Take care of your Cheers—so it can take care of you.

Explaining how user error and environmental factors can degrade health products and potentially make them unfit for consumption.

11 min readNov 12, 2020

As the founder of Cheers, I can’t go anywhere is my hometown without my friends, neighbors, and acquaintances unsolicitedly telling me how well Cheers’ products are working for them. People love to discuss drinking—favorite wines, beer specials, what a great time they had last night, etc. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people love to talk about how our alcohol-related products are working for them.

The majority of the time, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Yet, every once in awhile, I will talk with someone that Cheers didn’t work for, and I’m quick to explain to them our super consumer-friendly refund policy. I’m also quick to explain to them the science of why the product may have not worked for them. Which of course, involves explaining the large scale study showing that some pain relievers are especially effective for some people, but not at all for others—all based on the genetic differences between individuals. Drugs, supplements, and health products all have different levels of efficacy in different people.

You read that right… even something as ubiquitous as ibuprofen might not work at all for some people.

However, genetics is not the only reason that Cheers’ products may not be working for you. It’s very possible that user error, or extreme conditions could be to blame.

How my friend ruined their Cheers.

On day I got talking to a close friend who was an avid Cheers user. He told me that the product worked really well for him when he first received his package, but for some reason it wasn’t anymore. This perplexed me, as it likely couldn’t be explained by genetics—as generally speaking, if it works for you today, it will work for you in the future… and vice versa. I didn’t have a good answer for him.

One day, he picked me up in his car to go golf with some of our other buddies on a hot August day in Houston. The high temperature averages 90+ degrees and 75%+ relative humidity throughout July and August in Houston—that’s cooking level conditions. On the way there, I saw a bottle of Cheers Restore sitting in his center console. Then it hit me—this could be the culprit. I immediately asked him: “hey, do you always keep your Cheers in the car?”

He replied: “Yea, I keep it in the car because I sleep 2–3 nights a week at my girlfriend’s house and don’t want to not have it with me—like would happen if I only kept it at my place and forgot to bring it.”

I furthered the line of questioning: “Is your car always parked outside in direct sunlight?”

He explained: “Pretty much. Where I work it’s just an uncovered parking lot. And on the weekends I park on the street rather than the parking garage. So it’s basically always in the sun.”

The rate at which temperature can rise inside a car at different levels of ambient temperature. On a 95 degree day, the inside temperature of a car can reach 138 degrees in only an hour.

I may not be Sherlock Holmes… but it was pretty clear why Cheers Restore wasn’t working for him anymore: accelerated degradation.

Each day his car sat in the sun the internal temperature would have reached nearly 150 degrees for extended periods of time. It sat in an extremely hot and humid environment in full Texas heat during the hottest three months of the calendar. Without 3rd party analysis of his current bottle, it’s impossible to know how much the product had degraded—but it’s safe to say that it was definitely no longer the identical product with the same physical and chemical characteristics of when he purchased it. He had destroyed it.

For not only efficacy reasons, but also for safety reasons we will discuss later, I made sure he got a new unit of Cheers Restore immediately.

Temperature changes things.

Every food or drug product has tolerances that a reasonable consumer would keep them within. For example, if a carton of milk is labeled that it expires September 7th, and it’s currently September 1st, it would typically be fine as long as you consume it prior to September 7th. However, no reasonable person would ever leave a carton of milk in a hot car for five days, then on September 6th think it’s ok to consume just because it isn’t yet September 7th. Any reasonable person would recognize that this would have spoiled the milk.

In the same way, just because a product isn’t labeled as “do not place in fire” does that mean a person could reasonably expect to throw it in a fire without it being ruined.

The fact of the matter is that temperature and humidity levels can change the physical and chemical properties of both organic and inorganic materials—from anything like a bottle of glue to a jar of supplements.

One “YouTuber” has even gone so far as to show that he can cook steak inside his car via the “sous vide” method. Sous vide, also known as “low temperature long time cooking,” is a method of cooking in which food is placed in a plastic pouch or a glass jar and cooked for longer than usual cooking times at a precisely regulated temperature. (1)

In the video, he seasons raw steaks, places bluetooth meat thermometers within the slabs of beef, and then places them in plastic ziplock bags. He then places these bagged steaks in the passenger seat of his car during the heat of the day. By the end of a four hour period the internal temperature of his car had reached 140 degrees, and the internal temperature of his steak had reached 122 degrees. This temperature is considered a “rare doneness” —a degree of doneness that’s preferred by over 1/10 of all Americans, including celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsey. He threw the steak on a grill to quickly sear the outside for color and texture, and then enjoyed the fruits of his labor. (2)

In fact, the raw vegan community argues that any temperature over 104–118°F degrees is enough to produce a chemical change and for a food product to convert from “raw” to “cooked.” (3)

If the temperature of a car parked in the sun can spoil milk, cook steak, and fry an egg… why should you think it wouldn’t ruin your drugs, supplements, or other health products, which are often of plant origin? (4)

Temperature and humidity can degrade dietary supplements.

In a study done by Lisa Mauer of Purdue University titled “Influence of simultaneous variations in temperature and relative humidity on chemical stability of two vitamin C forms and implications for shelf life models”, Mauer found that “dietary supplements [are] prone to a process called deliquescence,” which is where “humidity causes a water-soluble solid to dissolve,” and that you “can get complete loss of the ingredients” depending on the i) ingredients (and the product’s unique ingredient formulation), ii) humidity, iii) temperature, and iv) the timeline plus pattern of exposure to those levels of humidity and temperature. (5)

“Opening and closing a package will change the atmosphere in it. If you open and close a package in a bathroom, you add a little bit of humidity and moisture each time,” Mauer said. “The humidity in your kitchen or bathroom can cycle up quite high, depending on how long of a shower you take, for example, and can get higher than 98 percent.” (6)

Her study was focused primarily on vitamin containing supplements, and specifically the vitamins B & C. However, the implications are that humidity and temperature can degrade drugs, supplements, and health products in general—all at different rates and levels depending on the formulations.

