What "Physician-Formulated" Should Mean — And How to Check

By Dr. Susan Lin, MD | MD HAIR | La Cañada Ventures, Inc.
Published on mdhair.com — The Physician Behind MD HAIR Series

There is a badge on the box. A small circle, a stethoscope or a caduceus, and two words: physician-formulated.

You relax slightly. Someone with a medical education chose what went in here. Someone who would lose something if it were wrong.

Now try to find that person. Click the About page. There is a photograph — good lighting, white coat, arms folded — and a first name, or sometimes a full name with no specialty. Search the name and you find the brand's own press release and nothing before the product launch. Try to work out whether that physician selected the actives, or approved a formula someone else wrote, or signed a licensing agreement and has never seen the batch records.

You cannot tell. That is the design.

I am Dr. Susan F. Lin, M.D. I trained at Boston University School of Medicine through its accelerated B.A./M.D. programme, am board-certified in Obstetrics & Gynecology and have earned board certification in Anti-Aging Medicine, and I have formulated the MD® line at La Cañada Ventures, Inc. since 2008. I use the phrase physician-formulated on my own products. So I am the last person you should take at her word about it — which is why this article sets a standard you can apply from outside, and then runs my own products through it, including the places we do not come out well.

The Phrase Is Not Regulated

Start here, because everything follows from it.

Physician-formulated has no legal definition in United States law. It is not defined in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, in the cosmetics regulations, or in DSHEA. There is no certifying body, no register, no minimum involvement threshold, no audit. Neither the FDA nor the FTC issues a physician-formulated designation.

What does apply is the general rule that claims must be truthful and not misleading, which the FTC enforces on a net impression basis (FTC guidance). If the overall impression of a page is that a named, practising physician designed the formula, and in fact a consultant was paid for the use of a name, that is a deception problem regardless of whether any individual sentence is literally defensible.

But enforcement is after the fact and rare, so in practice the phrase means whatever the brand decided it means. The range it covers is enormous:

  • A physician who conceived the formula, selected each active and its concentration, wrote the specifications, reviews the certificates of analysis, and signs off the claims.
  • A physician on a paid advisory board who reviewed a near-final formula for an afternoon.
  • A physician whose name and likeness are licensed for a royalty, with no formulation role at all.
  • A physician who is a passive investor.
  • A doctor whose doctorate is in something other than medicine, with the ambiguity carefully preserved.
  • A medical advisory board that exists on the website and has never convened.

Every one of those can appear on a box as physician-formulated. The badge does not distinguish them. You have to.

The Five Questions That Do Distinguish Them

Here is the standard I would want a family member to apply. Each question is answerable from outside the company, in a few minutes, using public records.

1. Is the physician named, individually and unambiguously?

Not our medical team. Not our doctors. Not a first name. A full name with a credential and a specialty, attached to the brand in a way that would be awkward to walk away from.

Anonymity is the first tell, and it is nearly decisive. A physician genuinely responsible for a formula will put their name on it, because that responsibility is the entire value of the claim. A physician who will not be named has told you the arrangement is not one they want attached to their license.

2. Are the credentials verifiable in primary records — not on the brand's own website?

A brand's About page is not evidence. It is a document the brand wrote about itself. Primary records are held by third parties with no stake in the sale, and you can check all of these for free:

  • State medical board licence lookup. Every U.S. state publishes licence status, issue date, and disciplinary history. In California, the Medical Board of California's licence search is public at search.dca.ca.gov.
  • FSMB DocInfo (docinfo.org) aggregates licensure and board actions across states — useful when you do not know which state to check.
  • ABMS Certification Matters (certificationmatters.org) verifies board certification through an American Board of Medical Specialties member board.
  • PubMed (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) — a publication record, if there is one.
  • USPTO — patents at patents.google.com or patents.justia.com; trademarks at tsdr.uspto.gov.

If the person exists in none of those, the credential is a graphic.

