Author: Nick Pelios
Over the past few weeks, a small sentence from my dietician has been looping in my head.
“Your cortisol is a little high.”
Not catastrophic. Not a red alert. Just… high enough to be worth paying attention to.
If you train hard, work long hours, and try to keep a few too many plates spinning at once, that sentence probably sounds familiar. Cortisol is not the villain it is often made out to be. It is a survival hormone. It helps us wake up, respond to stress, mobilize energy, and perform under pressure. The problem is not cortisol itself. The problem is when the stress response never fully switches off.
My dietician’s suggestion was simple. Clean up sleep. Tighten nutrition. Protect recovery. And consider trying ashwagandha.
I had heard the name before, mostly in the foggy space where supplements, ancient medicine, and wellness trends blur into each other. I had never taken it. I did not know what it would actually feel like. But the suggestion sent me down a rabbit hole. And because everything in my life eventually gets filtered through the lens of freediving, one question kept surfacing.
If ashwagandha really does what people claim it does, what could that mean underwater?
This is not a recommendation. It is not a promise. It is a personal exploration. I am still in the research phase. But the more I read, the more I started to imagine how its potential effects might intersect with the physiology and psychology of breath-hold diving.
To understand that, we first need to talk about stress.
Freediving is a Stress Laboratory
Freediving is often marketed as calm. Serene. Meditative. And at its best, it is. But physiologically, it is also a controlled confrontation with stress.
The moment you hold your breath, a cascade begins. Carbon dioxide rises. Oxygen drops. Chemoreceptors in your body start sending increasingly urgent signals. Your brain interprets this as a threat. Even a trained diver is not immune to the basic biology. We just learn to reinterpret the signals.
Cortisol plays a role in that landscape. Elevated chronic stress can shift how sensitive we are to discomfort. It can shorten patience. It can amplify anxiety. It can disturb sleep, which then feeds back into recovery, mood, and performance. A diver who is under-recovered is not just tired. They are neurologically louder. Every contraction feels bigger. Every urge to breathe feels more dramatic.
This is where ashwagandha enters the conversation.
In traditional Ayurvedic medicine, ashwagandha is classified as an adaptogen. The term adaptogen is often overused, but the basic idea is that certain compounds may help the body regulate its response to stress. Modern research has focused heavily on its interaction with cortisol.
Several clinical trials have shown that standardized ashwagandha extracts can reduce serum cortisol levels in chronically stressed individuals. The reductions are not magical. They are not instant. But they are measurable. Participants often report parallel improvements in perceived stress, sleep quality, and anxiety scores.
If that effect translates consistently, the freediving implications are intriguing.
Imagine a baseline nervous system that is slightly less reactive. Slightly less jittery. Slightly more willing to sit with discomfort. Freediving performance is not only about lung capacity or technique. It is about the quality of your internal dialogue when the urge to breathe begins to rise. A calmer hormonal backdrop might not add meters directly, but it could reshape how you experience the dive.
The Cortisol Angle and Breath-Hold Tolerance
One of the most interesting threads in my reading has been the relationship between stress hormones and breath-hold tolerance.
Acute stress sharpens us. A spike of adrenaline before a dive can feel energizing. But chronic stress is different. It erodes the edges of resilience. High baseline cortisol has been associated with increased anxiety, impaired sleep, and altered perception of effort in athletes. Endurance sports literature repeatedly shows that overtrained athletes with dysregulated stress hormones often experience reduced performance even when their muscles are technically capable.
Breath-hold diving is a form of endurance. It is just compressed into minutes instead of hours.
If ashwagandha helps normalize cortisol, the indirect effect could be a more stable platform for training. Better sleep alone would be a gift. Sleep is where neural adaptations consolidate. It is where motor patterns settle. It is where the emotional charge of the day gets processed. A diver who sleeps deeply tends to wake up with a quieter nervous system. That quiet is gold underwater.
There is also emerging evidence that ashwagandha may influence perceived exertion and fatigue resistance in certain athletic contexts. Some studies have shown improvements in VO2 max, strength, and recovery markers in resistance-trained individuals. Freediving is not weightlifting, but the common thread is systemic stress. A body that recovers more efficiently from training may accumulate adaptation more cleanly.
Again, none of this guarantees deeper dives. Freediving is brutally honest about shortcuts. But it suggests a possibility: that managing stress chemistry could subtly expand the space in which training works.
