If you're looking for a natural way to boost your health and well-being, then ashwagandha might just be the herb you need.

does-ashwaganda-really-help-sex-drive-libido-and-erections-a-urologist-breaks-it-down

Does ashwaganda really help sex drive, libido and erections?! A urologist breaks it down

what if I told you that there's an herb that reduces stress and boosts testosterone by 15 is it for real or all just a fad I'm Dr Rena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and if you're new here I make Urologic content on Sexual Health bladder health and so much more each and every week so if you like what you see make sure you subscribe and share this Channel with your friends so today we're going to talk about ashwagandha what it is how it works the side effects and the data on sexual function in women and men for testosterone libido fertility and erectile function and if you decide after this video that you do want to take it stick around to the end to find out how you're going to take it and what time it's optimal what dose and what to look for so ashwagandha is known as withania thumbnifera it's an herb that grows in India the Middle East and parts of Africa it's often used in ayurvedic medicine as a natural stress relief immune support anxiety and depression so how does it work well it contains active compounds called with thanolides which are believed to have a variety of health benefits specifically they're thought to be anti-inflammatory and maybe have some antioxidant properties it's also classified as an adaptogen meaning that it essentially helps the body to cope with stress more effectively and specifically in both short-term and long-term physical or mental stress and the way it works specifically is it actually reduces cortisol which is a marker that our body releases when we are adapting to stress so side effects can include dizziness sleepiness Headache nausea or other GI symptoms like vomiting diarrhea there have been rare cases of liver injury and generally some emotional blunting and lack of finding pleasure in everyday activities and this is because it works on a number of different Pathways including serotonin Pathways which often have are part of our pleasure Pathways it can also interact with blood pressure meds or anti-anxiolytics like benzodiazepines and you definitely don't want to take it if you're pregnant trying to get pregnant breastfeeding or on any sort of immunosuppressive medications if you have type 1 diabetes or any sort of thyroid disease you want to avoid this supplement also it can have a blood thinning effect it's actually considered a Nightshade plant and so if you are allergic to Nightshade plants which can be plants like tomatoes eggplants potatoes and peppers you want to stay away from this so let's start with how this affects sexual function in women in 2015 50 women were randomized to receive KSM 66 ashwagandha which is a water-based extract or a placebo which was made of starch so they took these at 300 milligrams twice a day daily for eight weeks and what they found that there was significant improvements in female sexual function specifically in arousal lubrication orgasm and satisfaction and overall their sexual distress score was lower they had a greater number of successful sexual income accounts so moving on to fertility in men there have been two studies that I've looked at five grams of ashwagandha root powder given to infertile men again these are really small studies and this is only looking at specific semen parameters not specifically leading to live births which is actually what matters when you're looking at infertility so in the first study they had 68 infertile men between the ages of 22 and 40 years of age they all had a sperm count that was somewhere between 5 to 20 million per milliliters and also had other abnormal semen parameters and had been trying to conceive for at least the last year and then they looked at these men before the study started and then at 90 days later and they found that with the ashwagandha root powder they were able to see a significant increase in sperm concentration which was actually almost 167 from 9 million to about 26 million they also saw significant increases in semen volume as well as sperm utility after day 90. and interestingly they also saw a serum testosterone increase by about 17 percent and the reason they think this works is because as I mentioned earlier ashwagandha is an antioxidant and when thinking about infertility the reason a lot of men often have issues with infertility is because the environment of the testicles which produce testosterone may have a lot of antioxidants and so the antioxidant properties of ashwagandha may be helpful in this respect another study looked at infertile men who were also heavy smokers and noted to be psychologically stressed and they again gave them the same five grams of the root powder for three months and they found again they had an increase in sperm count as well as motility in a second study they did the similar process with a number of men who either had abnormal semen parameters with infertility or also had psychological stress and infertility to see if this improved and in fact again they saw in this very small study that there was some improvements in sperm concentration as well as motility I think the take home from this about infertility is that it may be helpful but we really don't have