Codeage · Systemic Balance · Longevity Science

Ashwagandha · Adaptogens · Balance · Longevity

Adaptogens, Balance,
and women's desire
through the decades.

The word desire, in its broadest sense, names a leaning toward life — energy, appetite, drive. This is a look at the plants traditional systems tied to that quality, and at the mid-century idea, the adaptogen, that tried to give it a scientific frame.

✦ 9 min read✦ adaptogens · ashwagandha · Tribulus · desire · drive

A word coined
in a laboratory.

The term adaptogen is younger than it sounds. It was coined in 1947 by the Soviet toxicologist Nikolai Lazarev, who used it for substances that seemed to help an organism hold its equilibrium under stress. Two decades later, the pharmacologists Israel Brekhman and I. I. Dardymov gave the idea a stricter definition: an adaptogen, they proposed, should be broadly safe, should act in a non-specific way across many systems, and should help return the body toward balance rather than pushing it in one direction.

That last criterion is the interesting one. Most pharmacology is directional — a molecule lowers this or raises that. The adaptogen idea described something different: a class of botanicals associated with the body's capacity to maintain its own balance, the property physiologists call homeostasis. Whether any given plant meets the strict 1969 definition is still debated in the literature, and the studies behind that debate were conducted independently of any product.

What the framework did was give an old intuition a vocabulary. Traditional systems had long kept a category of “tonic” plants — herbs taken not for a single complaint but for the general project of staying well. The adaptogen concept was an attempt to describe that category in the language of physiology, and several of the plants tied to women's vitality in the older traditions turned out to sit squarely inside it.

An adaptogen was never meant
to push the body one way.
It was meant to keep it in balance.

Ashwagandha —
the most studied of them.

If any plant is the standard-bearer of the adaptogen idea, it is ashwagandha (Withania somnifera), a small shrub of the nightshade family used in Ayurvedic medicine for millennia. Its name is usually translated as “smell of the horse,” a reference both to the root's odour and to the qualities traditionally attributed to it. It belongs, like shatavari, to the rasayana category of Ayurveda.

Ashwagandha's roots contain a family of steroidal lactones called withanolides, and these are the constituents researchers have studied most closely — particularly in relation to the body's stress-response biology, the hormonal and nervous-system machinery the body uses to meet a demand. That work is substantial and ongoing, and, as throughout this series, it was conducted independently and did not involve any specific Codeage product.

The reason ashwagandha keeps appearing — in the women's tonics of tradition and in the modern literature alike — is that it sits at the meeting point of the two stories this series keeps telling: a plant with deep cultural roots that has also drawn serious, sustained scientific attention.

III

Tribulus —
the much-examined botanical.

Tribulus terrestris is a low, spreading plant that grows in warm regions worldwide, and it has appeared in traditional preparations across several of them — in Ayurveda, in traditional Chinese medicine, and in the folk practices of the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The part used is typically the fruit or whole plant, and quality preparations are standardized to a class of compounds called saponins, including one named protodioscin.

Tribulus has been the subject of a considerable body of research, examining its saponins across a range of contexts. The picture in the literature is genuinely mixed — a useful reminder that “studied” does not mean “settled,” and that honest reading means holding findings lightly. Those studies, here as everywhere in this series, describe the plant and were carried out independently of any product.

What earns Tribulus its place is not a verdict but a history of attention: a plant taken seriously enough, across enough traditions and enough laboratories, to keep being examined across the decades.

A Short History of a Word

The adaptogen,
across the decades.

1947The coinage

Lazarev names it

The Soviet toxicologist Nikolai Lazarev coins the term adaptogen for substances that appear to help an organism hold its balance under stress.

A word, arriving before its definition.

1958–69The criteria

Brekhman & Dardymov

The pharmacologists Israel Brekhman and I. I. Dardymov propose a strict definition: broadly safe, non-specific in action, and tending to return the body toward balance rather than pushing it one way.

The definition still debated today.

TodayThe literature

An open question

Whether any given plant meets the 1969 criteria remains debated, and research into ashwagandha, Tribulus and other candidate botanicals continues. The studies are independent of any product.

Studied does not mean settled.

Balance is
a moving target.

The phrase “through the decades” is doing two jobs. The adaptogen idea itself has a history measured in decades — from Lazarev's 1947 coinage to the present, a slow accumulation of study. And vitality, in any traditional account, was never treated as a fixed quantity. It was understood as a balance that shifts across a life, something to be tended rather than assumed.

That is why the tonic plants were taken over long stretches rather than for a moment. Shatavari, ashwagandha, damiana — the botanicals traditional systems gathered for women, and the same ones a modern women's herbal formula like Codeage Lady’s Desire+ gathers today — were part of a long-view practice, closer to maintenance than to rescue. The modern longevity literature, with its interest in how the body sustains itself over time, has arrived at a strikingly similar posture, whether the subject is circulation and energy or the stress-response system.

Damiana (Turnera diffusa) makes a fitting close to the list: a plant from the Americas, outside the Ayurvedic canon entirely, that nonetheless landed in the same category — a folk tonic tied to mood, warmth and vitality. The convergence is the lesson. Across continents and across decades, the same project keeps reappearing: not to force a body in one direction, but to keep it in balance. It is the project Codeage organizes under The Longevity Code.

Across continents and decades,
the same project keeps reappearing —
not to push a body, but to steady it.

Codeage · Systemic Balance · Pillar 04

A few of these plants,
in one place.

Several of the botanicals named above are gathered into a single daily herbal formulation.

Herbal Formula · 30 Servings

Codeage Lady's Desire+

A vegan herbal formulation that brings together shatavari root, Tribulus terrestris, ashwagandha root and fenugreek seed, with damiana leaf, black maca root, L-arginine, BioPerine black pepper extract and vitamin B6 — several of the botanicals discussed above, gathered into a single daily format.

View the Formula →

Formulated without dairy, soy, or gluten. Non-GMO. Manufactured in the USA in a cGMP-certified facility with global ingredients.

This article is educational and concerns the botanicals and nutrients themselves, not any finished product. References to traditional use describe historical and cultural practice; references to research describe published, independent literature. Studies referenced were conducted independently and did not involve any specific Codeage product. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Previously in This Series

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Systemic Balance · Biology

Circulation, Energy and the Biology of Drive in Women