Why most men's supplements are underdosed

Why men's supplements are underdosed: the honest data

Most men's supplements contain ingredients that work - just not at the doses on the label. The gap between what's clinically studied and what ends up in a capsule is often enormous. Creatine, for instance, has been studied at 3-5g per day in hundreds of trials; the majority of "men's multis" that include it at all deliver 500mg or less. That's not a minor shortfall. That's a different product.

What the evidence actually shows

I started looking into this properly about three years ago, when I was trying to understand why so many men I knew - educated, health-conscious, mid-thirties - were taking supplements daily and noticing nothing. The answer, once I started reading primary literature rather than brand websites, was almost always dose.

Take creatine monohydrate. A meta-analysis by Lemon et al. (2003) covering 22 trials found consistent improvements in high-intensity exercise performance at doses of 3-5g per day during maintenance. That's the established effective range. Now look at a typical men's "performance" supplement. If creatine appears at all - and it often doesn't - it's frequently listed at under 1g, buried in a proprietary blend. The math doesn't work.

It's not just creatine. A systematic review by Carr and Maggini (2017) on Vitamin C noted that immune and antioxidant benefits in clinical settings were observed at doses of 200-500mg per day, with higher doses used in oxidative stress contexts. Many men's supplements include 30-60mg - enough to prevent scurvy, not enough to do much else. And a Cochrane-adjacent review of glycine research by Razak et al. (2017) - though I'd note the human data on glycine specifically is still developing and large-scale RCTs are limited - pointed to doses of 3-5g being used in the studies that showed any measurable signal.

The pattern is consistent. Ingredients are included at doses that look credible on a label but fall well short of what the underlying research actually used.

Why underdosing happens: the economics behind the label

This isn't accidental. It's structural. Supplement manufacturing costs scale directly with ingredient quantity. A capsule-based product has a hard ceiling on how much it can contain - typically 500-800mg per capsule - and brands trying to list 10, 12, or 15 ingredients in a two-capsule serving are doing arithmetic that doesn't add up. Something has to give, and what gives is dose.

There's also a marketing incentive to include as many ingredients as possible, because a longer ingredient list reads as more comprehensive. A product with 15 ingredients at ineffective doses looks more impressive on a shelf than a product with five ingredients at studied doses. Consumers aren't typically reading primary literature. Brands know this.

Then there's the proprietary blend loophole. If you want to understand exactly how this works, I'd recommend reading why supplement labels lie - it covers the regulatory gap that lets brands list a blend total weight without disclosing individual ingredient doses. It's one of the more effective ways to make underdosing invisible.

The biological mechanisms that actually require adequate dose

Dose-response relationships aren't uniform across ingredients, but for most of the compounds that appear in men's supplements, there's a threshold below which biological effect is negligible or absent.

Creatine works by saturating muscle phosphocreatine stores. You can't partially saturate them and get a proportional benefit - you need to reach a physiological threshold. Hultman et al. (1996) demonstrated that a loading protocol of 20g/day for five days, or a slower accumulation at 3g/day over 28 days, were both sufficient to achieve full muscle creatine saturation. Sub-1g doses achieve essentially nothing measurable.

For antioxidant compounds like grape seed extract and pine bark extract, the picture is more nuanced. Research suggests these polyphenols may support vascular function and reduce oxidative markers, but the human data on precise dosing thresholds is genuinely thin. Schoonees et al. (2012) reviewed pine bark extract trials and noted that the studies showing any signal used doses of 100-360mg per day - and even then, the evidence base is limited and large-scale trials are lacking. A 25mg "token" inclusion in a proprietary blend is not the same thing.

The same logic applies to CoQ10 - and if you're over 35, the form matters as much as the dose. I've written separately about ubiquinol vs. ubiquinone: why the form of CoQ10 in your supplement matters after 35, because the conversion efficiency between forms changes with age in ways that make the label dose even more misleading than it first appears.

What clinical doses actually look like for men over 30

Here's where I try to be genuinely useful rather than just critical. These are the doses that appear in the studies I've read - not what I'd recommend as a clinician (I'm not one), but what the research actually used.

