Osha Root Effects (What You Notice and What the Research Found)

The first osha root effects you notice come in the mouth. Put a dropper of osha tincture under your tongue and you get an earthy, warming taste with a sharp bite close to celery seed or lovage, followed by warmth that runs down the back of the throat when you swallow. Behind that first minute sit centuries of use by the peoples of the Southwest and Northern Mexico, and a shelf of lab studies from Mexico and Texas on what the root contains.

Osha is Ligusticum porteri, a member of the carrot and parsley family (Apiaceae) and a close relative of lovage. It grows in mountain meadows between about 1,500 and 3,500 m, from the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico up through Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. The part people use is the root, and it smells strongly of celery.

What does osha root do?

Ask the people who have used it longest and you get a list of uses tied to the throat, the chest and the stomach. Ask the labs and you get compound names (Z-ligustilide, butylidenephthalide, ferulic acid) and a few measured results. Ask someone who takes it every day and they describe the taste, the warmth, and a small habit they keep. For the full background on the plant, from botany to harvest, see our complete guide to osha root.

The taste, the warmth and the first minute

Osha tastes earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite from the root. The American Herbal Pharmacopoeia, in its 2018 monograph on osha, puts the celery aroma down to terpenes common across the carrot family, so the smell sits close to lovage and fresh celery leaf. Herbalist Christopher Hobbs describes the taste as acrid and spicy, with a warm temperature.

In practice, a dropper under the tongue goes like this. The first second is earthy. Then the celery bite comes through. You hold it there for 20 to 30 seconds, swallow, and feel the warmth follow it down. Some people stop there. Others chase it with a glass of water, and a few stir the dropper straight into tea so the taste softens into the cup.

The whole thing takes under a minute. It fits in the gap between waking up and the first coffee, and after a week or two the dropper becomes part of the morning the way brushing your teeth is.

How the Zuni, Diné and Rarámuri used it

Osha was found in a Utah medicine bundle dated to between 200 and 600 years old. The 2018 American Herbal Pharmacopoeia monograph lists the Hopi, Diné (Navajo) and Zuni among the peoples who kept it, mostly for the chest and throat.

• The Zuni used the root for sore throats and body aches.
• Diné healers used it for a hoarse voice and credit the medicine to the bear.
• Rarámuri (Tarahumara) families in the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico brewed it as a tea for stomach pain and fever.
• The Lakota name for it is mato tapejuta, which means bear medicine.
• Comanche healers used it for pneumonia, and New Mexican families brewed it as chuchupate tea.

The bear name comes from what people saw bears do. Ethnobotanist Shawn Sigstedt introduced the root to Kodiak bears on two occasions, and both times the bears chewed it into a mash and rubbed it into their fur. The story told across the Southwest is that bears dig up the root when they wake from hibernation.

Bear Root is the easy way to take it every day

Almost all osha is wild-harvested, and the plants are often more than 10 years old when they are dug. United Plant Savers lists it as At-Risk, and it looks enough like poison hemlock that people who are not trained botanists should leave wild plants alone. A tincture (an alcohol extract) gets the root into a form you can carry and use every day without digging, drying or grinding anything.

Bear Root is Mara's osha root tincture. The root is a mountain plant of Northern Mexico, home of the Rarámuri families who brewed it as tea. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract. It comes in a 50 ml dark Miron glass dropper bottle. If you are comparing bottles, dark amber glass is a step in the right direction, and the gold standard is dark Miron glass, which is what Mara uses to keep light off the extract.

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. A bottle lasts 30 to 50 days at that rate. People keep it next to the kettle for a morning or evening tea, or add a dropper to a water bottle after a hike or a run. Use it any time of year.

To take it in a mug, read our post on Bear Root tea.

Osha root effects in published research

The research on Ligusticum porteri comes mostly from universities in Mexico and Texas, and most of it starts from the Indigenous uses above. These are the findings with numbers attached.

Z-ligustilide. This is one of the compounds behind the celery smell that osha shares with lovage. Measurements put it at 0.15 to 2.5% of osha root, a wide spread from one root to the next.

The tuberculosis bacterium. A 2008 study at the University of Texas at El Paso by Oscar Beltran tested the root the Rarámuri use for tuberculosis and chest infections. At the lowest concentration tested, 5 µg/ml, osha stopped more than half the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It showed 0% toxicity to human cells at that level.

Stomach lining in rats. In 2020, Pineda-Peña and colleagues, writing in the Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia, gave rats a nanoemulsion of osha root oil before a dose of indomethacin. Stomach protection reached 72% at 10 mg/kg and 92% at 30 mg/kg, against 69% for omeprazole.

Antioxidant enzymes. A 2017 study at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi (Nguyen, Sparks and Omoruyi, Pharmacognosy Research) added osha root extract to a human cell line under oxidative stress. At 400 µg/mL, catalase activity rose 148.4% and superoxide dismutase rose 90.7%.

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

What are the benefits of osha root?

The Zuni, Diné, Rarámuri and Lakota kept it mainly for the throat, chest and stomach. Lab studies have measured its compounds against the tuberculosis bacterium, antioxidant enzymes in human cells and stomach lining in rats, with the numbers listed above.

What does osha root taste like?

Earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite. The celery note comes from terpenes and Z-ligustilide, the same family of compounds found in lovage.

Is bear root the same as osha?

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

How long does a bottle of Bear Root last?

At 1 to 2 droppers a day, one 50 ml bottle lasts 30 to 50 days.