Can You Take Vitamin D3 With Ashwagandha? A Simple Daily Routine

Vitamin D3 and ashwagandha are two of the most common additions to a modern wellness routine. One is the "sunshine vitamin" that many indoor workers run short on. The other is the best-known adaptogen, used by people looking for support with everyday stress and sleep. If you've got both on your shelf, you've probably wondered whether they belong in the same routine. So, can you take vitamin D3 with ashwagandha?

Short answer: yes. For most healthy adults there's no known reason to keep them apart. Here's what each one does, what the research says, where the evidence on the pair is limited, and a simple daily routine.

The short version

Why people take vitamin D3 and ashwagandha together

They cover two very different foundations.

• Vitamin D3 fills a common gap. For most people the main source of vitamin D is sunlight on the skin, not food (Holick, 2007), so long office days and dark winters make it easy to fall short.
• Ashwagandha is an adaptogen, an herb traditionally used to help the body handle stress. Modern trials look at stress scores, the stress hormone cortisol and sleep.

Many people reach for both at the same time of year: when days get short, they want to cover vitamin D and they want help staying calm and sleeping well through a busy season.

What vitamin D3 does

Vitamin D supports the normal absorption of calcium and healthy bones (Ross et al., 2011).

Plenty of people come up short. A large analysis of US nutrition survey data found that most Americans had total vitamin D intakes below the estimated average requirement, even after counting fortified foods and supplements (Fulgoni et al., 2011).

Steady daily dosing works. In a study of healthy men through a Nebraska winter, blood vitamin D levels rose in direct proportion to the daily D3 dose (Heaney et al., 2003).

Our Vitamin D3 2,000 IU gives you cholecalciferol, the same form your skin makes from sunlight, in one small softgel a day. A bottle of 100 softgels lasts just over three months.

What ashwagandha does

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) root has been tested in several placebo-controlled trials in healthy, stressed adults:

• Stress and cortisol: In a 60-day trial, adults under chronic stress who took 300 mg of ashwagandha root extract twice a day had lower stress scores and lower blood cortisol than the placebo group (Chandrasekhar et al., 2012).
• Dose and sleep: In an eight-week trial, people taking 250 or 600 mg a day of ashwagandha root extract had lower perceived stress than placebo, with the higher amount showing the strongest results. The same trial linked ashwagandha to better sleep quality (Salve et al., 2019).
• Morning cortisol: In another 60-day trial, 240 mg a day of an ashwagandha extract was linked to lower morning cortisol compared with placebo (Lopresti et al., 2019).

Those trials used concentrated root extracts. Our Ashwagandha is one capsule a day of organic ashwagandha root with a touch of organic black pepper. Sixty capsules last two months, which lines up with the eight-week window most trials used.

What about the combination?

Here's the honest part. We didn't find any published human trials that tested vitamin D3 and ashwagandha together, so we can't say whether the pair does more than each one alone. Evidence on the combination is limited.

What we can say:

• They're studied for different things, so they don't double up.
• We didn't find any reported interaction between them.
• Neither one works overnight, so both reward a steady daily habit.

How to take vitamin D3 with ashwagandha

Take vitamin D3 with a meal that has some fat

Vitamin D is fat-soluble. In healthy older adults, vitamin D3 taken with a meal containing fat was absorbed better than the same dose taken with a fat-free meal (Dawson-Hughes et al., 2015). In a small clinic study, switching vitamin D to the largest meal of the day was linked to an average rise of about 50% in blood levels after two to three months (Mulligan and Licata, 2010). More in the best time to take vitamin D.

Pick a time for ashwagandha that suits your goal

Ashwagandha can be taken morning or evening. Morning suits daytime balance. Evening suits winding down before bed. See the best time to take ashwagandha.

A simple daily routine

1. Option A, one step: take one D3 softgel and one ashwagandha capsule with breakfast, ideally with eggs, yogurt, nuts or avocado.
2. Option B, split: take D3 with your biggest meal of the day and ashwagandha with dinner to help you wind down.
3. Either way, keep it daily. Same meal, same time.

Give it time

Vitamin D levels build gradually over weeks of steady dosing (Heaney et al., 2003), so plan on two to three months. Most ashwagandha trials ran for eight weeks or more. More in how long vitamin D3 takes to work and how long ashwagandha takes to work.