According to Mauer: “Different crystalline substances deliquesce at different humidities, Mauer said. For example, at room temperature, sodium ascorbate would deliquesce at 86 percent humidity, ascorbic acid at 98 percent humidity and fructose at 62 percent. Some ingredient blends deliquesce in as low as 30 percent humidity. Different forms of ingredients, such as the two forms of vitamin C studied (ascorbic acid and sodium ascorbate), have different deliquescence points, different sensitivity to moisture and different degradation rates. At high enough humidities, samples dissolved completely.”

Her research is important in that it specifies exacting information about the deliquescence of specific ingredients. That said, until this type of study is performed on other ingredient formulations, it’s virtually impossible to know at what pattern of temperature and humidity levels that it will take to begin significantly degrading various drugs, supplements, and health products to a level where efficacy and safety are compromised. And even then, there’s an infinite number of possible exposure patterns that could be made, and thus all that could be established are best practices, rather than hard and fast rules. This then means that the protection of dietary supplements against degradation is both art and science—rather than all science.

In this regard, stability studies (which are common among the drug and supplement industry) are helpful… but they can only be done based on predetermined constraints, such as: “How long will this product last left unopened at a constant room temperature?” or “How long will this product last left open at 90 degrees and at 70% humidity?”

The above questions assume a perfectly controlled environment, which don’t reflect the reality in the real world of a consumer that buys and uses a product. In fact, it doesn’t even accurately reflect the reality of any product’s supply chain. If you buy a product at a supermarket, that product has gone through the hands of a manufacturer, a freight company, a distributor, another freight company, the retailer itself, the vehicle of the customer, and then wherever the product goes with the customer thereafter—with even more steps depending on the supply chain makeup of a specific product.

There’s no way to accurately answer the question of: “How long will a product last before degradation occurs when it’s opened at random intervals at different temperature and humidity levels, all while being stored in an ever changing environment?” There’s even not any a way to answer the question of: “How long will a closed product last before degradation occurs when it’s exposed inside its sealed packaging at random intervals to different temperature and humidity levels?”

Therefore, when it comes to protecting the safety and efficacy of a product, the best that can be reasonably done is to offer the best practices of to store the product in a cool, dark, and dry place for as much of the product’s life as possible. For the majority of products and their lifecycles, this should yield completely fine results—as it has in the drug/supplement industry for decades.

If somehow a product has degraded, one would have to examine how that product degraded, which a near impossible task, especially once it has already gotten into the hands of a consumer. That said, it’s worth reiterating that as long as the best practices of storing the product in a cool, dark, and dry place for the vast majority of a product’s lifetime is observed, everything should be fine most of the time.

While there is a chance of a mishap in a product’s supply chance from manufacturer to customer, the message for consumers is this: “Simply be reasonable about how you store your drugs, supplements, and other consumable health products.”

Proper protection of your health products is not only important for efficacy, but safety as well.

When drugs, dietary supplements, and health products are manufactured, their bacteria and mold levels are tested to make sure they are under a certain threshold. Bacteria is in everything, and most aren’t necessarily harmful, so long as they are kept at proper levels. For example, yogurt, cheese, butter, pickles, etc. are all examples of products where bacterias are actually purposefully used to make the final product.

Problems only occur when bacteria, or specific types of bacteria, are allowed to get to harmful levels. If best practices are used, bacteria shouldn’t ever exceed safe limits until the expiration date is reached. However, if you’re like my friend at the beginning of this article who stored his product in his car where the product was continually exposed to extreme heat and humidity, you can bet that the risk of bacteria (and even mold) reaching unsafe levels was increased significantly.

Therefore, when it comes to storing your health products—such as Cheers—be reasonable and take precautions about exposing them to environments that could lead not only to degradation of the product, but its safety as well.

A final message for anyone who uses health products—including Cheers.

We primarily gave the examples of bad places to store your health products as vehicles, bathrooms, and kitchens—as these places are regularly exposed to varying levels of temperature and humidity.

However, the above are not the only common pitfalls. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of tips:

If where you live is currently hot and/or humid, order health products with faster shipping so that they spend less time in transit.
When possible, it’s usually better to order directly from a brand itself rather than a 3rd party such as Amazon. While a brand usually has complete control over its own warehouse, it doesn’t have control over third party warehouses such as Amazon.
Don’t let a health product sit in your mailbox or on your doorstep for extended periods of time. Try to be there when the product is delivered so as to be able to bring it into a cool, dark, and dry environment as soon as possible.
Don’t store health products in your car, your bathroom, or other places where temperature and humidity can increase for periods of time.
Do everything you can to store your products in a cool, dark, and dry environment. If your products are exposed to a brief moment of unusual temperature or humidity, chances are that it is mostly fine. But be reasonable!

As long as you are reasonable and follow the above tips, you can almost be certain that your health products will be safe and effective throughout the entirety of its lifetime before the printed expiration date.

So whether it’s a prescription drug, a dietary supplement, or another health product… rest easy knowing that you know how to best take care of them. (And to be honest, probably already did if you’re a reasonable person who for example knows to not to store milk in a hot car! 😉)

So get with your friends, responsibly enjoy some adult beverages, and toast to knowing that it’s not hard to keep your Cheers products both safe and effective! 🍻