At Kojo, I built the formula around these numbers - not around what fits neatly into two capsules. That's why it's a drink format. Creatine is at 5,000mg. Vitamin C is at 500mg. Glycine at 2,000mg, taurine at 2,000mg - both at the lower end of the studied range, with the honest caveat that the human data on both is still developing. Aged garlic extract at 600mg. These aren't arbitrary numbers. They're the doses the research actually used.

The specific problem for men after 35

Age changes the calculation in a few important ways. Creatine stores in muscle tissue decline with age - Brose et al. (2003) found that older adults (mean age 72) supplementing with 5g/day of creatine alongside resistance training showed significantly greater improvements in lean mass and strength compared to placebo (p<0.05), suggesting the baseline depletion makes adequate dosing more, not less, important.

Testosterone decline is another factor worth understanding clearly. I'm not going to overstate the supplement angle here - the honest picture is more complicated than most brands admit. I'd suggest reading what happens to testosterone after 35: the evidence, without the panic before assuming any supplement will meaningfully address it. But the broader point stands: men over 35 are often the target market for these products, and they're also the demographic where adequate dosing matters most, because physiological reserves are lower and the margin for error is smaller.

Mitochondrial function is another area. CoQ10 synthesis declines with age, and the conversion from ubiquinone to the active ubiquinol form becomes less efficient. A 30mg inclusion of ubiquinone in a men's multi is doing very little for a 45-year-old man whose endogenous conversion capacity has already dropped.

How to read a supplement label without being misled

A few things I now look for before trusting any supplement:

• Are individual ingredient doses listed? If you see a "blend" with a total weight, you have no way of knowing how much of anything you're getting. Walk away, or at minimum recognise you're buying a black box.
• Does the total weight add up? If a two-capsule serving claims to contain 12 ingredients and the total weight is 800mg, average dose per ingredient is 66mg. That's a warning sign before you even look at the specifics.
• Are the doses in the range used in the cited studies? Brands often link to research on their ingredient pages. Check whether the dose in that study matches what's on the label. Frequently, it doesn't.
• Is the form specified? Creatine monohydrate, ubiquinol, magnesium glycinate - form matters. If the label just says "creatine" or "CoQ10" without specifying form, that's a gap worth querying.
• What's the delivery format? Capsules have a hard physical limit. A product trying to deliver 5g of creatine plus meaningful doses of several other ingredients in capsule form is either using an impractical number of capsules or underdosing something.

The regulatory gap that makes this possible

In the UK, food supplements are regulated under the Food Supplements (England) Regulations 2003, which set maximum and minimum levels for vitamins and minerals but say almost nothing about non-vitamin, non-mineral compounds - which covers most of what appears in men's performance supplements. There's no requirement to demonstrate efficacy. There's no minimum dose standard. There's no obligation to match the doses used in cited research.

This isn't a call for heavy-handed regulation. I'm genuinely ambivalent about that. But it does mean the only protection consumers have is their own ability to read labels critically and cross-reference primary literature - which is a significant ask for most people buying a supplement before work.

The honest answer is that the industry has optimised for shelf appeal rather than physiological effect, and the regulatory framework has allowed it. That's the environment. Working within it requires scepticism as a baseline.

Frequently asked questions

My honest take

I built Kojo because I got frustrated. Not in a dramatic way - more in the quiet, accumulating way you get frustrated when you keep buying things that don't do what they claim. I'd spent years taking capsule-based men's supplements, reading the labels, thinking the ingredient list looked sensible, and noticing nothing. When I started actually reading the studies, the dose problem was obvious within a few hours.

What I find harder to admit is that even the formula I've built involves genuine uncertainty. Glycine at 2,000mg is at the lower end of the studied range, and the human trial data is limited enough that I'd be overstating it to claim confidence about effect magnitude. Taurine similarly - research suggests it may support cardiovascular and metabolic markers, but the evidence base for large-scale human benefit is still developing. Aged garlic extract has some interesting cardiovascular data, but again, I'd be misrepresenting the literature if I told you the effect sizes were established with high certainty.

What I can say with more confidence is that the doses in Kojo's formula are at or near the doses used in the research that exists - which is more than I can say for most of what's on the market. That's not a marketing claim. It's just the honest starting point I wanted to build from.

The supplement industry has a dose problem. It's not hidden - it's just rarely discussed plainly. I'd rather you read this, check the numbers yourself, and make an informed decision than take my word for it. That's the whole point of writing these pieces.