People type "osha root for sinus" on mornings when the head feels packed with wet sand and the nose has stopped working. Osha (Ligusticum porteri) is a high-mountain root that families have reached for over centuries, and the record of who used it, and how, is long and specific. Mara's Bear Root is an osha root tincture from a mountain plant of Northern Mexico.
What is osha root?
Osha is a member of the carrot and parsley family (Apiaceae) and a close relative of lovage. It grows at 1,500 to 3,500 metres, in the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico and in high mountains further north. The part people use is the thick, dark, hairy root. Plants are often more than 10 years old before anyone digs them, and almost all supply is still wild-harvested.
It goes by a pile of names. In New Mexico, Hispanic ranchers call it chuchupate. The Rarámuri name is wasía. The Lakota name is mato tapejuta, bear medicine. In English it is bear root, after a story told by the Diné: the bear gave osha to the people as a medicine. The ethnobotanist Shawn Sigstedt, who lived and studied with the Diné, later watched bears chew the root and rub the mash into their fur. For the plant's full background, read our complete guide to osha root.
How five traditions used osha root for sinus and head colds
The clearest summary of tribal uses is a 2017 University of Kansas thesis by Natasha Myhal, which pulls together interviews and older ethnographies. When a blocked head or a hoarse voice came on, osha was one of the first roots people turned to.
- Southern Ute: used for colds, flu and upper respiratory infections. The root was chewed, made into tea, extracted, or used on the skin, and also carried for spiritual protection (McBeth, 2008).
- Diné (Navajo): a piece of root was sucked on for a gravelly voice or a cold (Clifford, 2016 interview).
- Lakota: the root was burned and the smoke breathed in for headaches and sinus infections, a practice the thesis says still happens in sweat lodge ceremonies (Schneider, 2017).
- Rarámuri of the Sierra Tarahumara in Northern Mexico: a liquid preparation for the common cold and fever (Irigoyen-Rascón and Paredes, 2015).
- New Mexico chuchupate: Hispanic families brewed the root as a tea for colds and sore throats, and Leonora Curtin's Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande records a syrup made from the stems.
A Pollinator Partnership fact sheet on osha, citing Daniel Moerman's Native American Ethnobotany, says the root was taken "especially for catarrh, colds, coughs, bronchial pneumonia, flu and other respiratory infections." Catarrh is the old word for thick mucus in the nose and sinuses. So the sinus connection is old, and it shows up across groups that lived hundreds of kilometres apart.
The Zuni drank crushed root in water for sore throat, and the Mescalero Apache chewed it for coughs. A root found in the Patterson Bundle, a Utah medicine bundle, has been dated to 200 to 600 years ago.
Osha stopped more than half the growth of the TB bacterium at the lowest concentration tested.
What herbalists say about osha root for sinus infection
Michael Moore, the herbalist who founded the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine, wrote that osha "can be used for head colds with dry cough," along with early sore throats and coughs. Christopher Hobbs, a fourth-generation herbalist, lists it for acute rhinitis and notes that modern herbalists use it for sinus infections. Hobbs describes the root in herbalists' energetic terms as acrid, spicy and warm, and matches it to colds with clear runny mucus, body aches and chills with little fever.
Both list the tincture among the ways to take it.
The UTEP finding everyone quotes
In 2008, Oscar Beltran at the University of Texas at El Paso tested three plants used for tuberculosis in Northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. One was chuchupaste, the osha the Rarámuri use for respiratory illness. In the lab, osha extract stopped more than half the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis at the lowest concentration tested, 5 micrograms per millilitre. At that level it showed 0% toxicity to the human cells tested alongside it.
Of all the lab work on osha, it is the number people quote most, and it comes from the same root the Rarámuri have used for generations.
Open the bottle and smell it
Osha's smell is the first thing people notice. Unscrew a bottle of Bear Root and a sharp, warm, celery-and-earth scent comes up out of the neck before the dropper is even out. Botanists describe the fresh root as smelling of butterscotch and celery. One of the root's main aromatic compounds is Z-ligustilide, at 0.15 to 2.5% of the root. Ligustilide also turns up in celery and lovage, osha's cousins in the carrot family, and you can smell the resemblance.
The taste follows the smell. Earthy and warming first, then a sharp, celery-like bite from the root, then a long warm finish in the throat.
A morning with Bear Root
Kettle on. Fill one dropper, hold it under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds, then swallow. Or squeeze the dropper into a mug of hot water or tea and breathe in over the cup while it cools enough to drink. The steam carries that celery and earth smell straight up. The Diné sucked on a piece of root for a hoarse voice, and the hot mug is the modern kitchen version of that habit. If you like the tea route, we wrote up how to make bear root tea with the tincture.
The product page suggests 1 to 2 droppers a day. At that rate one 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days, so a single bottle covers a month or more of daily use.
Bear Root – Osha Root Tincture
50 ml dropper bottle. Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico.
Add to bagWhy a tincture beats a bag of dried root
Osha looks a lot like poison hemlock and water hemlock above ground. People who are not trained botanists should never dig it themselves, and loose root sold online is hard to check. United Plant Savers lists osha as "At-Risk" because so much of it is wild-dug, which makes every gram worth keeping in good shape.
A tincture is an alcohol extract of the root, measured out by the dropper. Bear Root comes in a 50 ml bottle of dark Miron glass. Dark amber glass is a step in the right direction, but Miron glass is the gold standard for keeping light off an extract, and it is what Mara uses. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract. It sits on the kitchen shelf, ready for the morning you need it.
Bear Root considerations
The product page recommendation: "Contains alcohol. Not recommended during pregnancy. If you're nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it."
Questions people ask
What are osha root uses?
Traditionally, colds, coughs, sore throats and a hoarse voice, recorded among the Southern Ute, Diné, Zuni, Lakota and Rarámuri. Today most people take it as a tincture, under the tongue or in a hot drink.
Is osha root the same as bear root?
Yes. Bear root is a common name for osha, Ligusticum porteri, from the story that bears dig and chew the root.
What does osha root taste like?
Earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite. The smell is strong and comes up as soon as the bottle is open.
How do you take osha tincture in the morning?
Hold 1 dropper under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or add it to hot water or tea. The product page suggests 1 to 2 droppers a day.