Ashwagandha

Several small randomised trials report reduced self-reported stress and lower cortisol, which is more than most botanicals can show. The caveats are heavy: participant numbers are small, many trials come from a handful of research groups, and supplement manufacturers funded a large share of them. There are also published case reports of liver injury, so this is not a risk-free herb.

Reviewed 2026-09-20

Official sources

Reviewed ingredient

This topic is also a reviewed ingredient, with dose context and claim-level evidence.

How this list was built

We searched Europe PMC for English-language papers published since 2012 whose title contains “ashwagandha” or “Withania somnifera”, kept meta-analyses, systematic reviews and trials, including non-randomised ones, because strong evidence on this topic is scarce, then ranked them by study design first, then recency and citations. Retracted papers are removed.

Open a paper to read its abstract and ask for an AI brief of what it found.