One you drop. One you take instead.
In three lines:
3. Daily ashwagandha for “lower cortisol” or “fix stress” claims more than NCCIH can back.
2. Some preparations may help with stress and sleep in short trials, but the evidence for anxiety is unclear.
1. If you do trial it, pick a named root extract and keep it short. Park it if you’re pregnant, or have thyroid disease or take thyroid meds.
OUT — the forever “cortisol” capsule
The Chemist Warehouse story: a Withania somnifera (ashwagandha) softgel every morning, so your stress hormones behave.
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) on ashwagandha: research shows some preparations may help insomnia and stress, while the evidence on anxiety is unclear. Many trials are small and use different extracts. That’s why a shelf bottle rarely matches a study.
On safety: short-term use, about up to 3 months, may be safe for many adults. Long-term safety isn’t established, and rare liver injury reports exist. NCCIH says avoid in pregnancy, don’t use while breastfeeding, and not recommended with autoimmune or thyroid disorders, before surgery, or with hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.
Interactions to know: thyroid hormone medicines, diabetes and blood-pressure drugs, immunosuppressants, sedatives and anticonvulsants.
So park the forever bottle if the pitch was “nature’s anti-cortisol”. Sleep, workload and GP-level anxiety care still beat a leaf powder.
IN — named extract, short window, or skip
Honest IN:
Prefer a label that names the root extract, not a mystery “blend”, and a studied-style dose: often in the ~300–600 mg/day standardised-extract range used in short trials. The exact extract and its withanolide standardisation matter, so match the label to a real product your pharmacist can check.
Cap the experiment at weeks to ~3 months, then reassess.
Skip is clean if you’re well without it, pregnant or trying, on thyroxine or carbimazole, or have thyroid or autoimmune disease.
And don’t stack it with heavy sedatives. Never stop a prescribed anxiety or thyroid treatment because of this letter.
ASK (take this to the GP)
“I’ve been taking daily ashwagandha for stress. Given NCCIH’s short-term stress evidence and warnings for pregnancy and thyroid medicines, should I stop it — and is there a safer plan for sleep or stress for me?”
This swap is not for you if
You’re pregnant, breastfeeding or trying: NCCIH says avoid.
You have thyroid disease, or take thyroid hormone (or any of the interacting medicines listed above). Ask before any dose.
You already have a clinician-managed anxiety, sleep or liver plan. Keep it.
Sources
NCCIH: Ashwagandha — Usefulness and Safety — https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/ashwagandha
LiverTox (NIDDK/NIH): Ashwagandha — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548536/