Every published human shilajit trial used between 200 and 500 mg a day for 90 days. The only trial that compared two doses head-to-head found 250 mg a day was indistinguishable from placebo, while 500 mg worked. With 300 mg capsules that means two a day, not one — and 90 days, not the four to eight weeks most labels suggest. Ours included.
Our shilajit and fulvic acid article covers what the substance is and whether the benefits hold up. This one deals only with the number: how much, how often, for how long, and how to translate a trial dose into the jar on your shelf. It ends somewhere uncomfortable, because the arithmetic doesn't flatter our own label.
What Dose Did the Trials Actually Use?
Three human trials carry the weight, and they cluster tightly: 200 to 500 mg daily, all for 90 days except one at eight weeks. Every one of them used the same standardised extract, PrimaVie from Natreon — which matters more than it looks, and we'll come back to it.
| Trial | Daily dose | Duration | Who | Design |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biswas 2010 | 200 mg (100 mg twice daily, after meals) | 90 days | 28 men with oligospermia | Single arm, no placebo |
| Pandit 2016 | 500 mg (250 mg twice daily) | 90 days | 96 men aged 45–55, 75 completed | Randomised, placebo-controlled |
| Keller 2019 | 250 mg or 500 mg | 8 weeks | 63 active men, mean age 21 | Randomised, three arms |
Notice what isn't there. No trial tested 1 g. No trial tested 100 mg. Nobody has run shilajit for six months. The evidence base is three studies and a narrow dose window, which is worth saying out loud before anyone treats a number as settled.
Why 250 mg Is the Dose That Failed
Only one shilajit trial ever compared two doses inside the same study, and its result gets quoted selectively. Keller and colleagues randomised 63 recreationally active men to 250 mg, 500 mg or placebo for eight weeks and measured how much maximal isometric strength they lost under a fatigue protocol (PMID 30728074).
The 500 mg group's strength fell 8.9%. Placebo fell 16.0%. The 250 mg group fell 17.0% — fractionally worse than placebo, which in practical terms means it did nothing at all.
So when a label offers you "250 to 500 mg daily" as a range, understand what that range contains. The bottom of it is the arm that failed. Two more caveats belong here, because the trial has them: that placebo comparison only reached significance in a post-hoc analysis of the stronger half of the sample, and the study was funded by the ingredient manufacturer. It is the best dose-ranging evidence shilajit has, and it is still one Natreon-funded study with a subgroup at its centre.
How Many Capsules Is That?
Our capsules hold 0.3 g — 300 mg each, 120 to a jar at €39. Here is what the trial doses translate to:
| Target | Capsules per day | Actual mg | Days per 120-cap jar | Cost per day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pandit / Keller high dose (500 mg) | 2 | 600 mg | 60 | €0.65 |
| Biswas (200 mg) | 1 | 300 mg | 120 | €0.33 |
| Keller low dose — the arm that failed (250 mg) | 1 | 300 mg | 120 | €0.33 |
Two capsules a day gives you 600 mg, which is 20% above Pandit's dose and the closest whole-capsule match. There's no reason to think that 20% matters.
The number worth writing down is the one in the fourth column. A full trial course is 90 days at two capsules, which is 180 capsules — one and a half jars, about €59. One jar does not contain one course. If you buy a single jar, take two a day and stop when it's empty, you stopped 30 days before the trial that everyone cites measured anything.
How Do You Dose the Resin?
Badly, if you follow the standard instruction. "Pea-sized" is the universal phrase for resin dosing and it's close to meaningless: a small pea and a large pea differ by a factor of three or four in volume, and resin is dense enough that the gap lands squarely across the threshold Keller identified. Our own resin label says pea-sized and then, sensibly, puts a number next to it — 300 to 500 mg — and includes a measuring tool. Use the tool.
