Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition podcast. I’m Leah Higl and I’m here with my co-host Adain Muir and today we will be answering the question, can ashwagandha help with muscle growth? Ashwagandha itself is, it’s in a bit of a weird space at the moment because it’s, it is often considered alternative medicine because of its history and where it was started in terms of when it was used and things like that.
But something worth considering is that the definition of alternative medicine itself is to quote, any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine, but which lacks biological plausibility and is untested, untestable, or proven ineffective. So what if something that was in the alternative medicine space eventually does have a bunch of evidence supporting its benefits?
So making that transition from the alternative medicine space to the regular medical space, something that is evidence-supported, evidence-based. Ashwagandha itself is not at a point where we have heaps of evidence to support its use, but there is quite a bit emerging in this space that looks pretty good, not only from a muscle mass growth perspective, but from the whole heap of other perspectives.
I don’t think it holds up to the level of scrutiny needed to cross completely over from the alternative medicine space, but it is becoming something that is in that weird middle ground at this point. So we’re going to go over the evidence that we do have and talk a little bit more about ashwagandha in this kind of muscle growth space.
Aidan:
So we could look at this from multiple angles. We could be looking at it from a theoretical perspective, research and also anecdotes. I’m gonna start just by talking about some research that’s interesting to kind of get us thinking about it. So I’m gonna look at two studies. The first one is a study that we have previously discussed on the podcast in an episode a fair while ago, but it’s what I call the crazy bench press study. In the show notes, you can go and find it with its actual name, but just a crazy bench press study.
There’s an eight week study that involved 600 milligrams of ashwagandha per day, which is a pretty standard dosage versus placebo. And the placebo group gained 26 kilos on their bench press. The ashwagandha group gained 46 kilos in eight weeks.
Leah:
Yeah, I’m going to go buy some, make my bench press 146 kilos.
Aidan:
Yeah, it must be very nice. The ashwagandha group had less soreness, more muscle growth and lost more body fat. They also had an increase in testosterone from memory that was a study just exclusively on men. We can talk about that more later. Obviously this is too good to be true. Surely it makes you curious to learn more. So a second study was a little bit more realistic.
Once again, you can find this in the show notes, but I just call it squat and bench press study because they tested both of those. Similar conditions to the other study, they increased squat by 19 kilos in the ashwagandha group versus 10 kilos in the placebo group, bench press increased by 12 kilos versus eight kilos. Those numbers look way more realistic, particularly when factoring in that they were untrained lifters.
Looking at it from a theoretical perspective now, every study that has been done on ashwagandha so far has shown reductions in stress. Every single one that I’ve seen. And we have a decent sample size of that now. So that’s worth being aware of. Researchers found improvements in sleep with ashwagandha and researchers found increases in testosterone in men, but no change in women.
That kind of tells me that I’m like, it’s not, I don’t think it’s doing anything to increase testosterone. I think people are just less stressed. They’re getting better sleep and all of that carries over to improve testosterone. And when we look at it through that lens about being like, this isn’t directly doing anything for testosterone or anything like that. It’s not absurd to think that the reduction in stress levels would explain any changes related to muscle growth and potentially fat loss. If there were to be any changes, it’s not absurd to think of that.
Leah:
Yeah, the two studies that you did mention, like they sound very, very promising from a strength perspective. I think an important thing to note that we’ve talked about is that these are pretty cherry picked since they are the most impressive. Like obviously that that first study, crazy results that’s going to pique your interest. But if we look at a systematic review, so looking at all of the research up until 2021 when this was published. So looking at all the research on strength and muscle growth.
found that ashwagandha did consistently improve these things in the research, but the effect size was a lot smaller than those studies made it look. So overall, whilst there may be a positive impact on muscle growth, we can’t be positive about whether that exists and whether it exists at the point that those two studies had shown.
Aidan:
So let’s talk about like, I don’t know, our interpretations. That’s kind of a bit of a summary of the research series, a bit of a positive impact on muscle growth that has been seen in the research. What do we actually think? So the first kind of question I think of when you’re thinking about how I actively interpret this is like, am I recommending this to people? Like I work with a lot of people who want to build muscle. Am I recommending this to everybody?
