Shilajit: The Complete Guide to What It Is, What the Research Shows and What It Does Not

Few supplement ingredients carry as many bold claims as shilajit. Search for it and you will be told it boosts testosterone, restores energy, sharpens the mind, slows ageing and detoxifies the body, usually by a seller with a jar to sell. Behind the marketing there is a real body of research: a handful of human trials, some laboratory work on its main component fulvic acid, and a long traditional history in Ayurvedic, Persian and Tibetan medicine. The problem is that the marketing has run well ahead of the research, and most of the research is smaller and weaker than the claims suggest.

This is the complete guide we wanted to read before we added a shilajit product to our range. It explains what shilajit actually is, what is in it, and what every human trial we could find on PubMed did and did not show, with the numbers. It looks honestly at fulvic acid, compares shilajit with ashwagandha, and says where our own Shilajit Choco Bites fit and where they do not. Where we found an older claim, including some on our own earlier pages, that turned out to be wrong or unverifiable, we have corrected it and say so.

This guide is the overview. For the details, we have separate articles on dosage, forms and timing, on safety, side effects and heavy metals, on the testosterone and women's health research, and on how to buy shilajit safely.

What shilajit actually is

Shilajit, also spelled shilajeet, salajeet or mumie, is a dark, sticky, tar-like substance that oozes from cracks in rock in high mountain ranges. It is found across the Himalayas, the Karakoram range that runs through Gilgit-Baltistan, the Altai, the Caucasus and the mountains of Central Asia. In Tibetan medicine it is known as Zhaxun. In Ayurveda it is a rasayana, a rejuvenating tonic. In Persian medicine, under the name momiai, it has a traditional reputation for helping broken bones to heal.

How it forms is less settled than sellers make it sound. A 2012 review in the International Journal of Alzheimer's Disease describes shilajit as formed over centuries by the gradual decomposition of certain plants under the action of microorganisms. A 2020 geological study in Chinese Medicine set out to clarify the source of Tibetan shilajit and found that the exudation points lay mainly on steep, sunny cliffs, on slopes of 60 degrees or more, at altitudes of 2,000 to 4,000 metres, in Triassic rock that was rich in organic carbon, including slate and carbonaceous slate. The organic matter was stored in pores and fissures in the rock and flowed out along them. The same authors said the source of shilajit "still remains unclear and controversial", and that this uncertainty limits what can be said about its safety and efficacy.

That is worth pausing on. Shilajit is not manufactured to a specification. It is collected from cliffs, and the raw material varies with the rock, the plants and microbes that produced it, the altitude, the season and the way it is collected and cleaned. Whatever any study says about a particular shilajit, it says about that particular material and processing, and it may not apply to the jar in your hand.

What does a long tradition tell us? It tells us that people in several unrelated medical systems noticed the substance, collected it and used it, which is real cultural evidence that it was not obviously harmful in the ways they could observe. The Chinese Medicine paper notes that Tibetan practitioners used a water extract mainly for heat-related syndromes of the stomach, liver and kidney, which is quite different from the Ayurvedic use as a rejuvenating tonic and from the Persian use for bone repair. Traditional use of this kind does not tell us the dose, the safe duration, the effect of long-term use or what was in the material, and it cannot detect slow harms such as gradual metal exposure. It is a reason to research shilajit, not a substitute for research.

What is inside it

Researchers describe shilajit as a fulvic mineral complex. A 2019 paper in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition describes it as composed of fulvic acids, dibenzo-alpha-pyrones, proteins and minerals. Fulvic acid, a humic substance formed as organic matter breaks down, is usually named as the principal active component. The mineral content is real too. A 2021 analysis in Biological Trace Element Research compared shilajit sold from India and from Pakistan using three analytical methods and found that both were highly enriched in calcium, sulphur and potassium, along with dozens of other elements.

The same analysis is also the first hint of why quality is the main question with this ingredient. It found lead, arsenic and mercury in some samples in amounts that, according to the authors, exceeded the standard permissible limits, and its abstract says Indian shilajit showed somewhat higher concentrations of nutrients and toxins in general than Pakistani shilajit. We look at contamination properly in our safety guide. For now the point is that "mineral-rich" cuts both ways: the same rock that supplies calcium and potassium can supply metals you do not want.

