Best Ashwagandha Supplements
Ashwagandha has long been respected in traditional medicine for its ability to refine focus, streamline a stress-free mind, and more. Here, you’ll find some of the best ashwagandha supplements available today.
Ashwagandha is a herb largely native to India’s wetlands, where it has a long history of use in traditional forms of medicine. You may also find it called ‘Indian ginseng’ or ‘Winter Cherry’.
Ayurveda, an Indian natural healing process, uses it as one of its key ingredients, where it is well-known for its ability to mitigate the symptoms of stress, bolster focus and concentration, and improve energy levels.
The word ‘ashwagandha’ comes from the Sanskrit for ‘the smell of the horse’. This partly refers to the herb’s quite potent scent. However, it is also thought to refer to its ability to boost strength and vitality.
Modern research is beginning to back up a lot of these ancient claims. As we’ll see, there are plenty of data-backed benefits that you can gain from taking ashwagandha supplements. There are also plenty of high-quality ashwagandha supplements out there, and here we’ll be looking at a few of the best.
Our Top Rated Ashwagandha Supplement
Our Top Ashwagandha Supplements
To find out more about the benefits of ashwagandha, keep reading past our top recommendations. For now, let’s kick off our list of the best ashwagandha supplements…
Nutrition Geeks Ashwagandha Calm+
Firstly, I want to look at Ashwagandha Calm+ by Nutrition Geeks. Where the middle of this list will be dominated by pure, unadulterated ashwagandha with largely little else involved (certainly no other active ingredients), I want to begin with a big one.
Ashwagandha Calm+ is a complete data-led, clinically justified ashwagandha complex with some of the most potent ashwagandha going, with a range of added extras.
It includes a formidable B vitamin complex, several nootropic amino acids, and black pepper extract for improved bioavailability.
It really has been very intelligently thought out.
Everything included has been blended using clinically valid, well-studied ingredients proven to do what the supplement’s name promises – everything is there to help to keep you calm, overcoming the symptoms of stress and anxiety, improving your quality of sleep, and overall giving you a better quality of life.
Their ashwagandha root extract gives 35% withanolide glycosides, which is really quite incredible – that’s around 10 times the industry standard, the amount that other companies offer by using lesser, basic ashwagandha or KSM 66 ashwagandha.
This being said, it’s not really that pricey. I would have expected it to come in at a much higher price point, given the quality, potency, and mix of ingredients. We have Nutrition Geeks’ packaging to thank for this. Its flat and letterbox-friendly packaging reduces costs in storage and postage, consequently reducing the cost for us consumers.
It’s all vegetarian and vegan friendly, free from gluten and dairy, and Nutrition Geeks try to ensure as small a carbon footprint as possible. High ethical standards lie at the heart of everything they do.
The full ingredients list includes l-theanine and l-tryptophan – two amino acids often found in higher-end nootropic supplements for their calming effects and cognitive benefits – black pepper extract, magnesium stearate, and that B vitamin complex, vitamins B6 and B12.
You get an equivalent of 2,400 mg of ashwagandha in each serving, making it one of the most generously dosed supplements of its kind that I’ve ever come across.
Simply take a capsule an hour or so before sleeping and then relax, safe in the knowledge that you’re well supported by a high-quality, ethical, potent supplement made by some genuinely brilliant people.
Yumi Nutrition Ashwagandha Gummies
Yumi Nutrition are pretty much my go-to supplement company when I want gummies. There are two main reasons for that:
First of all – they taste great.
Secondly – they are packed full of high-quality ingredients, and are flavoured using natural juices rather than artificial sources.
Their Ashwagandha gummies are just about the tastiest supplement I’ve every tried. Now, to be fair – that shouldn’t be your primary concern. But for anyone who wants to encourage consistency with taking an ashwagandha supplement (and consistency is key with supplements), then this will help for sure.
You get 1,200mg of ashwagandha powder per 2-gummy serving and that comes with 10 calories – likely made up of the elderberry, carrot and hibiscus juices used in each gummy.
Now 1,200mg is not as much as the 2,400mg you get from Nutrition Geeks’ offering, but it is in line with most others. I found it really helped with feeling relaxed and my sleep routine, and even saw an improvement in my recovery from strength training when testing it for a month.
It’s not the cheapest, but when stacked against other gummies it compares well – and is all high quality and made by a UK company.
New Leaf part I: Ashwagandha Tablets
Next up, we’re taking a turn towards New Leaf, with their high-quality ashwagandha tablets.
New Leaf are a fantastic company, known for excellent products and value. They’re a well-respected, trusted company with a broad range of vitamins, minerals, and supplements in their range.
Everything is made to as high a quality as possible, manufactured and packaged in the UK under strict quality standards before being independently third-party lab tested by the UK & Europe’s largest testing facilities, Eurofins, for purity, ensuring no heavy metals or anything else you don’t want getting in there.
Everything is ethically and sustainably sourced, and all of their products are brought to you in recyclable value-filled bottles.