Anxiety, CO2, and the Mind Under Pressure
Every diver knows the psychological wall. The point where the urge to breathe stops being a signal and becomes a negotiation.
Anxiety amplifies CO2 sensitivity. When you are tense, your breathing pattern at the surface changes. You may over-breathe. You may carry residual tension into the dive. That tension burns oxygen and accelerates the internal clock. The dive feels shorter than it is.
Ashwagandha has been studied for its anxiolytic, or anxiety-reducing, properties. Several trials comparing it to placebo have reported significant reductions in anxiety scales, sometimes approaching the magnitude seen with mild pharmaceutical interventions, but without the same side effect profile. The proposed mechanisms involve modulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and potential interactions with GABAergic signaling in the brain.
Translated into diver language, this suggests a compound that might gently nudge the nervous system toward parasympathetic dominance. That is the rest-and-digest mode. The freediver’s sweet spot. It is the state where heart rate drops, peripheral blood vessels constrict appropriately, and the mammalian dive reflex expresses itself more cleanly.
I keep imagining the surface ritual before a dive. The last few breaths. The mental framing. If a supplement could make that transition smoother, if it could reduce the background hum of anxiety, it might not change the physics of oxygen consumption, but it could change how efficiently we enter the dive state.
There is also a training implication. CO2 tables are as much psychological conditioning as physiological. A calmer baseline might allow a diver to stay more present during uncomfortable holds, reinforcing the lesson that discomfort is survivable. Over time, that could rewire the emotional response to rising CO2.
Recovery, Inflammation, and Training Density
Another angle that caught my attention is ashwagandha’s potential anti-inflammatory and recovery-supporting effects.
Intense training creates microtrauma. That is the point. Adaptation is the body rebuilding stronger. But chronic low-grade inflammation can blunt that process. Some studies suggest that ashwagandha supplementation may reduce markers of inflammation and oxidative stress. It has also been linked to improved testosterone levels in certain populations, which could influence recovery and muscle maintenance.
For freedivers who cross-train with strength work, apnea tables, and cardiovascular conditioning, recovery is the bottleneck. We rarely plateau because we are incapable of more. We plateau because our system cannot absorb the workload.
If ashwagandha contributes even modestly to recovery efficiency, it could allow slightly higher training density without tipping into overreaching. That is a delicate balance. More is not always better. But the ability to recover cleanly is a competitive advantage in any sport.
There is also the immune system angle. High stress and heavy training loads can suppress immunity. Getting sick during a training cycle is more than inconvenient. It resets momentum. Adaptogens have historically been valued for their immune-modulating effects, and some modern data supports a stabilizing role. For a diver preparing for a trip or competition, staying healthy is part of performance.
The Placebo Question and Honest Expectations
At this point in my research, I keep circling back to a humbling truth.
Supplements live in a gray zone between pharmacology and psychology.
The placebo effect is not fake. It is a measurable neurobiological phenomenon. If I start taking ashwagandha expecting calm, I may behave in ways that create calm. I may prioritize sleep more intentionally. I may interpret sensations differently. The ritual of taking a supplement can itself become a signal to slow down.
That does not invalidate the compound. It complicates the narrative.
The most responsible way to approach something like ashwagandha is with curiosity and restraint. The studies are promising, but they are not unanimous. Doses vary. Extract quality matters. Individual responses differ. Some people feel a noticeable shift. Others feel nothing. A few report side effects such as digestive discomfort or drowsiness.
For a freediver, the key is integration, not dependence. No herb replaces training, technique, or safety. No supplement substitutes for progressive adaptation. At best, ashwagandha might act as a small lever on the stress system, making the work we already do slightly more effective.
I find that framing comforting. It removes the fantasy of a shortcut and replaces it with the idea of support.
The Safety and Practical Side
It would be irresponsible to romanticize a supplement without mentioning safety.
Ashwagandha is generally considered safe for most healthy adults when taken in standardized doses, but it is not for everyone. People with thyroid conditions, autoimmune diseases, or those who are pregnant are often advised to avoid it or consult a physician. It can interact with medications. Quality control in the supplement industry varies wildly. A cheap, poorly standardized product is not the same as a clinically studied extract.
For divers, there is an additional layer. Anything that affects alertness, blood pressure, or perception should be tested cautiously outside of critical environments. The first weeks of any new supplement should not coincide with aggressive depth training or competition. Observe the body in low-risk contexts. Treat it as data collection.
