Shilajit for skin and collagen: the evidence

Shilajit has found a second life in beauty marketing, with claims that it boosts collagen, firms skin and slows ageing. The research behind those claims is real but narrow. It shows that shilajit can change a blood marker and switch on certain genes. It does not yet show that skin looks or feels any different.

This gap between a biological signal and a visible result matters. Plenty of things change blood markers without changing anything you’d notice. We grade the evidence as weak.

Does shilajit increase collagen?

It raised a blood marker of collagen production in one small trial. Researchers at the University of Nebraska randomly assigned 35 recreationally trained men, average age 21, to 500 mg or 1,000 mg of shilajit a day, or a placebo, for eight weeks (Neltner et al., 2024). They measured pro-c1α1, a fragment released into the blood when the body makes type 1 collagen, the main collagen in skin, tendons and bone.

Three in four men on the higher dose (75%) had a rise large enough to count as meaningful, against 30% on placebo. On the lower dose it was 69%, which was not significantly different from placebo.

The results came with very wide variation between individuals, and the trial studied young men, not the middle-aged women most skin products are aimed at. A blood marker from the whole body also can’t tell us where that collagen ended up: skin, tendon, bone or muscle.

What happened in the skin trial?

Blood flow and gene activity in the skin changed, but measures you would notice did not. In a US trial, 45 healthy women aged 30 to 65 were randomly split into three groups of 15: placebo, 125 mg or 250 mg of a standardised extract (PrimaVie) twice a day for 14 weeks (Das et al., 2019). Researchers took small skin samples from the inner upper arm before and after, and photographed the skin to measure blood flow.

• Skin blood flow (microperfusion) improved at the higher dose, compared with both the starting point and the placebo group.
• Gene activity changed for thousands of genes, including ones involved in blood vessel growth and the supporting structure of skin.
• Hydration, elasticity, viscoelasticity and barrier function showed no significant difference from placebo.
• No side effects were reported.

The capsules and placebo were supplied by Natreon, which makes PrimaVie and part-funded the research.

So the trial most often quoted as showing shilajit “improves skin” found that the things people care about, such as moisture and elasticity, did not change. The authors reported this finding to show shilajit didn’t harm the skin, which is fair, but it also means there is no evidence of a cosmetic benefit.

What else supports the collagen claim?

A few related findings, none of them about skin:

• In overweight adults, 250 mg twice a day for eight weeks switched on collagen and other supporting-tissue genes in muscle (Das et al., 2016).
• In young men, 500 mg a day lowered hydroxyproline, a marker of collagen breakdown, but only in the stronger half of the group (Keller et al., 2019).
• In postmenopausal women, the shilajit extract tested for bone density was described by its researchers as having “collagen-promoting activity” (Pingali and Nutalapati, 2022); see bone health.

These all point the same way, which is mildly encouraging. But most of the evidence comes from studies of one branded extract, often linked to its maker, and none measured skin appearance.

Does shilajit work on the skin directly?

There is no human evidence. Lab studies have looked at shilajit in wound dressings, and one found it helped human gum ligament cells close a scratch wound in a dish at moderate concentrations, while higher concentrations became toxic to the cells (Alqarni et al., 2025). That says nothing about skincare products.

Is it worth trying for skin?

If your main goal is skin, there are better-studied options, starting with daily sun protection. If you want to try shilajit anyway, the doses in these trials were 250 to 1,000 mg a day for 8 to 14 weeks, and the results came from purified, standardised extracts. Raw resin may behave differently and can carry heavy metals (see heavy metals).

For more on the exercise and tendon side of the collagen story, see exercise performance. The benefits overview compares every claim.