For years, I’ve criticized companies that sell supplements using cherry-picked science, proprietary blends, influencer testimonials, and vague promises of “replacing 20+ supplements” and “supporting wellness.” And as far as greens and reds powders, I pretty much put them all in the “pass” category.
When a follower of mine asked me to review IM8, I figured that it was going to be the same old supplement garbage. IM8 was co-founded by David Beckham and endorsed by a bunch of athletes and people who might be famous but I’ve never heard of…none of which impresses me at all. Let’s face it: celebrity products and endorsements are an absolutely horrible way to determine a product’s efficacy. Why do I care if Jay Shetty and some MMA fighter think Beckham’s supplement is amazing?
What is IM8?
IM8 is a line of 2 supplements: IM8 Daily Ultimate Essentials Pro ($346 CAD/90 days) and IM8 Daily Ultimate Longevity ($459/90 days). If you’ve got even more money to burn, the “David Beckham stack” is both products plus a handy shaker cup and hand mixer, all for the low low price of $806 CAD/90 days. Any product purchase gets you 90 days of free access to the IM8 “transformation program,” which I’m pretty sure is meant for the same people who can afford these products, aka those who need a health transformation the least out of anyone.
Once you get past the IM8’s pretty packaging and “premium” claims, the truth comes out.
One good thing about IM8 is that the products are NSF certified for sport. This means:
- the products contain what the labels say
- they’ve been tested for contaminants
- they’ve been screened for more than 280 banned substances
For athletes and non-athletes, that’s valuable information, especially when the supplement industry hasn’t always been honest about what’s actually in some products.
That being said, the NSF certification doesn’t tell us whether a supplement actually works. It’s not meant to test the claims a company makes or hold them up to existing research. It’s strictly a quality control thing.
Throughout IM8’s website you’ll see the usual claims:
Clinically Proven.
95% more energy.
Better digestion.
Better sleep.
These claims are so overused and under proven in the supplement realm that honestly, they don’t even faze me anymore. And rightly so, because like many other products, the IM8 research didn’t support them.
Yes, IM8 does actually have research behind its products, but you don’t have to dig too deep to see the flaws.
IM8 conducted 12-week randomized placebo-controlled trials for both Essentials Pro and Ultimate Longevity. The Essentials trial enrolled only about 60 participants, and the Longevity trial, only 25. Although the studies both concluded in 2025, neither has been published in a peer reviewed journal. There are outcomes for the Essentials trial listed on the IM8 site, which you can see in the screenshot below.
75% “felt sharper focus”? “Felt more energy”? What’s with the word “felt”? Right – because results were apparently based on participant questionnaires rather than objective physiological measurements (which were promised but not delivered, perhaps because they weren’t up to par). That’s an important detail, because if you’re going to make big claims, you should have big research to back them up.
Unfortunately, one short, small study that’s mostly qualitative and not even published isn’t it. The results of the Longevity study are MIA, by the way.
I don’t care about all of the study parameters, I want to see the actual studies. The link in the “expected outcomes” section leads to the Clinicaltrials.gov page, and nothing further.
And just as an FYI, the IM8 advisory board contains physicians who have blocked me for calling them out for their false and misleading nutrition claims. These include Amy Shah and James DiNicolantino. I’d be embarrassed to be associated with those people in any way, let alone having them endorse my product by sitting on the “advisory board.” No thanks.
More isn’t always better.
IM8 proudly advertises over 90 ingredients. This isn’t as impressive as it sounds, because in nutrition, and especially with supplements, more isn’t always better. Unfortunately, consumers have been conditioned to think that more ingredients equals more health and value.
There are several scientific problems with “kitchen sink” supplements, the first being proprietary blends. And IM8 has several of those in both products.
I always speak out against proprietary blends in nutritional supplements, because I think they’re a shady way of hiding the actual amounts of each ingredient that you’re getting. Are they over the safe limit? Under the effective dose? Enough to cause side effects? Nobody ever knows until someone discovers that the supplement is either ineffective, or when it ends up doing harm.
So, transparency matters, and we have no idea whether the IM8 “cell rejuvenation technology 8™” contains meaningful doses or pixie dust.
With multi-ingredient products, there’s also the potential issue of interaction between ingredients. Once you combine dozens upon dozens of vitamins, botanicals, probiotics, antioxidants, adaptogens, enzymes, amino acids, and phytonutrients, predicting how they’ll interact becomes extraordinarily difficult.
Sometimes ingredients may complement one another, but sometimes they compete for absorption. Most often, taking that many ingredients together makes it impossible to know what’s actually doing anything.
Most people don’t need all – or any – of this.
This is perhaps my biggest criticism of multi-ingredient supplements like IM8. Supplements should fill nutritional gaps, not attempt to replace an entire diet or imply via marketing that they’re necessary for health.
NOBODY needs this much vitamin C, most of which is just excreted in the urine. Or, 8000% of the DRI for vitamin B12, or this large of a dose of all of the other B vitamins, which are readily available in food. Most of us have no use for supplemental digestive enzymes, probiotics, or essential amino acids. This is all smoke and mirrors to make customers think that they’re getting all this stuff they aren’t eating in their diet. It’s unreal.
Taking nutrients that you don’t need generally doesn’t provide extra benefit, and taking everything “just in case” isn’t evidence-based nutrition. Most ingredients in IM8 are relatively benign (aka useless) unless you’re actually low or deficient in those nutrients. IM8 says its ingredients are “clinically dosed,” which means nothing if, once again, you’re not low or deficient in them. Healthy people eating a varied diet generally don’t need supplementation in this many things.
I generally recommend targeted supplementation rather than combining dozens of ingredients into one product, especially when such complex formulations don’t usually provide optimal doses of anything.
Notice I’m not saying anything about the IM8 longevity supplement. That’s because I’m massively sick and tired of the longevity trend that is literally supported by nothing. IM8 Ultimate Longevity contains NAD, which hasn’t been proven to do a thing for longevity in humans. Nada. It also contains several proprietary blends, which we’ve already discussed. I don’t mean to sound extreme, but it’s all garbage.
The celebrity effect
I have to mention this, and let’s be honest: David Beckham isn’t associated with this product because he’s an expert in nutrition. He’s there because trust sells supplements, and consumers naturally assume that if someone as fit and successful as Beckham creates and uses a product, there must be something special about it. Eh, there isn’t. This is a Marketing 101 tactic, so consider yourself warned.
For most healthy adults, I’d much rather see money spent not on supplements, but on:
- fruits and vegetables
- adequate protein
- strength training
- sleep
- preventive healthcare
- seeing a registered dietitian if needed
Those interventions have dramatically stronger evidence than any supplement.
My verdict
No matter how many ingredients are in a product, and no matter how fit and famous the founder is, there is still no evidence that replacing a healthy diet and lifestyle with an expensive powder is the shortcut to better health.
IM8 is clever marketing wrapped around science that is still far weaker than consumers are being led to believe.