One distinction to insist on while you are there: board-certified is not one thing. Certification through an ABMS member board is a specific, verifiable status with defined training and examination requirements. Many other boards exist, some rigorous, some not, and their names can be indistinguishable to a lay reader. Look up which board, not just whether the word appears. I apply this to myself below.

3. Did they choose the actives and their concentrations?

This is the question that separates formulation from endorsement, and it is the one brands answer least often.

Choosing an active is a marketing decision as much as a scientific one. Choosing a concentration is formulation: it is where efficacy, tolerability, stability, cost and delivery are traded against one another, and it is where a physician's judgement either exists or does not. So ask, in a support email:

Did your physician select the concentration of each active, or approve a formula developed by a contract manufacturer?

Both answers can be legitimate. Only one of them is physician-formulated in the sense the badge implies. An evasive answer is itself the answer.

4. Are they accountable for the claims — in public, under their own name?

Formulating is one job. Being answerable for what the marketing says is a different and harder one.

Look for: articles written in the first person under that physician's name, with the caveats intact. A visible history of the physician saying no — this is not for everyone, this takes longer than you want, see your own doctor, we do not have data on that. And best of all, a correction: a claim the brand made, checked, and withdrew in public.

A physician-formulated brand that has never published a limitation has a physician on the packaging and a marketing department in charge.

5. Does the involvement predate the product?

Check the timeline. Was this physician formulating before this brand existed, or did they appear in the same quarter as the launch? A decade of prior work in the relevant field is hard to manufacture. A LinkedIn profile updated last spring is not.

Now Apply All Five to MD HAIR

A standard that conveniently exonerates its author is worthless. Here are our answers, with the weak ones named rather than buried.

1. Named? — Strong.

Dr. Susan F. Lin, M.D. My full name, credential and specialty are on the products, the site, and every article in this series. There is no our team of physicians. There is me, and if a formulation decision is wrong, it is mine.

2. Verifiable? — Strong, with one distinction I am going to draw myself.

  • Medical school: Boston University School of Medicine, accelerated B.A./M.D. programme, supported by an NIH scholarship.
  • Licence: California Physician's and Surgeon's Licence No. G77036, originally issued July 1993 — look it up yourself in the Medical Board of California's public licence search at search.dca.ca.gov, which shows current status, issue date, and any disciplinary history. That page is a state record, not something we wrote.
  • Trademark: the MD® mark, U.S. Reg. No. 4,471,494, held by La Cañada Ventures, Inc. Searchable at tsdr.uspto.gov — a federal record, not a claim we made.
  • Patent: I am the named inventor on U.S. Patent No. 8,206,695, a granted patent covering the MD Lash Factor® eyelash formulation. Readable in full at patents.justia.com/patent/8206695. I cite it here as a biographical fact about me, and I want to be precise about its scope, because patent language is routinely stretched: it covers the lash formulation only. It does not cover MD Nutri Hair™, it does not cover our hair topicals, and I will not let its proximity imply otherwise.
  • Formulating since: 2007–2008, which predates every product currently on either site.

The distinction I owe you. I hold two certifications and they are not the same kind of thing. Obstetrics & Gynecology is an ABMS-recognised specialty, certified through the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology — verifiable at Certification Matters. My Anti-Aging Medicine certification was earned through the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), which is not an ABMS member board, and a reader applying question 2 properly should know that before deciding what weight to give it. I list both because both are true and both are relevant to how I think about hormonal transitions and hair. I am telling you which is which because my own standard requires it.

3. Actives and concentrations? — Yes on selection. Mixed on disclosure, and this is our weakest answer.

I selected the actives in every MD formulation and I set the concentrations. That work is mine.

What I do not do is publish every concentration, and I am not going to pretend that is costless. The clearest example is on our own label: MD Nutri Hair™ declares a Proprietary Blend of 300 mg. That is lawful — proprietary blend declaration is a permitted format under the Supplement Facts rules (21 CFR § 101.36) — and it means the individual amounts of flaxseed powder, lignan powder and lilac are not disclosed to you. You can see the total. You cannot see the split.