Their ashwagandha extract tablets are well-dosed, with 1,200mg of ashwagandha root from a 20:1 extract contained in every serving. This means high quality and good potency, with nothing extra or unnecessary.
The only added ingredients you get on top of the ashwagandha are a bulking agent, microcrystalline cellulose, and an anti-caking agent, magnesium stearate.
One serving is made up of two easily swallowed tablets and makes up your entire daily need. Each bottle should give you a six-month supply of 365 tablets, meaning that you will only need two bottles to see you through for an entire year. It really is well-priced and convenient.
The tablets are all completely vegetarian and vegan friendly and are both GMO and gluten free.
It’s high-quality, no-nonsense stuff, designed solely to give you a good ashwagandha kick with all of the benefits that that entails.
New Leaf part II: Ashwagandha Gummies
Here’s another great capsule alternative for those of us who don’t like swallowing tablets – New Leaf’s Ashwagandha Gummies.
As with their ashwagandha tablets, New Leaf’s gummies are as pure as you can get, giving you much the same kind of dose.
They use a high strength 30:1 ashwagandha extract taken from a full 40 mg of pure ashwagandha root. This in turn delivers 1,200 mg per serving, with a serving made up of two gummies.
So, very similar to their tablets indeed, and well dosed, if not the most potent on this list.
The quality is exactly where you want it, too. Their ashwagandha root is premium, containing 5% withanolides. This is a couple of percentage points higher than most brands offer.
The recipe is more involved than you get with New Leaf’s tablets. This is inevitable when you’re looking at gummies, however.
Everything is still completely vegetarian and vegan friendly (not always a given with chewables) and is free from gluten and GMO ingredients. There are no artificial colours, flavours, or preservatives, with everything coming from fruit juice (including the pectin needed to make the jelly-like substance in the first place).
As well as the pectin and the ashwagandha itself, you get glucose syrup and sugar, maltodextrin, acidity regulator (trisodium citrate), coconut oil, anthocyanins for colour, magnesium citrate, glazing agents (carnauba wax), and good old-fashioned water.
Simply chew on two gummies daily, enjoying the taste and texture of sweeties with something that is really quite good for your health.
NOW Supplements Ashwagandha
Now onto one of my favourite natural supplement companies, NOW Supplements, with their Ashwagandha tablets.
NOW keep their supplements affordable without compromising on quality, allowing as many people as possible the chance to be their best, healthiest selves. They have a broad array of vitamins, minerals, botanicals, and the like on their roster, bringing plenty to the market, all aimed at meeting their mission statement of empowering healthy living.
NOW are a legacy, family-owned business and a key voice behind the project Vitamin Angels, who are devoted to bolstering the wider natural supplement community and bringing the industry up as a whole, improving the state of our nutrient availability.
NOW have over five decades’ worth of experience to draw from and back their products, during which time they have fostered a reputation for complete transparency through the entire design and manufacturing process, as well as rigorous product testing and quality control. If you’re buying from them, you’re buying good.
This shows in the accolades they have enjoyed over the years. They are the recipients of plenty of industry awards, all of them standing testament to NOW’s innovation and the rigour with which they create some of the best supplements going.
Their ashwagandha quite unsurprisingly follows this same trend. They use a standard extract to give you 450 mg per serving with 2 – 3 servings recommended throughout the day.
They ask you to split things up, which may be inconvenient, and which I think is largely unnecessary. Take a few at once to get a good 1,350 mg of ashwagandha, making it a fraction more potent than previous items on this list.
NOW Supplements’ ashwagandha is certified non-GMO, kosher, free from dairy, eggs, nuts, soy, and gluten, and everything is vegetarian and vegan friendly.
They are GMP quality assured with an NPA A-rating, meaning that every element of their production process and packaging has been scrutinised by third parties, meaning all their products are pure, potent and safe.
Qualia Resilience
Finally, we have Qualia Resilience, a well-thought-out, quite complex combination of 17 separate ingredients that should represent what the manufacturer calls ‘a whole-system solution’.
It contains a new form of liposomal ashwagandha as a cornerstone of this formula, which should go a long way to improving your resilience to stress and anxiety.
Qualia Resilience can enhance your brain’s ability to more ably process stress, especially under adverse conditions, which should allow you to remain calm no matter what life throws at you. It manages this in large part by supporting several cognitive processes alongside the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system, whilst also inspiring more balanced cortisol and adrenal function.
Qualia have a lot of data to back this up, though plenty of it comes from their own labs, so should be treated with caution.
Their beta study found that nearly everyone who took Qualia Resilience benefited from at least one aspect of its purported benefits, including improved resilience, mental toughness, improvements to overall calm, stress support, mitigating fatigue related to stress, and improved cognitive performance.
This isn’t all down to ashwagandha, of course – though it is a big player in Qualia Resilience’s formula.
For instance, it uses Extramal®, a patented, freeze-dried form of melon juice sourced from Southern French cantaloupe. It contains plenty of superoxide dismutase (SOD), an incredibly potent antioxidant. It has been shown to reduce perceived stress whilst promoting an overall sense of improved natural wellbeing.