If you'd rather not weigh anything, there's a check that costs nothing: count the days your jar lasts. A 20 g jar at 500 mg a day is 40 doses. At 300 mg it's 66. So if a 20 g jar is still going strong after three months of daily use, your "pea" is somewhere near 200 mg and you're dosing below the arm that worked. That arithmetic runs in both directions, which is the point — it also catches people taking far more than they think.
Cost lands differently by format. Resin at 500 mg daily works out to roughly €0.98 a day from the 20 g jar and €0.79 from the 50 g, against €0.65 for two capsules. Capsules are the cheaper way to hit a trial dose, and the more precise one. Our resin versus capsules comparison covers the rest of that trade-off.
Does Our Own Label Match the Trials?
No, and pretending otherwise would be the easy thing to do here. Our capsule instructions say one capsule in the morning, expect results over four to eight weeks, and cycle four to six weeks on with a one to two week break. Line that up against the evidence and three things are off.
One capsule is 300 mg, which sits between Keller's failed arm and his working one, and closer to the failed one. Four to eight weeks is shorter than every trial except Keller's, and Pandit's testosterone effect wasn't visible at eight weeks — more on that below. And cycling off at four to six weeks would interrupt a 90-day course twice before it finished.
Our resin label says something different again: 300 to 500 mg, once or twice daily, which spans 300 mg to a full gram. Same substance, same shop, two sets of instructions that don't agree. If you want the protocol the trials actually ran, it's 500 mg a day, every day, for 90 days, whichever format you buy.
How Long Before You Judge It?
Ninety days, and the reason is more interesting than mere patience. Pandit's team measured testosterone at four points rather than two, and the curve does something strange: total testosterone rose 6.82% at day 30, fell back to 3.09% at day 60, then jumped to 20.45% at day 90 (PMID 26395129). Free testosterone finished 19.14% up and DHEAS 31.35% up, both only significant at the final measurement.
Read that middle number again. At day 60 — more than eight weeks in, past the point where most labels tell you to evaluate — the effect had all but disappeared. Anyone who ran that trial for two months and stopped would have concluded shilajit does nothing.
We can't explain the dip, and neither did the authors; with 38 men finishing in the treatment arm it may be noise as much as biology. But it's the only granular timecourse shilajit has, and its practical instruction is unambiguous. Don't judge this substance at four weeks. Don't judge it at eight. Decide at 90 days or don't start.
Does Fulvic Acid Percentage Change the Dose?
It should, and this is the gap between the trials and almost every product on the market, ours included. Pandit's PrimaVie was standardised to at least 60% total bioactives by weight: no less than 50% fulvic acids, at least 10% dibenzo-α-pyrone chromoproteins and at least 0.3% dibenzo-α-pyrones, all quantified by HPLC.
So "500 mg of shilajit" in that trial meant at least 250 mg of fulvic acids and a specified amount of two other compound classes. A generic resin at 500 mg means 500 mg of something dark that came out of a rock. If its fulvic acid content is 20% rather than 50%, you're at 100 mg of the marker compound instead of 250 — taking a trial dose by weight and a fraction of it by activity.
Does our shilajit declare a fulvic acid percentage? It doesn't, and that's a fair thing to hold against it and against most of the category. Until a product states the number, dose by weight, take the higher end of the range, and treat the standardisation gap as a reason for modest expectations rather than a reason to double up.
When Should You Take It?
The trials disagree, which is quietly useful. Biswas dosed after major meals; our label says empty stomach in the morning; Pandit's paper doesn't specify relative to food. Since both feeding schedules produced results, timing relative to meals is probably not the lever people treat it as.
What does matter is splitting the dose. Both 90-day trials divided their total into two — 100 mg twice daily, 250 mg twice daily — and neither tested the whole amount at once. If you're taking 600 mg as two capsules, take one morning and one evening rather than both at breakfast. It costs nothing and matches what was actually studied.
Should You Cycle It?
