Shilajit and testosterone: what studies show

Testosterone is the best-studied claim about shilajit, and it is still thin. The whole case for a rise in men rests on one small Indian trial from 2016, plus a handful of supporting studies that either had no placebo group or were done in mice and rats.

That single trial was well designed (randomised, double-blind and placebo-controlled), which is why we grade the evidence as moderate rather than weak. But one trial is not proof. Until another team gets the same result, treat it as a promising lead.

What did the main testosterone trial find?

Men taking shilajit had significantly higher testosterone after 90 days than men taking a placebo. In the trial, healthy volunteers aged 45 to 55 took 250 mg of purified shilajit twice a day (Pandit et al., 2016). Compared with placebo, the shilajit group had significantly higher:

• total testosterone
• free testosterone (the portion not bound to proteins in the blood)
• DHEA-S, a hormone the body can turn into testosterone

The pituitary hormones LH and FSH, which tell the testes to make testosterone, stayed stable. That matters because it suggests shilajit wasn’t simply forcing the system into overdrive.

What the published summary doesn’t tell us is just as important. It gives no figure for how much testosterone rose, so we can’t say whether the change was large enough to matter. The trial didn’t report on energy, libido, mood or muscle, so we don’t know whether the men felt any different. And it included only healthy men in one age band in India.

What do reviews of testosterone boosters say?

A 2024 systematic review is the most useful outside check. The authors looked at 52 studies of 27 so-called testosterone boosters published over two decades and concluded that most fail to raise total testosterone (Morgado et al., 2024). Purified shilajit extract (PrimaVie) was one of the few they rated “possibly effective”, and only for men with age-related low testosterone (late-onset hypogonadism).

“Possibly effective” is a cautious phrase. It reflects exactly the problem above: a single positive trial and nothing to confirm it.

Is there other human evidence?

There are two weaker studies, and they point in different directions.

The Biswas study was designed to look at fertility (see shilajit and fertility), and testosterone was a secondary measure. Without a comparison group, some of the rise could be chance or the effect of simply being in a study. The 2026 resin study measured testosterone and, according to its full text, found no significant change over 28 days, though four weeks may be too short to tell (Yadav et al., 2026).

What do animal studies show?

Several rodent studies report higher testosterone, but almost all of them started with animals whose testes had been deliberately damaged.

• In male mice made infertile with cadmium, a toxic metal, 35 days of shilajit raised testosterone, increased activity of the enzymes that make it and restored sperm production (Mishra et al., 2018).
• In mice given the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide, shilajit restored testicular structure and boosted testosterone-making enzymes (Rajpoot et al., 2024).
• A 2026 rat study found that two of several shilajit samples raised total testosterone about 2.5-fold and free testosterone about 3.5-fold compared with controls, but it also found mild to moderate liver and kidney tissue changes. Its first author founded and runs a shilajit company (Rizun et al., 2026).

Animal results are useful for generating ideas, but doses per kilo of body weight are far higher than people take, and “repairing damage in a poisoned mouse” is a very different question from “raising testosterone in a healthy man”.

Who might consider it, and who should not?

If you are a man in middle age wondering about low energy or libido, the honest answer is that shilajit has one encouraging trial behind it and plenty of unknowns. Low testosterone has many causes, some of them treatable medical conditions, so a blood test through your GP is the right first step before trying any supplement.

Some precautions, which are sensible inferences rather than tested risks:

• If you have, or are being investigated for, a hormone-sensitive condition such as prostate cancer, talk to your doctor first. No study has looked at this.
• If you already take prescribed testosterone, there is no evidence on combining the two.
• The trial product was a purified, standardised extract. Raw or untested shilajit can contain heavy metals (see heavy metals in shilajit).

The trial dose was 250 mg twice a day for 90 days. Our dosage guide covers how that compares with what products sell, and the benefits overview shows how testosterone compares with every other claim.