By Peter Jaret

For four hours, the unlikely trio made its way up the rugged face of the Sayan Mountains in northern Mongolia—Richard P. Brown, an American psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist, Zakir Ramazanov, a distinguished Russian plant biochemist, and their Siberian guide. Under a cloudless sky of the deepest blue, they climbed quickly, the temperature falling and the oxygen growing thinner as they gained altitude. At last, after climbing more than 10,000 feet over icy streams and rugged rock faces, they crested the last ridge. “We stood and stared in amazement,” remembers Brown. “Everywhere we looked, growing in the craggy mountain ravine, were the bright yellow flowers of Rhodiola rosea.”

Brown began digging around for information about the little-known herb, which is also called Arctic root or golden root. When he contacted an American company that produces a rhodiola supplement, he was advised to speak with Ramazanov, who had done research on the herb in Russia, where the plant grows. “By an incredible coincidence, Ramazanov had just moved to the United States and was living only an hour away from me,” says Brown.

The two men agreed to get together, and during their first meeting the Russian biochemist gave Brown a tall stack of articles and research studies, as well as a book he’d written about the herb. “I realized then that there was much more to this than I’d ever imagined,” says Brown.

As he made his way through the mountain of material, he learned that rhodiola has been used for centuries in traditional Russian and Scandinavian medicine. It was even included in the first Swedish pharmacopoeia, way back in 1755. More than 180 studies of it had been conducted over the past 40 years. The reason he’d never heard of them? Almost all were done by researchers in the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Soviet interest was part of a systematic search begun in the mid-1960s for medicine that could boost energy, improve memory, or enhance performance. One goal was to give the Soviet military an edge. Another was to improve the stamina and performance of astronauts in the space program. Along the way, scientists documented a wide range of remarkable benefits associated with rhodiola—from calming the stress response and increasing energy to enhancing memory and boosting the body’s immune defenses. The findings had been kept top secret because of their importance to the military and the space effort, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of what had been learned was in danger of being lost.

“There was a large body of data almost no one in the U.S. knew about,” says Brown, data that suggested rhodiola had a variety of potent effects. Soviet researchers had classified the herb as an adaptogen, a substance that can increase the body’s resistance to stress and help normalize imbalances.

One way the herb does this is by cranking up the power of mitochondria, the tiny engines that provide living cells with fuel. The herb can also increase the metabolism of fat for energy and improve overall metabolism in the brain, the most energy-hungry organ in the body. By providing this energy boost, the herb appears to help cells function better under stress. Its unique group of antioxidant compounds also helps protect cells and DNA from being damaged ... [continue to next page]