By my own question 3, that is a real limitation of our transparency, not a technicality. Concentration is where formulation judgement lives; withholding it asks you to take that judgement on trust. I would rather name it here than have you discover it on the back of the box.

Some things I can give you, because they are documented. The nutrients outside the blend are declared individually: niacinamide 5 mg, alpha tocopheryl acetate 5 mg, D-biotin 0.05 mg. That biotin figure is deliberate and I will defend it — it is a cofactor dose, not a megadose. Biotin at high doses is a documented interferent in immunoassays, with the FDA's communications generally discussing concern from around 5 mg (FDA); ours is roughly a hundredfold below that. A brand chasing a bigger number on the panel would have put in more. And on the raw material side, the lilac ingredient's specification states verbascoside content of 47.5–52.5% w/w by HPLC — a standardisation range, from the supplier specification sheet, not a marketing adjective.

4. Accountable for claims? — Strong, and I can point to a correction.

Everything in this series is written in the first person under my name with the caveats intact. This article and its companions apply our own standards to us.

The specific proof is a claim we withdrew. Earlier MD copy attributed a particular enzyme-interaction property to lilac-derived verbascoside. We went back to the primary source and found that the document behind the sentence was a supplier presentation, not a paper — and that the paper the presentation pointed to had tested two fragments of the verbascoside molecule and never mentioned verbascoside itself anywhere (Hiipakka et al., 2002). Read properly, the citation contradicted the claim it was supporting. We removed the sentence everywhere it appeared, across more than a dozen files and our live site, and I have written about it publicly at my own expense.

What the peer-reviewed literature does support is narrower. In controlled laboratory studies on human dermal papilla cells, verbascoside induced cell proliferation, prevented testosterone-induced cell death, and reduced the release of pro-inflammatory signals including IL-1α, IL-6, IL-1β and TNF-α (Wisuitiprot et al., 2022). Three caveats travel with that sentence permanently: these are cell studies rather than human trials; the authors state clinical study is still needed; and the verbascoside tested came from Acanthus, not lilac — the same molecule from a different botanical source, not our own material. The paper is open access, so you can check every word of that against the original.

5. Predates the product? — Strong.

2007–2008, ahead of every current SKU.

Honest scorecard: strong on 1, 4 and 5; strong-with-a-disclosure on 2; weakest on 3, concentration disclosure, where the proprietary blend on our own supplement label is the clearest example. If that is your deciding factor, choosing something else is a legitimate conclusion reached with accurate information — which is a better outcome than buying from us on a misunderstanding.

What Physician-Formulated Does Not Mean, Even at Its Best

Three limits, and they apply to me as much as to anyone.

It is not a claim about evidence. A physician can formulate a product with no clinical data behind it. Formulation credentials say something about how the formula was chosen; they say nothing about whether the finished product has been tested in humans against a control.

It is not a regulatory status. It is not FDA approval, review, endorsement, or anything adjacent. A physician-formulated cosmetic is a cosmetic. A physician-formulated supplement is a supplement. Neither is approved, and no cosmetic or supplement is.

It is not neutrality. I am not a disinterested expert commenting on this market. I sell in it. The correct use of my credentials is as a starting point for verification, not as a substitute for it — which is the whole argument of this article.

The Bottom Line

Physician-formulated is unregulated, undefined, and covers everything from a decade of formulation work to a signature on a licensing agreement. The badge does not distinguish them.

Five questions do. Is the physician named individually? Are their credentials verifiable in primary records — board, FSMB, ABMS, PubMed, USPTO — rather than on the brand's own page? Did they select the actives and the concentrations? Are they publicly accountable for the claims, including a visible history of saying no and at least one correction? Did their involvement predate the product?

