Ashwagandha, a note for those with digestive issues
If you don't have digestive issues, then this note isn't particularly likely to apply to you. This note is especially for people with multiple food sensitivity issues, people who end up going to an allergist and/or a gastroenterologist for what can be disabling gut issues.
If you have something like Inflammatory Bowel disease, Crohn's Disease, Microscipic Colitis, Celiac Disease, Leaky Gut Syndrome, multiple food allergies/sensitivities, and the like, then this note might interest you. Some book authors believe it takes gut healing to ameliorate psoriasis or interstitial cystitis too, so this might also be of some interest to you if you have either of those problems.
I researched Ashwagandha for myself, for the second time around, looking for side-effects issues. It didn't seem especially likely that this supplement would cause me difficulties when I was considering ordering it the first time. WebMD positively glows with the supplement's potential. But after I figured out that this was making me sick in multiple ways, and that those ways continued far past the time I'd managed to get over the intense and overwhelming chest pain (with some breathing issues too), I did a little more looking around the web for Ashwagandha side effects.
When I researched it for the second time, I found out that this supplement is a member of the Solanaceae family of plants, commonly called the nightshades. All plants have some amount of toxins in them in at least the form of varying amounts of oxalates, and we have evolved to be able, ordinarily, to deal with all the small amounts of toxins in edible plants too. But members of the nightshades family have some extra toxins in addition to oxalates, so these make it very important for your gut to be working properly to do that extra digestive work. But some people - those with leaky gut problems and the kind of digestive issues you can get as a result - have more of a burden than most people; an inflammed gut doesn't work ideally... and putting extra toxins into it just makes its problems worse.
In addition, it's easy for allergic-tending people to become allergic to members of the nightshades family. I have a barrelfull of foods and inhalants I'm tested allergic to. Ashwaganda had no bad effects for me initially. But, as my allergist told me long ago, I tend to develop allergies so easily that anything I put in my mouth on a daily basis stood a very good chance of becoming an allergen for me.
That's where I am right now as I'm writing this. I won't go into all the gut issues, but I've been bending over backward to try to heal my gut, which had gotten so chronically inflamed that it had become disabling. I have been avoiding all the zillions of foods I'm tested allergic to, and avoiding all nightshades too, every last one. I thought. Yet I was still having flares of terrible health in multiple ways... when I finally noticed the connection in the timing for the episodes when I started getting, for starters, terrible, terrible chest pain. And it continues well past the time of the modulation of the chest pain and other digestive symptoms, into making my blood sugar and my blood pressure shoot upwards for at least two days. It continued for days to making putting anything at all into the stomach produce chest pain and abdominal pain, from the mechanical impact of food on an inflammed gut. What might be even worse, the list of potential problems I read about at the Buzzle website (with lots of information on potential side effects) included kidney disease. I'm currently in a losing battle in trying to halt the downward progression of that particular disease.
I've long known I was allergic to several foods in the nightshade family and violently affected by the smell of at least one member of the nightshade family: tobacco. All I have to do to get a horrible headache and other symptoms too is simply to be in the same room with someone smoking, even though I've never smoked. If you happen to have tobacco reaction issues, you might be on the lookout for a reaction to Ashwagandha too.
By the way, Buzzle is a good place to find a fuller discussion of side effects issues than most any other place I've seen. I realized I was seeing effects on Policosanol, something that I'd read about sufficiently, I thought... when I developed bleeding problems from it. Sure enough, if I'd read Buzzle to begin with, I'd have known what to be on the lookout for with that particular supplement.
Google search on "Ashwaganda Side Effects" brings up:
<http://www.buzzle.co...e-effects.html>
Google search on "Policosanol Side Effects" brings up:
<http://www.buzzle.co...e-effects.html>
Best wishes
Mary
among 100 000 people, you are the only one, congratulation ! 
