What Is Shilajit?

Shilajit is a dark, sticky, tar-like substance that seeps out of layers of rock in high mountain ranges, most famously the Himalaya and the Hindu Kush, and also the Altai, the Pamir and the Caucasus. It is not a plant and it is not a mineral. It is what is left of plant matter after a very long decomposition, mostly humic substances with fulvic acid as the largest fraction, carrying whatever trace minerals the surrounding rock contributed. Warmed by summer sun, it softens and is pushed out of cracks in the rock face, where it is collected, then dissolved, filtered and reduced back to a resin before it reaches a jar.

That is the whole definition, and it is more than most pages manage. What follows is the longer version: where the name comes from, what the material is made of and how that is measured, what the eight published human trials looked at, and where the honest evidence stops. If you already own a jar and want the practical side, how to take shilajit is the next page. If you want to know whether it is safe, the heavy metals question is the one that matters.

The name, and the four other names for the same thing

The word comes from Sanskrit. Shila is rock and jatu is resin or gum, so shilajit is, quite literally, the resin of the rock. In the Ayurvedic texts it appears as shilajatu, which is also the name we trade under. A 2007 review in Phytotherapy Research by Agarwal and colleagues at Jamia Hamdard describes it as “a pale-brown to blackish-brown exudation, of variable consistency, exuding from layers of rocks in many mountain ranges of the world, especially the Himalayas and Hindukush ranges.”

Across Russia, Central Asia and most of Eastern Europe the same material is called mumijo, and you will see mumie, moomiyo, mumiyo and mumio on labels in German, Polish, Czech and Russian. The European Commission’s novel food consultation on the substance, filed by Germany, lists “shilajit” and “asphaltum panjabinum” as synonyms of mumijo and describes it as “a complex product of both organic and mineral origin which is formed by natural processes in various mountainous regions of the earth.” The same document is careful about one thing that matters if you read older sources: mumijo is not mumia, the powdered mummy that was sold as a folk remedy in early modern Europe. They share three letters and nothing else.

One substance, five names. If you compare products across markets, that is worth holding onto, because “Himalayan shilajit” and “Altai mumijo” are the same class of material from two mountain ranges, not two products.

Where it comes from, and how it forms

The short answer is that nobody has watched it form, because it takes far longer than a research career. The consensus view, set out in a 2012 review in the International Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease by Carrasco-Gallardo and colleagues, is that shilajit is produced by the decomposition of plant material over centuries, with the authors naming latex-bearing species such as Euphorbia royleana and mosses and liverworts found near the deposits as likely contributors. The Phytotherapy Research review describes the result as “a complex mixture of organic humic substances and plant and microbial metabolites occurring in the rock rhizospheres of its natural habitat.”

Rhizosphere is the important word. This is soil chemistry that happened inside a mountain. Plant matter trapped in rock strata is broken down by microorganisms, under pressure, over a very long time, and the products of that breakdown migrate through the rock and accumulate in fissures. When the face warms in summer the softened material creeps out and is collected by hand, usually at altitudes above 2,500 metres, though the exact height varies by range and is part of the folklore of the trade rather than a specification.

Two consequences follow from this origin story, and both matter more than the mountain range printed on the label. First, composition depends on the site: the plants that went in, the rock the material sat in, and the water that moved through it. A 2026 study in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology ran twelve samples from different geographical origins through ICP-MS and found “distinct variability” in the major metals calcium and magnesium, the essential elements iron, zinc and manganese, the toxic elements, and the rare earth elements. Two honest jars from two valleys genuinely differ. Second, raw material that has sat in rock for centuries carries what the rock carries, which is why purification and testing are not optional extras. That is covered in its own article.

What shilajit is made of

Most writing on this subject says “85 minerals” and moves on. The number is repeated from page to page without a source, and the interesting part is elsewhere. Shilajit is mostly organic matter, and the organic matter is mostly humic substances.

