Rhodiola rosea
© WikipediaRhodiola Rosea
For four hours, the unlikely trio made its way up the rugged face of the Sayan Mountains in northern Mongolia - Richard P. Brown, an American psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist, Zakir Ramazanov, a distinguished Russian plant biochemist, and their Siberian guide. Under a cloudless sky of the deepest blue, they climbed quickly, the temperature falling and the oxygen growing thinner as they gained altitude. At last, after climbing more than 10,000 feet over icy streams and rugged rock faces, they crested the last ridge. "We stood and stared in amazement," remembers Brown. "Everywhere we looked, growing in the craggy mountain ravine, were the bright yellow flowers of Rhodiola rosea."

Brown began digging around for information about the little-known herb, which is also called Arctic root or golden root. When he contacted an American company that produces a rhodiola supplement, he was advised to speak with Ramazanov, who had done research on the herb in Russia, where the plant grows. "By an incredible coincidence, Ramazanov had just moved to the United States and was living only an hour away from me," says Brown.

The two men agreed to get together, and during their first meeting the Russian biochemist gave Brown a tall stack of articles and research studies, as well as a book he'd written about the herb. "I realized then that there was much more to this than I'd ever imagined," says Brown.

As he made his way through the mountain of material, he learned that rhodiola has been used for centuries in traditional Russian and Scandinavian medicine. It was even included in the first Swedish pharmacopoeia, way back in 1755. More than 180 studies of it had been conducted over the past 40 years. The reason he'd never heard of them? Almost all were done by researchers in the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Soviet interest was part of a systematic search begun in the mid-1960s for medicine that could boost energy, improve memory, or enhance performance. One goal was to give the Soviet military an edge. Another was to improve the stamina and performance of astronauts in the space program. Along the way, scientists documented a wide range of remarkable benefits associated with rhodiola - from calming the stress response and increasing energy to enhancing memory and boosting the body's immune defenses. The findings had been kept top secret because of their importance to the military and the space effort, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of what had been learned was in danger of being lost.

"There was a large body of data almost no one in the U.S. knew about," says Brown, data that suggested rhodiola had a variety of potent effects. Soviet researchers had classified the herb as an adaptogen, a substance that can increase the body's resistance to stress and help normalize imbalances.

One way the herb does this is by cranking up the power of mitochondria, the tiny engines that provide living cells with fuel. The herb can also increase the metabolism of fat for energy and improve overall metabolism in the brain, the most energy-hungry organ in the body. By providing this energy boost, the herb appears to help cells function better under stress. Its unique group of antioxidant compounds also helps protect cells and DNA from being damaged by unstable oxygen compounds.

Rhodiola appears to stimulate the production of a variety of neurotransmitters in the brain as well, including endorphins and serotonin. This effect may explain why it can help dispel depression. Laboratory evidence shows it can increase levels of dopamine, which could provide benefits to patients with Parkinson's disease. Brown is convinced that rhodiola also protects the heart in several ways, including boosting the energy available to heart muscles, thereby preventing the kind of damage that can lead to heart attacks or heart failure.

Ramazanov had brought many of the most important studies with him when he emigrated to the United States. But he and Brown also wanted to go back to the source. That's why they decided to visit the Sayan Mountains, where they gathered wild rhodiola and tested its constituents against the domesticated version used for supplements. They also went to Moscow to round up more studies and talk to scientists who had been involved in some of the earlier research.

"I'm generally reluctant to overhype herbs," says Mark Blumenthal, executive director of the American Botanical Council, in Austin, Texas, which published a monograph on rhodiola in its journal HerbalGram. "But the claims for rhodiola are backed up by an impressive amount of scientific research. This really is a kind of superherb, which affects many different kinds of body processes and offers many different benefits."

Brown's wife, Patricia Gerbarg, knows firsthand how potent rhodiola's restorative benefits can be. She's also a psychiatrist, and long before either she or her husband had heard of the herb, she had begun to suffer from persistent pain in her joints. "We'd just gotten our first puppy, and he'd begun to pick up deer ticks," she says. "Of course I was worried about Lyme disease, especially with three children at home. But I didn't have the telltale rash, so I assumed the pain would go away."

Only it didn't. Month by month it worsened, spreading into her tendons and muscles. She went in for medical tests, but they were all inconclusive. "Some of the specialists I went to even implied that they thought the pain was all in my head," she remembers. "That was a little surprising for a medical doctor to hear."

