Dr. David Miller Facebook ad: “Supports healthy urinary flow and restful sleep”

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I am 67 years old and I have bought 4 different prostate supplements in the last 5 years, and every one of them was a bad purchase, and every one of them was my own fault. Not because the products lied to me. Because I never once wrote down what I was actually buying before I bought it. I am writing this because I finally sat down with a legal pad and did what I would have done for any part I ever specified at work, and the exercise took me one evening, and I wish somebody had made me do it in 2021. My name is Frank. I spent 34 years as a mechanical engineer, mostly on pumps and sealing systems, for a company outside Rockford, Illinois. I retired in 2023. My wife's name is Pat. We have been married 44 years. I am going to skip the part where I describe how I sleep. You know how you sleep. If you did not, you would not be this far into something like this. I will say one thing about it and then move on, because it is the only part of this that is not about a checklist. In February, Pat and I drove to Rockford to see a play our niece was in, and I spent the second act doing arithmetic about the parking garage and how long the drive home was, and I could not have told you one thing that happened on that stage. I have known where every bathroom is, in every building I go into, for a while now. I have never said that sentence out loud to anybody until this one. On the way home Pat did not ask me about the play. She has stopped asking me about things, and she has stopped asking in the gentle way, which is worse. That is the whole emotional part of this letter. Here is the rest of it. The next weekend I sat down at the kitchen table with a legal pad, the way I would have done for a pump seal, and I wrote down what I would need to know before I spent another dollar. I want to give you the list, because the list is the useful thing I have. **1. Is the amount anywhere near what was actually studied?** This is the one that cost me the most money and I did not know to ask it for 4 years. Saw palmetto has been studied a great deal. Almost every trial that found anything at all was run at the same daily amount, which is 320 mg. That number is not a secret and it is not disputed. It is simply never printed anywhere a shopper would meet it. So the only question that matters on the shelf is whether the bottle in your hand is anywhere near it. Most are not close. Every one of them is legally allowed to print the words saw palmetto on the front of the bottle in the same size type. I went and got the 3 bottles I still had in the cabinet and read the fine print on all of them. 85 mg. 120 mg. 160 mg on the one that had cost the most. I had spent 4 years taking somewhere between a quarter and a half of the studied amount, and I had never asked the question, and nobody hid it from me. It was printed right there. I simply never read the part of the label that mattered. **2. Does the label give me every amount, or hide them in a blend?** The phrase to look for on a label is proprietary blend. A proprietary blend prints one combined weight for a group of ingredients and never tells you how much of any single one is in there. It is not a trade secret. It is somewhere to put the cheap material. A label with nothing to hide prints every ingredient on its own line with its own number beside it. Two of my 3 bottles used a blend. **3. What is the actual amount?** Not the amount of the blend. The amount of the ingredient. The bottles I had were 85 mg, 160 mg, and one that said 500 mg of a proprietary blend, which is a way of telling you nothing at all with a large number. A proprietary blend is a legal way to list 8 ingredients in order without telling you how much of each. If a formula is worth buying, there is no reason to hide the amounts. I would not have accepted a bill of materials like that from a supplier and I do not know why I accepted it from a supplement. **4. Is every ingredient listed with its own number?** This is the same question as 3, asked about the whole panel instead of one line. I decided that any product with a proprietary blend anywhere on the panel was off my list, on principle, without reading further. That rule alone eliminated most of what I looked at. **5. What is the disclosure like?** I mean the warnings. I decided that I trusted a label that told me something inconvenient more than a label that told me nothing. **6. What is the return policy, actually?** Not the number of days. The conditions. A 90 day return that requires you to prove something is not a 90 day return. **7. How many steps per day?** I have watched enough people abandon a regimen to know that the best product taken 4 times a day loses to a decent one taken once. That was the list. 7 items. One evening. Then I went looking for something that satisfied all 7, and I want to be honest that I expected to find nothing and to go back to being annoyed. What I landed on is called ApexFlow, and I will go through the list rather than tell you it is wonderful. On the amount: 320 mg, against the 85 mg and 160 mg bottles in my own cabinet. That was the item I most wanted and the item almost nothing on the shelf satisfied. On the blend question: there is no blend. 12 ingredients, 12 separate numbers, printed. That is the way I would have specified it. On the label: I could add every number up myself, which is the only test I actually trust. On disclosure: 12 ingredients, each with its own amount printed. No proprietary blend anywhere on the panel. I checked that first and I would have stopped there if it had failed. On warnings: there is black pepper extract in it at 5 mg, and the label says plainly that black pepper can change how the body handles certain prescription medications and tells you to talk to your doctor if you take any. They did not have to make that easy to find. That single line did more for my confidence than the entire front of the bottle. On the return: 90 days, any reason, including changing your mind, with nothing to prove to anybody. I read that twice looking for the condition and there was not one. On steps: 3 capsules, once, in the morning, with food. One step. One more note on the panel, because I nearly made this mistake myself. It is 12 ingredients and the largest single dose in it is a rye pollen extract, not the saw palmetto. I spent 4 items of my own list on saw palmetto and almost specified the whole product by one line of it. Do not evaluate this the way I nearly did, as a saw palmetto pill with extras. 