Freediving culture sometimes romanticizes experimentation. But the water is not forgiving. Every variable we introduce deserves respect.
Where I Am Landing
After weeks of reading, I find myself neither convinced nor dismissive. I am interested.
The research suggests that ashwagandha may reduce cortisol, ease anxiety, support recovery, and improve certain performance markers. Each of those effects has a plausible bridge to freediving. A calmer nervous system. Better sleep. More efficient recovery. Slightly improved tolerance for discomfort. None of these are magic. All of them matter.
What attracts me most is not the promise of deeper dives. It is the possibility of a healthier baseline. Freediving is a sport that exposes whatever is already inside you. If your life is chaotic, your dives feel chaotic. If your nervous system is fried, the water magnifies it. A tool that helps rebalance stress off the line could indirectly transform what happens on the line.
I am aware that I am projecting hopes onto a plant with a long history and a messy modern reputation. Wellness culture tends to oversimplify. Ancient equals good. Natural equals safe. Those equations are false. But they contain a kernel of truth: humans have been experimenting with their physiology for as long as we have existed. Some experiments endure because they work often enough to be remembered.
Ashwagandha has endured.
The next step for me is personal data. A trial period. Careful observation. Blood work before and after. Subjective notes on sleep, mood, and training. Not because I expect a miracle, but because I am curious about the edges of my own system.
Freediving has taught me that progress is rarely explosive. It is incremental. It hides in the details. The way you breathe between dives. The way you recover after stress. The way you interpret discomfort. If ashwagandha nudges any of those variables in a favorable direction, even slightly, that is worth understanding.
And if it does nothing, that is data too.
Either way, the process of researching it has already been useful. It forced me to confront how much of performance is hormonal and psychological. We tend to focus on lungs and legs because they are visible. But the real frontier might be the chemistry of calm.
When I finally take that first capsule, I will not be expecting enlightenment. I will be listening for small shifts. A quieter morning. A steadier breath-up. A dive where the contractions feel like information instead of threat.
Sometimes the most meaningful gains in this sport are not measured in meters. They are measured in how gently you can sit inside your own body while it asks you to breathe. If a root from an ancient pharmacopoeia can help even a little with that conversation, I am willing to explore it.
The Cortisol Experiment: Could Ashwagandha Change My Freediving?
Author: Nick Pelios
Over the past few weeks, a small sentence from my dietician has been looping in my head.
“Your cortisol is a little high.”
Not catastrophic. Not a red alert. Just… high enough to be worth paying attention to.
If you train hard, work long hours, and try to keep a few too many plates spinning at once, that sentence probably sounds familiar. Cortisol is not the villain it is often made out to be. It is a survival hormone. It helps us wake up, respond to stress, mobilize energy, and perform under pressure. The problem is not cortisol itself. The problem is when the stress response never fully switches off.
My dietician’s suggestion was simple. Clean up sleep. Tighten nutrition. Protect recovery. And consider trying ashwagandha.
I had heard the name before, mostly in the foggy space where supplements, ancient medicine, and wellness trends blur into each other. I had never taken it. I did not know what it would actually feel like. But the suggestion sent me down a rabbit hole. And because everything in my life eventually gets filtered through the lens of freediving, one question kept surfacing.
If ashwagandha really does what people claim it does, what could that mean underwater?
This is not a recommendation. It is not a promise. It is a personal exploration. I am still in the research phase. But the more I read, the more I started to imagine how its potential effects might intersect with the physiology and psychology of breath-hold diving.
To understand that, we first need to talk about stress.
Freediving is a Stress Laboratory
Freediving is often marketed as calm. Serene. Meditative. And at its best, it is. But physiologically, it is also a controlled confrontation with stress.
The moment you hold your breath, a cascade begins. Carbon dioxide rises. Oxygen drops. Chemoreceptors in your body start sending increasingly urgent signals. Your brain interprets this as a threat. Even a trained diver is not immune to the basic biology. We just learn to reinterpret the signals.
Cortisol plays a role in that landscape. Elevated chronic stress can shift how sensitive we are to discomfort. It can shorten patience. It can amplify anxiety. It can disturb sleep, which then feeds back into recovery, mood, and performance. A diver who is under-recovered is not just tired. They are neurologically louder. Every contraction feels bigger. Every urge to breathe feels more dramatic.
This is where ashwagandha enters the conversation.