There's no evidence either way, and our own label's four-to-six-week cycling advice isn't drawn from any trial. Every study ran continuously: 90 days straight in two of them, eight weeks straight in the third. Nobody has tested a break.
Cycling is a reasonable precaution for a substance with no long-term safety data past three months, and shilajit qualifies. But if you cycle, do it after a full 90-day course rather than in the middle of one. Stopping at week five means you never reach the point where the only detailed timecourse we have showed anything happening.
Who Should Not Take These Doses
Anyone pregnant or breastfeeding, children, and anyone with haemochromatosis or another iron-overload condition — shilajit carries iron and none of the trials enrolled people who need to limit it. The trials also excluded anyone with abnormal liver or kidney bloodwork at screening, so their safety findings don't extend to people who wouldn't have qualified.
Unpurified resin is a separate matter entirely, and a more serious one: raw shilajit can carry lead and arsenic, which is why every trial used a purified, tested extract rather than material scraped off a rock. That deserves its own treatment rather than a paragraph here. The general contraindications are covered in our shilajit benefits article.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the correct shilajit dosage per day?
500 mg daily, split into two doses, is the best-supported figure — it's what Pandit's 90-day randomised trial used and the only dose that beat placebo in Keller's three-arm study. With 300 mg capsules that's two per day. Lower doses have positive uncontrolled data but failed the one head-to-head comparison.
Is 300 mg of shilajit enough?
Probably not for the strength and fatigue endpoint. Keller's 250 mg arm lost 17.0% of its strength under fatigue against 16.0% for placebo — no benefit at all — while 500 mg lost 8.9%. At 300 mg you're nearer the dose that failed. Two capsules is the safer read of the evidence.
How long does shilajit take to work?
Ninety days for hormonal effects. In the one trial that measured intermediate timepoints, testosterone was up 6.82% at day 30, 3.09% at day 60, then 20.45% at day 90. The eight-week mark, where most labels tell you to evaluate, fell inside the flat stretch. Judging early gives you the wrong answer.
Should I take shilajit on an empty stomach?
It doesn't appear to matter much. The oligospermia trial dosed after major meals and still hit its endpoints; our label suggests morning on an empty stomach. Splitting the daily amount into two doses is better supported than any particular relationship to food, since both 90-day trials did exactly that.
Can you take too much shilajit?
No human trial has gone above 500 mg a day, so anything higher is untested rather than proven dangerous. The bigger risk with large doses is contamination load: heavy metals scale with the amount you take, so an unpurified product becomes more of a problem the more of it you consume.
Shop Shilajit
Buy shilajit capsules (120 × 0.3 g, €39) for precise dosing — two a day for 90 days needs one and a half jars — or shilajit resin (20 g €39, 50 g €79) if you prefer the traditional format and will use the measuring tool. The 50 g jar is the better value for a full course. Free shipping on orders over €50.
Related Articles
- Shilajit Benefits and Fulvic Acid: What the Evidence Shows
- Shilajit Resin vs Capsules: Which Format Is Worth Buying?
- How to Read a Supplement Label
- Best Mushrooms for Men
- Cordyceps Dosage Guide
- Are Extracts Stronger Than Dried Fruiting Bodies?
Sources
- Pandit S, Biswas S, Jana U, De RK, Mukhopadhyay SC, Biswas TK. Clinical evaluation of purified Shilajit on testosterone levels in healthy volunteers. Andrologia. 2016;48(5):570-575. PubMed 26395129
- Keller JL, Housh TJ, Hill EC, Smith CM, Schmidt RJ, Johnson GO. The effects of Shilajit supplementation on fatigue-induced decreases in muscular strength and serum hydroxyproline levels. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2019;16(1):3. PubMed 30728074
- Biswas TK, Pandit S, Mondal S, et al. Clinical evaluation of spermatogenic activity of processed Shilajit in oligospermia. Andrologia. 2010;42(1):48-56. PubMed 20078516