01 · Definition
What it is
Adaptogen is a category, not a single plant. The term was coined by the Soviet toxicologist Nikolai Lazarev in 1947 and later formalized by Brekhman and Dardymov in 1969, who proposed three defining criteria for the category.
It is a term of art from the history of pharmacology. ASCENTIALS uses it only as a definition here; it is not a claim about any ASCENTIALS product.