In traditional Ayurvedic medicine, ashwagandha is classified as an adaptogen. The term adaptogen is often overused, but the basic idea is that certain compounds may help the body regulate its response to stress. Modern research has focused heavily on its interaction with cortisol.
Several clinical trials have shown that standardized ashwagandha extracts can reduce serum cortisol levels in chronically stressed individuals. The reductions are not magical. They are not instant. But they are measurable. Participants often report parallel improvements in perceived stress, sleep quality, and anxiety scores.
If that effect translates consistently, the freediving implications are intriguing.
Imagine a baseline nervous system that is slightly less reactive. Slightly less jittery. Slightly more willing to sit with discomfort. Freediving performance is not only about lung capacity or technique. It is about the quality of your internal dialogue when the urge to breathe begins to rise. A calmer hormonal backdrop might not add meters directly, but it could reshape how you experience the dive.
The Cortisol Angle and Breath-Hold Tolerance
One of the most interesting threads in my reading has been the relationship between stress hormones and breath-hold tolerance.
Acute stress sharpens us. A spike of adrenaline before a dive can feel energizing. But chronic stress is different. It erodes the edges of resilience. High baseline cortisol has been associated with increased anxiety, impaired sleep, and altered perception of effort in athletes. Endurance sports literature repeatedly shows that overtrained athletes with dysregulated stress hormones often experience reduced performance even when their muscles are technically capable.
Breath-hold diving is a form of endurance. It is just compressed into minutes instead of hours.
If ashwagandha helps normalize cortisol, the indirect effect could be a more stable platform for training. Better sleep alone would be a gift. Sleep is where neural adaptations consolidate. It is where motor patterns settle. It is where the emotional charge of the day gets processed. A diver who sleeps deeply tends to wake up with a quieter nervous system. That quiet is gold underwater.
There is also emerging evidence that ashwagandha may influence perceived exertion and fatigue resistance in certain athletic contexts. Some studies have shown improvements in VO2 max, strength, and recovery markers in resistance-trained individuals. Freediving is not weightlifting, but the common thread is systemic stress. A body that recovers more efficiently from training may accumulate adaptation more cleanly.
Again, none of this guarantees deeper dives. Freediving is brutally honest about shortcuts. But it suggests a possibility: that managing stress chemistry could subtly expand the space in which training works.
Anxiety, CO2, and the Mind Under Pressure
Every diver knows the psychological wall. The point where the urge to breathe stops being a signal and becomes a negotiation.
Anxiety amplifies CO2 sensitivity. When you are tense, your breathing pattern at the surface changes. You may over-breathe. You may carry residual tension into the dive. That tension burns oxygen and accelerates the internal clock. The dive feels shorter than it is.
Ashwagandha has been studied for its anxiolytic, or anxiety-reducing, properties. Several trials comparing it to placebo have reported significant reductions in anxiety scales, sometimes approaching the magnitude seen with mild pharmaceutical interventions, but without the same side effect profile. The proposed mechanisms involve modulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and potential interactions with GABAergic signaling in the brain.
Translated into diver language, this suggests a compound that might gently nudge the nervous system toward parasympathetic dominance. That is the rest-and-digest mode. The freediver’s sweet spot. It is the state where heart rate drops, peripheral blood vessels constrict appropriately, and the mammalian dive reflex expresses itself more cleanly.
I keep imagining the surface ritual before a dive. The last few breaths. The mental framing. If a supplement could make that transition smoother, if it could reduce the background hum of anxiety, it might not change the physics of oxygen consumption, but it could change how efficiently we enter the dive state.
There is also a training implication. CO2 tables are as much psychological conditioning as physiological. A calmer baseline might allow a diver to stay more present during uncomfortable holds, reinforcing the lesson that discomfort is survivable. Over time, that could rewire the emotional response to rising CO2.
Recovery, Inflammation, and Training Density
Another angle that caught my attention is ashwagandha’s potential anti-inflammatory and recovery-supporting effects.
Intense training creates microtrauma. That is the point. Adaptation is the body rebuilding stronger. But chronic low-grade inflammation can blunt that process. Some studies suggest that ashwagandha supplementation may reduce markers of inflammation and oxidative stress. It has also been linked to improved testosterone levels in certain populations, which could influence recovery and muscle maintenance.
For freedivers who cross-train with strength work, apnea tables, and cardiovascular conditioning, recovery is the bottleneck. We rarely plateau because we are incapable of more. We plateau because our system cannot absorb the workload.
