As someone who studied Ayurved before delving into Chinese Medicine, I appreciate the cross-pollination of materia medica here. Nice write-up!
Ashwagandha (which, fun fact, is Sanskrit for "horse-smelling") is a useful herb for calming, supplementing and strengthening especially in weak, deficient, chilly patients. It's an unusual example of a calming (as opposed to stimulating) adaptogen.
Worth noting that the main contraindication for it in Ayurvedic terms is pitta disorders, which we can gloss generally as heat conditions. Ashwagandha is after all in the hot-natured nightshade family (along with peppers, eggplant, etc.) and some people are just sensitive to this plant family.
Ayurveda often recommends that Ashwagandha be given with or in milk, something you'd never see in Chinese medicine, but which effectively enhances its nutritive, restorative properties. Different strokes!
Thanks for your comment. I have heard from other Ayurvedic practitioners that ashwagandha is warming, but it doesn't seem as if the traditional energetics played much of a role in the authors' rationale. It's definitely good to know, and it makes sense to me that the herb would be considered warming by those who are familiar with it.
I'm also thinking that the evidence presented for the herb's liver functions as stated in the article is a bit weak, but again, I have no clinical experience with it so that is just speculation on my part.
Agreed on the liver channel affinity (or lack thereof), it's not really considered a mood-altering herb or prescribed much on psycho-emotional indications, other than general weakness or what they used to call neurasthenia.
As someone who studied Ayurved before delving into Chinese Medicine, I appreciate the cross-pollination of materia medica here. Nice write-up!
Ashwagandha (which, fun fact, is Sanskrit for "horse-smelling") is a useful herb for calming, supplementing and strengthening especially in weak, deficient, chilly patients. It's an unusual example of a calming (as opposed to stimulating) adaptogen.
Worth noting that the main contraindication for it in Ayurvedic terms is pitta disorders, which we can gloss generally as heat conditions. Ashwagandha is after all in the hot-natured nightshade family (along with peppers, eggplant, etc.) and some people are just sensitive to this plant family.
Ayurveda often recommends that Ashwagandha be given with or in milk, something you'd never see in Chinese medicine, but which effectively enhances its nutritive, restorative properties. Different strokes!
Thanks for your comment. I have heard from other Ayurvedic practitioners that ashwagandha is warming, but it doesn't seem as if the traditional energetics played much of a role in the authors' rationale. It's definitely good to know, and it makes sense to me that the herb would be considered warming by those who are familiar with it.
I'm also thinking that the evidence presented for the herb's liver functions as stated in the article is a bit weak, but again, I have no clinical experience with it so that is just speculation on my part.
Thanks for reading!
Agreed on the liver channel affinity (or lack thereof), it's not really considered a mood-altering herb or prescribed much on psycho-emotional indications, other than general weakness or what they used to call neurasthenia.