD means a supplement is good for some conditions and weak for others.

For practitioners, these numbers help answer a few practical questions. Does this ingredient have any strong indicated uses, or is everything middling? Is the overall average fair, or is it propped up or dragged down by a few outliers? And is this something you can treat as broadly useful, or do you need to match it carefully to the condition in front of you?

Example 1: Creatine

Range 32–88, mean 64, median 68, SD 24.7. The high end is excellent, the center is still strong, and the high SD tells you the benefit is concentrated in some uses rather than equal across every condition studied.

Example 2: Vitamin D

Range 32–76, mean 48.8, median 48, SD 10.5. The peak is lower, the center is middling, and the smaller SD means scores are less concentrated in a few standout uses.

These scores reflect the reality of how these supplements work. Creatine’s main job is the phosphocreatine shuttle: rapid ATP regeneration in tissues with high, short-burst energy demand, especially skeletal muscle. That is a narrow mechanism, so evidence piles up for performance and related uses and thins out elsewhere, which shows up as a high peak and high SD. Vitamin D acts through the vitamin D receptor, which is expressed across bone, immune, muscle, and many other tissues. A broad mechanism produces smaller, more even condition scores rather than one dominant specialty. DEX Score is an accurate representation of real evidence.

Score percentiles

Across every supplement–condition evidence review in the database, here is how rare each DEX Score threshold is. Exceeding a threshold places a rating at that percentile of the distribution.

Supplements by highest DEX Score

Counting each supplement once by its best score across conditions: 10 at ≥80, 48 at 80≥70, and 44 at 70≥60.