Because shilajit is a mixture with variable composition, it is also not accurate to say that a given dose "contains" a given amount of fulvic acid unless the product has been measured. We come back to this in the section on product quality, using independent test data, because it changes how any trial result should be read.

The human evidence, study by study

We searched PubMed for every shilajit trial and review and read the abstracts and, where we could, the details. The human research falls into a few clusters: hormones and fertility in men, bone in postmenopausal women and after fractures, muscle strength and fatigue in men, and gene-expression studies of muscle and skin. Table 1 lists the studies with their design, dose and result. We list the size of each study and whether it had a control group, because those two facts matter more than the headline percentage.

Two more human studies deserve a mention because they are often cited. Das and colleagues in the Journal of Medicinal Food (2016) gave overweight or class I obese adults 250 mg of a purified extract twice a day for 8 weeks and then added exercise for 4 weeks. Muscle biopsies showed higher activity of a cluster of 17 probe sets for genes related to the extracellular matrix, the scaffolding of muscle, including collagen, elastin, decorin and fibronectin. Supplementation was well tolerated and blood glucose, lipid profile, creatine kinase and myoglobin did not change. A follow-up in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition (2019) gave healthy women 125 mg or 250 mg twice a day for 14 weeks. At the higher dose, skin microperfusion improved compared with baseline and with placebo, and no adverse effects were reported. Both are studies of gene expression and of blood flow. They show that the substance does something biologically, but they do not show a benefit that a person would feel or that a doctor would treat.

The chart makes the point at a glance. Trials of a drug in development typically enrol hundreds or thousands of people. The largest shilajit trial, a fracture study in Iran, enrolled 160. The most cited one, on testosterone, enrolled 96. Small trials are more easily swayed by chance and by who happens to be in which group, and they are more likely to produce results that do not replicate. That does not make them wrong. It means that each result should be treated as a lead worth following up, not a settled fact.

How to read the testosterone result

The Pandit trial is the reason shilajit is sold to men. Its abstract says that in healthy volunteers aged 45 to 55, 250 mg of purified shilajit twice a day for 90 consecutive days significantly increased total testosterone, free testosterone and DHEAS compared with placebo, and that the gonadotropic hormones LH and FSH were well maintained. Summaries of the full paper put the rises from baseline at about 20.45% for total testosterone and 19.14% for free testosterone. A 2023 systematic review in the International Journal of Impotence Research by Morgado and colleagues looked at 52 studies of 27 proposed testosterone boosters and concluded that most fail to raise total testosterone. It listed purified shilajit extract, along with Eurycoma longifolia and a cocoa-and-pomegranate blend, as "possibly effective" for men with late-onset hypogonadism.

Two cautions follow. First, "possibly effective" is the reviewers' own cautious wording and it refers to one branded purified extract in one trial. Second, a rise in a blood hormone is not the same as a benefit. The trial abstract reports hormone levels, not symptoms, muscle, mood or sexual function. Anyone who suspects low testosterone needs a blood test and a doctor, not a supplement. Our testosterone and women's health guide goes through this research in more detail.

Bone: the best-designed trial is in women

The trial we would call best designed, in that it was long, blinded, had three arms and measured a hard outcome, is the 2022 study in postmenopausal women with osteopenia. Sixty women aged 45 to 65 were randomised to placebo, 250 mg or 500 mg of a standardised aqueous shilajit extract daily for 48 weeks. Bone mineral density at the lumbar spine and femoral neck fell progressively on placebo, and the fall was dose-dependently smaller in the shilajit groups, with significantly different percentage changes at 24 and 48 weeks (P below 0.001). Markers of bone breakdown fell and markers of antioxidant defence rose in both shilajit groups. The trial was small and it measured density by scan, not fractures, so it cannot say whether shilajit prevents broken bones. It is nonetheless the most convincing single result in the field, and it is a result about women, not men.

The tibia fracture trial points in a related direction. In 160 patients, those who took shilajit capsules for 28 days after fracture surgery had a mean bone union time of 129 days compared with 153 days for placebo. The authors call it a promising option for reducing healing time and note that bone repair is a traditional use of shilajit in Persian medicine. It is one trial, in one country, of one preparation, and it needs replication.

How long the studies lasted, and why that matters

Most people who buy shilajit intend to take it for months or years. The trials did not run that long. Figure 2 shows the duration of each study in days. The shortest lasted 28 days, the median was 84 days, and the longest, the bone density trial, lasted 48 weeks, or 336 days. No human study we found followed shilajit users for two years or more.