Applied to us: named, verifiable, accountable, and formulating since 2007–2008 — with two disclosures I made rather than waited for. One of my two board certifications is through an ABMS member board and one is not. And MD Nutri Hair™ carries a 300 mg proprietary blend, so the individual amounts are not disclosed, which is the weakest answer on the list.

Ask any brand these five questions. The ones worth your money will answer them specifically, in writing, with links. The ones that answer with a badge have already told you what the badge is for.

Dr. Susan Lin's Clinical Perspective

"Early on I was offered the arrangement this article describes — a fee, a photograph, my credentials on someone else's formula. It is a common offer and it is more lucrative than doing the work. I declined, and not out of virtue: I could not see how I would answer a colleague who asked me why a particular active was at a particular percentage in a product I had never opened. That question is the whole job. A physician's name has value on a box precisely because it implies someone with a license and a reputation examined the formulation and would defend it under questioning. Rent the name and the meaning drains out, but the reassurance stays behind — which is exactly the arrangement the customer is not being told about. So I would ask readers to treat the badge as the beginning of a search rather than the end of one. Look the person up. If they are real, it takes two minutes and you will find them."

— Dr. Susan F. Lin, M.D., Physician Formulator, MD HAIR

Mechanism Spotlight: Why the Concentration Question Is the One That Actually Matters

Question 3 is the technical heart of the list, so it is worth explaining why a percentage carries more information than an ingredient name.

Cosmetic ingredient declaration (21 CFR § 701.3) lists ingredients in descending order of predominance only down to 1%. Below that threshold, ingredients may be listed in any order. So a headline botanical can legally sit at a hundredth of a percent, between two preservatives, and still appear on the front of the box in a large typeface. The list tells you an ingredient is present. Past the 1% line it does not even tell you the rank order, let alone the amount.

Concentration then interacts with everything else that determines whether an active reaches its target. Molecular size: the 500-dalton rule observes that molecules much above that penetrate intact skin poorly (Bos & Meinardi, 2000), which is why the same compound behaves entirely differently on cultured cells and on a scalp. Vehicle: solvent polarity, lipid content, pH, penetration enhancers and whether the base evaporates or forms an occlusive film can change delivery several-fold at identical concentration. Contact time: a rinse-off shampoo and a leave-on serum containing the same ingredient at the same percentage are not comparable products. Stability: polyphenols oxidise with light, air and time, so the amount in the study may not be the amount left in a bottle six months into shelf life.

Now stack those. An ingredient chosen without a concentration decision is a marketing input. An ingredient chosen with one — at a level informed by the published work, adjusted for the vehicle, checked for stability, and traded against tolerability — is a formulation decision, and it is the specific thing a physician's judgement is supposed to be adding.

Which is why the disclosure question bites. On the supplement side, a proprietary blend gives you a total and withholds the split; on the cosmetic side, the 1% rule does much the same thing by default. In both cases you are being asked to trust the judgement rather than inspect it. That is the honest description of what we are asking of you, and it is why I would rather set the standard in public and fail part of it than quietly define the phrase down to whatever we already do.

Recommended Reading

Pillar pages on mdhair.com:

Related articles in this series:

Our sister site md-factor.com carries the same physician-accountability documentation for the wider MD® portfolio, including the lash line covered by U.S. Patent No. 8,206,695.

MD HAIR Product Recommendation

None. An article asking you to verify claims rather than trust badges should not close by asking for trust.

Instead: read the Clinical Evidence page. It sets out what our studies are, what tier of evidence they occupy, and what they do not establish — including the fact that we hold no randomised, placebo-controlled trial on the hair products. Judge my formulation credentials against that page rather than against this one. If you want the studies on file, ask us; a brand that will not show you its evidence when asked has answered question 4 for you. And if you are still working out what is driving your own hair change, start with the MD HAIR Quiz — several of its outcomes route to a physician rather than to any product.

