Editorial & Corrections Policy

What VitaWhat is — and is not

VitaWhat is an educational reference about vitamins, minerals, deficiencies, allergies, hormones and everyday foods. It exists to help readers understand a topic well enough to have a better conversation with a qualified professional.

It is not a diagnostic tool, a treatment guide or a substitute for medical advice. Nothing on this site should be used to start, stop or change any medicine, supplement or treatment without speaking to a doctor, pharmacist or registered dietitian.

How content is produced

• Who writes it: entries are researched and written by the VitaWhat editorial team.
• Medical review: health entries are reviewed by Steve Davis.
• Primary sources: the NHS, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Dietary Supplements, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the British Dietetic Association and other national public-health bodies. Each entry lists its sources at the foot of the page.
• Review dates: every entry shows a "last reviewed" date in its byline. Entries are re-checked when the underlying guidance changes, and routinely on a rolling cycle.

How we grade evidence

Not all evidence is equal, and our wording reflects that:

• "Established" / "proven": supported by major public-health guidance or systematic reviews of clinical trials (for example, vitamin C preventing scurvy).
• "Evidence suggests": supported by clinical studies that are promising but limited in size, duration or consistency.
• "Traditionally used for": a historical or cultural use with little or no clinical evidence. This phrasing is deliberate — traditional use is not proof of effectiveness. This matters most in our herbal & botanical section, where each page carries an evidence note making the distinction explicit.

Where the evidence is genuinely uncertain, we say so rather than round up.

About our interactive tools

• 3D body locator: the markers show where a deficiency commonly presents. Symptoms are rarely specific to one nutrient, so the locator is a way to explore the reference — never to self-diagnose.
• Energy & BMI calculator: uses standard published equations and food-composition values. Its assumptions and limitations (including the groups for whom BMI is a poor measure) are stated on the calculator page itself.

Corrections

We want every error found and fixed. If you spot a factual mistake, an out-of-date figure or a broken source link:

• Report it via the contact page or email support@helium22.com, naming the page and the statement in question.
• We check the claim against current primary sources.
• Confirmed errors are corrected promptly and the entry's "last reviewed" date is updated.

Substantive corrections that could have affected how a reader understood a health topic are noted on the corrected page.

Advertising & independence

VitaWhat may carry clearly-labelled advertising. Advertisers have no influence over what we cover, what the entries say, or how evidence is graded. We do not accept payment for favourable coverage of any product, supplement or brand, and advertising is always visually separated from reference content.