Lowers cortisol

>Lowers cortisol
>Boosts testosterone
>Anti inflammatory
>Anti carcinogenic
Redpill me on Ashwaghanda.
Seems to be exactly what I have been looking for as an
endurence athlete trying to combat heightened cortisol levels and inflammation.
What's the catch? I am extremely weary of the supplement industry, as it often boils down to snake oil salesmanship,
but this stuff seems to actually have some science backing it and the effects seem almost to good to be true

Attached: ashwagandha-plant.jpg (640x640, 37K)

Bumping for interest

why would you wanna reduce cortisol

I took ashwaghanda for a month and felt literally no change so I kinda just forgot about it now it just sits in my cabinet

Attached: b90.png (200x226, 26K)

Why did op post himself with that plant

Because it's bad if in your blood at constantly heightened levels, as is often the case if you train for endurance or combat sports.
Fucks with your body in a number of ways, including but not limited to
Making you hold on to fat considerably more, makes your body shed muscle (blocks insulin and testosterone)
Disrupting your sleep and therefore your recovery (this is where you actually get stronger/faster/more enduring)
Promoting inflammation and disrupting your metabolism (obviously not good in more than one way)

>What's the catch?
With Ashwagandha there is no catch it seems. Some people have undesired effects but the vast majority has only positive effects.
It should be cycled so its efficiency is not reduced, I'd recommend 3 weeks on and 1 week off, or something similar.
I personally take NOW Foods Ashwagandha 450 mg (not shilling, buy any brand you want) and it has helped me a lot with sleeping and social anxiety.

wait so if i lift everyday and i'm finding it hard to sleep it's probs due to too much cortisol? is there anyway to limit it with foods?

examine disagrees about testosterone

rest days reduce cortisol

Good info, thank you.
Sleep is my biggest concern right now.
After a challenging workout day, I often fall into bed completely exhausted, but fail to fall asleep.
Sometimes it takes hours of agonising discomfort for me to finally catch some sleep.
Obv. that's especially bad when I wanna put in some work the next day.

what if i don't want to do a rest day

That is very possible, absolutely.
In terms of food, what I managed to find out is basically just your standard clean eating.
Limit sugar, avoid processed shit and all that.
Apparently coffee is really shitty in this regard too, while green tea is supposed to help.
Bananas are good for cortisol too, if I remember correctly.

For sleeping I would recommend ZMA (Also has a lot of other benefits) and melatonin. Taking all 3 will give you more dreams though, which for me is a positive but for other people not.

you'll have high cortisol

Attached: shruggirl.jpg (726x800, 77K)

This is basically the dilemma here.
I wanna train 5-6 days a week, alternating between HIIT running, boxing gym and easy long runs for recovery.
Cortisol doesn't make that easy.

It should logically follow, that if cortisol blocks test, reducing cortisol will increase test effectively.

Do you consume caffeine and sugar? Cut those out. You can still train every day without raising cortisol but if you're having trouble sleeping/recovering you might be overtraining.

I found some ashwagandha extract capsules that contain added magnesium, zinc and a couple of different b vitamins.
ZMA is just zinc magnesium and b6 anyway, right?

I doubt those are of high quality. Ashwagandha is often contaminated with heavy metals from bad brands so I wouldn't risk it. Also I suspect that the dosage would be very low because ZMA capsules are very large already by itself, plus the ashwagandha then I would assume that they reduced the dosages.

Also you're not supposed to take ZMA in the morning because it makes you sleepy, ashwagandha is supposed to be taken in the morning and evening however.

based

Cortisol lowers post exercise, it's the natural rhythm of things:

>high intesity event
>fight or flight
>intense moment of escape/combat
>huge spike in cortisol
>kill aggressor/escape to safety
>cortisol plummets

The problem is modern life causes constant stress and other things like coffee spike your cortisol with no bout of exercise to trigger it's decline. Chances are working out is NOT the cause of sleeping issues, infact cardio a few hours before bed is quite beneficial for quality sleep.

The benefit you're missing about ashwaghanda is it's ability to lower prolactin

I'm getting like 20 and 900mg of zn and mg respectively from food. Way more than the daily recommended dosage. Should that help with cortisol/stress? Do i need to supplement?

RDA is just the minimum you need. If you are eating a lot of zinc rich foods then you probably don't have a zinc deficiency, in which case it's not necessary to supplement with it. It won't help with stress or cortisol. There are other supplements that do help however.