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The room went quiet as I brought a glass of what looked like diluted sludge closer to my lips. Karim Ud-din chuckled, warning me of its pungency—the taste of shilajit, a sticky tar-like substance, has been described as everything from earthy and intensely bitter to almost metallic. What made me nervous, however, were the many connotations around this resin in my wellness-obsessed algorithm. I better not sprout a couple of chin hairs in the name of research, I thought jadedly, taking that first sip.
Outside the Alkarimi family’s living room in Hunza Valley, the idyllic yet fleeting cherry blossom season was drawing focus away from Gilgit-Baltistan’s striking snowy peaks in the far north of Pakistan. And it is within the fissures of this rugged landscape that locals say they’ve tapped the secret to good health. Each morning begins with a microdose of shilajit stirred into warm water or cow’s milk, a time-honored ritual they credit wholeheartedly. Members of the indigenous Hunzukuch tribe, for context, live well past 100 and fascinate wellness experts who attribute their lifespan to everything from glacial water to the valley’s apricot-centric diet.
A world away, Irish influencer Glenn Wilkinson ascribes both his physique and his sex life to an arguably degraded version of this revered substance. “Taking shilajit [drops] helps me perform better in the gym and, at 54, helps me keep up with my young wife,” reads one of his Instagram captions, exemplifying the kind of claims he makes as a self-proclaimed longevity advocate. Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino of Jersey Shore fame similarly advocates for a bastardized iteration, recently revealing to GQ that shilajit gummies form part of a strict protocol that helped bring back his abs. Unsurprisingly, wellness brands like Erewhon have hopped on the shilajit bandwagon, too.
True to form, LA’s trendiest grocery store has opted to go down the overpriced juice shot route, touting a convoluted mixture that features shilajit and other “traditional botanicals.” Klunk, another California-based brand, sells raspberry-flavored shilajit gummies under the tagline “Manhood Terror” for $54.99. “It’s a misnomer,” said Karim with a laugh, as I forced him to confront the narrative stemming from marketing taglines like “nature’s Viagra” and “testo titan.” Shilajit doesn’t actually cause unusually high testosterone levels, he clarified. “It simply offsets the deficiencies caused by modern diets thanks to its composition—fulvic acid and more than 80 minerals. Besides, shilajit also helps balance female hormones, strengthens the immune system, improves brain health, and boosts energy. It’s been beneficial to both men and women for hundreds of years.”
Ayurvedic practitioners in neighboring India date it even further back in time – over 3,000 years – classifying it under the Rasayana (rejuvenator) category. In fact, shilajit itself is a Sanskrit term that translates to ‘destroyer of weakness’. Science seems to concur. A study (Keller, J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2019) featuring 63 men concluded that volunteers on a higher dose of purified shilajit were more resistant to fatigue than those in the low dose and placebo groups after a structured exercise routine.
Elsewhere, a widely cited randomized controlled trial (Pandit, Andrologia 2016) recorded a 20.45% increase in the testosterone levels of 96 participants who took 250mg of purified shilajit twice a day for 90 days straight. The placebo group, in contrast, showed no improvement. Contributing to the study’s visibility is neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, who has referenced it on more than one occasion while promoting shilajit as an “adventurous” supplement to increase libido and improve sperm quality, adding, “It’s pretty esoteric stuff.”
Indeed, the so-called sweat of mountains remains a mystery to most. “We also call it patthar ka paseena because it seeps out once the heat of summer intensifies,” explained Karim. “It forms through the gradual decomposition of plant matter in mountain crevices across the Great Himalayas.” Just as riveting is the method through which it is harvested: a brave few scale the cliffs of Gilgit-Baltistan with little more than rope and a couple of pitons at altitudes averaging 14,000 feet, wielding a chisel to split the highly sought after rocks that bear shilajit.
Once secured in its rawest form, Karim takes on the cumbersome purification process honed by the family’s patriarch, Captain Sulaiman, back in the ‘70s. “Our family brand, Sulaiman Aftabi Shilajit, is named after my father, who returned to Hunza Valley after serving in the army during the India-Pakistan war of 1965,” revealed Karim. “It was his struggles with trauma and persistent pain that fueled his curiosity about the area’s healing powers.” PTSD, flailing immunity, low testosterone, cognitive decline—is shilajit is the panacea for all our woes?
In search of a healthy dose of skepticism, I approached Dr. Joshua Calvert, who wryly nicknames it “the true Mountain Dew” during our conversation. The Hone Health-affiliated urologist is no stranger to just how buzzworthy the supplement has become. “Shilajit is very popular right now,” he affirms. “It’s a buzzword. And like so many other things in the men’s health space, it has very limited efficacy data.”
