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Ashwagandha And Sleep

Whether it be because of increases in stress associated with everyday life or the overuse of technology like smartphones, there has been a significant increase in people who have sleep issues in recent years. While some people may think this relates solely to recognised conditions like insomnia, sleep issues can be as simple as the inability to get to sleep quickly, stay asleep for long, or wake up feeling refreshed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the use of medications designed to help people sleep has increased at a similar rate over the same time period. Now, while these medications can be very effective, they may also lead to side effects as well. That is why, in most cases, herbal supplements are a far superior option.

One of the best herbal supplements of this kind is ashwagandha, which has seen its popularity soar in the last few years. It can promote the same kind of improvements to a person’s sleep wake cycle as prescription medications, without the risk of any nasty side effects, making it perfect in every way.

So, what is ashwagandha and how do you use it? Well, that is exactly what we are going to look at now.

Table of Contents

What Is Ashwagandha?

Ashwagandha is an adaptogenic herb made from the roots of an evergreen shrub with various names, including winter cherry, withania somnifera and Indian ginseng. Used in ayurvedic medicine and other forms of traditional medicine in Asia for centuries, due to the extensive range of health benefits that it was believed to offer, more recent clinical studies have proven that most of the claims of its supporters are indeed true.

These benefits include relieving anxiety, depression, and stress, reducing or preventing inflammation, boosting energy and testosterone production and levels, enhancing brain and heart health and function, exercise performance, and your mood, improving your sleep latency, cycle and quality, lowering blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and combatting diseases, infections, and health issues, such as arthritis (1).

Learn more surprising benefits of ashwagandha here.

While simply taking pure, natural ashwagandha can produce most of these benefits, it is quite hard to obtain. Not only that, but there is also no guarantee that you will be getting a good quality version of the compound. That is why using a nutritional supplement that contains it is usually the best way to take ashwagandha, as it is both convenient and ensures that you know exactly what you are using and the results it is likely to produce.

How Does Ashwagandha Help With Sleep?

Reduces Stress

Beyond its ability to help you sleep, perhaps the best known benefit of ashwagandha supplementation is the fact that it can reduce stress, which it achieves by preventing the production of a hormone known as cortisol. This will relieve feelings like anxiety, making it far easier to drift off to sleep and stay that way (2).

Supports The Nervous System

Ashwagandha also has a calming effect on the nervous system, which helps to regulate its functions. It can help to balance the activity of the autonomic nervous system, which controls various involuntary functions in the human body, such as a person’s heart rate and digestive system, while also boosting the parasympathetic nervous system (3).

Both of these effects are very beneficial to sleep on their own, but when produced in combination with one another they create the perfect situation to calm the body and prepare it for a high quality of sleep.

Improves Sleep Latency

Sleep latency or sleep onset refers specifically to how long it takes a person to fall asleep. Many studies have shown that ashwagandha supplementation can help to boost sleep latency, which not only allows for a quicker and more restful onset of sleep but will also reduce the feelings of stress that can build up when drifting off becomes difficult, which we have already seen will impair sleep quality on its own (4).

Enhances Sleep Quality & Duration

While ashwagandha supplementation can help a person sleep in a number of indirect ways, it also helps to improve sleep quality directly too. What is particularly noteworthy is the fact there is evidence that ashwagandha helps improve the duration of deep sleep that you get and reduce sleep disturbances.

As REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is the most restorative kind, keeping you in it for a longer, uninterrupted period will lead to far more restful and restorative sleep that you would get from combining lots of naps that were nowhere near as deep (5).

Increases Neurotransmitter Production & Activity

Numerous studies have shown that ashwagandha can increase the production and activity of certain neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). These neurotransmitters are well known to promote relaxation and reduce neural excitability, which will help to aid sleep regulation and further ensure that the sleep you do receive is of a higher quality (6).

This will also improve your mood, help you unwind, and further reduce feelings of anxiety, irritability, stress, and nervousness, all of which will help create a much better situation in which for a person to fall and stay asleep.

Learn 5 (More) Surprising Benefits of Ashwagandha

Regulates Certain Hormone Levels

In addition to regulating the production of neurotransmitters, ashwagandha has a similar effect on certain hormones too. This is because it has a positive effect on the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis, which is what controls the body’s stress response.

In times of great stress, the HPA axis signals the body to release cortisol, which we have already looked at, as well as other hormones, in an effort to try and remedy the situation. The problem is, it often goes into overdrive and ends up doing more harm than good.

By preventing this overreaction from occurring and actually reducing the intensity of your body’s stress response, it will stop you from becoming stressed over the smallest things, help you feel calm, and make it easier to relax, all of which are extremely beneficial for your sleep latency and quality (7).