Pull up any list of shilajit studies and count the women in them. In most of the trials people quote at you, the answer is zero. Search “shilajit for women” and you’ll get pages about energy and glow with no study attached to any of it. But there is one: a 2022 paper in Phytomedicine that followed 60 postmenopausal women with osteopenia for 48 weeks.
Pingali and colleagues published it in Phytomedicine in 2022 (PMID 35933897). Sixty postmenopausal women with osteopenia, randomised, 48 weeks of follow-up. What the authors report is a dose-dependent preservation of bone mineral density: the women on the higher dose held that number better across the year than the women on the lower dose.
Forty-eight weeks is a long run for a supplement trial. Every other shilajit trial we can cite ran somewhere between 28 days and 90 days. That length alone makes it the most interesting shilajit paper published so far, in our opinion. And it’s the one nobody puts on a product page, because “dose-dependent preservation of bone mineral density” doesn’t sell like a photo of a man deadlifting.
Three things before anyone gets excited. The trial ran on a standardised extract, PrimaVie, rather than raw resin, and so did most of the positive shilajit research. Some of that research was paid for by people with extract to sell. And one trial is one trial: sixty participants, one research team, no replication we can point you to. Of those three, the missing replication is the one that bothers us most. Funding gets disclosed and you can weigh it yourself, but a result nobody has repeated is just a result.
It isn’t a health claim, and we’re not going to turn it into one. Bone mineral density is a number off a scan. It drifts down with age in most people and drops faster after menopause. What the Phytomedicine paper reports is a dose-related difference on that number after 48 weeks. Read it as a measurement moving in a small group of women, and stop there.
The population matters as much as the number. Every woman in that trial was past menopause and had already had a bone scan come back below average. If you’re 29 and lifting three mornings a week, that group isn’t you. The paper wasn’t written about you, or anyone like you.
So if a seller quotes that trial at you as proof of what shilajit will do for your bones, they’ve gone a long way past what the paper says. Ours is a complementary product, and nothing on this page is a reason to change whatever your doctor already has you on.
Here’s the file with the populations named, because the population is the first thing that gets dropped when these studies get retold on a product page.
| Study | Who was actually in it | What it reported |
|---|---|---|
| Pingali 2022, Phytomedicine | 60 postmenopausal women with osteopenia, 48 weeks | Dose-dependent preservation of bone mineral density |
| Pandit 2016, Andrologia | 75 healthy men aged 45 to 55, 500 mg a day, 90 days | Total testosterone up 20%, free up 19% against placebo |
| Keller 2019, JISSN | 63 active men, 500 mg a day, 8 weeks | Strength retained under fatigue, lower collagen-breakdown marker in a subgroup |
| Biswas 2010, Andrologia | 28 subfertile men, 90 days | Sperm count up 61%, motility improved |
| Yadav 2026, Cureus (open-label pilot) | 25 healthy young men, 28 days, resin | Strength and fatigue improved, testosterone unchanged |
Add them up and you get 251 people. Sixty were women, all past menopause, all in one study, all starting from the same kind of scan result. That’s the whole of it.
The most quoted paper in the list is Pandit 2016, run in 75 healthy men aged 45 to 55 on 500 mg a day for 90 days. Whatever you make of a 20% figure, it was measured in a group of middle-aged men. It tells you nothing about a woman of any age. And a shop selling you shilajit on the strength of it either hasn’t read the paper or is counting on you not reading it.
The Cureus pilot from this year sits beside it: 25 healthy young men, 28 days, resin rather than extract, strength and fatigue scores improved and testosterone unchanged. That result rarely makes it into anybody’s marketing, which tells you something about the marketing.
The rest of the picture is absence, and absence isn’t evidence either way. Nobody has run the study that would tell a 34-year-old woman in Durban what a pea-sized daily dose does over three months. So nobody can tell her. Us included.
This is the question women send us most, usually phrased as “will it help my iron”. We don’t know. There’s no trial we can point you to, so we’re not going to invent an answer.
What we can give you is the shape of the question. Shilajit resin carries minerals, and fulvic acid is the part of it that most of the marketing gets built on. Iron is a separate question, and our own results don’t put a number on it, so we can’t quote you one. Any brand quoting you a precise one with no method printed beside it is guessing.
Which is why this belongs in a conversation with someone who can see your blood results. Plenty of South African women are already on prescribed iron. Others have been told the opposite, that their stores run high and they should leave supplements alone. Adding a mineral-rich resin on top of either situation without knowing your own numbers isn’t clever, and a website can’t know your numbers. Get tested, then ask.
Batch 250915 went to Qarshi Research International, accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 and an ILAC member, and was analysed between 28 November and 8 December 2025. Lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium all came back not detected by AOAC 999.10/11. Fulvic acid 35 g/100g by titration, solubility in water 97.2 g/100g by gravimetric method. It’s all on our lab tests page, and how we test is written up under our standard.
Contamination is worth caring about here more than in most product categories. A 2025 analysis in BMC Chemistry (PMID 39827344) tested six commercial shilajit products and found thallium in five of them. Six is a small sample. It’s still five. Ask any seller for a batch-numbered lab report before you pay, ours included, and if they can’t produce one, that’s your answer. The rest of the checks are in how to spot fake shilajit.
What ours isn’t: the standardised extract used in the bone density trial. We sell purified resin, a different material from the one Pingali’s team put in front of those 60 women. Anyone who blurs that line is selling you a study rather than a jar.
Yes. Nothing about it is sex-specific, and the longest published trial ran entirely in women. What nobody can honestly tell you is what it’ll do for you, because the research in women stops at that one bone density study.
A standardised extract, PrimaVie, not raw resin. Most of the positive shilajit research used that same kind of extract material, so read those results as being about the extract. Ours is resin, and we’d rather say so than borrow the credit.
We can’t tell you, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. No trial we can cite has tested it, and our own lab results don’t report an iron figure. If iron is the reason you’re considering shilajit, get your bloods done and take the question to your GP first.
Speak to your doctor or midwife before you do. Shilajit hasn’t been trialled in pregnancy, ours included, and “probably fine” isn’t a standard we’re prepared to apply to somebody else’s pregnancy.
The small one, if you’re still deciding whether you’ll keep it up. Our 15 g jar is R500, about 37 days at a pea-sized dose, which works out to R33 a gram. The 40 g jar at R999 runs about 100 days and comes down to R25 a gram, so the bigger sticker price is the cheaper resin.
Read a lab report before you read another benefits list, ours or anybody else’s. Ours is on the lab tests page with the method printed beside every number. Two minutes to go through, at most. If it holds up for you, the 15 g jar is the sensible way in, and delivery is free anywhere in South Africa in one to three working days. If it doesn’t hold up, ask the next brand for theirs and read that one instead.
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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