Dr Norman Swan

speaker

26,995 appearances 288 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2006 last heard 15 Sep

Dr Norman Swan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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What's That Rash? · Ashwagandha: what's the evidence? · 21 Jul 2026 podcast

Because it's not one thing.

It's a melange of different substances which can have varying effects each on their own, which is why...

The pharmaceutical industry has an interest in ashwagandha.

Are one or two of these constituents of ashwagandha possible drugs for the future?

Well, again, you don't get the benefit without the downside.

And what people have not shown is whether or not there are... Most of the studies are short-term, without long-term safety.

And you don't know the relapse rate.

You don't know head-to-head whether it's better than having psychotherapy, for example, or better than having an SSRI.

What's it like head-to-head with other treatments?

Again, I'm not going to go over all the caveats that I've just had, but they apply to the sleep research as well.

But if you synthesize it, if there is a sleep effect, it seems to be more prominent in people with insomnia rather than just, you know, I have trouble getting off to sleep once every so often.

And what we still, again, don't know about sleep is does it restore a normal sleep pattern?

What happens when you stop it?

There are very effective treatments for insomnia, usually based on psychotherapy rather than drugs.

And drugs are not recommended over an extended period of time.

So it's quite possible it has a somnolent effect.

I mean, there are other things in the ashwagandha as well.

which it's not entirely obvious why it would have an effect on stress, anxiety and sleep, because a lot of the beneficial compounds, the appearing compounds in ashwagandha seem to be having antioxidant effects on the body.

So they may be anti-inflammatory effects.

So they slow down the tissue aging process, the oxidative stress.

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