This matters for two reasons. The first is benefit: an effect measured at 90 days tells you nothing about year three, whether it holds, fades or reverses. The second is safety. A problem that takes a year to show, for example slow accumulation of a metal from a contaminated product, would never appear in a 28-day pilot. For that reason "no serious adverse events were reported" in a 4 to 12 week trial of a purified product is reassuring only about what it covers. Our safety guide returns to this.

Muscle, energy and fatigue: promising and thin

The claim most often made after testosterone is that shilajit improves energy and physical performance. The evidence is a set of small studies mostly in young, active men. In the Nebraska trial by Keller and colleagues, 63 recreationally active men took 250 mg, 500 mg or placebo for 8 weeks. The abstract reports its results for subgroups. In the half of the group with higher baseline strength, the strength lost after a fatiguing set of leg extensions was 8.9% on 500 mg versus 17.0% on 250 mg and 16.0% on placebo, and a marker of collagen turnover, hydroxyproline, was lower on the high dose. There was no significant difference between the low dose and placebo. Subgroup findings of this kind are useful for generating ideas and weak for proving them, because the trial was not designed to be judged on the stronger half alone.

The Yadav pilot in 2026 reported larger changes: after 28 days on 500 mg a day of resin, 25 men improved leg press strength by 12.94%, endurance by 12.30% and VO2 max by 1.36%, and their fatigue scores fell by 32.40% and CRP fell by 25.35%. But it had no control group, four of its six authors work for a botanical products company, and men who begin a supervised programme of testing often improve simply because they are practising the tests. The authors themselves call for larger placebo-controlled trials. We report the numbers because they are what the paper found and because you will see them quoted, and we ask you to read them with that context.

A different kind of caution comes from a randomised trial by Martinez and colleagues in Nutrients in 2025, in which 166 sedentary men and women at risk of metabolic syndrome followed a 12-week exercise and diet programme and took a placebo, a fruit extract, or combinations of chromium, the fruit extract and shilajit. The abstract reports some evidence of improvements in vascular function, insulin sensitivity and blood lipids, with differences that were more consistent at 6 weeks than at 12. But the shilajit doses in the combination groups were 6 mg or 12 mg, a fraction of the doses in any other trial, given alongside chromium and the extract. That trial cannot tell you what shilajit does. It is a reminder that a product listing shilajit as one of several ingredients, or a study of such a product, says very little about shilajit itself.

What the laboratory and animal work shows, and what it does not

Much of what is written about shilajit's benefits comes from cells and animals. A 2026 systematic review in Cureus by Das and colleagues searched for research on shilajit and cancer and found nine preclinical studies, eight in cell cultures and one in an animal model of osteosarcoma, and no clinical studies at all. All nine reported dose-dependent toxicity to cancer cells, with IC50 values, the concentration that kills half the cells, ranging from 31 to 1,103 micrograms per millilitre depending on the cancer type and the form of shilajit. The authors describe the evidence as preclinical, note that standardisation issues restrict clinical translation and say any clinical use "remains speculative at this stage". Lots of substances kill cancer cells in a dish. Very few of them turn out to help patients. Nothing in this review is a reason to use shilajit for cancer, and it is a reason not to trust any seller who says so.

There are similar animal findings on other topics: a 2021 study in Physiological Reports found that a shilajit extract reduced aspirin-induced stomach lesions in rats to a degree comparable to omeprazole, and a 2024 mouse study reported that it protected the testes from damage from the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide. These are interesting, and animal models are how ideas get tested, but a result in rats or mice given amounts adjusted to body weight is not a result in you.

For the brain, the frequently quoted result is that fulvic acid blocks the self-aggregation of tau protein in laboratory experiments, a mechanism of interest in Alzheimer's disease research. A 2012 review in the International Journal of Alzheimer's Disease says so, and also calls for more basic biological research and clinical trials. We could not find a completed trial showing that taking shilajit prevents or treats dementia in people. A laboratory mechanism is where research starts, not where it ends.

