Adaptogenesis — the hidden Soviet science (Brekhman, Lazarev)

1947 — a word born in a military laboratory

The word adaptogen has a precise date of birth: 1947. The place: a military pharmacology laboratory in Tomsk, western Siberia. The man: Nikolai Vassilievich Lazarev, a Red Army pharmacologist tasked with a question simple in appearance — how to keep Soviet soldiers combat-capable under extreme conditions? Cold, hunger, sleep deprivation, radioactive exposure, chemical stress. Lazarev was looking for a substance that would heal nothing specific, but would raise the organism's general resistance.

He coined the word from two roots: the Latin adaptare (to adjust, to conform) and the Greek genes (that which produces, that which engenders). Adaptogen: that which produces adaptation. Not a stimulant — a stimulant pushes energy upward and lets the organism crash back lower. Not a sedative — a sedative shuts down without rebalancing. Something else: a new pharmacological category, with no Western equivalent.

Context matters. The USSR emerged from the Great Patriotic War with 27 million dead. Stalin wanted a military medicine that depended neither on American laboratories nor on a dismantled German pharmaceutical industry. Soviet pharmacology turned toward the resources of the immense Siberian territory — the taiga, the Altai, the Russian Far East — where peoples (Evenks, Nanai, Udege) had used for millennia roots that science had not yet named. That is where Lazarev began to look.

Israel Brekhman — the student who systematized it (1958–1990)

Israel Itskovich Brekhman was born in 1921 in Vladivostok, a Russian Far East port city on the border with China and Korea. A military physician during the war, he joined the Institute of Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok in 1951. It was there that he encountered Lazarev's work — and decided to devote his life to a research programme of a scale without equal in the history of phytopharmacology.

In 1958, Brekhman published a decisive paper in Lekarstvennye Sredstva Dalnego Vostoka, proposing the three pharmacological criteria that would define an adaptogen. First criterion: the substance must show a wide margin of safety — that is, it can be given at high doses without causing significant side effects in healthy organisms. Second criterion: its action must be non-specific — it must raise the organism's resistance to stressors of varied nature (chemical, physical, biological). Third criterion: its effect must be normalizing — whatever the direction of the imbalance, the substance returns the organism toward homeostasis. If tension runs high, it lowers. If it runs low, it rises.

These three criteria are not wellness slogans — they are measurable experimental thresholds. Brekhman and his team tested hundreds of Siberian plants over thirty years. Very few cleared all three. The survivors became the three historic pillars of adaptogenesis: Eleutherococcus senticosus (Siberian ginseng, a woody root of the taiga; studied from 1960 onward on more than 4,000 human subjects under industrial, military, and athletic conditions), Rhodiola rosea (golden root, a high-altitude rhizome of the Altai and Siberia; studied for its effects on mental fatigue and cognitive performance under stress), and Schisandra chinensis (wu wei zi, the pentavalent berry of Manchuria; the only plant in classical Chinese medicine whose berry holds all five tastes — sour, sweet, bitter, pungent, salty).

Cosmonauts, soldiers, divers — the Soviet proving ground

Where Western pharmacology tests on laboratory mice, Soviet pharmacology tested on humans at work. Brekhman's subjects were the cosmonauts of the Soyuz programme, under extreme orbital stress. Red Army soldiers deployed in the Caucasus, the Arctic, Mongolia. Soviet navy divers in the White Sea, exposed to dissolved nitrogen and prolonged cold. The workers of Norilsk, the Arctic city where the temperature drops to minus forty-five degrees six months a year, where polar sleep disrupts circadian rhythms. The athletes of the Soviet Spartakiads, training for the Olympic Games.

The protocols included measures of physical performance (endurance, strength, recovery speed), cognitive tests (reaction time, working memory, sustained vigilance), biological markers (salivary cortisol, lactate, blood sugar, white-cell count after stress), and subjective fatigue assessments. Brekhman documented that Eleutherococcus raised work capacity by fifteen to twenty percent on average over multi-week courses, without the peak-and-crash characteristic of stimulants. That Rhodiola shortened mental recovery time after prolonged wakefulness. That Schisandra improved adaptation to altitude and cold.

This data was published in Soviet journals — Farmakologiya i Toksikologiya, Lekarstvennye Sredstva Dalnego Vostoka — in Russian, and remained largely inaccessible to Western science until the 1990s. The KGB classified part of the results: cosmonaut performance was a state secret throughout the Cold War. When Brekhman published his major book Man and Biologically Active Substances in 1980 (translated into English by Pergamon Press), the depth of the programme remained largely unknown to the Western public.

The three pillar-plants — anatomy of a lineage

Eleutherococcus senticosus — the root of the taiga

A shrub of the Araliaceae family, a distant relative of true ginseng (Panax ginseng) but of a separate genus. It grows in the understory of the Russian Far East taiga, in northeastern China, in North Korea, on the island of Hokkaido. The Nanai and Udege peoples have used the root for centuries as a decoction to carry them through the winters — a use documented by nineteenth-century Russian ethnobotanists. Brekhman chose Eleutherococcus because it grows abundantly, is easy to cultivate at scale, and shows a remarkable margin of safety. More than four thousand clinical studies published in Russian between 1960 and 1990. The principal active compounds: the eleutherosides, glycosides of varied structure (eleutherosides B, D, E chiefly), which act on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.

Rhodiola rosea — the golden root of the Altai

A high-altitude crassulacean plant, growing above two thousand metres in the Altai, in Siberia, in the Carpathians, in Scandinavia. The Vikings took it before their expeditions across the North Sea; Siberian peoples drank its decoction before long winter journeys. Brekhman and his team tested it intensively on students during exams, on doctors on night duty, on soldiers on prolonged deployment. Rosavins and salidroside are its principal phytochemical markers. Rhodiola stands apart for its quick action (a perceptible effect within the first hours) and its distinct cognitive profile: it modulates serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline without inducing the dependence of amphetamines.

Schisandra chinensis — the berry of the five tastes

A climbing vine of Manchuria, with cinnabar-red berries. In classical Chinese medicine (Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, first century BCE), it is listed among the sixty superior plants — those that may be taken over the long term without harm. Wu wei zi: the fruit of the five tastes. The sour taste dominates, yet the sweet, the bitter, the pungent, and the salty come through as you chew. This gustatory fivefoldness is read by Chinese pharmacopeia as the sign of an action on the five organs (liver, heart, spleen, lung, kidney). Brekhman brought it into the adaptogen pantheon for its documented hepatoprotective effects (the schisandrins), for its action on respiration and resistance to altitude, and for its capacity to sharpen pilots' visual acuity in night flight — a very specific test run on Soviet military aviation in the 1970s.

Mechanisms — the HPA axis and the theory of non-specific stress

To understand how an adaptogen acts, you have to understand Hans Selye's theory of stress (1936), the Austro-Canadian endocrinologist whose work laid the conceptual ground on which Brekhman built. Selye described the general adaptation syndrome in three phases: alarm (mobilization), resistance (adaptation), exhaustion (collapse, if the stress lasts too long). The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) is the central hormonal chain of this response: hypothalamus → CRH → pituitary → ACTH → adrenals → cortisol and catecholamines.

Adaptogens intervene at several levels of this cascade. Alexander Panossian, the Armenian-Swedish biochemist who systematically took up Brekhman's work across the 2000s–2020s, documents that adaptogens modulate the expression of stress proteins (heat shock proteins HSP70, HSP27), interact with the sympathetic nervous system, normalize cortisol secretion, and activate the AMPK pathway (cellular energy regulation). In 2010 and 2017 Panossian published two reference papers in Phytomedicine synthesizing the mechanisms into a unified theory: adaptogens are modulators of the stress response that act as mild stressors themselves — they create a gentle, controlled stress that trains the organism to respond better to major stresses later on. This is hormesis applied to herbalism.

Georg Wagner, a pharmacologist at the University of Munich, extends this analysis to immunomodulation. The eleutherosides and schisandrins stimulate macrophage activity, increase interferon production, modulate the Th1/Th2 balance. Here again: non-specific. No single molecular target. A background action that readjusts the terrain.

Beyond the three plants — the widening of the concept

Brekhman himself, in the 1980s, extended the adaptogen category to other plants that satisfy the three criteria. Withania somnifera (Ashwagandha, Ayurveda), Panax ginseng (Korean ginseng, Chinese medicine), Aralia mandshurica (Manchurian aralia), Glycyrrhiza glabra (licorice), Bacopa monnieri (Brahmi, Ayurveda), Centella asiatica (Gotu kola), Astragalus membranaceus (huang qi, Chinese medicine). David Winston, in his book Adaptogens — Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief (2007, revised 2019), offers a practical map of these plants, distinguishing the stimulating adaptogens (Rhodiola, Eleutherococcus, Ginseng), the restorative ones (Ashwagandha, Cordyceps), and the calming ones (Reishi, Schisandra).

INFUSE takes up this map without making a dogma of it. The stimulating/restorative/calming distinction is useful but it simplifies: one and the same plant can produce different effects depending on the person's terrain, the dose, the length of the course, the time of day. Rhodiola enlivens a tired terrain and settles an agitated one. Ashwagandha restores the exhausted and gently rouses the slowed. This is the normalizing effect Brekhman spoke of — not a single direction, but an intelligence in the plant that meets the organism where it is.

The pre-Soviet lineage — what peoples knew before 1947

It would be dishonest to present adaptogens as a Soviet invention. Lazarev and Brekhman gave a scientific name to what peoples had known for millennia. The Nanai of the Amur took Eleutherococcus before the winter hunts. The Sami of Scandinavia drank Rhodiola to carry them through the polar nights. Classical Chinese medicine lists Wu Wei Zi (Schisandra) among the superior plants of the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing — a founding text of the first century BCE. Ayurveda describes rasayana (rejuvenation, regeneration) as an entire branch of its pharmacopeia, going back to the Charaka Samhita (around 1000 BCE) — and Ashwagandha, Brahmi, Shatavari, Tulsi are classical rasayana.

Soviet science did something singular: it applied the rigorous experimental method to a body of plants that nineteenth-century Western medicine had dismissed as peasant superstition. Brekhman made these plants measurable, reproducible, defensible before a scientific committee. But he did not invent their efficacy — he documented it. It is a distinction that matters to INFUSE: we acknowledge the scientific debt to the Soviet pharmacologists, and we acknowledge the first debt to the peoples who kept this knowledge alive for millennia.

Gems & legends — the memory behind the science

Gem 1 — The secret of Norilsk. In the 1970s, the Arctic city of Norilsk (nickel and palladium mining, latitude 69 north) received regular shipments of Eleutherococcus from Vladivostok. The factory doctors documented a 30 to 50 percent reduction in winter sick leave among workers who took the daily decoction for six months. The study was never published in the West — it remains in the archives of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Gem 2 — The cosmonaut's riddle. The legend has it that Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space (Vostok 6, 1963), took Schisandra and Eleutherococcus daily throughout her mission. The official record confirms the Eleutherococcus but stays silent on the Schisandra. Brekhman himself, in a late interview (1988), confirmed that he had supplied the extracts — but refused to say more. The state secret holds.

Gem 3 — Brekhman and American ginseng. In the 1980s, Brekhman corresponded with James Duke, an ethnobotanist with the USDA, and invited him to Vladivostok. Duke would later confirm that this correspondence was one of the rare scientific bridges between the USSR and the USA in pharmacognosy during the Cold War. Brekhman is said to have told him: 'Your Cherokee and Iroquois peoples did with Panax quinquefolius what our taiga peoples did with Eleutherococcus. We hold the same knowledge, named differently.'

Gem 4 — Rasayana and the adaptogen. The Charaka Samhita (a founding Ayurvedic text, around 1000 BCE) devotes an entire section (Rasayana Adhyaya) to plants that restore living tissue in depth, lengthen life, strengthen memory, raise resistance to illness. The three Ayurvedic criteria for rasayana are remarkably close to Brekhman's three pharmacological criteria: wide non-toxicity, deep and whole-body action, an effect of regeneration. It is a trans-historical convergence that resists any explanation by diffusion.

Gem 5 — Rosavins and Mongolia. The Rhodiola rosea of Siberia typically holds 1 to 3 percent rosavins (its principal phytochemical markers). But the Rhodiola of the Mongolian Altai grows at extreme altitude (3,000 to 3,500 metres) and shows higher concentrations, up to 4 percent. The nomadic peoples of the Altai regard this root as a plant of initiation — it is gathered only in autumn, after the first frost, and the harvesting ceremony includes an offering of fermented milk to the mountain. This ritual dimension was left out of the Soviet version of adaptogen science.

Gem 6 — The forgotten word. In 1958, when Brekhman published his first synthesis, he hesitated between several coinages: adaptogen, anti-stressor, biological balancer, homeostatic. He chose adaptogen because it evokes Darwinian adaptation — an evolutionary reference that places the pharmacology within general biology, not within clinical medicine. This Darwinian filiation goes largely unnoticed in the contemporary wellness reception of the word, which has turned it into a purely clinical term.

Gem 7 — Panossian and the stress proteins. In 2009, Alexander Panossian published in Phytomedicine the first molecular demonstration that adaptogens raise the expression of heat shock proteins (HSP70, HSP27) — proteins that protect cells against thermal, oxidative, and ischemic stress. It was the first time a precise molecular mechanism was documented for Brekhman's 'non-specific' effect. Soviet science had observed; post-Soviet science begins to explain.

Gem 8 — The silence of the Cold War. Between 1960 and 1990, more than 4,000 clinical studies on adaptogens were published in Russian. Very few were translated into English before the fall of the USSR. By the time translation began (the 1990s–2000s), part of these archives was already lost, scattered, illegible. It is one of the great memory-holes of modern pharmacognosy. The recovery effort is being carried on by the Swedish Herbal Institute, the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the American Botanical Council.

Primary sources

• Brekhman, I. I. & Dardymov, I. V. (1969). New Substances of Plant Origin which Increase Nonspecific Resistance. Annual Review of Pharmacology, 9, 419–430.
• Brekhman, I. I. (1980). Man and Biologically Active Substances: The Effect of Drugs, Diet and Pollution on Health. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
• Lazarev, N. V. (1947). General and specific influences on the body of pharmacological substances. Farmakologiya i Toksikologiya (in Russian).
• Panossian, A. & Wagner, H. (2005). Stimulating effect of adaptogens: an overview with particular reference to their efficacy following single dose administration. Phytotherapy Research, 19(10), 819–838.
• Panossian, A. (2017). Understanding adaptogenic activity: specificity of the pharmacological action of adaptogens and other phytochemicals. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1401(1), 49–64.
• Winston, D. & Maimes, S. (2007, rev. 2019). Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief. Rochester: Healing Arts Press.
• Wagner, H., Nörr, H. & Winterhoff, H. (1994). Plant adaptogens. Phytomedicine, 1(1), 63–76.
• Selye, H. (1936). A syndrome produced by diverse nocuous agents. Nature, 138, 32.
• Panossian, A. & Wikman, G. (2010). Effects of Adaptogens on the Central Nervous System and the Molecular Mechanisms Associated with Their Stress-Protective Activity. Pharmaceuticals, 3(1), 188–224.
• Lad, V. (2006). Textbook of Ayurveda Volume Two: A Complete Guide to Clinical Assessment. Albuquerque: The Ayurvedic Press.
• Charaka Samhita (c. 1000 BCE). Rasayana Adhyaya section. Translated edition by Sharma & Dash, Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, 1976.
• Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (first century BCE). Section on the superior drugs (Schisandra chinensis). Critical edition by Yang Shou-zhong, Blue Poppy Press, 1998.

Secondary sources

• Davydov, M. & Krikorian, A. D. (2000). Eleutherococcus senticosus as an adaptogen: a closer look. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 72(3), 345–393.
• Kelly, G. S. (2001). Rhodiola rosea: a possible plant adaptogen. Alternative Medicine Review, 6(3), 293–302.
• Panossian, A., Wikman, G., Kaur, P. & Asea, A. (2009). Adaptogens stimulate neuropeptide Y and Hsp72 expression. Phytomedicine, 16(6–7), 617–622.
• Duke, J. A. (1985). Handbook of Medicinal Herbs. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
• Alarcón Gallegos, R. (2018). Plantas Maestras de los Andes. Earth Restoration interview. Transcript available.
• American Botanical Council (2013). Adaptogens — Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. HerbalGram, 97.