Osha root medicinal uses are written down in more places than most people expect: Zuni ceremony records, Comanche and Lakota oral history, Rarámuri family practice in the Sierra Tarahumara, and the notebooks of New Mexico healers who call it chuchupate. Osha (Ligusticum porteri) is a carrot-family root that grows at 1,500 to 3,500 metres. Bear Root is made from osha, a mountain plant of Northern Mexico. Below, the record is sorted by what each people used it for, with the name of the source beside every entry.
If you want the plant itself first (where it grows, how to tell it apart, the bear story), start with our complete guide to osha root.
Osha root medicinal uses, by what people used it for
Throat and voice
The Zuni crushed the root in water and used it both as a wash and as a drink for sore throat, according to Camazine and Bye's 1980 study of Zuni plant use. Their name for it, kwimi dechi, is glossed as "smelly root". Among the Diné (Navajo), sucking on a piece of root was the old answer to a gravelly voice, recorded by Clifford in 2016. Hispanic families in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado used it for sore throat too, as Eliseo Torres recorded.
Chest, coughs and breathing
The Comanche made a broth from the root for pneumonia, which the Comanche healer Sanapia described to anthropologist David Jones in 1972. The Lakota name is mato tapejuta, "the bear's medicine". Lakota families used it for bronchitis and burned the root so the smoke could be breathed in for sinus trouble (Schneider, 2017). The Southern Ute took it as a tea, chewed it or applied it to the skin for flu and upper respiratory infections (McBeth, 2008). One of its English names is Colorado cough root. We cover the chest history in more detail in osha root for the lungs.
Stomach
In the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua, the Rarámuri call the plant wasía. Rarámuri families brewed it as a tea for stomach pain, wind and fever, documented by Irigoyen-Rascón and Paredes in 2015 and by Robert Bye in 1986. The Yavapai Apache used it for diarrhoea (Robbins and colleagues, 1916). In Colorado's San Luis Valley, Hispanic households drank osha tea for digestion (Vigil, 2016).
Body aches and headache
Zuni healers gave an infusion of the root for body aches and chewed it during curing ceremonies (Camazine and Bye, 1980). The Mescalero Apache rubbed it on sore places and chewed it for headache, noted by Hrdlicka in 1890 and by Castetter and Opler in 1936. Rarámuri families made a root lotion for stiff, aching joints.
Protection and spirit
This is the oldest use on record. The Patterson Bundle, a leather medicine satchel found in Utah, held osha root among its plant materials, and it has been dated to between 200 and 600 years old. The Southern Ute kept the root for spiritual protection and to ward off evil. Comanche elders carried pieces in small cloth sacks to keep snakes away, and the Diné spread powdered root around hogans and sheep corrals for the same reason. Rarámuri parents tied a piece around a newborn's neck. Lakota families burned it in the sweat lodge.
The Diné say the bear showed them the plant. Ethnobotanist Shawn Sigstedt watched Kodiak bears chew the root to a mash and rub it into their fur, which is where the name bear root comes from.
What is osha used for in curanderismo?
In northern Mexico and New Mexico, curanderos (traditional Hispanic healers) know the root as chuchupate or oshá. Herbalist Michael Moore, who spent around 40 years learning from Hispanic and Native healers, noted that every place named Oshá is in New Mexico, close to Hispanic villages. Torres records curanderos using it for sore throat and flu and to keep away evil spirits and curses. Leonora Curtin's 1947 book Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande lists it among the region's household remedies. In the San Luis Valley, families still time the harvest to the feast of San Lorenzo, August 10.
Osha stopped more than half the growth of the TB bacterium at the lowest concentration tested.
What lab research has looked at
In 2008, Oscar Beltran at the University of Texas at El Paso tested chuchupaste, the root the Rarámuri use, against the bacterium behind tuberculosis. Osha stopped more than half the growth of the TB bacterium at the lowest concentration tested, the strongest result of the three plants in the study.
A 2020 study by Pineda-Peña and colleagues in Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia gave rats a nanoemulsion of osha's volatile oil before a stomach-irritating drug. At 10 and 30 mg/kg, it protected 72% and 92% of the stomach lining, in line with the 69% seen with omeprazole. The same study found 37 compounds in the oil.
The root's best-known compound is Z-ligustilide, measured at 0.15 to 2.5% of the root. In 2018 the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia, working with United Plant Savers, published a full monograph on oshá.
How people take bear root today
Most people now take osha as a small daily ritual, any time of year. The common ways:
- One or two droppers under the tongue, held for 20 to 30 seconds, then swallowed.
- Stirred into a morning or evening tea.
- Added to a water bottle before or after a hike or a run.
- Mixed into juice or a smoothie.
The taste is earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite from the root. At one to two droppers a day, a 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days.
Bear Root – Osha Root Tincture
50 ml dropper bottle. Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico.
Add to bagWhy a tincture fits a daily habit
Osha root is dense and woody. The old way was to simmer chunks of it on the stove for a long time, and no two roots are alike. Z-ligustilide content ranges more than tenfold from root to root. A tincture is an alcohol extract made once, in a measured batch. Every dropper is the same measure, there is nothing to boil, and the bottle goes in a gym bag or a desk drawer.
Storage counts too. Light breaks down plant extracts over time. If you are comparing bottles, dark amber glass is a step in the right direction, but the gold standard is dark Miron glass, which keeps light off the extract. That is what Mara uses for Bear Root.
Bear Root is osha from the mountains of Northern Mexico, the same country where Rarámuri families have brewed wasía for generations. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract.
Bear Root considerations
The product page carries one recommendation: "Contains alcohol. Not recommended during pregnancy. If you're nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it."
Questions people ask
What is osha root used for?
Historically, the Zuni, Diné, Lakota, Comanche, Southern Ute and Rarámuri used it for the throat, chest, stomach and aches, and carried it for protection. Today most people take it as a daily tincture under the tongue or in tea.
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.
What is osha called in Spanish?
Chuchupate is the most common name, with chuchupaste and oshá also used in northern Mexico and New Mexico.
What does osha tincture taste like?
Earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite. Many people stir it into tea or water.