Fulvic acid: what we know, and what a supplement label can hide

Reviewers name fulvic acid as shilajit's main active principle, and standalone fulvic acid liquids are sold as products in their own right. Two facts are worth knowing. First, fulvic acid is not unique to shilajit. It is a humic substance that can also be extracted from peat and other decomposed organic matter, and one 2020 study in Environmental Research tested a peat-derived fulvic acid supplement for physical properties and for acute toxicity in mice and sub-acute toxicity in rats, as part of exploring it as a pharmaceutical excipient. A fulvic acid drink is therefore not the same thing as shilajit, and shilajit is not just fulvic acid. Second, the laboratory studies of fulvic acid, including a review of its potential in chronic inflammatory disease and diabetes indexed in PubMed Central as PMC6151376, report antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity in cells and animals and call for controlled clinical trials before any therapeutic claim.

The bigger practical issue is that fulvic acid is the thing sellers most often quote, and it is not what most labels reliably tell you. In September 2024 ConsumerLab published tests of eight shilajit supplements: capsules, tablets, gummies and resins, including PrimaVie extract capsules, Swanson and Youtheory extracts, Organifi gummies, and resins from Banyan Botanicals, Cymbiotika and others. Every product contained fulvic acid, but the amounts ranged from 6.9 mg to 2,206 mg per serving, a difference of nearly 32,000%. Resins contained substantially less fulvic acid than the concentrated extract capsules and pills, and on a cost basis, extract formulations were cheaper than resins for equivalent fulvic acid. One product could not be approved because it contained far more fulvic acid than its label stated. The price of 100 mg of shilajit ranged from 10 cents to more than 8 dollars.

Several things follow. The common claim that raw resin is the "strongest" form, which was on this site before we rewrote it, quoting a fulvic acid share of 60 to 80% for resin, is not what the independent test found. A serving of one product can contain a few hundred times as much fulvic acid as a serving of another. And without knowing the fulvic acid content per serving, a dose in milligrams of "shilajit" is a weak guide. We take this up in our dosage guide.

A short guide to reading any supplement study

The shilajit literature is a good training ground for reading supplement research critically, because it shows most of the common problems in one place. When you see a result quoted, ask these questions.

• Was there a placebo group? A percentage change in a group that took the supplement is not evidence of a benefit unless a matching group that did not take it changed less. The oligospermia study and the resin pilot both lack a control group, so improvements in them could reflect chance, a change in habits, or the natural drift of measurements back toward normal.
• How many people, and for how long? Figures 1 and 2 answer that for shilajit: small and short.
• What was measured? A blood marker, a gene's activity or a scan is a surrogate. A person's symptoms, function or risk of an event is the outcome that matters. The collagen marker rose in the Nebraska study, but the study does not show that anyone's tendons or skin improved.
• Which preparation was used? The studies used a purified extract, a processed shilajit, an aqueous extract, capsules and a resin, from different makers. A result from one does not transfer automatically to another, and none of them was a chocolate bite.
• Who ran and paid for it? Industry involvement is normal and not disqualifying, but it is a reason to want independent replication. For the testosterone finding, we found no replication by a separate team.
• Was the result the main one or a subgroup? The muscle strength finding was in the stronger half of the group.

Applying those questions does not make shilajit look worthless. It makes it look like what it is: an ingredient with a few interesting early signals, for which the honest answer to "does it work?" is "maybe, for a few things, in some preparations, and we need better trials."

Shilajit versus ashwagandha

Shilajit and ashwagandha are often sold together and often confused. They are different substances with different evidence. Ashwagandha is the root of Withania somnifera, a plant used in Ayurveda. Shilajit is a mineral exudate. Table 2 sets them side by side using the best evidence we could verify for each.

Read the table as a comparison of the depth of evidence, not of which is "better". For stress and anxiety, ashwagandha has more and larger trials pooled together, and the pooled estimates for cortisol, perceived stress and anxiety all point the same way, although the abstract does not give the doses and the meta-analysis has not been through ordinary peer review. For testosterone and bone, shilajit has a small number of promising trials and ashwagandha has not been studied in the same way. Neither has a proven effect on the things each is most heavily marketed for, such as longevity or "adaptogenic" resilience.

The liver rows are not a reason to panic and they are not a reason to ignore. In the Icelandic and US series, five patients developed jaundice and symptoms such as nausea and itching 2 to 12 weeks after starting ashwagandha-containing supplements, and liver tests returned to normal within 1 to 5 months in four of them. In the Indian series, a review of 23 patients with ashwagandha-related liver injury found that 8 had taken single-ingredient products and had no other cause, chemical analysis of the products found only natural phytochemicals and no adulteration, and three patients who had existing chronic liver disease developed acute-on-chronic liver failure and died. These are case reports and cannot tell us how common the problem is. They show that a "natural" supplement can harm the liver, and that someone with liver disease has good reason to avoid herbal supplements without medical advice. Nothing comparable has been reported for shilajit in the sources we reviewed, which may mean it is safer or may only mean it has been studied less.

