7 Herbs for Immune System Health, from Elderberry to Osha

People looking up herbs for immune system health usually end up with the same short list: elderberry, echinacea, astragalus, garlic, ginger, andrographis and osha root. Each one has a tradition behind it and, for most, a trial or lab study with numbers attached. Below is that list, herb by herb, with who traditionally took it and one named finding for each. Osha gets the longest entry, because it is the one with the deepest roots in the mountains of Northern Mexico and the easiest to fold into a daily habit.

Seven herbs for immune system use, and what was found

Elderberry

European households cooked the dark berries of Sambucus nigra into syrups for centuries, and North American nations used their own native elder. The best known modern trial comes from Griffith University in Australia, published in 2016. Associate Professor Evelin Tiralongo's team gave 312 economy class passengers flying overseas either elderberry extract or a placebo. The placebo group logged 117 days with a cold. The elderberry group logged 57, with symptom scores of 247 against 583.

Echinacea

Plains nations including the Lakota and Cheyenne used the purple coneflower root long before European settlers bottled it. In 2007, a University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy team pooled 14 randomised, placebo controlled trials in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Across those trials, people taking echinacea had a 58% lower chance of catching a cold, and colds that did start ran 1.4 days shorter.

Which Chinese herbs for immune system use come up most?

Astragalus, or huang qi, leads that list. The name means "yellow leader", for the yellow inside of the root. It appears in the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, the oldest Chinese materia medica, which sorted herbs into three classes and placed astragalus in the highest. Chinese practitioners gave it as a tea to people who caught colds often and counted it among the fu zheng herbs, the ones meant to strengthen the body's own defences.

Two more herbs on this list have Chinese names too. Andrographis is chuan xin lian. Fresh ginger is sheng jiang, which Chinese medicine keeps separate from dried ginger, gan jiang.

Garlic

Garlic has been cooked into food in nearly every cuisine on earth, and taken raw by the clove in plenty of them. A 12 week British trial, the one study in the Cochrane review of garlic and colds, gave 146 volunteers a daily allicin garlic capsule or a placebo. The garlic group recorded 24 colds and 111 sick days. The placebo group recorded 65 colds and 366 sick days.

Fresh ginger

Ayurvedic and Chinese cooks both reach for ginger root in teas and broths. A 2013 study in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology by Chang, Wang and Yeh tested hot water extracts on human airway cells exposed to respiratory syncytial virus. At 300 micrograms per millilitre, fresh ginger cut virus plaque formation to 19.7% of control in one cell line and 27.0% in the other. Dried ginger made no difference, which lines up with the old Chinese split between the two.

Andrographis

In India, Andrographis paniculata is called kalmegh, the "king of bitters", and it has a long place in Ayurveda. A 2017 meta-analysis from the University of Southampton, published in PLoS ONE, covered 33 randomised trials with 7,175 patients with respiratory tract infections. Compared with placebo, people taking andrographis reported better scores for cough and for sore throat, and shorter time off sick compared with usual care.

Osha root, the bear medicine of the high mountains

Osha (Ligusticum porteri) is a relative of lovage in the carrot and parsley family. It grows between 1,500 and 3,500 metres, and almost all of it is wild harvested from plants that are often more than 10 years old when dug. The Rarámuri of Northern Mexico brewed the root as a tea for stomach pain and fever. The Zuni used it for sore throats and body aches. The Diné took it for a hoarse voice and for colds, and credit the medicine to the bear. The Lakota name, mato tapejuta, means "bear medicine".

The bear part of the story has an observer behind it. Shawn Sigstedt watched Kodiak bears chew the root and rub it into their fur, and the old account says bears dig it up when they wake from hibernation. People have carried it for a long time as well. Osha root turned up in a Utah medicine bundle dated to between 200 and 600 years old.

Researchers took the Rarámuri use seriously. In 2008, researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso tested chuchupaste, the Northern Mexican name for osha, against the tuberculosis bacterium. The extract stopped more than half of its growth at the lowest concentration tested. The root's signature compound is Z-ligustilide, which makes up 0.15 to 2.5% of the root. A 2005 study in the Flavour and Fragrance Journal found Z-ligustilide was 39.1% of a solvent extract of osha root, and that extract made the antibiotic norfloxacin four times more active against a drug resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus. You can read more about the plant in our full guide to osha root, and about its long use for breathing in how osha root has been used for the lungs.

Making osha a daily ritual

Of the seven herbs here, osha is the one that fits a daily habit with the least fuss. A dropper of osha goes into the morning tea, a water bottle after a hike or a run, or straight under the tongue at the desk, any month of the year.

Bear Root is Mara's osha root tincture, made from a mountain plant of Northern Mexico. The taste is earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite from the root. Take 1 to 2 droppers a day. Hold it under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into water, tea, juice or a smoothie. One 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days at that rate.

Bear Root – Osha Root Tincture

50 ml dropper bottle. Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico.

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Why the extract is the practical form

Osha root is slow growing, and United Plant Savers lists it as At Risk. It also looks like poison hemlock in the wild, so digging your own is a bad idea. A tincture gives you the root's compounds, Z-ligustilide included, in a measured dropper you can use for a month or more.

Light and air wear down plant extracts over time. Dark amber glass is a step in the right direction. Dark Miron glass is the gold standard, and it is what Bear Root comes in. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract.

Questions people ask

What are the best herbs for immune system health?

The herbs people take most are elderberry, echinacea, astragalus, garlic, ginger, andrographis and osha root. Each has a tradition behind it, and most have a named trial or lab study with numbers.

What Chinese herbs are used for the immune system?

Astragalus (huang qi) is the best known, ranked in the highest class of the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing. Andrographis (chuan xin lian) and fresh ginger (sheng jiang) are also part of Chinese practice.

Can you take osha root every day?

Bear Root's suggested use is 1 to 2 droppers a day, under the tongue or in water, tea, juice or a smoothie. A 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days at that rate, and people take it year round.

Is bear root the same as osha?

Yes. Bear root is a common name for osha (Ligusticum porteri), from the story of bears digging up and chewing the root.