Bear Root Benefits, From Bear Medicine to a Daily Dropper

Bear root is the common name for osha, Ligusticum porteri, a mountain plant in the carrot family. When people search for bear root benefits, they usually want two things. They want to know what the root has been used for, and why anyone still takes it. The record on both is long. It runs from Zuni curing ceremonies and Rarámuri root tea in Northern Mexico to a 2008 lab test at the University of Texas at El Paso, and the bear sits at the start of every version of the story.

What is bear root?

Bear root and osha are the same plant. Botanists call it Ligusticum porteri. It is a relative of lovage and celery, and it grows high, at roughly 1,500 to 3,500 metres, on meadows and forest edges. Its range runs down the Sierra Madre into Chihuahua and Sonora, which is why Mara describes Bear Root as a mountain plant of Northern Mexico. Spanish speakers call it chuchupate. The Rarámuri call it wasía.

The root smells strongly of celery, and the smell gets stronger after frost. Natasha Myhal's 2017 thesis at the University of Kansas recorded the plant growing from about 6,000 to 11,700 feet. Almost all of the root sold anywhere is still dug from wild stands, and plants are often more than ten years old when they are harvested. For the full botany, harvest and history, see our complete guide to osha root.

Why it is called bear root

The name comes from bears. Across the Rocky Mountain and Sierra Madre peoples, the story goes that bears dig up osha when they come out of hibernation, chew the root, and rub it into their fur, and that people learned the plant by watching them. The Diné (Navajo) credit the medicine to the bear. The Lakota name for it is mato tapejuta, which translates as "the bear's medicine." Several Southwest peoples called it the gift of the bear.

Someone checked. Shawn Sigstedt, a researcher who later taught biology at Colorado Mountain College, put osha root in with captive bears, including Kodiak bears. They chewed the root into a mash and rubbed it into their fur, the same behaviour the old stories describe. Years later he set up motion cameras on his own land near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and filmed two wild bears, months apart, rubbing chewed osha onto a tree and then rubbing their bodies against the bark.

Bear root benefits, in the words of the people who named it

Most of what people mean by bear root uses comes from the peoples who lived with the plant. Each kept its own account. Myhal's thesis gathers many of them in one place.

• Zuni healers chewed the root during curing ceremonies and gave it in water for sore throats and body aches. Their name for it translates as "smelly root."
• Diné elders sucked on a piece of root for a hoarse, gravelly voice.
• Rarámuri families in the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico brewed the root as a tea for stomach pain, headaches and fever.
• Lakota people used it for fevers and headaches, and burned it in the sweat lodge.
• In northern New Mexico, Hispanic families made chuchupate tea for sore throats.
• Comanche elders made a broth from it for pneumonia. The Southern Ute kept it for respiratory sickness and for spiritual protection.

The habit is old. A piece of osha root was found in the Patterson Bundle, a leather medicine satchel from Utah dated to between 200 and 600 years ago. In 2018 the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia gave the plant its own monograph.

What labs have found in the root

The best-known finding comes from the Rarámuri use. In 2008 Oscar Beltran at the University of Texas at El Paso tested three plants used for tuberculosis in northern Mexico and the Southwest. The osha extract stopped more than half the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis at the lowest concentration he tested. Human cells in the same experiment were unaffected at that level.

The root's main active compound is Z-ligustilide, a phthalide that makes up somewhere between 0.15% and 2.5% of the root depending on the plant. A 2012 analysis by Rivero and colleagues counted 31 volatile compounds in the root oil, with phthalides making up 44.61% of the active fraction. Other named studies, all in animals:

• Déciga-Campos and colleagues (2005) found that a root extract reduced pain responses in mice.
• Brindis and colleagues (2011) isolated five compounds, including Z-ligustilide and ferulic acid, and found the extract lowered blood sugar in diabetic mice.
• A 2015 study in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology found diligustilide, the main compound in one root extract, protected the stomach lining of rats from ethanol damage at 10 mg/kg.

Taste

Earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite from the root. The celery note comes from the same family of aromatic compounds you smell in lovage and parsley. It is a strong flavour on its own, which is why many people put the dropper into something rather than straight onto the tongue.

How a bear root tincture fits into a normal day

Old texts describe the root being chewed, smoked and brewed. Today most people take it as a bear root tincture, an alcohol extract of the root measured out by the dropper. The bottle does the measuring, there is nothing to chop or steep, and a single bottle sits on the kitchen bench or in a gym bag all year.

The routine is short. Take one to two droppers a day. Hold the liquid under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into a morning tea. Some people add a dropper to their water bottle after a hike or a run. Others keep it with the evening tea. At that rate a 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days.

Mara's Bear Root is a 50 ml dropper bottle of osha root tincture made from Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico. The ingredient list is short. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract. It comes in dark Miron glass, which keeps light off the extract.

Bear Root – Osha Root Tincture

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

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Bear Root considerations

Contains alcohol. Not recommended during pregnancy. If you're nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it.

Questions people ask

Is bear root the same as osha?

Yes. Bear root, osha, Porter's lovage and chuchupate are all names for Ligusticum porteri. We cover the names in more detail in bear root vs osha root.

What is bear root good for, traditionally?

Zuni healers gave it for sore throats and body aches, Diné elders for a hoarse voice, and Rarámuri families brewed it as a tea for stomach pain and fever. The Lakota call it mato tapejuta, the bear's medicine.

Why do bears eat osha?

The bears have not said, but Shawn Sigstedt watched captive Kodiak bears chew the root and rub the mash into their fur, and later filmed wild bears in Colorado doing the same against a tree.

How do you take bear root tincture?

One to two droppers a day, held under the tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallowed, or stirred into water, tea, juice or a smoothie.

What does bear root taste like?

Earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite.