Adaptogenesis: Lazarev, Brekhman and the Soviet history of the word adaptogen

The word adaptogen has a date of birth: 1947. It has a place, Leningrad, and an author, the pharmacologist Nikolai Lazarev. Twenty years later, at the other end of the Soviet Union, Israel Brekhman attached it to a thorny root of the taiga. This page tells the story of that word, its people and its dates. It does not take up its promise: in the European Union, no health claim is authorised for the plants filed under that name.

1947, Leningrad: a word is coined

Nikolai Vasilyevich Lazarev was a pharmacologist and toxicologist in Leningrad. In 1947 he built the word from the Latin adaptare, to fit, and the Greek -genēs, that which gives birth. Lazarev first applied it to a synthetic molecule, dibazol. The roots came later, with his students and colleagues.

The post-war Soviet Union was then searching the immense pharmacopoeia of its territory for plants Western science had not studied. The taiga of the Far East, the Altai and Siberia became gathering grounds for the laboratories.

Vladivostok: Brekhman and the root of the taiga

Israel Itskovich Brekhman worked in Vladivostok, on the Pacific shore, in the Far Eastern institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He started with ginseng, Panax ginseng, the most expensive root of Chinese medicine. Then, at the end of the 1950s, he turned to a shrub far more common in the forests around him: eleuthero, Eleutherococcus senticosus, which trappers call the devil's bush, so thickly are its stems bristling with needles. A root found everywhere, where wild ginseng was counted one by one.

In 1969, with his colleague I. V. Dardymov, Brekhman published in English, in the American journal Annual Review of Pharmacology, an article proposing a definition of the adaptogen in three criteria. These are criteria of pharmacological effect; we do not reproduce them here. In 1980 his book Man and Biologically Active Substances came out in Oxford, from Pergamon.

Tomsk, the Amur and the Altai: the other roots

Brekhman was not alone. In Tomsk, in Siberia, the pharmacologist A. S. Saratikov devoted a large part of his career to rhodiola, the golden root; in 1961 the botanist G. V. Krylov led an expedition into the Altai to map its stands.

Schisandra, the five-flavour berry, had been noticed earlier. In 1895 the botanist Vladimir Komarov noted that Nanai hunters of the Amur took its dried berries with them on the hunt. Soviet researchers picked up that trail in the twentieth century.

Western herbalists would later file under the same word plants from other traditions: ashwagandha from Ayurveda, ginseng, holy basil.

Cosmonauts and athletes

The word left the laboratories through sport and space. According to the herbalists David Winston and Steven Maimes, Soviet athletes were given an eleuthero extract in the late 1970s, and cosmonauts from 1977 onwards. That is where its nickname, the cosmonauts' plant, comes from. We report the fact; we draw nothing more from it.

A hidden science?

This story has often been told as that of a secret science, kept behind the Iron Curtain. That is an exaggeration. Part of the applied work, military or sporting, was probably never made public. But the bulk of the corpus was published: in Soviet journals, in Russian, and in books printed in Vladivostok, Tomsk or Leningrad. The barrier was mostly language. Brekhman himself summarised his work in English as early as 1969, and his 1980 book came out in Oxford.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the biochemist Alexander Panossian, based in Sweden, spent years translating and summarising this corpus in English-language journals. The title of this page once spoke of a hidden science. We keep the address and correct the word.

What Europe made of the word

In 2008 the herbal medicines committee of the European Medicines Agency, the EMA, published a reflection paper on the adaptogenic concept. It concluded that the concept still needed clarifying, and that it is not part of the pharmacological vocabulary accepted in Europe. The European law of 2006 on claims, for its part, authorises none for these plants.

That is why, at INFUSE, adaptogen is a word of history: it says where our roots come from and who studied them, without promising anything about what they would do.

Before the word

The plants themselves did not wait for 1947. Ayurveda files its long-haul roots among the rasayana, "the path of the essence"; we tell that parallel in our page on adaptogens and rasayanas. China, in the Shennong Ben Cao Jing, sorted its substances into three ranks, and placed at the top, shang pin, those held safe for long use. In the taiga, Evenki hunters and the peoples of the Amur knew their roots and berries long before the pharmacologists.

Roots at the House

Three of the plants in this story are with us. Eleuthero, as crushed root for decoction, from China and from a certified organic supply chain. Rhodiola, as pieces of dried root, from Eastern Europe. Ashwagandha, as whole-root powder, from India and from a certified organic supply chain. The two northern roots are drunk as a decoction, in the morning; ashwagandha in warm milk.

Precautions

Each plant has its own, set out on its product page. The main ones:

• Eleuthero: hypertension, heart conditions, autoimmune disease, immunosuppressants, anticoagulants, digoxin, diabetes medication: medical advice first. Avoid during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Preferably in the morning.
• Rhodiola: pregnancy and breastfeeding, blood pressure or diabetes medication, autoimmune disease, bipolar disorder, antidepressants: medical advice first. Take care with coffee.
• Ashwagandha: pregnancy and breastfeeding, thyroid, liver, autoimmune disease, allergy to nightshades: medical advice first; stop two weeks before surgery.

When in doubt, your doctor before the root.

Sources

• I. I. Brekhman, I. V. Dardymov, "New substances of plant origin which increase nonspecific resistance", Annual Review of Pharmacology 9 (1969).
• I. I. Brekhman, Man and Biologically Active Substances, Pergamon Press, Oxford (1980).
• A. Panossian, G. Wikman, review in Pharmaceuticals 3 (2010): Lazarev, 1947, dibazol.
• A. Panossian, G. Wikman, "Pharmacology of Schisandra chinensis Bail.: an overview of Russian research and uses in medicine", Journal of Ethnopharmacology 118 (2008): Komarov, 1895.
• R. P. Brown, P. L. Gerbarg, Z. Ramazanov, "Rhodiola rosea: a phytomedicinal overview", HerbalGram 56 (2002): Krylov, 1961.
• A. S. Saratikov, E. A. Krasnov, Rhodiola rosea (golden root), Tomsk University (1987).
• David Winston, Steven Maimes, Adaptogens (2007): athletes and cosmonauts, 1977.
• EMA, HMPC, Reflection paper on the adaptogenic concept (2008).
• EU text (EC) No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims.
• INFUSE product sheets: eleuthero, rhodiola, ashwagandha.