What's the Best Time to Take Adaptogens?

Adaptogens help to balance hormones, neurotransmitters, and your response to stress. Unsure of when to take them each day? Here, Dr. Bill Rawls explains the benefits of adaptogenic herbs, plus how a person-specific approach is the best way to gain benefits from them. Learn more about protecting your body from stress here.

Video Transcript

Question: What’s the best time to take adaptogens?

Tim Yarborough: We got one from Brad here wondering about the best time to take adaptogens. Morning or early evening? Explain that a little bit, Dr. Rawls.

Dr. Rawls: I tend to dose adaptogens throughout the day. And again, you know, when you get down to this scale, when you go to adaptogens, you’re talking about something that’s on the way end of the normalizing scale. And it’s not having direct effect on neurotransmitters or hormones.

What it’s doing is, it’s providing feedback to the hypothalamus and other areas of the brain that balance those functions. So the hypothalamus is sending out proper messages to balance the neurotransmitters, balance the hormones in the body.

So it’s not as dependent on what time of day that you do it because it’s not a direct effect. So it’s like ashwagandha: I typically tell people to start it, take a dose in the morning, and then play around with an evening dose and see how that feels for them.

Everybody’s a little bit different. It’s like for me, ashwagandha is very slightly stimulating. So when I use it, I take it in the morning, and I don’t take an evening dose. But then, I talk to many women with menopause that they need both of those doses during the day to help balance the hypothalamus, to get rid of hot flashes, and other things.

So it’s a little bit person-specific; you have to play around with it a little bit, but it’s really hard to get yourself in trouble with adaptogens.

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