Tips to get more from both

• Get some daylight. A short walk outside in the morning gives you natural light and a calmer start to the day.
• Protect your sleep. A regular bedtime gives your stress response a steady rhythm.
• Eat the fat. A little fat at the meal where you take D3 helps absorption.
• Track how you feel. A quick weekly note on stress and sleep makes it easier to judge the routine after eight weeks.

Is it safe?

Both are widely used supplements. Still, a few notes:

• The Institute of Medicine set the upper limit for vitamin D at 4,000 IU a day for adults from all sources (Ross et al., 2011). Our softgel is 2,000 IU. Our Complete Multivitamin adds 10 mcg (400 IU), so even with both you're at 2,400 IU.
• Rare cases of liver problems have been reported with ashwagandha-containing supplements (Björnsson et al., 2020). Stop and see your doctor if you notice yellowing skin or eyes, dark urine or unusual itching.
• Don't use ashwagandha if you're pregnant or breastfeeding.
• Check with your doctor first if you take medicine for thyroid, blood sugar, blood pressure, mood or sleep, have an autoimmune or liver condition, or are under 18.
• Stick to label amounts for both products.

Frequently asked questions

Can I take vitamin D3 and ashwagandha at the same time?

Yes. Taking them with the same meal is the simplest routine for most people. Just make sure that meal has some fat for the D3.

Should I take ashwagandha in the morning or at night with vitamin D?

Either works. If sleep is your main goal, many people move ashwagandha to the evening and keep D3 with breakfast or lunch.

Can I add magnesium too?

Many people do. See can you take magnesium with vitamin D3 and can you take magnesium glycinate with ashwagandha.

The bottom line

Yes, you can take vitamin D3 with ashwagandha. They support different things: D3 for calcium use and bones, ashwagandha for your stress response and sleep. Evidence on the pair is limited, but each has its own research, and we found no reported interaction. Take D3 with a meal that has some fat, choose a time for ashwagandha that fits your goal, and give it eight weeks or more.

Ready to build your routine? Shop Vitamin D3 2,000 IU and Ashwagandha.

References

1. Holick et al. Vitamin D Deficiency. New England Journal of Medicine. 2007. doi:10.1056/NEJMra070553 (PubMed 17634462)
2. Ross et al. The 2011 Report on Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D from the Institute of Medicine: What Clinicians Need to Know. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 2011. doi:10.1210/jc.2010-2704 (PubMed 21118827)
3. Fulgoni et al. Foods, Fortificants, and Supplements: Where Do Americans Get Their Nutrients?. The Journal of Nutrition. 2011. doi:10.3945/jn.111.142257 (PubMed 21865568)
4. Heaney et al. Human serum 25-hydroxycholecalciferol response to extended oral dosing with cholecalciferol. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2003. doi:10.1093/ajcn/77.1.204 (PubMed 12499343)
5. Chandrasekhar et al. A Prospective, Randomized Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study of Safety and Efficacy of a High-Concentration Full-Spectrum Extract of Ashwagandha Root in Reducing Stress and Anxiety in Adults. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine. 2012. doi:10.4103/0253-7176.106022 (PubMed 23439798)
6. Salve et al. Adaptogenic and Anxiolytic Effects of Ashwagandha Root Extract in Healthy Adults: A Double-blind, Randomized, Placebo-controlled Clinical Study. Cureus. 2019. doi:10.7759/cureus.6466 (PubMed 32021735)
7. Lopresti et al. An investigation into the stress-relieving and pharmacological actions of an ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) extract. Medicine. 2019. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000017186 (PubMed 31517876)
8. Dawson-Hughes et al. Dietary Fat Increases Vitamin D-3 Absorption. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 2015. doi:10.1016/j.jand.2014.09.014 (PubMed 25441954)
9. Mulligan et al. Taking vitamin D with the largest meal improves absorption and results in higher serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. 2010. doi:10.1002/jbmr.67 (PubMed 20200983)
10. Björnsson et al. Ashwagandha‐induced liver injury: A case series from Iceland and the US Drug‐Induced Liver Injury Network. Liver International. 2020. doi:10.1111/liv.14393 (PubMed 31991029)

Researchers named in this article are cited for their published work only. Not affiliated with Health & Cognition.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.