Humic substances: humin, humic acid, fulvic acid

Humic substances are, in the words of the International Humic Substances Society, “major components of the natural organic matter in soil and water as well as in geological organic deposits.” They are what remains when plant and microbial material has been broken down about as far as it will go. Soil chemists sort them into three fractions by an operational test that has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with solubility. Humin does not dissolve in water at any pH. Humic acid dissolves in alkaline water and precipitates when the solution is acidified to around pH 1 or 2. Fulvic acid stays dissolved at every pH.

Carrasco-Gallardo and colleagues put the humic fraction of shilajit at around 60 to 80 per cent of the total, with fulvic acid as the dominant component. Because fulvic acid is the most soluble and the most discussed fraction, it is the number that ends up on labels, and it is the subject of our fulvic acid explainer. For now the important point is that a fulvic percentage means little without the method beside it, since different assays give different numbers for the same material.

What our supplier’s certificate actually reports

Rather than quote a range, here is a real measurement. Our supplier’s laboratory certificate for the shilajit resin we sell, issued in February 2026 by an accredited laboratory, reports 73.8 per cent fulvic acid and 14.7 per cent humic acid by HPLC, 14.3 per cent moisture and 11.8 per cent ash. The ash figure is the mineral residue that survives ignition, which is a fair proxy for how much of the resin is inorganic. On that certificate, then, roughly nine parts in ten of the dry material are humic substances and about one part in ten is mineral. The heavy metal panel, microbiology, aflatoxin and pesticide results on the same document are discussed where they belong, and the PDF itself is linked from the product page.

That certificate describes one batch of one product. It does not describe shilajit in general, which is exactly the point: a percentage without a batch number and a method describes nothing.

The non-humic fraction

Alongside the humic material sit smaller organic molecules. The ones most often named are dibenzo-alpha-pyrones, a family of compounds that the European Commission’s consultation document and the Phytotherapy Research literature both list as characteristic of the material, along with a range of plant and microbial metabolites. A 2014 review by Stohs in Phytotherapy Research names dibenzo-alpha-pyrones and fulvic acid as the constituents most often proposed to account for the effects reported in animal and human studies. Proposed is the operative word: these are the molecules researchers look at, not molecules with an established mechanism in people.

The mineral fraction

The trace minerals are real and they are small. The 2026 ICP-MS study found calcium to be the most abundant element, present as a complex with lactic acid, with magnesium next, and the essential elements iron, zinc and manganese present at variable levels. Most of the metals travelled as low molecular weight complexes, that is, bound to small organic molecules rather than sitting as free ions, which is the observation the “mineral carrier” argument for fulvic acid rests on. The same study reported toxic metals below established toxicity thresholds in those twelve samples, and rare earth patterns consistent with natural geochemistry rather than adulteration.

What that does not make shilajit is a mineral supplement. A rice-grain dose of resin weighs a few hundred milligrams and about a tenth of that is ash. Nobody should be taking it for its calcium. Iron is the one mineral that matters in practice, because it is the reason people with iron-overload conditions should not take the resin at all.

How it becomes a product

Raw shilajit off the rock is a mixture of the resin, rock dust, sand, plant debris and whatever else was in the fissure. Between the mountain and the jar sits a purification step that Ayurveda calls shodhana and that a modern producer does with filters and low heat: the raw material is dissolved in water, the insoluble matter is filtered out, and the solution is slowly reduced back to a resin. The Phytotherapy Research review describes shilajit’s consistency as variable, and a well-reduced resin is stiff at room temperature, glossy, and softens quickly between the fingers.

Purification removes what does not dissolve. It does not, by itself, guarantee anything about dissolved metals, which is why the finished batch is tested and the result written down. A jar with a purification story and no test report is telling you half of what you need to know. The tests worth asking for, the limits they are compared against, and how to read a certificate are in the heavy metals article, and the practical checks you can run on a jar at home are in how to spot real shilajit.

The finished resin is the traditional form and the one with the least processing between rock and mouth. Capsules and powders are the same material dried and, usually, blended with other ingredients, which trades the taste and the spoon for a measured dose. The trade-offs are compared in resin against capsules.

What shilajit has been studied for in people

This is the section where most pages either overreach or go quiet. The published human evidence on shilajit consists of roughly eight small trials, several using one branded standardised extract, and only one running as long as a year. Every one of them is audited, with dose, duration and population, in shilajit benefits. Here is the shape of it.

The 2019 trial in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition gave 63 recreationally active men, mean age 21, either 250 mg or 500 mg of shilajit daily or placebo for eight weeks, then ran them through a fatiguing protocol of maximal leg extensions. In the upper half of the sample by baseline strength, the 500 mg group lost less maximal voluntary isometric strength after the protocol than placebo. The 250 mg arm did not differ from placebo. That is a result in half of a group of 63 at one of two doses, which is a reason to run a larger trial rather than a settled fact.

The 2022 trial in Phytomedicine randomised 60 postmenopausal women aged 45 to 65 with osteopenia to placebo, 250 mg or 500 mg of a standardised aqueous extract daily for 48 weeks. Bone mineral density at the lumbar spine and femoral neck fell in the placebo group over the year and fell less in both supplemented groups, with bone turnover markers moving in step. It is the longest shilajit trial published, and it is still 60 people at one centre.

A 2016 trial in men aged 45 to 55 measured androgens, and a handful of studies have measured gene expression in muscle and skin, skin blood flow, a collagen synthesis marker and time to bone union after surgery. That is the list. Energy as a felt experience, the most searched-for effect, has been measured in one 28 day open-label pilot with no placebo arm, which is to say it has not really been measured at all.

Two conclusions. The evidence is real, narrow and thin, and it belongs to specific groups: young men doing leg extensions, middle-aged men, postmenopausal women with osteopenia. And under Regulation (EC) 1924/2006 no health claim for shilajit is authorised in the EU, which the European Food Safety Authority’s register makes easy to check. A page telling you shilajit acts on a condition is making a claim it is not permitted to make, whatever the trial it cites.

What tradition says, stated as tradition

Shilajit is a rasayana in Ayurveda, one of the class of preparations the classical texts associate with longevity and strength, and the Charaka Samhita describes it as a product of the mountains that carries the essence of the metals in the rock. The Phytotherapy Research review notes that it has been used “as a rejuvenator and an adaptogen for thousands of years, in one form or another, as part of traditional systems of medicine in a number of countries.” In the Soviet and post-Soviet literature mumijo was used across a similar range, most famously for bone fractures, which is the one traditional use that a modern trial has actually looked at.

All of that is cultural history and it is reported here as such. A tradition is evidence that people believed something for a long time. It is not evidence that the belief was correct, and the two are kept apart on every page of this site.

Who should not take it

The exclusions below are not decoration and they do not change with the brand.

Iron-overload conditions. Shilajit is iron-bearing, as every elemental analysis confirms. Anyone with haemochromatosis or another iron-overload diagnosis should not take it.

Pregnancy and breastfeeding. Avoid. No trial has recruited pregnant women, and a 2018 case report describes a licorice-like syndrome in a pregnant woman after six months of mumijo. One case is one case, and it is one more than any trial in pregnancy.

Children. Not tested. Not for them.

Prescribed medication. No interaction studies exist. Ask a doctor or pharmacist first.

Anyone buying untested material. The contamination literature on shilajit is stronger and more consistent than the efficacy literature. A jar without a batch-specific laboratory report is a purity question first and a benefits question a long way second. The full side-effect picture, including the mild digestive complaints reported in trials, is in shilajit side effects.

Where to go next

Shilajit is a humic resin from mountain rock, mostly fulvic and humic acid with a small mineral fraction, purified by dissolving and filtering, tested batch by batch if the seller is serious, and studied in people about eight times with narrow results. That is the honest definition.

From here, fulvic acid is the chemistry, how to take shilajit is the practice, the heavy metals article is the safety question, and ashwagandha and shilajit is for anyone deciding what, if anything, to pair it with. If the honest version is enough for you, our purified shilajit resin is sold with its laboratory certificate linked from the page, which is the only way we think it should be sold.