Best Herbs for Congestion, and Why Osha Comes First

Search for herbs for congestion and the same eight plants come up again and again: osha, mullein, thyme, eucalyptus, peppermint, ginger, licorice root and elecampane. Each one comes out of a different tradition, from Zuni curing ceremonies to German herbal monographs and Chinese formula books. Osha goes first. More separate peoples kept it close than any other plant on the list, and it has the most striking lab result of the eight.

1. Osha root, the plant the Diné credit to the bear

Osha (Ligusticum porteri) is a member of the carrot and parsley family that grows high in the mountains, at roughly 1,500 to 3,500 metres. Its root smells sharp and celery-like, and almost every people who lived near it found a use for it.

Zuni healers chewed the root during curing ceremonies and gave crushed root in water for a sore throat. Diné (Navajo) healers used it for a hoarse voice, and they say the bear led them to the medicine. Ethnobotanist Shawn Sigstedt recorded that story. The Lakota name is mato tapejuta, "bear medicine." Comanche healers turned to it for pneumonia. In New Mexico, Hispanic ranchers call the plant chuchupate, and chuchupate tea for a sore throat is still a family habit there. In the mountains of Northern Mexico, Rarámuri families brewed the root as a tea.

The bear part of the story has been watched in person. Sigstedt gave osha roots to captive brown bears in Colorado Springs, and one female chewed a root into a mash and rubbed it over her shoulders, chest and head. Bears are said to dig the root when they wake from hibernation. Archaeologists found osha root in the Patterson Bundle, a leather medicine satchel from Utah dated to between 200 and 600 years old.

The root contains Z-ligustilide, measured at 0.15 to 2.5% of the root. In 2008, researcher Oscar Beltran at the University of Texas at El Paso tested osha as a plant the Tarahumara (Rarámuri) use for tuberculosis and other respiratory infections. His extract stopped more than half the growth of the tuberculosis bacterium at the lowest concentration he tested, and it was not toxic to human cells until much higher concentrations.

More herbs for chest congestion

Mullein

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) is the tall, woolly-leaved plant you see along roadsides. Encyclopedia.com records Native American groups burning the leaves as a smudge over campfire embers and inhaling the smoke for pulmonary congestion. Some tribes called it "big tobacco." In Mexico it is gordolobo, used by the Nahuatl before the Spanish arrived and still sold at herb stands for the throat.

Thyme

Germany's Commission E, the expert panel that reviewed herbal medicines in the 1980s and 1990s, listed thyme for bronchitis and for catarrh of the upper respiratory tract. The main compound in the oil is thymol, the same one that gives the kitchen herb its bite.

Elecampane

Elecampane (Inula helenium) is a big yellow-flowered daisy whose root has been used in European herbal medicine since ancient Greece and Rome. Herbalist Christopher Hobbs describes it as an expectorant used for coughs and bronchitis. The root holds alantolactone and isoalantolactone, plus a lot of inulin.

Licorice root

In Chinese herbal medicine, licorice root (gan cao) is said to moisten the lung and clear phlegm. It appears in more classical formulas than almost any other single herb, usually as the ingredient that ties the rest together.

Herbs for nasal congestion

Eucalyptus

Eucalyptus oil is mostly 1,8-cineole. In a 2004 trial published in The Laryngoscope, Kehrl and colleagues gave 152 adults with acute sinusitis either 600 mg of cineole a day or a placebo. After seven days, the symptom score in the cineole group had dropped from 15.6 to 3.0, against 9.2 in the placebo group.

Peppermint

Peppermint's main compound is menthol. Ronald Eccles reviewed the research in Current Allergy and Asthma Reports in 2003 and described menthol acting on a receptor on the nerves that sense coolness. People breathing menthol report that air feels like it moves more freely through the nose.

Ginger

At Columbia University in 2013, Elizabeth Townsend and colleagues tested three ginger compounds (6-gingerol, 8-gingerol and 6-shogaol) on human airway muscle tissue and found the tissue relaxed significantly more when a ginger compound was added to the standard airway medicine isoproterenol.

Why osha comes first

Most herbs on this list belong to one tradition. Thyme and elecampane are European. Licorice is Chinese. Osha was kept by the Zuni, the Diné, the Lakota, the Comanche, the Rarámuri and the ranching families of New Mexico, peoples who never compared notes and still picked out the same root. It turns up in a centuries-old medicine bundle, and a biologist watched the bear story play out in person.

It is also the one plant here you can't grow in a window box. Osha has resisted cultivation, almost all of it is wild-harvested, the plants are often more than 10 years old when dug, and United Plant Savers lists it as "At-Risk." It also looks a lot like poison hemlock, so it is no plant for amateur foraging.

Bear Root, a few drops at a time

Bear Root is Mara's osha root tincture, made from a mountain plant of Northern Mexico. It comes in a 50 ml dark Miron glass dropper bottle. The taste is earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite from the root.

Most people take 1 to 2 droppers a day. Hold it under your tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into a cup of tea in the morning or evening. Some drop it into a water bottle after a hike or a run. It fits any time of year, at a desk or in a gym bag, and a bottle lasts 30 to 50 days.

The tincture is the practical way to keep osha around. Dried osha root is dense and resinous, and getting anything from it into a cup means grinding and long simmering. A tincture has done that extraction already, so a dropper gives the same measured amount every time and goes anywhere your water bottle goes. Light breaks down plant extracts, which is why the glass matters. Dark amber glass is a step in the right direction, but dark Miron glass is the gold standard, and it is what Mara uses. The ingredients are simple: premium quality extract.

For the full story of the plant, read our guide to osha root. If your interest is the chest in particular, we also wrote about osha root and the lungs.

Bear Root considerations

The recommendation on the product page: "Contains alcohol. Not recommended during pregnancy. If you're nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it."

Questions people ask about herbs for congestion

What is the best herb for congestion?

Osha has the widest tradition of the common choices, kept by the Zuni, Diné, Lakota, Comanche and Rarámuri, and a 2008 University of Texas at El Paso study found it stopped more than half the growth of the tuberculosis bacterium at the lowest concentration tested.

Which herbs do people use for chest congestion?

Osha, mullein, thyme, elecampane and licorice root are the ones that come up most. Each has a long record of use for the chest in its own tradition.

Is bear root the same as osha?

Yes. Bear root is a common name for osha (Ligusticum porteri), after the story that bears dig up the root and chew it.

Can you put osha tincture in tea?

Yes. Stir 1 to 2 droppers of Bear Root into tea, water, juice or a smoothie, or hold it under your tongue for 20 to 30 seconds and swallow.