The Endurance Athlete’s Secret Weapon – First Endurance

Adaptogens & Homeostatic Deviations

Stress is a deviation from normal metabolism, which constitutes a general deviation from health and wellness. Our bodies have in-built ways to stay in or get back to normal metabolism, of course, and adaptogens work by supplying a plethora of regulatory signals that your body already has (and can utilize more of) or that mimic what your body uses to control and overcome deviations, getting back to health and homeostasis. By having numerous mechanisms that are supportive rather than demanding, they contribute multiple extra nudges to help bring your body back to normal.

One reason for the undeserved reputation for adaptogens being ineffective is that this concept is different from our modern drug and direct treatment mentality: take this exact substance for that exact symptom. Given their non-specific, holistic effect, the case is often that you can take adaptogens for everything, and if that symptom is related to one of the metabolic deviations falling under the adaptogens’ umbrella, it will also get better. But again, that can be a tricky proposition to understand and effectively take advantage of.

Through the Nonsense to the Truth

Serious, intense, long-term endurance exercise is definitely a significant stress. Do adaptogens work for exercising persons? Do they keep me healthier? Do they keep me moving? When used according to the rules laid out above, the answer to all of these questions is yes. Why can we say this? The science – rather, let me rephrase that – the good science supports it.

As an example of how the literature on any topic can be misinterpreted and twisted to one’s personal biases, let’s take a look at ginseng (Panax ginseng), the poster child for adaptogens. Critical, careful, and thorough looks at the research on adaptogens for ginseng and exercise yield a bigger picture that supports efficacy for adaptogens and human performance, but studies often produced contradictory results by limiting things like scope, dosage, or outcome measurements.

In 2004, I was invited with coauthors to write a review on ginseng in sports for an academic book on nutrients as ergogenic aids (Bucci, 2004). We did not have commercial interest in ginseng – we did not really care if it “worked” or not for exercise. But we were curious about the polarity of obvious biases, and kept an open mind.

In preparing the chapter, we noticed diametrically opposed results from the same substances, similar subjects, similar exercises, and similar settings. We smelled a rat and dug deeper. We found many experimental designs that missed the mark of what they were aiming for. Shoddy science (fewer subjects, shorter time periods, and insensitive measurements) led predictably to find conclusions of no or lesser effect.

In our analysis, we clearly showed:

1. studies with larger numbers of subjects showed positive results for physical performance;
2. studies lasting longer than 8 weeks showed significant positive results for mental and physical performance; and
3. doses were less important (as would be expected from knowing how adaptogens work).

Conversely, we found that studies with fewer subjects (

And yet, these are the studies most cited as “proof” adaptogens do not work. In other words, many human studies on adaptogens were doomed to fail before they even started. Or even worse, potentially designed to fail to support an entrenched position or belief, because studies looking at more intense, longer-term exercise found better results. Reviews like ours can also produce those specious results; if they are not thorough and/or carefully select biased and poorly designed studies, then they poison the science and perception.

In reality, hundreds of beneficial outcomes by administration of adaptogens to cells and animals under stress strongly support efficacy, and they also illuminate how and why adaptogens work. While human studies on adaptogens are actually much more likely to be poorly designed and also to be misinterpreted along lines of bias, it’s much easier to stress cells and animals in a controlled, monitored manner. Incidentally, such studies have been valuable sources of insight.