EDITORIAL
METHODOLOGY.

Every clinical-shape claim - any statement about mechanism, dose-response relationship, pharmacokinetics, receptor activity, or physiological effect - cites a peer-reviewed source indexed on PubMed or PubMed Central (PMC), or a named research-community authority whose work can be located and evaluated. Claims without a citable source are not published. Where a claim rests on a review article rather than primary literature, we note this and link both where available.

Mechanism claims cite specific primary literature where possible. A statement about DIO2 substrate specificity, for example, cites the original in vitro characterisation study, not only a downstream review that summarises it. This matters because review articles sometimes compress nuance in ways that primary literature does not. Readers who want to evaluate the evidence directly should be able to reach it without hunting through citation chains.

We separate three epistemic tiers explicitly inside our content, and label them in-line where the distinction is consequential. “Established mechanism” means the claim reflects primary literature consensus with replicated findings. “Research-community hypothesis” means the claim has plausible mechanistic grounding and active investigator interest but has not been formally validated in the peer-reviewed literature at scale. “Not endorsed by mainstream endocrinology” means the framework - such as Wilson's Temperature Syndrome or the clinical interpretation of rT3 ratios - sits outside conventional clinical practice guidelines, regardless of its popularity in the research community. We do not pretend otherwise.

Bibliographies appear in each post's frontmatter and are rendered on-page in a numbered source list. Each source carries a PubMed or PMC link where one exists. The source list is part of the post, not a supplemental document - it is published alongside the content, visible to readers without any additional navigation.

All YMYL posts carry a reviewed_date and reviewed_by field in their frontmatter. These fields are rendered on the post header and emitted in the MedicalWebPage JSON-LD as lastReviewed and reviewedBy. Pillar content - the highest-traffic, highest-YMYL-risk posts - is re-reviewed at least every six months. A re-review means a full pass over every clinical-shape claim against current PubMed results, a check for any retractions of cited studies, and an update to reviewed_date regardless of whether content changed. Minor edits - broken link fixes, typographic corrections, internal link updates - trigger a date_modified update without bumping reviewed_date, keeping the two signals distinct.

A quarterly editorial pass covers the full content inventory: citation links are validated, retraction databases are checked against all cited PMIDs, schema markup is re-validated against current structured data guidelines, and any posts that have slipped past their six-month review window are prioritised for the next review cycle. This cadence is enforced via internal editorial tracking, not an automated tool - a human reviews each post.

chronic-illness.st sells research compounds. Several of those compounds are the subject of content published on this site. That is a conflict of interest. We do not obscure it. Where content discusses a compound that the site sells, the product detail page is linked directly in the content - not only in the site navigation or a sidebar - so that readers can see the commercial relationship without having to infer it. This applies to slow-release T3, peptide compounds, and any other product in the catalog that appears in editorial content.

All product-recommendation framing in our content is research-context framing. We do not write copy that presents a compound as a treatment for a named condition and then sell that compound without disclosure. When we describe pharmacokinetic properties or reference research protocols, we are describing what the literature says - not recommending a clinical course of action. The distinction matters and we enforce it as an editorial rule, not an advisory preference.

All compounds sold on chronic-illness.st are offered strictly for laboratory research use. They are not pharmaceutical products approved for human consumption in any jurisdiction. This framing is not a legal disclaimer appended to otherwise clinical content - it is the governing editorial constraint that shapes how we write about every compound. When we describe a protocol, we describe it as a research protocol. When we cite a study, we describe what the study measured in its laboratory or clinical research setting, not what a reader should do with a compound they purchase.

Every YMYL post carries a MedicalRiskDisclaimer block appropriate to its risk level. Dose-specific content is wrapped in collapsed <details> blocks where the content is contextually necessary for research completeness but could be misread as a clinical instruction if presented at the top level. MedicalWebPage JSON-LD on all medical-topic posts specifies medicalAudience: Researcher - not Patient, not Consumer - which signals to search engine parsers the intended context of the content.