And my answer is no. How often are you recommending ashwagandha? Specifically for muscle growth? Never. Yeah. So I’m in the same boat. So I only ever really recommend it at this stage to people who are pretty stressed, reporting stress, impacting their ability to do good with nutrition or training or whatever. I’m pretty open-minded to trying this stuff after I go through a big spiel kind of like we’ve talked through now. I’ll be like, optional, if you wanna try it, you can try it, see how you feel, et cetera. But I’m not just like out there being like, everybody with this way, let’s look at Ashwagandha. That’s kind of the space I’m in at the moment.
As I’ve said before, like if we start to take everything that has a small amount of research supporting it or looking beneficial, then we’re casting a very wide net and we start recommending a lot of things. So it’s hard at this point to be recommending it for this. The other thing that makes me a bit sceptical is that you could look at them and be like, well, the research is showing on average that there is a positive impact on Moscow.
I still think there’s a little bit of reason for skepticism. Firstly, like pretty much every study that’s done on Ashwagandha has positive benefits in every field. Some of it seems too good to be true. Like, we’ve obviously got that bench press one. Some of it we talked about in the previous podcast, like, was there was one study that was titled something along the lines of ashwagandha improves anxiety.
Then when you read the methods, like nobody with anxiety was allowed to be included in the study. Like if you had a mental health condition, you were excluded. were excluded. Yeah, was wild. And they’re just like measuring anxiety scores, but you’re like, that’s not what this study like showed. It just showed you got a bunch of people without anxiety and their anxiety scores improved while taking ashwagandha. There’s just a lot of stuff that I just don’t think would normally fly in most other areas of supplement kind of research.
Using the bench press study, I think we just ignore that bench press study. Like that’s pretty safe to say, but like with the level of control and stuff like that, a lot of, a lot of research is done under pretty tight circumstances, but using that bench press study as an example, what did their bench look like in the first week? Like, I want to know. and it makes you ask a bunch of questions. Like sometimes people review other studies. Like there was a study ages back about hip thrust versus squats that when people like dug deeper, they’re kind of like, why are these women squatting so much in comparison to what they’re hip thrusting?
Like, are we, like, it came to the conclusion that squat spilt glutes better than hip thrust was from memory, or at least as well, right? That’s kind of the conclusion it came to. But when you look at the numbers, it’s like, they’re hip thrusting like half of what you would expect. Like, who’s coaching them? Like, how did they end up doing that? Like, is this really looking at squats versus hip thrust?
Or is it like, looking at squats versus significantly under loaded. Maybe with bad coaching, et cetera, et cetera. So many, I know it’s unrelated to ashwagandha, but it’s like, obviously quality of these things really matters. And I think that’s another area for skepticism. Cause we kind of see what I would consider to be a bit of lack of quality in some of these studies more frequently than you would ideally want.
Leah:
A question you may ask if you are going to go down the route of trying ashwagandha is are there any downsides? Are there any side effects? And the simple answer to this is it seems really, really rare. When I recommend ashwagandha, I do say to clients like, there seems to be like no downsides to taking it. So trial it, see if it helps you for X, Y or Z. In high dosages, there does seem to be that there can be some gastrointestinal symptoms that can occur. Like many supplements if you take an excess can upset the stomach. So that’s a possibility.
Some people are also concerned about theoretical issues that we don’t really have a basis for yet. A really good example of this is people talking about autoimmune conditions and saying that we maybe shouldn’t take ashwagandha because it does seem to improve immune function, which could be dangerous for someone with an autoimmune condition. But that does involve several points along the way where we’re really stretching the logic on that.
Aidan:
I find that one tough when I’m working with clients because like there have been times I’ve recommended it and then they’ve Googled and they’re like, yeah, I read that it was like something that you shouldn’t take with an autoimmune condition. It puts me in a bit of rough position because it’s like they might read that and be like, you just know this. I have looked into this. It’s just, I’m not at a point where I think that it matters, but it’s also like, maybe it does matter. How do we know? There’s no research that’s going to that.
Leah:
Yeah, there’s like, obviously from theory, like, maybe, but probably not. But also there’s no basis saying that it is safe for people with autoimmune conditions.
Aidan:
Yeah, it’s just something to note.