Meanwhile, Gerbarg's pain and fatigue were becoming crippling. "My hands hurt so much I could hardly use them. My kids had to help cook, wash the dishes, even write out checks for me. I could hardly walk from the house to the car. Once, when we went with our son to visit colleges, he had to lift me and carry me up the steps."

Even her mind was affected. Any kind of mental task became exhausting. With a job, a husband, three kids, and a dog, she'd been used to doing at least four things at once. "Now it was impossible for me to concentrate on more than one thing at a time," she says.

Eventually, a specialist recommended that Gerbarg begin an eight-month course of antibiotics, the usual treatment for Lyme disease. "It definitely helped," she says. But only so much. She estimates she recovered about 25 percent of her former strength. She continued to suffer from pain, fatigue, and memory problems, and her balance was still shaky.

That was around the time her husband first heard of rhodiola. "He told me about it, and we both wondered if it might help because of its energy-boosting properties." To be on the safe side, Brown tried the herb himself. "Almost immediately, my mind seemed sharper," he says. "I felt less stressed and had more energy when I exercised."

That was good enough for Gerbarg, who started taking the herb, too. After ten days, she began noticing her mind growing clearer, her concentration sharpening, and her memory improving. The heavy weight of fatigue that had dragged her down for years began to lift. "Day by day I was getting better," she recalls.

But it wasn't until one day, with her 14-year-old son David, that she realized how much she'd improved. She and her son had enjoyed playing chess together before her illness, but it had been several years since she'd had the energy to play. Finally, she felt well enough to give it a try. Her son agreed to meet her at the chess table for old time's sake. "And I beat him," says Gerbarg. "At least that first game."

Both Gerbarg and her husband were so impressed by their own experiences, and the medical literature on the herb, that over the past ten years they've prescribed it to more than 400 patients. They claim to have successfully treated people suffering from fatigue, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, memory problems, loss of sexual interest, and impotence. They've used rhodiola to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, adult attention deficit disorder, and other brain-related conditions. And they've come to believe that even in healthy people, the herb is a powerful tonic, increasing the body's resistance to stress and enhancing physical performance and mental sharpness. Last year, to spread the word to patients and other practitioners, they published a book, The Rhodiola Revolution, which details their clinical experiences and summarizes much of the research to date.

They've already won over many experts. At Martha's Vineyard Hospital in Massachusetts, psychiatrist Charles Silberstein has successfully eased depressed and anxious patients off prescription antidepressants and onto the herb, sparing them the side effects associated with drugs. Sharon Sageman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, also prescribes rhodiola as an alternative to prescription antidepressants. But she's documented an even wider range of benefits, from easing symptoms associated with menopause to fighting the fatigue and mental dullness that often follow chemotherapy.

One of Sageman's patients, a 56-year-old woman, came to her feeling anxious and depressed. "After going through menopause, she had gained ten pounds and lost her interest in sex," says Sageman. "I put her on Rhodiola rosea and she quickly felt calmer, her libido returned, and she even lost the weight she'd put on." More than half of the patients she sees are taking the herb, says Sageman, who uses it herself to sharpen her memory and boost energy.

Is there anything rhodiola can't do? Despite its extraordinary promise, the herb does have limitations. It doesn't appear to be as effective as prescription drugs, such as Zoloft, in treating symptoms of severe depression, according to Brown (although when patients on these drugs are also given the herb, they are often able to reduce their dosage and hence the unwanted side effects).

And not everyone responds to rhodiola. In a Soviet study involving 128 patients with fatigue, distractability, irritability, headaches, and weakness, for example, it provided relief for only 64 percent of the subjects.

What's more, some of the purported benefits of the herb remain controversial. In a 2004 double-blind study by Belgian researchers, subjects who used the herb by itself experienced a measurable increase in physical stamina, duplicating results that Soviet scientists reported. But when researchers at the Cooper Institute's Center for Human Performance and Nutrition Research, in Dallas, enlisted competitive cyclists to test an herbal-based formula that includes rhodiola, they found no benefits.

"We still have a lot to learn," admits Brown. Unfortunately, getting funding to do studies won't be easy, as Brown and Gerbarg have discovered. "Companies that produce herbal supplements aren't interested because they don't have the money. The big pharmaceutical companies aren't interested because they can't patent an herb."

For now, the best evidence is likely to come from the personal experiences of doctors and patients using the herb. So far, that evidence is compelling. "Those of us who have been using rhodiola and prescribing it are convinced that it offers powerful benefits," says Brown. "Many of my patients are doctors themselves, and they have a tendency to be skeptical of herbal supplements. Rhodiola rosea has changed a lot of minds."

