Can adaptogenic ingredients improve health management?

‘Adaptogens may do for your adrenal glands what exercise does for your muscles‘

Dr. Brenda Powell, co-medical director of the Center for Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute. https://time.com/5025278/adaptogens-herbs-stress-anxiety/

Plant based Adaptogenic ingredients (also known as adaptogen or nootropic) are nontoxic substances, able increase the body’s ability to resist damaging effects of stress and help restore normal physiological functioning.

Such herbs have long standing traditional use in Asian societies not solely in their cuisines but consumed for their medicinal properties of providing relief from stress and improving fatigue response and focal clarity.

Recognition of their therapeutic benefits has seen increased use of such ingredients are in supplement and beverage products in the marketplace. Growing clinical studies on such ingredients suggest there is greater understanding of its effects on the human body.

Modern studies have shown that adaptogens can non-specifically enhance the resistance of human body under a wide range of external stress conditions with a multi-targeted and multi-channel network-like manner, especially by affect the immune-neuro-endocrine system and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis.

CHARACTERISTICS
An adaptagen must have the following qualities to be adaptogenic:

• MUST NON SPECIFICALLY ENHANCE the human body in resisting a wide range of adverse conditions, such as physical, chemical or biological stress.
• MUST MAINTAIN HOMEOSTASIS IN HUMANS that is, these substances can offset or resist physical disorders caused by external stress.
• MUST NOT HARM the normal functions of the human body
• MUST REDUCE THE HARM caused by stressed states (fatigue, infection, and depression)
• MUST HAVE POSITIVE excitatory effects on the human body
• MUST NOT CAUSE side effects such as insomnia, low protein synthesis, or excessive energy consumption

. Liao, Ly., He, Yf., Li, L. et al. A preliminary review of studies on adaptogens: comparison of their bioactivity in TCM with that of ginseng-like herbs used worldwide. Chin Med 13, 57 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13020-018-0214-9