Leah:
Some people also report when using ashwagandha, it makes them feel emotionless or like a zombie, like very similar to what some people may experience in taking things like SSRIs, which we kind of hear about a lot. From a theoretical reasoning around like the mechanisms that’s really tricky to interpret, like how is it doing this stuff? I do wonder.
If for some of these people, they don’t know what it’s like to not be stressed and highly strong. I think for some people that can feel like you’re being a zombie or not being quite like yourself because you’re not used to that feeling. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s negative, but hey, if that’s your interpretation, that’s how you feel.
Aidan:
Yeah, it’s so hard to interpret that as well. Like a lot of anecdotal stuff is hard to interpret. Like the same thing with L-theanine. Like a lot of people are like, L-theanine makes me drowsy. It’s like what the research shows that it doesn’t like compared to placebo. But it’s like, what if you were just running on five hours of sleep and you were just severely sleep deprived but stress was keeping you going? I don’t know. like, once again, I do try to set that without judgment. I’m trying to set that being like, I’m curious. Like, is this why you feel that way? I don’t know.
Leah:
You’re just like always in fight or flight mode. And you’re like, as soon as you’re not, you’re like I feel like lethargic or I feel like not the same.
Aidan:
Yeah. Another one that I’ve gotten recently, because every time I post about Ashwagandha on Instagram, there’ll be some kind of comment about the potential downsides that may or may not exist. One I got recently, which I found as a funny one, two people were saying that they felt really, two guys were saying that they felt really aggro and agitated from it. This was on a post I did about muscle growth and they’re like, yeah, my testosterone increased so much that I was like aggro.
Tough one to respond to like the first one I was kind of like I’m saying this kind of seriously but like did you measure your testosterone? Like did you measure it? And like obviously they didn’t like no one was just out there measuring their testosterone before and after supplementation but it was kind of like not as a joke but also just being like do you know that it increased? Like, do know that your testosterone was the cause for this? Like there’s no way you know that you could definitely feel something without that being the reason but then the second thing being around a bunch of people on performance-enhancing drugs
A little bit of testosterone doesn’t seem to make people aggro. Yeah, it doesn’t seem to have that outcome. Many other drugs could explain quote on quote, road rage, but just like slightly higher tests don’t seem to explain that many cases.
The next thing we’re going to talk about is the dosage and how to take it should you wish to take it. So research has used dosages between 200 milligrams and 1000 milligrams. The standard dosage I recommend is 600 milligrams split across two times per day. But the big thing is, how do we know what the best dosage is? I talk about this a bit with like protein supplementation. There’s a reason all of the whey proteins like 30 grams is a serving size and plant-based ones often it’s like 40 grams is the serving size or a slightly larger one.
The reason is that so much research has been done that seems to be the ideal amount. That seems to be an amount that will maximise muscle protein synthesis in most people because the powder might be 30 grams, but the amount of protein would be like 25 or whatever. And then there’s also market testing about being like, if the ideal amount was 80 grams, no one wants that anyway. it’s a combination of a bunch of research from multiple areas. With Ashwagandha, like, let’s say we were like, this does increase muscle growth. We’ll come to that conclusion. How do we know the ideal dosage?
You’ve got to be like 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, just keep going until it caps out and all those downsides and that’s how you find the ideal. We do not have enough research to kind of be at that point. Every now and then when I recommend my standard dosage of 600 milligrams split two times per day, some other people will come and be like, no, I found a thousand works way better.
And it’s like, I don’t know, who am I to argue with that? Like, how do I know? Like, if it’s not causing any downsides? Yeah, like it could be better. I have no idea. I’m just going on based on what I know. That’s my current recommendation. But there’s no reason to say that I won’t change that if I see more research and a bit of a common theme among certain dosages getting better results.
Leah:
Overall, think Ashwagandha is a good it’s going to be a very interesting space to watch as more research is done and we kind of find out more about it and its outcomes. And like you said, from a dosage perspective, also going to be really interesting. And so from a muscle building perspective, it’s a space to watch from muscle building perspective. But also from like stress, anxiety perspective, it’s a space to watch. So probably some cool things that we can see in the future. At this point in time, it’s in that weird space still there.
Aidan:
This has been episode 142. As always, if you could please leave a rating and review, that would be massively appreciated.