Comment · Mon, September 27, 2021 · ND Owner
Anyone here who solved the fatigue with Tongkat Ali?
Original post in this thread
spread_nutella_on_me · 10 points
There have been multiple reports here, for whom TA causes fatigue and sleepiness. I've seen suggestions for stacking DHEA and Iodine but had no success with that myself.
Anyone got a success story to share after running into the fatigue issue?
What they were answering
spread_nutella_on_me · 5 points
Jup, taken few hours before bed results in difficulty falling asleep for me. And when sleep does happen by 5 A.M, it's in a very half-sleep, half-awake state.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
Yep, he thinks it is cortisol as well. The tongkat ali is lowering your cortisol too much. That's why you get lethargy during the day. Combining it with something like our Panax ginseng leaf extract would be a good test to see if that balances it out during the day. In fact, too low of cortisol can cause insomnia as well. This is likely why it keeps you up at night when you take it in the PM. Ashwagandha also lowers cortisol. He found that Shoden works much better when taken with our PanaMAX, as the ginseng balances out the cortisol. You want it in the middle of the range. Too low and too high are both bad. Interestingly enough, I have also noticed that I have better days when I take PanaMAX with Shoden. Perahaps PanaMAX is the key for you to have tongkat work properly.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5806584/
There seems to be a link with lower blood pressure and insomnia, too.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1866393/
Lowering cortisol too much could be part of what makes bacopa demotivating, along with the tryptophan hydroxylase modulation. Interestingly enough, there is a link between cortisol and serotonin, too. We are going to have to look into cortisol more. It's much more complex than initially meets the eye. For you, I would try taking PanaMAX with the tongkat ali and see how that works for you.