Can you take both? Sellers often combine them. We found no trial of the combination and cannot say whether it helps or harms. If you take prescription medicines, particularly for thyroid, blood sugar or the immune system, get your doctor's or pharmacist's view first.

Where our Shilajit Choco Bites fit, honestly

Our Shilajit Choco Bites are a chocolate product with a small amount of shilajit. The product page lists the ingredients as Himalayan Shilajit, Dark Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Natural Sweetener and Herbal Extracts, and states that each bite contains approximately 0.05 g (50 mg) of shilajit. A 250 g pack holds 60 bites. The page recommends them for adults aged 40 and over and says they are not suitable for people with hemochromatosis.

Here is how that compares with the research. The trials in Table 1 used between 200 mg and 1,000 mg a day, most often 500 mg. At 50 mg per bite that would be 4 to 20 bites a day, and it would mean a lot of chocolate. We are not suggesting anyone do that. The bites are best understood as a small, pleasant, food-format way to take a modest amount of shilajit, not a product that replicates any trial. The chocolate itself is a separate matter, covered in our chocolate guide, and there is no research on shilajit and cocoa having a combined effect.

Two more things should be said plainly. First, we have not published a batch-specific laboratory certificate for the shilajit in these bites on this site. Earlier versions of our shilajit pages described the shilajit as tested, while our safety FAQ said that documentation was still being finalised. We have removed the unsupported wording. Until a batch-matched heavy metal report is published, please treat the heavy metal question as open for our product, as you would for anyone else's, and use our buying guide to judge us. Second, the "40 and over" recommendation on our product page reflects the general fact that testosterone declines with age. The Pandit trial studied men aged 45 to 55, and no trial has tested a 40-year cut-off.

The claims, scored

To pull the evidence together, Table 3 lists the claims you are most likely to meet and our reading of how well each is supported. The ratings are ours and they are deliberately conservative.

Who might reasonably consider shilajit, and who should not

An honest summary is that shilajit is not proven to do anything you would notice, there are a few small trials pointing to possible effects on testosterone, bone and muscle recovery, and the main risk is the quality of the product you buy. An adult in good health who takes no medicines and is curious could reasonably try a tested product at a modest dose and stop if anything feels wrong, provided they do not expect much and do not use it instead of medical care. It is a poor choice for anyone who is pregnant or breastfeeding, for children, and for anyone with an iron-overload disorder such as hemochromatosis, an autoimmune condition, or kidney or liver disease unless their doctor agrees. Our safety guide covers the reasons for each and the evidence on side effects.

If you want the routine that has the best evidence for how you feel and how long you stay healthy, it is not a supplement. It is the daily habits in our daily wellness routine guide: walking, sleep, fibre and limiting sugar.

Frequently asked questions

What does shilajit do?

The best human evidence is that purified shilajit extract raised testosterone in healthy men aged 45 to 55 in one 90-day trial, slowed bone loss in postmenopausal women in a 48-week trial, and may have shortened fracture healing time in a 28-day trial. Each finding comes from a single small study. It is not proven to boost energy, cure disease or slow ageing.

Is shilajit the same as fulvic acid?

No. Fulvic acid is one component of shilajit and can also be obtained from peat and other sources. Shilajit also contains other organic compounds and minerals.

Is shilajit better than ashwagandha?

They have been studied for different things. Ashwagandha has more evidence for stress and anxiety, while shilajit has a few small trials for testosterone and bone. Neither has been proven for long-term health, and each has its own safety issues.

Is it safe?

In the trials, 28 days to 48 weeks at 200 mg to 1,000 mg a day, no serious problems were reported, but the trials were small and short. The main documented risk is contamination with heavy metals in poorly made products. See our safety guide.

How do I choose a product?

Look for a named region, a stated purification method, and a batch-matched laboratory report for heavy metals. Our buying guide explains how to read one.

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. It has not been evaluated by the FDA, Health Canada, the MHRA or any other regulator, and shilajit or any product containing it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, managing a health condition or taking medication, speak to a qualified healthcare provider before using it.

Sources

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