It has also changed Brown and Gerbarg's life together. "Before I got sick, my husband and I were great dancers. We competed in ballroom dancing competitions, and even won a few," says Gerbarg. Her debilitating illness ended all that for years. "I could hardly walk, let alone dance." In her darkest moments, she thought she and her husband would never dance again.

But a few months after starting on rhodiola, Gerbarg felt so good when she first got out of bed that she danced a few steps around the bedroom. "It was all coming back," she says, "the energy, the balance, the enthusiasm for life." Now she and her husband are dancing together, just about every chance they get.

Rhodiola: Good for What Ails You

Substantial research on Rhodiola rosea, much of it conducted in the former Soviet Union, has documented a wide range of clinical benefits. "Many of these are very well designed, carefully controlled studies," says Richard P. Brown, the Columbia University psychiatrist who played a leading role in assembling and evaluating much of the evidence. Like many herbs, rhodiola appears to work in multiple ways, making it useful for a variety of purposes. Among them:

- Fighting Fatigue
Combatting fatigue has been one of the most common uses of this herb. That may make it especially useful for people suffering from illnesses that cause weariness, such as chronic fatigue syndrome. But it can also be helpful for people who work erratic shifts or jet-setters who jump time zones frequently. In a study of 161 young cadets assigned to night duty as part of their military service, Soviet scientists tested rhodiola extract against a placebo. Using an anti-fatigue index, the researchers found that cadets taking the herb were less tired and performed better in a variety of tasks.

- Improving Physical Performance
Because the herb boosts the activity of mitochondria - tiny organs that deliver energy to cells - sports scientists have begun testing to see if it can increase stamina and strength. In a Soviet study of 52 young men, rhodiola increased physical work capacity by 9 percent.

Easing Depression
Rhodiola may offer a natural alternative to antidepressants that, though effective, often have unwanted side effects. Psychiatrists at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons report consistent success in treating mild and moderately depressed patients with rhodiola. By using the herb, many patients are able to go off antidepressant medications or at least lower their dosage. A study of 128 patients found that 64 percent experienced significant relief after taking 150 milligrams three times a day.

- Treating Impotence
Rhodiola has long been prized in traditional Siberian medicine for its ability to boost a flagging sex drive. Soviet scientists put the herb to the test in 35 men who were having trouble with premature ejaculation and/or getting or maintaining erections. Twenty-six, or almost 75 percent, reported that 150 to 200 mg a day substantially improved their sexual function.

- Enhancing Immunity
Along with increasing overall energy, rhodiola may also give the body's defenses an assist - which may in turn help immune cells battle viruses and bacteria. In a study of 200 patients with serious infections that had begun in their teeth and then spread, those on antibiotics combined with the herb recovered faster than those on antibiotics alone. Animal studies show that the herb works as well as the antibiotic oxacillin. (See Heal Thyself, page 32, for more on revving immunity).

- Boosting Brain Power
By reducing free radical damage to cells and stimulating the production of neurotransmitters, among other mechanisms, rhodiola is believed to boost brain health and function. Students taking rhodiola learned new words in a foreign language 60 percent faster.

Rundown on Rhodiola

If you decide to try rhodiola, it won't take long to determine if it will work for you, say experts familiar with the herb. "Most of the people I've seen respond within a couple of weeks," says psychiatrist Sharon Sageman, who prescribes it both as a general tonic to enhance energy and ease stress and to treat specific conditions, such as depression, anxiety, or the unwanted symptoms of menopause. Here are some guidelines for giving it a try:

- Make sure the label lists Rhodiola rosea. Some brands include other forms of rhodiola, which are not nearly as well studied.

- Choose a brand of pure root extract standardized to 3 to 4 percent rosavins and 0.8 to 1 percent salidrosides, widely regarded as the ideal ratio for the two most important constituents.

- Start with one 100-milligram capsule once a day, taken 20 to 30 minutes before breakfast. If you don't notice benefits after three days, gradually increase the dosage. Most people respond to daily doses in the 200 to 600 mg range; don't take more than 400 mg a day without medical supervision.

- Take a little extra rhodiola when you're under either emotional or physical stress. The hallmark of adaptogens is their ability to arm the body to resist the negative effects of stress.

- If the herb makes you feel jittery, reduce the dosage.