As a men’s sexual health specialist who regularly navigates questions around wellness and longevity, he’s vocal about the inherent differences between Western medicine and holistic systems. “I do a lot of testosterone management and operate on penises all day long. I have the best job in the whole world,” he says without a hint of irony. “But rather frustratingly for my patients, I tend to be very Western-medicine focused and by the book—that was born out of my education. We don’t study naturopathic alternatives because that’s simply the nature of it. Now, I’m not saying that that’s a good thing.”
Addressing this clash of philosophies, Dr. Calvert suggests that the sweet spot would be a marriage of sorts between Western and Eastern ideals but acknowledges it will never happen. “The results of the 2016 study were promising, but legitimate trials on the effects of shilajit that are paradigm-shifting just aren’t going to happen because they cost a lot of money. Plus, what testosterone company is going to want to test it? That’s going to entail new formulation and rebranding and remodeling and marketing. They would have no incentive to do so. But I do think there is enough money in American pharmaceutical coffers that if shilajit could do all the things we’re told, they would have a large factory in Northern Pakistan to mass produce and bottle it.”
If my discussion with Karim was any indication, though, the scarcity of shilajit is a given by virtue of how and where it forms. It’s no wonder, then, that wellness obsessives worldwide are repeatedly duped by counterfeiters using jaggery or the lookalike ozokerite (a naturally occurring mineral wax with no medicinal properties) to their advantage online. A good place to start would be a certificate of analysis provided by a third-party lab on the product page, he advised.
“Shilajit has so much buzz because it’s objectively cool, right?” continues Dr. Calvert, incredulous about the current darling of Ayurveda. “I mean, it’s organic plant matter that’s broken down and literally oozes from a mountain. It’s mountain juice. It has sex appeal because, like, why wouldn’t I want to drink mountain sweat? When you start looking at any of these things online, they love to talk about adaptogens and assign these mystical personified abilities to shilajit: it knows to increase testosterone in me, but in you, it’s going to increase your progesterone level. It’s this biological implausibility.”
The problem, he shares, is the unwillingness of men to address sensitive health matters, getting their information through porn instead. “I can’t tell you how many dudes I see taking supplements, pills, whatever advertised on porn sites that are like, ‘Your dick will grow six inches overnight!’ A lot of men actually click on those links and buy that shit, no questions asked, because they’re after a quick fix. They’ll try anything. Men in America are, by definition, medically disadvantaged, so there’s definitely a target audience for homoeopathic remedies—medical quackery even. That’s why I see my work as a sacred responsibility; I’m the person who gets to talk to them about what it means to be a man in our society. And that’s why I’d recommend lifestyle, sleep, dietary, and exercise optimization to naturally improve testosterone and sperm levels more than any single supplement.”
Under existing laws, for the uninitiated, the FDA neither has the authority to approve dietary supplements for safety and effectiveness, nor approve their labeling before they’re sold to the public. But where the FDA falls short, ConsumerLab steps in, established in response to the lack of quality standards in the dietary supplement industry. Interestingly, contamination was not cause for concern in its findings, contradicting the FDA’s warnings about Ayurvedic products. A total of eight shilajit supplements were independently tested for heavy metals owing to widespread concerns about toxicity, more so when it comes to crude shilajit.
“Despite it looking so dark and tarry, none of them would’ve triggered a warning label in California, the only state that has a limit on heavy metals in supplements,” says founder Dr. Tod Cooperman. “And it has pretty strict limits: 0.5mcg per daily serving for lead. The highest that we found here was 0.36mcg, and some as low as 0.04mcg. That’s the good news.” According to an article published by Hone Health’s The Edge, the side effects of shilajit as adjunctive therapy aren’t concerning either. Nausea and upset stomach are specified as potential reactions by a certified Ayurvedic practitioner, most likely caused by the resin’s famously acrid taste—a small price to pay if you consider Gilgamesh’s quest for longevity.
Legend has it that the semi-mythic king bound stones to his feet, sinking down to the ocean floor in order to pluck the so-called Plant of Eternal Youth from the ocean floor—only to be robbed of it by a wandering snake. “My bottom line? There are biases in both directions,” admits Dr. Calvert. “There’s bias in my own medical training, and I certainly acknowledge that. I love taking care of men’s health, and if I thought that shilajit was as miraculous as wellness influencers claim it is, I would recommend it for every man.”