Ashwagandha: Benefits of the Most Powerful Adaptogen

Ashwagandha is an extremely powerful adaptogen used both by athletes and the general public due to its many benefits for health and athletic performance.

While there is no conclusive scientific evidence to confirm these benefits, it has been used for thousands of years in Ayurvedic medicine and its efficiency has been confirmed by several athletes who use ashwagandha supplements to boost their athletic performance.

We are also huge fans of ashwagandha ourselves and use it regularly in our diet to reduce stress, boost the immune system, and improve physical performance.

To get the best source of ashwagandha possible, we have created our own supplement, which unites the ashwagandha root extract with a high number of withanolides to provide the best possible effect of this powerful adaptogen.

Benefits of ashwagandha

Regular consumption of ashwagandha has several significant benefits for your health and athletic performance.

To optimize its effect, you should intake 800 mg of ashwagandha per day (400 mg in the morning and 400 mg in the evening). Also keep in mind that you should regularly intake ashwagandha for at least 14 days to allow it to develop its full effect.

Ashwagandha reduces stress and anxiety

One of the main benefits of ashwagandha is its ability to reduce stress. This is related to its classification as adaptogen, a substance that is able to reduce stress and/or increase resistance to stress.

Ashwagandha reduces stress by lowering cortisol levels in your body. Cortisol is referred to as the stress hormone because it is directly linked to your stress response. While cortisol has several benefits, chronic elevated cortisol levels cause weight gain, high blood pressure, decreased immunity, and increased risk of diabetes.

This is especially important for athletes, who constantly increase their cortisol levels due to regular intense exercise. While there are several ways to manage cortisol during exercise, such as intaking a sufficient quantity of carbohydrates during exercise and taking care of proper recovery after exercise, ashwagandha is another very useful tool to keep cortisol in check.

Ashwagandha improves athletic performance and increases VO2 max

Ashwagandha is extremely popular among athletes due to its ability to improve athletic performance and increase VO2 max.

Ashwagandha increases muscle gain by regulating the ratio between testosterone and cortisol. Since testosterone levels decrease when cortisol levels increase, lowering cortisol directly improves testosterone levels and stimulates muscle gain and other benefits of testosterone.

Ashwagandha is also an efficient supplement to increase VO2 max. Obviously, the first prerequisite to increase VO2 max is a dedicated and structured training routine, but ashwagandha improves oxygen flow, which makes these training sessions easier and naturally further increases VO2 max.

If you are a looking for a supplement created specifically to increase VO2 max, check out our ashwagandha-based supplement Absolute 4Endurance Pro!

Ashwagandha improves sleep

Since your sleep is directly linked to stress, by managing cortisol levels to reduce stress and anxiety, ashwagandha is a great natural way to improve your sleep.

This is especially useful for athletes who have troubles falling asleep after intense evening workouts, which increase their cortisol and adrenaline levels, both of which prevent you from falling asleep.

Since we often train in the evening ourselves, this is one of the benefits of ashwagandha we are most fond of. And to make the best of it, we created Restful, a 100% natural supplement based on ashwagandha, magnesium, zinc, l-theanine, hop extract, and saffron – all ingredients that reduce stress and promote better sleep.

Ashwagandha boosts the immune system

Ashwagandha has an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and immune-stimulating effect. All of these effects combine to boost your immune system.

While there is some concern that stimulating your immune system too much might have negative effects, which is especially important for people suffering from autoimmune disorders, for most people boosting the immune system is a clear and much needed benefit.

Especially if you are an athlete, a strong immune system is essential to sustain and improve your athletic performance. This is due to the fact that intense exercise increases stress and reduces your energy levels, which puts a toll on your immune system.

Other benefits of ashwagandha

In addition to all the listed benefits, ashwagandha also improves cognitive function, reduces blood sugar levels, increases fertility in men, improves sexual function in women, promotes healthy weight loss, and improves the health of your heart.

While many of these benefits require further studies to conclusively confirm their efficiency, the thousands of years of use in Ayurvedic medicine and all the positive experience of the people using ashwagandha on a regular basis all but confirm that this powerful adaptogen really works, something reflected more and more by scientific studies as well.

Ashwagandha 4Endurance Pro: the best ashwagandha supplement

It seems a little biased to say we have created the best ashwagandha supplement, but this was our main goal when creating our own 100% ashwagandha supplement.

We used the best ashwagandha root extract we could find – the best ashwagandha supplement comes from the root and not the leaves – and we revved the quantity of withanolides to at least 7% (28 mg per capsule).

What are withanolides? Withanolides are the active ingredients of ashwagandha, the ones that are responsible for many of ashwagandha's benefits. Withanolides have been shown to have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-tumor properties. They also boost the immune system.

Most ashwagandha supplements contain from 1 to 4% withanolides, so with 7% minimum in our supplement, you can expect the best effect from Ashwagandha 4Endurance Pro.

Ashwagandha 4Endurance Pro also contains 400 mg of ashwagandha per capsule. The recommended intake is 2 capsules per day, one in the morning and one in the evening, which allows you to sustain a daily intake of 800 mg of high-quality ashwagandha to get all the benefits of this amazing adaptogen.