Ashwagandha - What Is It Good For?

Ashwagandha is enjoying a dramatic in popularity at the moment. In the West at least.

 

Of course, ashwagandha has been used continuously for a very long time. It is a staple of traditional Ayurverdic medicine. As you might imagine, it has been widely used in India for centuries and it remains widely used today. Most of the ashwagandha in the world is actually produced in India. 

 

In the West, the story has always been a little different. 

 

A decade ago, you would have struggled to find a decent ashwagandha extract anywhere outside of India, Nepal, China, and the near East.

 

Even just a few years ago, you would have struggled to get hold of Ashwagandha without going to a specialist imported herb or alternative medicine store in a major metropolitan city. 

 

This is not true today - ashwagandha is fast becoming one of the most popular, widely-used herbal supplements in the West. Since it is already extremely popular in the East, that means that ashwagandha is fast becoming one of the most popular supplements in the world. 

 

But why?

 

Why are so many people starting to employ this root extract as a dietary supplement?

 

What are they getting from it?

 

Let's go through some of the proven properties of ashwagandha to see why people are spending so much money on it!

 

 

Sleep

 

Probably the most common reason why people use ashwagandha is to help them sleep. 

 

If you consider the fact that ashwgaandha is sold as a powerful sleep aid it's easy to understand why it has become so popular so quickly in the West; more of us than ever are complaining of disturbed sleep patterns and chronic exhaustion. A supplement that promises to help us get over sleeplessness would definitely be worth paying good money for!

 

According to supplement manufacturers, ashwagandha helps with sleep in a number of different ways. They claim that it helps you get off to sleep faster, to stay soundly asleep for longer, and to wake up feeling significantly more refreshed. 

 

You should of course be skeptical of claims made by supplement manufacturers, but on this one the evidence checks out: ashwagandha looks like a potent, safe, sustainable sleep aid!

 

In this study, administration of 300mg of ashwagandha extract helped people sleep better than the standard therapy intervention: "Both NC and PT led to significant improvements in patients' anxiety. Group comparison demonstrated a significant decrease in anxiety levels in the NC group over the PT group. Significant improvements in secondary quality of life measures were also observed in the NC group as compared to PT. "

 

 

Testosterone

 

 

According to some manufacturers, ashwagandha supplementation can have a profound effect on testosterone levels in otherwise healthy men. They usually claim that it has the biggest effect on the testosterone levels of older men, but many products targeted at young bodybuilders and other athletes utilize ashwagandha for the same reasons. 

 

 

This is a relatively obscure use of ashwagandha, but it seems to hold water scientifically. 

 

Several robust scientific studies show that ashwagandha supplementation does indeed positively influence testosterone levels. 

 

It does this by decreasing cortisol levels.

 

Ashwagandha drives down cortisol levels in humans. Cortisol is the body's stress hormone. We need it to regulate a number of bodily functions, but too much of it can be seriously damaging to health; having chronically high cortisol levels can even decrease your life span by a significant amount. 

 

High cortisol levels also mean low testosterone levels - the two hormones are antagonists. When one goes up, the other must necessarily come down. This is in part why high cortisol levels mean faster fat accumulation, reduced strength, muscle wastage, and a loss of libido. 

 

Suppressing cortisol is a great way to support healthy testosterone levels without actually increasing testosterone production. Ashwagandha's ability to reduce cortisol therefore makes it a great testosterone booster!

 

If you're interested in trying to maximize testosterone levels - whether it's for building muscle or supporting your libido as you get older - we recommend doing more reading into the use of ashwagandha for testosterone. The cited article is a great place to start!

 

 

Stress

 

Like sleep, it seems that stress is an area where ashwagandha truly performs as the supplement manufacturers claim.

 

We've already covered its ability to reduce cortisol levels and increase testosterone levels, which would obviously help reduce stress levels. But it is important to note just how powerful this effect is, and how reliably ashwagandha seems to be able to improve subjective stress levels in people with serious anxiety. 

 

In this clinical psychological study, researchers were able to demonstrate that ashwgaandha (500mg of full spectrum extract for 6 weeks) was able to improve stress levels in people with anxiety disorders: "At 6 weeks, significantly more patients met a priori response criteria in the drug group (88.2%) as compared with the placebo group (50%). The drug was well-tolerated and did not occasion more adverse effects than did placebo. It is concluded that this ethanolic extract of Withania somnifera has useful anxiolytic potential and merits further investigation."