If ashwagandha contributes even modestly to recovery efficiency, it could allow slightly higher training density without tipping into overreaching. That is a delicate balance. More is not always better. But the ability to recover cleanly is a competitive advantage in any sport.
There is also the immune system angle. High stress and heavy training loads can suppress immunity. Getting sick during a training cycle is more than inconvenient. It resets momentum. Adaptogens have historically been valued for their immune-modulating effects, and some modern data supports a stabilizing role. For a diver preparing for a trip or competition, staying healthy is part of performance.
The Placebo Question and Honest Expectations
At this point in my research, I keep circling back to a humbling truth.
Supplements live in a gray zone between pharmacology and psychology.
The placebo effect is not fake. It is a measurable neurobiological phenomenon. If I start taking ashwagandha expecting calm, I may behave in ways that create calm. I may prioritize sleep more intentionally. I may interpret sensations differently. The ritual of taking a supplement can itself become a signal to slow down.
That does not invalidate the compound. It complicates the narrative.
The most responsible way to approach something like ashwagandha is with curiosity and restraint. The studies are promising, but they are not unanimous. Doses vary. Extract quality matters. Individual responses differ. Some people feel a noticeable shift. Others feel nothing. A few report side effects such as digestive discomfort or drowsiness.
For a freediver, the key is integration, not dependence. No herb replaces training, technique, or safety. No supplement substitutes for progressive adaptation. At best, ashwagandha might act as a small lever on the stress system, making the work we already do slightly more effective.
I find that framing comforting. It removes the fantasy of a shortcut and replaces it with the idea of support.
The Safety and Practical Side
It would be irresponsible to romanticize a supplement without mentioning safety.
Ashwagandha is generally considered safe for most healthy adults when taken in standardized doses, but it is not for everyone. People with thyroid conditions, autoimmune diseases, or those who are pregnant are often advised to avoid it or consult a physician. It can interact with medications. Quality control in the supplement industry varies wildly. A cheap, poorly standardized product is not the same as a clinically studied extract.
For divers, there is an additional layer. Anything that affects alertness, blood pressure, or perception should be tested cautiously outside of critical environments. The first weeks of any new supplement should not coincide with aggressive depth training or competition. Observe the body in low-risk contexts. Treat it as data collection.
Freediving culture sometimes romanticizes experimentation. But the water is not forgiving. Every variable we introduce deserves respect.
Where I Am Landing
After weeks of reading, I find myself neither convinced nor dismissive. I am interested.
The research suggests that ashwagandha may reduce cortisol, ease anxiety, support recovery, and improve certain performance markers. Each of those effects has a plausible bridge to freediving. A calmer nervous system. Better sleep. More efficient recovery. Slightly improved tolerance for discomfort. None of these are magic. All of them matter.
What attracts me most is not the promise of deeper dives. It is the possibility of a healthier baseline. Freediving is a sport that exposes whatever is already inside you. If your life is chaotic, your dives feel chaotic. If your nervous system is fried, the water magnifies it. A tool that helps rebalance stress off the line could indirectly transform what happens on the line.
I am aware that I am projecting hopes onto a plant with a long history and a messy modern reputation. Wellness culture tends to oversimplify. Ancient equals good. Natural equals safe. Those equations are false. But they contain a kernel of truth: humans have been experimenting with their physiology for as long as we have existed. Some experiments endure because they work often enough to be remembered.
Ashwagandha has endured.
The next step for me is personal data. A trial period. Careful observation. Blood work before and after. Subjective notes on sleep, mood, and training. Not because I expect a miracle, but because I am curious about the edges of my own system.
Freediving has taught me that progress is rarely explosive. It is incremental. It hides in the details. The way you breathe between dives. The way you recover after stress. The way you interpret discomfort. If ashwagandha nudges any of those variables in a favorable direction, even slightly, that is worth understanding.
And if it does nothing, that is data too.
Either way, the process of researching it has already been useful. It forced me to confront how much of performance is hormonal and psychological. We tend to focus on lungs and legs because they are visible. But the real frontier might be the chemistry of calm.
When I finally take that first capsule, I will not be expecting enlightenment. I will be listening for small shifts. A quieter morning. A steadier breath-up. A dive where the contractions feel like information instead of threat.
Sometimes the most meaningful gains in this sport are not measured in meters. They are measured in how gently you can sit inside your own body while it asks you to breathe. If a root from an ancient pharmacopoeia can help even a little with that conversation, I am willing to explore it.