7 out of 7. Now the part I would want an engineer to do and would want you to do, which is not on the list because it is not a specification. I called my pharmacist before I took a single capsule. He has been at the same counter on North Main since my kids were small. I called specifically because of item 5. The black pepper line is not a formality. I take a blood pressure medication and I take something for reflux, and I did not know how piperine interacts with either and I was not going to find out by experiment. He pulled up my profile. I read him the panel. He went down it. He told me which one he wanted to think about and then he told me what to do about it, which was to take the capsules with breakfast and keep them well away from the evening medication. Then he said he wished more of his customers called him before they started anything new. I also told my doctor's office at my next visit and gave them the brand and the amounts, and heard back that there was no concern about adding it to what I was already taking. I want to be clear that this is not optional and it is not a formality. It is item 5 on the list and it is the item the other 6 do not matter without. I started in March. 3 capsules, mornings, with food. I am not going to give you numbers, because I do not have any that would mean anything to you, and because I have come to distrust anybody in this category who hands me a number. What I will tell you is that in May, Pat asked me about a movie on the way home. Just asked me. The way she used to. And in July we drove to Door County and I did not do arithmetic about it before we left, and I did not do arithmetic about it in the car, and I noticed that I had not done any arithmetic somewhere around Green Bay. I want to be honest about something, since this whole letter is a checklist and a checklist that skips an item is worthless. I cannot tell you with certainty that it was the ApexFlow. I also started walking in the mornings in April because Pat wanted the company. I stopped drinking coffee after lunch on the pharmacist's suggestion. The winter ended, and I am a person who does badly in an Illinois winter. Any of those could be responsible for some part of it. I would not accept my own testimony as evidence if somebody brought it to me at work. What I can tell you is what the 7 items were, what satisfied them, what I added, when I added it, and that my wife started asking me about things again. That is the honest version, and anybody in this category offering you a cleaner one is selling you harder than I am. If you have bought 3 or 4 of these and quietly stopped expecting anything, I do not think you were fooled. I think you bought without a specification, the same as I did, for the same reason, which is that this is an embarrassing thing to research carefully and it is easier to grab something on the way past. You do not have to use my list. Write your own. It took one evening and a legal pad. But do it before you spend again, and please make the pharmacy call regardless of what you buy, especially if you take anything by prescription. It takes 2 minutes. They have your whole list and you have a memory. 90 days, any reason, nothing to prove, one email to [email protected]. That is the policy, and it is the reason the downside of being wrong about all of this is an email. They are a small operation and they run out. That is not a sales tactic in my hands, it is just information. That is the whole of it. Thank you for reading a letter that is mostly a list. — Frank One last item, and it is the only one I did not have to build myself. They have a short night-time check on their site. It asks what you would put in your own column one, and it returns a 90 day plan. 3 minutes. I did it after I had already decided, which was the wrong order, and I would tell you to do it first. https://apexflow-us.com/pages/night-time-check DISCLAIMER This story is a composite narrative reflecting experiences shared by ApexFlow customers. Individual experiences vary and are not guaranteed. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. P.S. If you only take one item off my list, take item 1. Almost every saw palmetto study that found anything was run at 320 mg a day. Go and turn over whatever is in your cabinet and read the number on the back. Mine said 120. The one before it said 85. The word on the front of all of them was identical and the same size, and there is nothing printed beside the number to tell you whether it is a real amount or a rounding error, which is precisely why nobody checks it. A man can take that every morning exactly as directed for 4 years and never once take the amount anybody studied. I did. Then I decided the category was a con, which was the wrong conclusion drawn from the right evidence. P.P.S. 3 capsules. In the morning. With food. That is the whole protocol. Nothing to mix, nothing to measure, no second dose in the afternoon. I have specified maintenance procedures for industrial equipment and the first thing you learn is that a procedure with 3 steps gets skipped and a procedure with 1 step gets done. This is a 1 step procedure. That is a design decision and I respect it. P.P.P.S. I am going to repeat item 5, because it is the item the other 6 are worthless without. Call your pharmacist before you start, especially if you take anything by prescription. There is black pepper extract in this formula at 5 mg and the label itself warns that black pepper can change how the body handles certain medications. A company hiding things does not print that. He had my actual list on his screen. I had a fairly good memory of it, and my fairly good memory was missing one. 2 minutes on the phone. Do it whatever you end up buying. P.P.P.P.S. The return policy again, in case you skimmed, and an engineer always skims. 90 days. Any reason at all, including simply changing your mind. Nothing to prove to anybody, no conditions I could find, and I went looking for them because I have read a lot of contracts. If you are not satisfied, you are not satisfied. You email [email protected] and they process it, and the money comes back. That converts the downside of being wrong from money into a phone call, and that is the actual reason I was willing to try a 5th one after 4 bad purchases. P.P.P.P.P.S. I said I would move on from the part about the play and I did, but I want to come back to it, because it is the only reason any of the rest of this got written. I did not sit down with that legal pad because I was frustrated about my money. I sat down because my wife stopped asking me about things. That is a quiet way to find out where you have ended up. If somebody has stopped asking you about things, you already know what I am describing and you did not need 7 items to recognize it. Go get the legal pad anyway. Being methodical about something is the only thing I have ever found that makes it smaller. — F.

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Supports healthy urinary flow and restful sleep