What is Ashwagandha? Part 1

Ashwagandha is on everyone's lips. And rightly so, because the practical capsules are meant to be swallowed. Just kidding - but the plant, which has been used in Indian Ayurveda medicine for hundreds of years, is now enjoying great popularity in the rest of the world too.

In fact, we have been using Ashwagandha in our products for several years now. Our products Mega Mass Caps , Ashwagandha Professional and Ashwagandha Sleep currently contain the popular root extract - all three in the form of the well-known KSM-66® brand raw material, which is considered to be the best Ashwagandha extract in the world.

In this series of articles (yes, you read that correctly: series. Here at WEIDER, we don't do things by halves) we would like to take a closer look at the Ashwagandha plant and its diverse effects, so make yourself comfortable, put on your reading glasses and let's go:

Ashwagandha, Latin Withania somnifera, has many names, including sleeping berry, winter cherry and Indian ginseng. The biological species name "somnifera" actually means "sleep-inducing". In Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language, Ashwagandha means something like "horse smell", which is due to the plant's smell, which is often perceived as unpleasant (Ganzera et al. 2003). Don't worry, packaged in a practical capsule, the smell will not stop you from taking it, we promise. And don't let the name or the smell put you off - because this plant really has it all!

The term "adaptogen" is often used in connection with Ashwagandha (the word origins lie in the Greek language, where the word "adapto" means "to adapt"). As the name suggests, adaptogens help our body to adapt to various forms of stress (Panossian 2017). Adaptation is simply a survival mechanism that protects us from numerous stress factors (e.g. environmental influences). Although adaptogens have been used by various peoples for thousands of years for their positive effects, they were only given their name in 1947 by the Soviet scientist Nikolai Lazarev (Todorova et al. 2021).

Adaptogens can be, for example, plant extracts or other bioactive substances that can make our body more resistant to stress factors when ingested. They do this by regulating the metabolic stress response (metabolism) or, in small doses, acting as so-called stress mimetics (Panossian et al. 2021). The latter means that the adaptogens themselves represent a minor stress stimulus to which the body subsequently responds with an adaptation in the form of increased stress resistance (Panossian et al. 2021). This principle is also known as hormesis (Greek for "stimulation"). The principle of hormesis is often described somewhat banally with the quote by Friedrich Nietzsche "What does not kill me makes me stronger", since smaller doses of an otherwise harmful substance have a positive effect on health through the adaptive reaction triggered.

The human body is always interested in maintaining a state of balance, known as homeostasis. Stress can be defined as a state in which the system (acute or chronic) is out of balance. Adaptogens can help restore balance in the event of physical or psychological stress. Due to their stress-reducing effect and the diverse (pleiotropic) mechanisms of action, adaptogens can potentially have a positive effect on chronic inflammation, atherosclerosis, neurodegenerative and cognitive diseases, metabolic disorders and other age-related complaints (Panossian 2017). The prophylactic use in healthy people for preventive purposes also seems to be quite justified - this of course also applies to sportsmen and athletes (Panossian 2017; Panossian et al. 2021).

To be classified as adaptogens, the respective substances must meet certain criteria: They must be harmless (non-toxic) or largely free of side effects, have a normalizing effect and have a non-specific effect (Panossian et al. 2021).

In this case, normalizing means that the systems are brought back into balance, regardless of the direction in which they swing. The non-specific effect means that, regardless of the stimulus, the general resistance to a variety of physical, chemical and biological factors is increased.

The diverse effects of adaptogens, including Ashwagandha, have been known in traditional medicine for thousands of years. In recent decades, some of these effects have now been confirmed by scientific studies.