Reading the research on adaptogens: what we know, and what we don't

The term adaptogen was coined in the mid-twentieth century to describe a plant said to raise the body's non-specific resistance to stressors. It was a pharmacological hypothesis before it was a marketing word, and the distinction matters.

What the literature supports is narrower than the term implies. For a small number of plants — Panax ginseng, Withania somnifera, Rhodiola rosea — there are controlled human trials, though typically with modest sample sizes and heterogeneous extracts. For most of the plants sold under the label, the evidence is preclinical: cell culture, animal models, mechanistic hypotheses.

This is not a reason to dismiss the category. It is a reason to describe it accurately. A botanical with two thousand years of traditional use and twenty in vitro papers is interesting; it is not the same as a botanical with a dozen randomised trials, and the difference should be legible in how we write about it.

When we describe an ingredient in this library, we say which of those two things it is.