I have never worn a pair of sandals. It’s not because I have ugly feet - though I will admit to a couple of crooked toes and yellowed calluses.

My aversion to them stems from an answer about them.

I was five and with my father at a playground. I was there to slide on the “slidey” and play Wiffle ball with him.

I assumed everyone else there had similar plans, so I didn’t understand why another father was wearing shoes that exposed his toes and were secured by straps. I asked my dad about that.

He said, “Men don’t wear sandals.”

I took that to mean manly men, athletic men. Not those who were that bad word I had just learned for men who acted too much like women.

Obviously, this wasn’t the most enlightened observation my father ever made, but my ability to recount the scene and his words 55 years later attests to the impression they made on me. And though I’d never profess to be a father figure to you, I know that written words can be just as enduring as those spoken, so I am careful with the ones I choose to use in this column.

Especially in an article about a supplement, even one that’s been used successfully for 3,000 years: Ashwagandha.

Now the perceptive reader notices the lack of a qualifier before the term. I did not introduce the supplement as a performance enhancer, a muscle builder, a health aid, a sleep inducer, or an anxiety inhibitor.

Separate studies, though, have shown that regular and prudent use of an extract from the root of this evergreen shrub can lead to all that.

To introduce the supplement by making all those claims would make me feel like a nineteenth-century snake oil salesman. Instead, I’ll simply share the two chance encounters that lead to this column.

A friend who is prone to bouts of depression visited me unexpectedly and noticed a bottle of ashwagandha on my kitchen counter. He remarked he never knew I battled the disease, too.

I told him I didn’t, that my battle was with sarcopenia, that ashwagandha had been shown to increase testosterone levels, and I was using it to help maintain muscle.

A bit later on a group ride, someone behind me said how 10 mg of melatonin guaranteed him a good night’s sleep - the same supplement and dosage I use from time to time. The guy beside me whom I did not know declared ashwagandha worked even better for him.

So while I’ll acknowledge you need to maintain a healthy skepticism towards any supplement, I’d be remiss if I didn’t call to light a few of the studies that attest to ashwagandha’s efficacy. Like a jack-of-all-trades study published in the July 2012 issue of the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine.

After testing 18 seemingly healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 to confirm they indeed were, researchers administered to them escalating doses of 375 mg, 500 mg, and 625 mg of ashwagandha twice a day for 10 days each and reported the increases were “tolerated well.” Testing throughout this time found no adverse effects on organ or blood function - though one volunteer did drop out after reporting “increased appetite, libido, and hallucinogenic effects.”

Testing at the conclusion found a reduction in total and LDL cholesterol and body fat percentage - as well as a “significant” increase in hand-grip strength, quadriceps strength, and back-extensor force. As a result, the researchers suggested further studies to evaluate the potential of this supplement for those with sarcopenia.

A study published in the November 2015 of the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition administered either 300 mg of ashwagandha or a placebo consisting of potato starch twice daily to 57 males between the ages of 18 to 50 “with little weightlifting experience.” After eight weeks of lifting, the 29 who received ashwagandha had grown stronger and larger.

Their average one-rep bench strength increased 42.6 percent more than the placebo group’s. Their chests and arms grew more, too, by 57.6 and 38.4 percent respectively.

And for good reason.

Testosterone production in those who took the ashwagandha instead of the placebo had increased by 81.3 percent.

A six-week, double-blind study published in the August 2020 issue of Sleep Medicine where 144 healthy subjects took either 120 mg of ashwagandha or a placebo daily suggests ashwagandha aids sleep in a number of ways.

While 29 percent of those given a placebo self-reported an improvement in overall sleep quality, 72 percent of subjects given ashwagandha - nearly 250 percent more - reported the same. Activity-monitoring devices recorded data that explains why sleep quality improved.

The supplement takers experienced less non-restorative sleep and spent less time trying to get back to sleep during the night as well. Their total sleep time also increased significantly.

While the studies testing ashwagandha’s effectiveness in alleviating depression aren’t as definitive, three others have linked it to a lessening of the stress and anxiety that are often the harbingers of depression.