Look at the shilajit ads aimed at men and count the ages. The model is usually somewhere in his twenties, shirt off, jaw like a bookshelf. But the trial most of those ads are quietly leaning on was run on 75 healthy men aged 45 to 55. Twenty years between the study and the marketing. That gap is the whole story here, and it’s the part almost nobody selling shilajit for men in South Africa mentions. We will.
Four human trials in men get cited over and over. They were run on different people, for different lengths of time, using a form of shilajit that mostly isn’t resin. One of them found nothing at all on the marker the ads care about. We’d rather you heard that from us than from a comment section under someone else’s post.
Population is the first thing we check on any supplement study. It’s the first thing marketing throws away. Here’s the roll call, without the results for now.
| Trial | Who took part | Dose and length |
|---|---|---|
| Pandit 2016, Andrologia, randomised controlled trial | 75 healthy men aged 45 to 55 | 500 mg a day of purified shilajit, 90 days, against placebo |
| Keller 2019, JISSN, randomised controlled trial | 63 active men | 500 mg a day, 8 weeks |
| Biswas 2010, Andrologia | 28 subfertile men | 90 days |
| Yadav 2026, Cureus, open-label pilot | 25 healthy young men | Resin, 28 days |
Every one of those trials had fewer than 80 people in it. Three of the four went looking for men in whom something was already expected to move, whether that was age, hard training or a fertility problem on file. The one trial that recruited young, healthy men is the one that found the least.
Pandit and colleagues published in Andrologia in 2016 (PMID 26395129). Seventy-five healthy men, aged 45 to 55, took 500 mg of purified shilajit a day for 90 days while a matched group took placebo. In that group of men, at that age, total testosterone finished about 20 per cent above placebo and free testosterone about 19 per cent. That’s the finding. It belongs to those 75 men, over those 90 days, at those ages.
Now the parts that get left out. The men were 45 to 55, an age band where hormone levels are usually already drifting down, so there was room for a number to climb. The trial used a standardised extract sold as PrimaVie, in capsules, not the raw resin that goes in a jar. Seventy-five people is a small sample by any medical standard. And that extract’s manufacturer has funded a good slice of the shilajit research, which doesn’t make the result false but does mean no honest reader calls it settled.
Yadav and colleagues ran an open-label pilot published in Cureus: 25 healthy young men, shilajit resin, 28 days. Strength and fatigue measures improved. Testosterone didn’t move.
That study is small, it had no placebo group, and 28 days is short, so it settles nothing by itself. But it points somewhere the marketing never does. The Pandit result may belong to the age group Pandit recruited rather than to men in general, and the gap between a man of 50 and a man in his twenties is exactly the gap the ads erase. If you’re 28 and buying shilajit for your hormones, the study you think you’re standing on wasn’t run on anyone like you.
We sell the stuff, and we’re telling you that. Read into it what you like.
Keller 2019, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (PMID 30728074), gave 500 mg a day to 63 active men for 8 weeks. The group taking shilajit held onto more of their strength under fatigue than the placebo group, and a subgroup showed a lower marker of collagen breakdown. Yadav 2026 landed in roughly the same territory with resin in young men. That’s the only ground where two of these trials meet.
Two honest caveats. A subgroup result is a finding inside part of a sample, which is where statistical noise likes to hide. And 63 men over 8 weeks is a pilot-sized study in a field that hasn’t got many bigger ones, so it points a direction rather than proving one.
Biswas 2010 in Andrologia (PMID 20078516) followed 28 subfertile men for 90 days and reported sperm count up 61 per cent with improved motility. It’s the number you see quoted in every fertility post, usually without the word subfertile anywhere near it.
Those men had a fertility problem on paper before they started. Measures that begin low have room to rise, and a 61 per cent improvement from a low base can still land below a normal range. It doesn’t tell you what happens to a man whose counts are already fine. Twenty-eight people, one study, 2010. Anyone selling shilajit as a fertility product off the back of it is stretching a small paper a very long way.
Put the four together and the honest read is this: a small evidence base, mostly built on a standardised extract rather than resin, partly funded by the people who make that extract, and strongest in men who were middle-aged or already struggling on the measure being tested. You could take all of that as a reason to skip shilajit entirely. We take it as a reason to buy the stuff for what it is, a traditional resin with some early research behind it, at a sane price per gram, from someone who publishes a lab report.
Three things we’d check on any brand, ours included.
Our own numbers, so you can hold us to the same standard. Batch 250915 was analysed by Qarshi Research International, accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 and an ILAC member, between 28 November and 8 December 2025. Lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium all came back not detected by AOAC 999.10/11. Fulvic acid measured 35 g/100g by titration, and solubility in water 97.2 g/100g by gravimetric method. It’s all on our lab tests page, and the testing behind it is written up under our standard. So a brand quoting 60 or 80 per cent fulvic acid with no method beside it is quoting a sales number. Genuine raw resin usually measures somewhere between 15 and 35 per cent depending on the assay.
On the hormone side, the one trial in healthy young men found no change. Yadav 2026 in Cureus followed 25 of them for 28 days on resin and saw strength and fatigue measures improve while that marker stayed flat. It’s an open-label pilot with no placebo group. A hint, not an answer.
500 mg a day in both Pandit 2016 and Keller 2019, taken as a standardised extract in capsule form. The traditional resin serving is roughly a pea, about 0.4 g. Different material, different dose, so the two numbers don’t swap.
Nobody has run the head-to-head trial, so anyone who answers that flatly is guessing. Most published trials used a standardised extract in capsules, while resin is the traditional form and the one Yadav 2026 used. We sell resin because it’s closer to what comes out of the rock and far easier to check by eye and by lab.
Between 28 and 90 days, and the two 90-day trials are the ones that reported the biggest numbers. Nobody has properly tested a week of shilajit on anything, so a month at a pea-sized daily dose is a fairer look than a weekend. More of these are answered on our questions page.
Go straight to the heavy metals line on any brand’s report before you read another benefits list. If it doesn’t say not detected, put the jar down. After that, the 40 g jar at R999 is about 100 days at a pea-sized dose, which is just under R10 a day, and it ships free anywhere in the country in 1 to 3 working days.
A complementary product, not a medicine. Pregnant or breastfeeding women, and anyone on chronic medication, should speak to a health professional first.
We publish the full laboratory report for the batch shipping now, with the method named beside every result. Read it in full.
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