You also get holy basil, eleuthero root extract, and ginger root extract, amongst others. Combined, these should add to the overall stress reduction, improved mental capacity for stress and work, and resilience that Qualia Resilience seeks to offer.
Then there is the ashwagandha itself, present here as both root and leaf extract. It comes as the patented Noogandha®(noo for ‘nootropic’, of course). It’s a branded liposomal ashwagandha form known for its ability to work as a nootropic at low doses. It is here both to aid in overcoming stress and boosting resilience whilst also improving overall cognitive health and function.
It’s one of the more complex ashwagandha supplements going, with a more complex host of benefits on offer than most. If you want something akin to full brain and body support against stress and fatigue, then Qualia Resilience is a very, very good option.
Verdict
There is a lot to love on this list. I’ve given you some truly tremendous supplements, here. But which should you go with?
If you are just looking for a good-quality source of ashwagandha and nothing else, I would encourage you to pick from the middle of this list. I particularly like NOW Supplements, though there is little to separate their offering from New Leaf’s. If you want tablets, go with them. If you want something a little more exciting, New Leaf’s gummies may be worth looking into.
However, we can all do a little better than basic. If you’re looking for the complete package, something that doesn’t just dose you with ashwagandha and hope for the best but rather does its utmost to optimise its calming effects and give you the best mental wellbeing benefits going, I would go with Ashwagandha Calm+ from Nutrition Geeks.
It’s very potent. The ashwagandha is as pure as it comes. In giving you likely more ashwagandha than you will ever be able to absorb, it is maximising the benefits to the limit every time.
Then there are the added extras, the amino acids and B vitamins. All of these should combine brilliantly to give you a sense of calm that I’ve rarely come across from any supplement. All the benefits of ashwagandha use should be yours, and then some. It really is brilliant.
Ashwagandha Benefits
There are plenty of benefits to be gained from regular ashwagandha consumption, many of which have been backed by modern clinical data. For instance, you can use it for:
Overcoming stress and anxiety
This is the main one, the benefit for which most of us take ashwagandha. It is one of the best ingredients available for mitigating the effects of stress and anxiety.
This is because it’s a potent adaptogen, a type of substance that helps your body to better deal with stress, particularly the stress hormone cortisol. It also seems able to control other stress mediators, like heat shock proteins and stress-activated protein kinase.
It can also reduce hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity, one of the main stress response regulating systems in the body.
Data back up its use for overcoming stress and anxiety symptoms. For instance, one study looking at 58 participants found that doses of 250 or 600 mg daily significantly reduced perceived stress levels after just two months compared to a control group taking a placebo. This was accompanied by an equally significant drop in cortisol levels.
This has a knock-on effect to sleep, too. Participants also reported far better sleep quality when taking ashwagandha compared to the control group.
Improving overall mental wellbeing
It’s not all about mitigating stress and anxiety symptoms. The mental health benefits to be gained from regular ashwagandha use may go further. It has been shown to have great promise in overcoming symptoms of depression in some.
One study looked at schizophrenia patients. It found that a daily intake of 1,000 mg of ashwagandha extract for three months reduced the severity of their depression and anxiety symptoms. Another study suggested that it may help with schizophrenia more broadly, improving all symptoms.
There is also some tentative data suggesting that ashwagandha may help those suffering with bipolar disorder to overcome cognitive impairment. Those suffering with stress have seen a three-quarters reduction in depression when taking 600 mg of ashwagandha extract daily for two months.
Improving athleticism
Ashwagandha may also have a role in boosting athletic performance. Research has suggested that it may grant athletes improvements to oxygen use and physical strength during training.
An analysis of research looked at a dozen studies in which athletes of both sexes took daily doses of anywhere from 120 mg and 1,250 mg of ashwagandha and was able to tentatively back up these claims.
One analysis found that ashwagandha significantly improved athletes’ VO2 – their oxygen consumption capabilities.
Another study looking at men in resistance training and taking 600 mg of ashwagandha daily for eight weeks showed greater improvements in muscular strength compared to a control group.
Boosting men’s sexual health and testosterone output
Ashwagandha is often used in testosterone boosting supplements thanks to data suggesting that it may help to promote higher testosterone output whilst also improving male fertility.
It has been shown to increase levels of the sex hormone DHEA-S, associated with testosterone production, by nearly a fifth in overweight men above the age of 40. This resulted in an average 15% increase in testosterone over the placebo group.
Ashwagandha has also been found to significantly increase semen volume and sperm production and motility in men with low sperm count, whilst also boosting sperm concentration and motility with those with more average sperm counts.
Working as a mild nootropic
Ashwagandha has been found to aid cognitive function, particularly working memory, executive function, attention, and cognitive task performance – which is why it is found in a range of nootropic supplements.
One study looking at 50 healthy adults found that daily doses of 600 mg of ashwagandha extract for two months could lead to significant improvements in both immediate and general memory, as well as attention and processing speed.
In addition, the antioxidant compounds delivered by ashwagandha could play a key role in maintaining cognitive health.
