Aswagandha: A PT's Helper for Anxiety and Sleep?

Aswagandha: A PT's Helper for Anxiety and Sleep?

This herbal supplemental is used a lot for sleep, anxiety, so perhaps it could help people with pain? PTs are getting asked this a lot, and many of us don't have the answers...until now! Enjoy the video, read the transcript below, and sign up for our courses today!

Hey y'all, Dr. Wells here again from St. Augustine Beach with another video for you. This one is about ashwagandha. Some of you may have heard of this plant, this herbal supplement. It's a nightshade plant. The scientific name actually means to induce sleep. The Sanskrit name is for horse sleep.

Some people also call it Indian ginseng. The reason why it's called Indian ginseng is the active compound in it is withanolides. It's a phytochemical steroid-like compound.

It's found in ginseng, so that's why people call it Indian ginseng. Anyhow, it's used for sleep and anxiety. Some people have started taking it recently.

I've had a patient case recently in the last probably six months, a patient with high anxiety, inability to sleep. She said, hey, I want something to try. She had seen this on, again, some sort of influencer's website. I'm ragging on influencers lately, aren't I? But I talked to her and I said, yeah, it could help you with anxiety. It could help you with sleep as needed but not on an ongoing basis. Well, she decided to buy some gummies. If any of you know, gummies are not great for supplementing. Gummies can have various levels of the active ingredient that's in the supplement. Some have really low or none.

Some have way too high. In this case, I believe this patient got some gummies of a higher concentration. Moreover, she was taking the gummies every single day habitually for a long period of time. Long story short, she started developing headaches. The only thing that she and I could associate with that we added into her program was the gummies. She had talked to her primary.

The primary thought, I don't think that's associated. I went into the literature. Sure enough, because it's a steroid-like compound, it can actually increase testosterone and throw off hormonal balance abnormally. Long story short, she stopped the ashwagandha, headaches went away, felt better. In the end of the day, ashwagandha could be a beneficial compound for some of our clients with anxiety or sleep problems. It needs to be carefully monitored.

It can influence drugs that interact particularly with hormones like testosterone things. It's not to be used when pregnant or breastfeeding. There could be other issues with cancer as well. Cancer meaning, if you're undergoing treatment for cancer, taking this drug could have interactions with certain medicines or hormonal changes within a cancer treatment for prostate or even breast cancer or endometrial cancer. Long story short, it's not a supplement for everyone. Probably best to use PRN.

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