enough data to recommend it widely and again the issue with any of these supplements is that we don't know that what they put on the bottle is actually what's in the supplements because there's very little regulation of supplements and again these studies only looked at people for up to about 90 days so what happens if you take it longer than that do you still see benefits and the other issue is that when you look at sperm parameters in general there's a variation even from person to person between day to day as well as if you've had a cold or a flu or something that can affect your temperature that can also significantly reduce your sperm concentration so what about erections so in men who had erectile dysfunction there's really only been one human study that looked at psychogenic erectile dysfunction if you want to learn more about that make sure you check out my video about psychogenic erectile dysfunction these men took two grams of ashwagandha root extract with meals for 60 days and ultimately they found that they really didn't see any difference in erectile function so let's talk about testosterone so I already mentioned in the infertility study that they saw an increase in testosterone in another randomized study where they looked at men getting 240 milligrams of ashwagandha extract with 35 of withinolide glycosides they were looking at actually how it affected cortisol and DHEA but as a secondary outcome they looked at testosterone and they measured this at starting of the study and then 60 days later and what they found was that after those 60 days there was a 10 increase in testosterone levels in the ashwagandha group however when comparing the changes between the placebo group and the ashwagandha group they were actually not statistically significant meaning while the numbers increased it wasn't any clinically different than the placebo group and likely the change was just due to chance and other Studies have looked at specifically stressed men as well as men who were also undergoing a resistance training program and saw some improvements with testosterone but as we know stress and testosterone are very much correlated if you have higher levels of cortisol that inhibits testosterone production so if you reduce cortisol in a stressed individual you should see improvements in testosterone if you're not stressed maybe that benefit won't be so obvious as I mentioned previously in my video about testosterone exercise resistance training particularly of large muscle groups does result in increases in testosterone so in that other study that looked at men who had a resistance training program who knows if it was from the ashwagandha or the resistance training lastly what about libido well we know again ashwagandha reduces stress and when you have chronic stress it obviously causes sexual dysfunction and reduces your libido there's actually been no human studies specifically on libido however in animal studies using moderate doses in mice they saw reductions in stress as well as more sexual activity in those who were chronically stressed taking ashwagandha however in an alternative study they actually saw lowering of libido because they gave a large dose of ashwagandha 3 grams per kilogram which may have been actually sedative and maybe made the mice more sleepy again the data for these sort of supplements is really all over the place and not very very strong however if you have none of the contraindications I discussed earlier in the video and you are interested in trying it and you have the income to try it then by all means it's okay to do so just make sure you talk to your doctor about it to make sure there's no contraindications between any of the medications that you're on so when do you want to take it well you don't want to blend all your cortisol first thing in the morning so you want to take it ideally in the afternoon and the evening and all the majority of the studies looked at a 300 milligram dose and you want to get the highest percentage of withinolide glycosides within that ashwagandha extract as you can also the majority of these studies were 8 to 12 weeks so if you're going to take it take it during times of real stress like your having a stressful time take it for a short period of time 8 to 12 weeks no more because we don't really know what preventing cortisol production over long periods of time will do to your body and lastly because it's a supplement you want to assess the supplement make sure it undergoes third-party testing so that what you're getting in the supplement is actually what you're taking and try to investigate if that particular supplement has undergone some studies of its own rather than just pulling studies generally about ashwagandha so bottom line ashwagandha may have some health benefits for stress reduction and potentially improvements in female sexual function testosterone and maybe infertility but we need a lot more studies to really confirm that this is actually true however we do have wonderful treatment options for low libido low testosterone infertility and erectile dysfunction so if you are experiencing any of those things make sure to see your local urologist infertility Specialist or sexual health expert to help guide you with evidence-based medicine that can really help as always I'm going to take care of yourself because you're worth it [Music]

Dr.

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