Methodology
Data
We scanned 373,690 public Reddit comments, May 2026 to October 2026, through the Arctic Shift archive. Coverage per subreddit (days sampled): r/Anxiety126, r/Nootropics184, r/Stress184, r/Supplements84, r/depression_help42, r/insomnia184, r/sleep184. r/Supplements was sampled on days 1 to 14 of each month and r/Anxiety on days 1 to 21; r/depression_help is a small earlier sample. We found 8,231 ingredient mentions in a stress, anxiety or mood context and kept 2,191 owner comments, where the writer says they used the supplement. 1,283 of those express a clear positive, negative or mixed experience.
How comments are classified
- Owner detection: keyword rules look for first-person use ("I take", "I've been on", "started"). Hypothetical, second-hand or "haven't tried it yet" comments are excluded.
- Sentence windows: sentiment is read only from the sentences naming the ingredient, so opinions about other products in the same comment do not leak in.
- Stacks and medicines: comments listing many supplements are not scored, because we cannot tell which one the writer is describing. Comments naming three or more supplements, or a prescription medicine, count half.
- One vote per person per thread: repeated comments by the same author in the same thread count once.
- Accuracy: keyword classification is imperfect, and about 40% of owner comments have no clear sentiment. Every quote links to the original comment so you can judge it yourself.
Promotional comments removed
While building the dataset we found clusters of comments that looked like coordinated brand promotion: many new or one-purpose accounts praising the same product with similar wording in a short period, or text with hidden characters. 401 such comments (across our calm, sleep and adaptogen datasets) were removed: they are never scored or quoted, and the brands involved are not listed or linked as examples. More campaigns may exist that we did not catch.
The score
Comment weight = (1 + ln(1 + upvotes)) × 2 if posted in the last 12 months × 1.5 if longer than 100 words × 0.5 if shared with other supplements or a medicine.
| Component | Design weight | Used now | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner sentiment | 40% | 50% | Bayesian average of 1–5 owner ratings: (C × m + Σ weighted ratings) / (C + Σ weights), with C = 5 and m = 3.46, the mean across all supplements. |
| Recommendations | 15% | 19% | How often owners actively recommend it to others, scaled 1–5 on a log scale. |
| Tolerability | 25% | 31% | Share of rated owner comments with no unwanted effect (drowsiness, headache, stomach upset, feeling flat and similar), shrunk toward the average (83%), scaled 1–5. |
| Value | 20% | 0% | Not rated: example products differ too much in dose and serving for a fair cost comparison. Its weight is shared out among the other components. |
Thresholds
- A supplement gets a page with 1+ owner comment. Pages with fewer than 5 owner comments are marked noindex and left out of the sitemap.
- Overall score is "Not rated" when there are no rated owner comments.
- Brands get their own score only with 5+ owner comments naming that brand; otherwise products are listed as examples, not scored.
- Rankings by concern need 3+ rated comments in that context per supplement, and a concern page is indexed only with 3+ qualifying supplements. Social anxiety had only 6 owner comments, so it has no page yet.
- Vitamin D and B vitamins are background pages: most owner comments are about correcting a deficiency or general health, so they are not ranked or shortlisted.
- Comparisons need 5+ owner comments on each side.
What we exclude
- Drugs: prescription medicines (antidepressants, benzodiazepines and others) and OTC sleep drugs (diphenhydramine, doxylamine) are never scored or ranked.
- Substances: kratom, phenibut, tianeptine, kava, kanna, CBD, CBN, THC and cannabis products are excluded entirely. Comments that mention them are never scored.
- Adaptogens and mushrooms: ashwagandha, rhodiola, lion's mane and similar are not scored here; they will be covered on adaptogenic.ai (coming soon).
- Quotes: we do not show quotes that describe curing, treating or healing a disease, name a drug, or contain links.
Facts and sources
Factual statements cite NIH pages (Office of Dietary Supplements, NCCIH, NIMH, MedlinePlus) or PubMed records. We list studies so you can read them; we do not rate clinical evidence.
Products and affiliate links
Products shown under each ingredient are examples we found on Amazon and checked against the amazon.com listing. They are not ranked by Reddit. Links include our Amazon Associates tag; this never changes a score. Images are our own illustrations, not product photos.
Known limits
- Six months of data, with partial sampling of the two largest subreddits.
- Reddit names ingredients far more often than brands, so most brand evidence is thin.
- Safety-flagged ingredients (5-HTP, St. John's wort, SAMe, L-tryptophan) have few owner comments.
- We plan to refresh the data monthly.
Data generated 2026-11-04.