Ashwagandha Capsules — the smell of the horse, the calm of the still pool

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) is a root of the Ayurvedic tradition, listed there among the rasayana plants. With nine other botanicals and four B vitamins.

A clean cream pot, the green band of our label running around it like a forest line. Ninety vegan capsules inside. The dose is gentle — one capsule, one to three times a day, with water, with or without food. Most people take one in the morning and find that's plenty.

That's how plants in this category tend to work. Not with fireworks. With patience.

These are our ashwagandha capsules: ninety to a pot, suitable for vegetarians and vegans, kosher and halal approved. We sell this ashwagandha UK-wide.

Ashwagandha — Withania somnifera — is a small bushy nightshade, about a metre tall, growing in dry sandy soil from Yemen to the Punjab. The leaves are oval and softly hairy. The flowers are tiny and greenish. The fruit is a small red-orange berry held inside a papery lantern, like a miniature version of its cousin the Cape gooseberry. None of it would catch your eye on a country walk. The interesting part is buried.

The root — pale, woody, the thickness of a man's thumb — is what the rasayana tradition harvests. Crushed, the fresh root smells faintly of horse. The Sanskrit name says it directly: ashwa = horse, gandha = smell.

Ashwagandha appears in the Charaka Samhita and has been part of Ayurvedic practice for more than two thousand years; in Indian villages the dried root is still ground and stirred into warm milk.

Ashwagandha root contains compounds called withanolides. The richest, best-characterised commercial extract is called KSM-66 — a full-spectrum root extract standardised to a known withanolide content, made by a slow milk-and-water process that preserves the natural ratio of the plant's chemistry. We use KSM-66 ashwagandha at 400mg equivalent weight from extract per capsule, which is a meaningful daily dose.

It is ashwagandha root extract (KSM66, Withania somnifera), given on the label as 400mg equivalent weight per capsule. That makes this an ashwagandha vitamin formula as well as a herbal one: each capsule also lists niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), B6 and B12.

In the high pastures of Tibet and Bhutan — between four and five thousand metres — there grows a strange fungus that begins its life inside a moth caterpillar overwintering in the soil. As spring comes, the fungus consumes the caterpillar from within and sends a slim brown fruiting body up through the snow. Tibetan herders gather them by hand and dry them in the sun. They have been a centrepiece of Tibetan and Chinese tradition for at least four hundred documented years, and almost certainly far longer in oral tradition.

What modern cultivation has done — and this is one of the genuinely good developments in the last thirty years of botanical sourcing — is replicate the Cordyceps sinensis fruiting body on plant substrate, without the caterpillar, in clean controlled conditions. Cordyceps extract equivalent to 200mg. We will say it has earned its place in this formula through five hundred years of Himalayan use.

The taproot of Panax ginseng — five to seven years old, dug from the cool forest floor of the Korean peninsula or the Heilongjiang river basin — is one of the most studied traditional plants. The Chinese name rén shēn means man root — a reference to the way mature roots branch into something resembling arms and legs. Korean insam tea, made by simmering a whole root with red dates, is a traditional winter morning ritual.

The combination is a long-standing herbal pairing in modern Asian formulation.

Above 4,000 metres in the Junín plateau of Peru — a place so cold and windswept that almost nothing else grows — Quechua farmers have cultivated a small radish-like tuber for at least two thousand years. It is maca — Lepidium meyenii — and it has been the staple energy food of the Andean highland population since long before the Inca empire. Maca is here at 200mg per capsule, alongside ginseng and ashwagandha.

Liquorice root (100mg) — Glycyrrhiza glabra — is the deglycyrrhized variant, used in Chinese herbal formulae for two thousand years as the harmoniser — the herb that smooths the rough edges of stronger plants. Reishi (25mg) — Ganoderma lucidum — is the dark glossy bracket fungus that grows on hardwood logs in the forests of east Asia. Chinese imperial pharmacy called it líng zhī, and it has appeared in the Shennong Ben Cao Jing since the Han dynasty. Two ancient companions to the headline plants.

Schisandra (25mg) — Schisandra chinensis — is the small red berry of north-east China, called wǔ wèi zǐ — the five-flavour berry — because in one taste it carries sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and pungent. It is one of the classical adaptogens of Chinese practice. Gotu kola (5mg) — Centella asiatica — is the small fan-shaped marsh herb that grows in Sri Lanka, southern India and parts of Southeast Asia. The Sinhalese name translates as the herb of the philosopher-king; it has been a herb of the Ayurvedic tradition for at least two millennia.

Black pepper (52mg) — Piper nigrum — is here for two reasons. It is one of the world's oldest traded spices and has been a centrepiece of Indian cooking for at least three thousand years. Black pepper, equivalent to 52mg. Turmeric (5mg) — added in respectful organic form — needs no introduction.

Most of this article has been about plants. Four of the ingredients in this bottle can be spoken about with the precision of nutrition science, because they are essential nutrients with food safety regulator authorised wording.

Vitamin B3 (Niacin) (20mg, 125% NRV) — contributes to normal energy-yielding metabolism and to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.

Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid) (10mg, 168% NRV) — contributes to normal mental performance and to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.

Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine) (2mg, 143% NRV) — contributes to normal psychological function, to the regulation of hormonal activity, and to normal red blood cell formation.

Vitamin B12 (Cyanocobalamin) (25μg, 1000% NRV) — contributes to normal energy-yielding metabolism and to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue. Vegans, vegetarians, and people over 50 are the populations most likely to run low.

These four are not the headline. They are the spine — a backbone of label-accurate nutrition behind the plant story.

Lay these thirteen ingredients on a table — ashwagandha, cordyceps, ginseng, maca, liquorice, reishi, schisandra, gotu kola, black pepper, turmeric, B3, B5, B6, B12 — and plants from three traditions, with four B vitamins.

We didn't pick them at random. We picked the rasayana tradition of Ayurveda, the adaptogen tradition of Chinese herbalism, the highland tonic tradition of the Andes, and the working B-vitamin family of modern nutrition science — and laid them in the same capsule. The thinking isn't more is more. It's the wisdom of three continents, edited into one daily ritual, behind a transparent label.

One capsule, one to three times a day, with water. Most people take one with breakfast and find that's plenty. The bottle holds ninety capsules — at one a day it lasts three months, at three a day a month.

1 capsule, 1 to 3 times per day or as required. Do not exceed the stated recommended intake.

If after sixty days nothing has changed, stop. A supplement that isn't doing anything for you isn't worth the money, and we'd rather have your trust for the next thing than your loyalty to the wrong thing.

This is a food supplement — it complements a varied diet, doesn't replace one. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, taking medication (in particular thyroid medication, sedatives, or immunosuppressants — ashwagandha and reishi can interact), or living with a medical condition, talk to your GP or pharmacist first. Keep it cool, dry, sealed, out of reach of children. Don't exceed three capsules a day.

If you've read this far, thank you. We tried to write the kind of page we'd want to read before spending money — no neon promises, no overblown language. Just a Rajasthani root, twelve quiet companions, and a small daily ritual.

— Vitadefence