I Keep Hearing About Adaptogens for Helping With Stress. What Are They and Which Are Your Favorites?

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I keep hearing about adaptogens for helping with stress. What are they and which are your favorites? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Alex Ask the Health Expert. Jilly from Instagram asks, I keep hearing about adaptogens for helping with stress. What are they and which are your favorites? Hey, it's J.J. and I've got Serena Poon here today to answer this question. She's a Le Cordon Bleu trained chef, certified nutritionist, and Reiki Master to the Hollywood elite. She started by creating contemporary meals, nutrition plans, and many menus for the likes of everyone from Jerry Bruckheimer to Kerry Washington to Sean P. Diddy Combs. Her passion for integrative health and holistic nutrition led her to create Culinary Alchemy, a method of functional and spiritual nutrition that integrates how food affects our bodies on a physiological and energetic level. She's also a crazy good gift giver. I've gotten some of my favorite crystals from her. We'll be right back to answer this question, so stay with me.

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I love Adaptogens. They are an absolute wonderful source of natural therapeutics. Adaptogens are basically non toxic plants like their roots and herbs that are used to help our body balance our stressors. You know, whether they are, whether they're physical, chemical or biological. And these herbs and roots have been used for centuries in Chinese and Ayurvedic healing traditions. But they're kind of basically getting a lot more traction now. They're much more mainstream and popular today, which I love because I've been using Adaptogens for many, many years. And it's amazing that it's getting more attention and that people are so much more open to incorporating it into their, into their lifestyles, into their diet and just like their healing protocols. So say something like, holy basil. It can be eaten as part of a meal, it can be consumed as a tea, it can be consumed as a supplement. So that's one of the amazing things about Adaptogens is that you can take it in in different forms, which is great because some people don't like supplements. Some people prefer to not have to tast an herb that may have a very specific flavor. So there's so many different ways that you can incorporate Adeptogens into your diet. But when you do take them, think of it as if you are training your body to handle the effects of stress. This is because the plants are interacting with the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, the HPA and the sympathoadrenal system, which are both involved in the body's response to stress. So these adaptogens may Kind of help tweak hormone production and physiological responses to stress to ensure that your body, from your mind to your immune system to your energy levels, functions as it should, really helps to balance it out. So Ashwagandha is another one of my favorite supportive adaptogens. Ashwagandha has been used in Ayurvedic medicine and practices for thousands of years. It's an herb that's known to help regulate stress and balance, keep the homeostasis in the body. And traditionally ashwagandha is used to treat loss of memory loss, nervous exhaustion, insomnia. But it's been found over time to help with other health conditions as well. So obviously it's used to counteract the symptoms of stress. It can help with the symptoms of anxiety and depression. And you know, by supporting stress, anxiety and depression type of symptoms. It also supports brain health, cognitive functions, it can help decrease inflammation in the body. All of these things help support healthy sleep, and it can also help support thyroid health, it can help with testosterone production in men. And so it's an amazing herb that's helpful in all these different ways. And there have been many studies that suggest that a high concentration and full spectrum ashwagandha root extract can actually be taken safely and effectively to really help someone balance out intense stress. And so, you know, it's, it's, if you're going to use ashwagandha, it's recommended to be taken, you know, when you're having those, those moments where you're feeling stressed or you may even be feeling panic. It can also be really, really good to be taken near bedtime because it's obviously, you know, we talk about, it's linked to having calming effects. And I actually personally use ashwagandha on a daily basis. I feel that it just really helps support my body and it just helps keep everything in balance. And it's something that I recommend for my clients as well. The two other adaptogens that I really love is rhodiola and holy basil, that I already mentioned. So rhodiola is an adaptogenic herb known for its capacity to alter hormones. So alter may be a strong word, but it really has been found to improve energy levels, mental performance. There was a study in 2000 that showed that rhodiola improved mental performance and fatigue for students who were taking, you know, it was during their exam periods. It's also been shown to decrease cortisol levels. And in one double blinded randomized controlled trial, subjects with stress related fatigue were given two daily doses for about 28 days. And the results showed decreased cortisol levels, reduced stress. So, you know, when you're taking these type of supplements, it's really important to take a look at the labels very carefully, make sure that you're getting a clean, organic product that doesn't have a lot of other additives in it. And so, and so that is one of my favorites. And another one would be holy basil that I'd already mentioned a couple times. And holy basil is a leaf that's. It's not your typical basil plant that you find, you know, on, like, your pizza or people use in cooking. It also has another name. It's also known as tulsi. So you might often see Tulsi rose tea. And this plant is native to Southeast Asia. It's been shown to have, you know, great improvements for cognitive function. It's helped with. It helps with cortisol levels. It can help with. It can help with cognition enhancing for some people that. There was a study, I think it was in 2015, 2016, where participants were given about 300 grams of holy basil for 30 days. And the researchers found that it really helped to enhance brain health. So I feel that it's most effective taken as a supplement. But you can also take it, you know, supplement in like a tincture form or you can do it in a capsule or a pill form. But I really do love that Tulsi tea that's often paired with rose. It's just very comforting, very healing, and very relaxing.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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