Editorial & Medical Review Policy

Mike’s Balance is a health and longevity research journal. Its purpose is to make medical evidence, personal observations and exploratory ideas easier to distinguish from one another rather than blending them into a single level of certainty.

Who is responsible for the medical content?

Medical and ENT-related articles are written or reviewed by Mikhail Faranov, MD, an otolaryngologist (ENT physician). His medical training and external practitioner profiles are listed on his author page. Articles outside his clinical specialty rely on published sources and should not be read as specialist medical care.

Four levels of information used on this site

  1. Published evidence: clinical guidelines, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, randomized trials and other peer-reviewed research.
  2. Clinical context: explanation of how a finding is commonly interpreted in medicine, including uncertainty and situations where professional evaluation is appropriate.
  3. Personal observation or experiment: measurements or experiences reported by the author. These can generate useful hypotheses but do not establish a general medical effect.
  4. Hypothesis or interpretation: an idea that goes beyond what the cited evidence directly demonstrates. When present, it should be identified as such.

Source hierarchy

For medical claims, preference is given to current clinical guidelines and major public-health or professional organizations, followed by systematic reviews and meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials, observational studies and mechanistic research. Primary research is preferred when a page discusses a specific experimental finding. News articles, commercial supplement pages, social-media posts and anecdotes may provide context, but they should not be used as the main evidence for a medical claim when stronger sources exist.

How conflicting evidence is handled

When human studies disagree, the article should say so. We avoid converting a single positive trial into a universal conclusion. Important details such as population, dose, duration, comparator, study size and clinically meaningful outcomes are considered separately from biological plausibility.

Personal experiments and measurements

Mike’s Balance sometimes publishes original self-experiments or home measurements. These are most useful when the setup, conditions and raw values are described clearly enough to be reproduced. A personal result is labelled as an observation and is not presented as proof that the same effect will occur in other people. Where possible, external calibration or methodological sources are added to explain what a measurement can and cannot establish.

Medical review and article updates

Health articles may be updated when better evidence, newer guidelines or a factual correction becomes available. The site displays a modified date for updated articles. A medical credential does not make every statement automatically correct, so cited evidence and transparent uncertainty remain part of the review process.

Corrections

If an article contains a material factual or sourcing error, the preferred approach is to correct the page rather than silently preserve the mistake. When the correction itself is useful to readers, the article may explain what was wrong. Readers can report a possible error through the contact page.

Some pages may contain affiliate links. Commercial relationships should not determine the conclusion of a medical evidence review. Affiliate links are disclosed separately in the Affiliate Disclosure.

Medical disclaimer

Mike’s Balance provides educational and research information, not an individual diagnosis or treatment plan. An article cannot account for a reader’s full history, examination, medications or test results. Urgent or potentially serious symptoms require appropriate medical evaluation. See the full Medical Disclaimer.