How we vet this
Onward Babe sits between two worlds that barely speak to each other: what conventional medicine currently recommends, and what the health-optimization research is chasing. We show you both, and we're straight with you about which is which.
The stance
We don't run on "an authority said it, so it's true." We run on "what does the whole body of evidence actually show?" Often those match. When they don't, we say so instead of defaulting to whoever sounds most official.
That cuts both ways, babe. We're not going to tell you supplements are useless, and we're not going to tell you to take twelve of them. We'll tell you what researchers have actually found and how sure anyone should be about it.
Every recommendation carries a label
These describe the state of the research, not how much we like the idea. One scale, used everywhere on the site — inside articles, on research answers, and in the print edition.
Where our information comes from
The studies themselves
Randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, prospective cohorts and large observational studies, found through PubMed and the major journals. When a claim matters, we trace it to the original paper and link you to it.
The rule: we never cite a website discussing a study when the study itself is available.
Clinical guidance
ASRM, ACOG, the NIH and its Office of Dietary Supplements, the National Library of Medicine, CDC, FDA, USPSTF, and academic medical centers including Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Harvard Chan, Stanford, UCSF, Penn, Columbia and Yale.
These carry the most weight for diagnosis, treatment and safety — anywhere being wrong is dangerous. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements is our first stop for supplement dosing, interactions and upper limits.
Research aggregators
Organizations like Examine, which systematically review the literature on supplements and nutrition and explicitly grade consistency, effect size and uncertainty. Valuable because they cover questions clinical guidelines haven't reached yet, and because they show their work.
We use them to find and cross-check research, then read the studies ourselves.
Supplement and health companies
We do watch Thorne, Ritual, Needed, FullWell, Pure Encapsulations, Nordic Naturals and the testing companies, because they often surface ingredient research, nutrient forms and bioavailability questions before anyone else.
They are never the evidence for a health claim. When a company cites a study we check: was it independent, how large, what design, did it test the ingredient or the finished product, who funded it, and does it fit the wider literature? Some fund real university trials, which is genuinely useful. They're still commercial sources, and we label them that way.
Researchers and communicators
People who translate research for a wide audience, like Rhonda Patrick, and specialists publishing in women's health and metabolic health. They're excellent at surfacing research that hasn't reached clinical guidelines yet.
Expertise is not evidence. We follow their citations to the original papers, and we don't present a contested opinion as settled fact.
Beyond the U.S.
ESHRE, NICE, RCOG, the WHO, and the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand societies. Other countries sometimes answer the same question differently, and where that difference could change what you ask for, we show you both instead of assuming the U.S. position wins.
Here's why that matters
ASRM and ESHRE define recurrent pregnancy loss as two or more losses, which don't have to be consecutive. The WHO and the UK's RCOG have used three consecutive. Applied to the same group of women, one study found 15.3% met the ASRM/ESHRE definition and only 5.3% met the WHO/RCOG one.
That difference isn't academic. It decides whether you get investigated after a second loss or told to try again. If you're at two, that's the number to bring to the appointment.
What we intend to watch, and what is actually running
Said plainly, because a claim about process is still a claim. The monitoring described below is the design for how this will stay current. It is not yet an operating system with a schedule behind it. Today, content is researched and written when it is written, every citation is opened and checked at the time, and each page says when that happened. There is no automated surveillance of the literature running in the background, and nothing here has been reviewed by a clinician. We would rather tell you that than imply a machinery that doesn't exist.
The intended design scans three streams and turns what they surface into a research queue:
| Stream | What we're looking for |
|---|---|
| New research | PubMed and the major journals (Fertility and Sterility, Human Reproduction, JAMA, BMJ, Lancet), new and revised guidance from ASRM, ACOG, NICE, ESHRE, RCOG and the WHO, and NIH Office of Dietary Supplements updates. |
| The optimization world | Independent synthesis like Examine, researchers working in nutrition, metabolic health and women's health, and what supplement and diagnostics companies have started citing. For spotting topics early — never as proof. |
| What women are actually asking | Fertility communities and forums, read for recurring questions and claims that need checking. Nothing from a community is ever republished here. Only the question crosses over. |
Anything that surfaces gets traced to primary literature, graded, and either becomes an article, revises an existing one, or gets logged as "looked at, not enough evidence yet." Automated tools can propose candidates for that queue; nothing clinical goes live from a machine without a person checking the underlying source.
Three different kinds of review, which we keep separate
| Kind | What it means | Status today |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial | Drafted and edited for accuracy and clarity against the cited sources. | Done, dated on every page. |
| Source verification | Every citation opened and checked to confirm it says what we say it says. | Done at time of writing, dated on every page. |
| Clinical review | Read by a named clinician with credentials, who signs off. | Not done. No page here has had it. |
When clinical review happens, the reviewer's name, credentials and the date will appear on the pages they reviewed — and only on those pages. Until then, no page will claim it.
The questions behind every recommendation
Before anything goes live we ask: What's the evidence? How strong and how consistent? What kind of studies? How large is the effect? Is it in humans? Is the population actually relevant to women trying to conceive? Any safety concerns or interactions? Who funded it? And finally: is this established science, promising evidence, early research, or somebody's hunch?
How we make money
Right now, we don't. Nothing here is sponsored, no brand has paid to be mentioned, and there are no affiliate links on the site today.
That will change eventually, because this takes real work and we'd rather it be sustainable than quietly abandoned. So here's the plan, in advance, and the rule that governs it.
The rule: no payment may change what we say is true, what we rank first, or what we tell you to ask your doctor. Money can change only where something appears on a page, and only when it's clearly labeled. Anything that can't live with that doesn't get built.
What that looks like in practice. We'll sell our own tools — a deeper appointment workbook, an appeals kit — and anything you need in order to be safe or to ask the right question stays free, permanently. We'll take referrals from fertility benefits companies, because their whole problem is reaching women who don't know they have a benefit, while the coverage guide stays vendor-neutral and keeps telling you to ask HR about every option, including theirs. If we ever add product links, evidence rank gets set before commission is even considered, disclosure appears on every page it touches, and we publish the list of what we earn from — and if something is graded "insufficient evidence," it stays graded that way no matter what it pays.
And if we license this to a clinic one day, they get the content and nothing else — no editorial input, no favorable mention, no influence over the second-opinion pages. We publish "when to get a second opinion." If that can't coexist with a deal, we don't take the deal.
Hold us to it.
When we get it wrong
Guidelines change and studies get overturned. Every page shows when it was written and when its sources were last checked, so you can judge how fresh it is rather than taking our word for it. Corrections get logged publicly with what changed and when. Find something stale or flat-out wrong? Tell us. We'll fix it and say that we did.