An adverse event is any unwanted medical occurrence, symptom, sign, or abnormal finding that appears after supplement use or a supplement change, whether or not the supplement is proven to have caused it.
What it means in practice
Unfair uses adverse event reporting as a stop-and-check mechanism for active stacks, especially during active medication overlap, high-dose trials, and stacked combinations.
Use this severity ladder for actionability before making immediate changes:
- Mild: predictable, short-lived, non-limiting symptoms. Action: reduce dose, continue with observation, and log details.
- Moderate: symptoms that affect sleep, hydration, heart rate, or mood but remain stable. Action: pause increase, hold non-essential additions, and open a self-check protocol.
- Severe: urgent danger signs (chest pain, breathing changes, syncope, seizures, severe rash/hives). Action: stop implicated items now and seek same-day urgent care.
Seriousness is a separate regulatory concept. FDA/MedWatch treats events as serious when outcomes include death, life-threatening danger, hospitalization, disability or permanent damage, congenital anomaly, or another important medical event. A non-serious event can still be actionable for a user's stack, and a serious event should be reported and clinically evaluated.
Common symptom categories
Gastrointestinal
- nausea
- persistent reflux
- diarrhea or cramping
- dark stools or new severe stomach pain
Neurologic
- dizziness
- new panic attacks or agitation
- tinnitus
- confusion, fainting, numbness, severe headaches
Cardiovascular
- palpitations or new irregular heartbeat
- resting heart rate jump with exertion intolerance
- significant blood pressure rise or drop
Practical triage rules
Stop immediately if severe symptoms appear.
Pause and monitor for 24–48 hours if multiple moderate symptoms appear together.
Resume only after symptoms clear and a log note is complete.
If symptoms recur after reintroduction, remove the most likely trigger and request clinician review before resuming.
What Unfair captures and reacts to
Adverse data captured in Unfair includes:
- time and timestamp of event
- dose taken, cycle position, and recent stack list
- self-reported symptom type, severity, and context (food, sleep, stress)
- optional vitals/notes if already tracked
Recommendation guardrails react on two rails:
- Immediate client-side flagging for high-risk categories.
- Background score recalculation for lower-risk events, usually reflected in next recommendation pass.
For safety-critical clusters (cardiac or neurologic red flags), recommendations drop confidence in related ingredients within minutes and ask for explicit confirmation before continuing.
Cross-site references
Uncertainty
- Evidence is limited for exact symptom-to-ingredient attribution in multi-ingredient stacks.
- Evidence is limited on timing windows for delayed-onset reactions across different formulas.
How this appears in Unfair
Unfair uses this definition in warning banners, interaction prompts, and stop logic. Journal entries that include adverse context are used in ranking updates so recurring patterns are less likely to be repeated.
Clinical safety note
If you develop chest pain, severe shortness of breath, swelling, confusion, or bleeding, stop the stack and seek emergency care.