⊹ To weave around
To accompany Ashwagandha
Click a card to see why it pairs — and choose your form.
⊹ Community voices
What the community murmurs.
4.8/522 reviews, including 19 left on our Etsy shop · 3 of them average 5/5
Excellent product. I have been using it for several days. I found shape and dynamism. In addition, despite the stress, I remain calm. Very surprising.
Gwenaelle
Using it twice a day and can def see a difference. Keeping me mellow and balanced. Works great in a hot beverage!
Lauren Carrozzi
Ashwagandha being an adaptogen is great, so you can mix it with most things. I like it with guarana, but it's also pleasant with apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and hot water too.
James
✦ Ashwagandha · in one breath ✦
The strength of the horse — an adaptogenic root of Ayurveda.
Signature INFUSEIntensity · scored out of 10
| terrain that settles | 10/10 | |
|---|---|---|
| vajikari-strength of the horse | 10/10 | |
| deep rasayana | 9/10 | |
| 21-day / 3-month / 1-year course | 9/10 | |
| morning milk | 9/10 |
Register smell of wet horse, a root of heat and earth · India's vaidyas · Charaka Samhita · Sushruta Samhita · Frawley & Lad
⊹ The path of the plant
⊹ FREQUENT QUESTIONS ⊹
We answer.
Should I take ashwagandha in the morning or in the evening?
Both gestures exist: the warm milk in the evening, or the cup in the morning. Ayurvedic tradition often favours the evening milk. She is a plant of rooting: choose the moment when you seek to come down.
What is the difference between ashwagandha root powder and a standardised extract?
The whole root powder (what INFUSE offers) contains the complete cortege of compounds of Withania somnifera, in the form Ayurveda has prepared for centuries. A third-party standardised extract concentrates certain compounds and provides a more consistent dose, but moves away from the root as she grows. INFUSE chooses the whole root, slower, closer to the plant.
How long before I feel the effects of ashwagandha?
Tradition reads Ashwagandha in long time — about twenty-one days for the first signs, three months for deep reconstruction, one year to change foundations. She is a plant of the long run. Patience is part of taking her.
How to prepare ashwagandha powder?
The classic way — one teaspoon (3 to 5 g) in 250 ml of warm milk, plant-based or animal, with a pinch of cardamom or cinnamon, simmered five minutes. The fat and gentle heat carry the plant deep within. She can also be mixed into a smoothie or porridge. No need to filter.
Is ashwagandha legal?
Freely sold in France. Check the law in your country.
What precautions should I take before using ashwagandha?
Caution in case of thyroid disorder or treatment (she can affect the thyroid), pregnancy or breastfeeding (insufficient data), hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, and Solanaceae allergy. Rare cases of liver damage have been reported. Stop two weeks before surgery. When in doubt, consult before starting.
All questions
Ashwagandha or rhodiola: which should I choose?
Two adaptogens, two different gestures. Ashwagandha is a root of long courses, taken in warm milk — a plant of ground. Rhodiola is generally taken in the morning, over shorter periods.
Can I take ashwagandha every day, long term?
This is even how tradition reads her — a plant of course, taken continuously over several weeks then in windows with pauses. The dried root slowly loses activity over time (the herbal literature places this decline at around two years), hence the value of buying quantities you will use within the year. For long-term treatment, ask a practitioner's advice.
Is it okay to take ashwagandha for sleep?
Her botanical name already speaks of the night: Withania somnifera, from the Latin somnifera, “which brings sleep”. In Ayurveda the root is drunk in the evening, stirred into warm milk, over several weeks. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, receiving thyroid treatment or taking any medication, ask a doctor first (see the precautions above).