And if you want to verify me before reading anything else, that is the correct order of operations. The Medical Board of California's licence search at search.dca.ca.gov (Physician's and Surgeon's Licence No. G77036), docinfo.org, certificationmatters.org, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, patents.justia.com/patent/8206695, and tsdr.uspto.gov for MD® U.S. Reg. No. 4,471,494. None of those pages are written by us.

A note on authenticity: genuine MD HAIR™ and MD Nutri Hair™ products are sold only through mdhair.com, md-factor.com, and the official La Cañada Ventures, Inc. stores on Amazon and Walmart. My name appears on units we did not make and cannot verify; that is a trademark matter we pursue, and it is also the sharpest possible illustration of why a physician's name on a box is only as good as the chain of custody behind it.

References

  1. Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act § 201(g) (drug) and § 201(i) (cosmetic), 21 U.S.C. § 321. law.cornell.edu
  2. U.S. Federal Trade Commission. (2022). Health Products Compliance Guidance. ftc.gov
  3. U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, 16 CFR Part 255. eCFR
  4. 21 CFR § 701.3 — Designation of ingredients (cosmetic ingredient declaration and the 1% rule). eCFR
  5. 21 CFR § 101.36 — Nutrition labeling of dietary supplements, including proprietary blend declaration. eCFR
  6. Federation of State Medical Boards. DocInfo physician licensure and disciplinary lookup. docinfo.org
  7. American Board of Medical Specialties. Certification Matters. certificationmatters.org
  8. Medical Board of California. License Search. search.dca.ca.gov (Physician's and Surgeon's Licence No. G77036)
  9. Lin S. U.S. Patent No. 8,206,695. patents.justia.com · patents.google.com
  10. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Trademark Status and Document Retrieval (TSDR). tsdr.uspto.gov (MD®, U.S. Reg. No. 4,471,494)
  11. Wisuitiprot V, Ingkaninan K, Waranuch N, et al. (2022). Effects of Acanthus ebracteatus Vahl. extract and verbascoside on human dermal papilla and murine macrophage. Scientific Reports, 12, 1491. PMID 35087085 · open access
  12. Hiipakka RA, Zhang HZ, Dai W, Dai Q, Liao S. (2002). Structure–activity relationships for inhibition of human 5α-reductases by polyphenols. Biochemical Pharmacology, 63(6), 1165–1176. PMID 11931850
  13. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Biotin Interference with Troponin Lab Tests — Assays Subject to Biotin Interference. fda.gov
  14. Bos JD, Meinardi MMHM. (2000). The 500 Dalton rule for the skin penetration of chemical compounds and drugs. Experimental Dermatology, 9(3), 165–169. PMID 10839713

Dr. Susan F. Lin, M.D. is the physician formulator behind MD HAIR and MD Nutri Hair™, product lines of La Cañada Ventures, Inc. — physician-formulated since 2008 under the MD® mark (U.S. Reg. No. 4,471,494). She trained at Boston University School of Medicine, holds California Physician's and Surgeon's Licence No. G77036, is board-certified in Obstetrics & Gynecology, earned board certification in Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M), and is the named inventor on U.S. Patent No. 8,206,695, which covers the MD Lash Factor® eyelash formulation.

"Physician-formulated" is a descriptive term with no regulatory definition and does not indicate FDA review, endorsement or approval. MD® products are cosmetics and dietary supplements manufactured in FDA-registered, GMP-compliant facilities — a statement about the facility, never about product approval. They are not FDA approved; no cosmetic or dietary supplement is. Individual results vary. MD Nutri Hair™ is a dietary supplement. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Because there are no clinical data in pregnant or breastfeeding women, we do not advocate using MD HAIR products during pregnancy or lactation.

This article is for educational purposes and does not constitute medical advice. Consult your own physician for personalized guidance.

Explore more in The Physician Behind MD HAIR series at mdhair.com/pages/dr-susan-lin