Our company & founder
Where health, happiness, and honest science meet. D3 Decoded is one of several editorial projects we publish under Nouri Zad Enterprises Inc., a household-scale company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Sister sites cover nutrient gap analysis, vitamin D fundamentals, and cat care for the household members who happen to walk on four legs. Every site shares the same operating principle: tell people what we'd want a friend in the field to tell us.
D3 Decoded exists because Vitamin D is one of the most poorly explained topics in consumer health. Most articles you'll read are either generic ("take 1,000 IU") or are thinly disguised advertorials with no laboratory perspective. Neither serves a reader who is genuinely trying to keep their 25(OH)D inside a clinician-preferred band between October and April.
We started this site after spending several seasons answering the same questions from friends and family members: Is the expensive liposomal form actually better? Do I need K2? Why does my doctor say my labs are "fine" when I feel terrible every year? What's a VDR variant and does mine matter? The answers exist in published literature, but they live behind paywalls, journal abstracts, and forty-page review papers. We translate them into something you can act on this week.
Editorial standards we don't bend
Six rules that decide what gets reviewed, what gets recommended, and what stays in the cutting-room floor.
No sponsored rankings
Brands cannot pay to be reviewed, to be placed higher, or to remove a critical line. The only money that flows from a brand to us is when a reader clicks an affiliate link and buys at the same price they'd pay otherwise. We disclose every affiliate relationship.
Lab paperwork beats marketing copy
Before a product enters our editor's pick list, we look for a published Certificate of Analysis or third-party assay batch. If the brand can't produce one and won't share one on request, the SKU doesn't make the shortlist no matter how good the label looks.
Citations are real, or they're not used
When we cite a specific paper, we link it (PubMed when available). If we can't verify a claim, we soften the wording or drop it. Drift-by-paraphrase isn't acceptable.
We say "we don't know" on purpose
Vitamin D science still has open questions: optimal serum range, the real role of VDR genotypes, long-term safety of mega-dosing. Where the evidence is genuinely unsettled, we say so - instead of borrowing confidence from one camp or the other.
Quarterly updates with a real changelog
Brands reformulate. Studies retract. Prices move. We re-review our top picks every quarter and ship a "last reviewed" date on every article. If a recommendation falls off the list, the page tells you why and what replaced it.
Medical decisions stay with your clinician
Everything on D3 Decoded is educational. We do not diagnose, treat, or prescribe. We tell you what the literature suggests, give you frameworks to think about VDR-aware dosing, and then point you toward a 25(OH)D blood test and a conversation with someone who actually knows your medical history.
How a product ends up on our shortlist
We start every season with a long list - typically twelve to twenty SKUs marketed as liposomal, nano-emulsion, or "enhanced delivery" Vitamin D. From there, we narrow:
- Delivery authentication. Does the label actually describe a liposomal vehicle (phospholipid vesicles, typically 100-200 nm), or is it a triglyceride softgel with marketing-grade language?
- Cofactor logic. Is K2 MK-7 included at a meaningful dose? Are there ratio problems we'd flag if a reader asked us about them?
- Paperwork transparency. Is there a publicly downloadable COA? Has the brand been audited by NSF, USP, or an independent ISO 17025 lab?
- Price-per-dose modeling. Normalized cost across a 90-day window - because a "premium" product that costs three times more isn't automatically three times better.
- Field check. Where possible, our small editorial circle uses the product for at least ninety days and tracks subjective response. Subjective data is the weakest tier, but it's better than not running the protocol at all.
The output is a tightly-edited shortlist - usually three or four products - that we'd be comfortable recommending to a family member. Everything else is on the cutting-room floor, and we'll explain why if you ask.
Written by Nader NZ, Bay Area, CA
Welcome to D3Decoded
A Palo Alto editorial team, owned and operated by Nouri Zad Enterprises Inc., rooted in biotechnology bench practice and dosing reality checks.
Get in touch
Press inquiries, correction requests, study suggestions, or "you got X wrong" notes - all welcome. We read every email, and we'd rather correct an error this week than leave it on the page.
Or write directly to hello@d3decoded.com