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In depthbotany · phytochemistry · historyRead
Botany — a nightshade that smells of horse
Ashwagandha is botanically Withania somnifera (L.) Dunal, of the Solanaceae family — the family of the tomato, the potato, henbane and mandrake. The root is slender and smooth, thirty to forty centimetres long and one to two centimetres thick; the orange-yellow seeds measure one to two millimetres (Rätsch, Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants, p. 543). She can be confused with Withania frutescens (Mediterranean), Withania aristata (Canary Islands) and small Physalis. Her native range forms a broad belt from North Africa and the Middle East, across the Arabian Peninsula, to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia: she thrives in dry climates and poor soils, which already says something about her temperament.
The name carries the plant. Ashva (horse) + gandha (smell) in Sanskrit: the root is said to smell of wet horse. The species name somnifera is Latin for "sleep-bringing". In English she is also called Indian ginseng and winter cherry (in French, ginseng indien); her botanical basionym is Physalis somnifera L. The chemistry of the root differs from that of the leaf, and most commercial supplements use the root (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements). INFUSE works with the whole root, ground to a powder, and uses no third-party standardised extract.
Phytochemistry — the withanolides and their companions
The signature compounds of Withania somnifera are the withanolides, a group of steroidal lactones named after the genus Withania, among them withaferin A. The root also holds sitoindosides (glycosides), alkaloids in modest amounts (tropine, cuscohygrine, withasomnine), choline, fatty acids and amino acids. The composition varies with the part of the plant, its origin and the age of the root, which is why a concentrated isolate does not match the root as it grows. This page names these compounds descriptively and attaches no promise of effect to them.
Lineage and long history — from rasayana to adaptogens
In Ayurvedic medicine, ashwagandha belongs to the rasayana, the rejuvenating plants. The word says literally "the path the rasa takes" — rasa being the plasma, the primordial tissue; the rasayana are the plants that sustain vitality over the long term (Winston & Maimes, Adaptogens, pp. 40-41; Frawley & Lad, The Yoga of Herbs, pp. 254-255). Named in the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita, she carries several function-names there — balya (strength-giving), vajikari ("that makes one like a horse"), vrushya (plant of desire), rasayana (rejuvenating), pustida (nourishing) — which sum up the range of her traditional uses (status: attributed traditional use). Frawley and Lad describe her as sattvic, one of the best herbs for the mind, "nurturing and clarifying", calming and promoting "deep dreamless sleep"; energetically bitter, astringent and sweet, and warming, she lowers Vata and Kapha and raises Pitta.
Her map reaches beyond India. Rätsch notes that she was known in ancient Egypt, that she may have been used in Mesopotamia (if the reading of the Assyrian name is right), and that early Arabic sources called her sakran, "intoxicating". In India the aerial parts are smoked for coughs and asthma; the Assyrians used the root as a fumigant for aching teeth, and in Yemen the root is still used for toothache (Rätsch, pp. 542-544). In the twentieth century, Soviet research (Lazarev, then Brekhman) defined the category of adaptogens, into which ashwagandha is now placed.
What the studies report — with caution
Most of the clinical research on ashwagandha concerns concentrated extracts, rarely the whole root. These studies describe observations; their findings do not apply to everyone and do not establish a medical use. The heart of the traditional use, the slow restoration of the reserve, has no single laboratory correlate.
Safety and points of use
Several signals call for caution. On the thyroid, rises in T4 have been reported, a fall in TSH in subclinical hypothyroidism, and rare cases of thyrotoxicosis that resolved once the plant was stopped: monitoring and medical advice are needed with any thyroid treatment. Rare cases of liver injury, sometimes severe, have been linked to ashwagandha supplements — most often reversible after stopping use and involving products whose composition was not always verified. During pregnancy and breastfeeding, a potential abortifacient effect has been suggested (the American Herbal Products Association contests it) and the data are insufficient: avoid use without supervision. Caution is also advised with hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, for heat constitutions (Pitta), since the root is warming, and with a nightshade (Solanaceae) allergy. Stop two weeks before scheduled surgery. The dried root slowly loses its activity (herbal literature puts this decline at around two years): keep it away from light and damp. This page documents a lineage and traditional uses; it is not medical advice, and in case of doubt the opinion of a health professional comes before the plant.
