Method
What this writing
rests on.
I don't have a lab, a physiotherapist on staff, or a warehouse of review units. Saying that up front is easier than writing around it, and it lets you judge the advice on what it really rests on.
Three inputs
- 01
Research, read properly
Most of the health pagesFor anything about pain, recovery or exercise, I work from clinical guidelines and systematic reviews rather than single studies, because a single study is usually wrong. Where the literature is split, both sides get a sentence. I have a university library card and no institutional affiliation, which means I can read the papers but not claim anyone vetted my reading of them.
- 02
Specifications, and what they imply
Most of the gear pagesA lot of buying advice is arithmetic. Amplitude times frequency tells you something about a massage gun that no amount of marketing copy can undo. When an article reasons from a spec sheet instead of a device on my floor, the top of that article says so. That note stays until it stops being true.
- 03
Things I own and use
A growing minorityA foam roller. A cheap percussion gun. A resistance band that has been tied to a door handle more times than is reasonable. When I describe using something, it is because I own it. I do not have a testing lab, a sample size, or a stopwatch worth trusting, so I try not to write as if I do.
Lines I don't cross
Six things you won't find here
All six are ordinary in this category, which is why the list is worth writing down.
- Invent measurements. If I did not put a decibel meter on it, there is no decibel figure in the article.
- Invent a medical reviewer. This site has no clinical board, and pretending otherwise is the most common lie in this niche.
- Take money for a ranking, a placement, or a favourable verdict. Nobody has offered, and the answer is no.
- Write a hands-on review of something I have not held.
- Order a list by commission rate and call it testing.
- Describe a product as "clinically proven" when what I mean is "one small trial showed something".
Money
Some links pay me
Buying through a link on this site sometimes sends a commission my way. The price you pay is identical, and no brand has ever seen an article before it went up. There are no sponsored posts and no display ads, mostly because nobody offered and partly because I would rather not write around a banner.
The obvious failure mode is a site that recommends everything. The only defence I have is that articles on this site regularly conclude you should buy nothing, and one of them argues a $700 product is mostly a very good feeling. That costs money every time.
Where a category has no product I can justify, the article says so instead of picking the least-bad option and linking it. The compression boots piece ends closer to "these are nice trousers for your legs" than to a recommendation, and that is the honest position.
The full disclosureLimits
Where this stops being useful
I'm not a clinician and I can't examine you. Everything on this site is written for a person with an ordinary, uncomplicated complaint, and ordinary is doing a lot of work in that sentence. If you have a diagnosis, a surgical history, or symptoms that don't match the plain description in an article, the article probably doesn't apply to you.
Some of what's here will turn out to be wrong. Recovery research moves, and several confident positions from ten years ago have since been walked back. When I notice that about my own pages, the page changes and the date changes with it.
The medical disclaimer, in fullCorrections
If something here is wrong
Tell me. I would rather rewrite a paragraph than defend it, and a correction with a source attached usually gets fixed the same week.
Email me