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2021 has entered with a bang, and HUM Calm Sweet Calm entered stage left right on cue.
In fact, in an arms race to chill everyone out as quickly as possible (praise be!), two of our fave brands, Goli and HUM Nutrition, both announced Ashwagandha gummies this week for a one-stop shop into well-being and serenity. Yes, please.
Now, we love HUM. In fact, HUM was Our First Gummy (hi, Hair Sweet Hair), so we’ve got a special fondness in our hearts for them, and are so ready for the next installment in their grand gummy series.
👉 We have a little more information on the wondrous potential benefits of Ashwagandha on our Goli review, so bop over there if you’ve just jumped in the adaptogen game.
To give you the broad strokes: Ashwaganda is a medicinal herb that’s part of a group of plants known as Adaptogens. This group of plants is renowned for their stress-combating properties, from the mental all the way down to the physical. Meaning it can boost brain function and fight anxiety all the way down to lowering cortisol levels in the body*. Huzzah!
Adaptogens been around for a long time, and their use as potent plant healers dates back centuries. But they’re having a bit of a moment in supplement game right now, and it was just a matter of time before that moment arrived in the land of gummies.
Let’s do a quick little comparison between these two hyped Ashwaganda gummies — comparing both the ingredients and type of Ashwagandha — to help you make an informed decision on which will best impart the specific strain of tranquility you need in your life. (Or just be like us and get both 😂)
Sensoril vs. KSM-66
So there are a few distinctions between these two new Ashwagandha gummies:
Hum Calm Sweet Calm Gummies are derived from Sensoril brand Ashwagandha, while Goli has partnered with KSM-66 for theirs. One of the differences seems to be that Sensoril uses both root and leaves to concoct their adaptogen magic, while KSM-66 uses just the root extract.
But is there a difference beyond that? Why, yes! We were hoping you’d ask.
While both are potentially effective for combating stress, it’s been reported by some people that Sensoril’s effect is more chill-focused and promotes restful sleep, while KSM-66 is more targeted towards recovery, stamina and energy. This is purportedly due to different ratios of the most bioactive aspect of Ashwagandha, withanolide glyocsides.
Sensoril formulates their extract to be 10% withanolides, while KSM-66 tries to create an extract that more closely represents what you find in the plant itself, with about 5% withanolides.
So we were definitely excited to see if we notice a difference! We considered it likely because HUM, in their quest for epic calm, also included a secret weapon:
l-theanine
While Goli is an Ashwagandha-only type of gummy (plus vitamin D2), the HUM comes with an additional active ingredient, by the way of 200mg of l-theanine!
We love l-theanine. When we see it in a gummy, we always jump at the chance to try it. If you’re not familiar with this amino acid, it’s used in various ways to promote a sense of calm and focus. People put it both in their coffee and in their melatonin gummies, so it pairs well with whatever else you’re supplementing.
Olly adds it to their Sleep Gummies and their Goodbye Stress to great effect, and there it’s only in 100mg and 50mg doses, respectively.
So 200mg is epic and profound! We haven’t yet encountered another gummy that has this much, and we’ve been scouring ingredient labels to see if anyone else includes this amount (unfortunately gummies like SugarBear Sleep use a proprietary blend, so it’s hard to say how much l-theanine they include), but suffice it to say: this might be the chillest gummy around. At least in theory.
Tasting Notes
We love these Tart Cherry flavors, and appreciate HUM’s thoughtful execution. These are definitely the most intriguing flavor of HUM’s gummy offerings, and we love the way that when you bite in, it starts with a bright sourness that opens up into a deep and ripe maraschino.
It’s a unique and rich expression of the beloved drupe. No medicinal cherry here! Just a piquant juiciness that could almost be mistaken for actual candy.
We could use a little more tart all the way through, but that’s just our personal preference! (The Sour Gummy is the Supreme Gummy, don’t @ us.)
Do Calm Sweet Calm Gummies Work?
Honestly: we were hoping for a little more impact with these. We technically know that we’re flooding our body with great things when we take these, but we can’t say that the effects are entirely noticeable or discernible as you go about your day.
When we saw that we were mainlining 200 mg of L-theanine (!!) we braced ourselves, thinking that it might have the same effect as a potent CBD gummy or whatever it was that Natural Vitality’s magnesium Calm Gummies did to us.
But the effects are much subtler here. And while we definitely wish that these gave us a more pronounced journey into chill, it’s hard to argue with the ingredients and the facts that they may be working behind the scenes, regardless of how much we’re feeling it. We want those cortisol levels down whether we’re consciously aware of it our not!
The good news is that this won’t disrupt your daily workflow. If you’re worried you’ll be lulled into a stupor of tranquility, fear not. HUM is not here to stand in your way. They just want to make sure your body doesn’t get overloaded with stress as you achieve all those goals on your vision board.
We’ve only worked our way through half of our bottle of these, so we’ll update this review with our final thoughts once we’ve thoroughly tried these in a variety of calm-requiring situations.
That said, if we’re in a space where we really want to Feel The Calm, we’ll no doubt be reaching for Charlotte’s Web Calm Gummies, a towering combination of CBD + Lemon Balm. (These are one of our all-time favorite gummies, you can read our review here.)
So! Have you tried the Calm Sweet Calm yet? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Or join us on our exploration of the calmness cosmos, and get some of your own from HUM.
