Written by Norianna Diesel
What is Shilajit?
Have you heard the word Shilajit, or perhaps it’s Russian counterpart, Mumiyo, and wondered, what the heck is this substance with such a strange name?
Shilajit is a sanskrit word that means: “Conqueror of mountains and destroyer of weakness” which is a suitable name for this rock ore found deep in certain mountain ranges in Asia, Europe, and (more recently) the Rocky Mountains of the Western United States. Shilajit ore (which is what Shilajit pitch is created from) is a unique combination of minerals and organic substances that was formed from decomposed forests that got buried underground millions of years ago. Overtime, as the mountains shifted, this ore shifted with the mountains to now be found in unique locations at high elevations.
This mineral rich substance has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years. Hailed as a panacea by many, it is often referred to as "black gold" for it's immense curative properties.
It states in the Charaka Samhita, Ayurveda’s definitive treatise: “There is no curable disease in the universe which is not effectively cured by shilajat when administered at the appropriate time, in combination with suitable drugs and by adopting the prescribed method. When administered to a healthy person, with similar conditions it produces immense energy.”
In The Yoga of Herbs by Dr. David Frawley and Dr. Vasant Lad, it says: “Shilajit possesses great curative powers and is considered capable of treating many diseases, particularly those of the aging process.”
Benefits of Shilajit:
Pure Shilajit is naturally very rich in fulvic and humic acids as well as dozens of trace minerals in ionic form. The fulvic acid in Shilajit helps make it an anti-inflammatory, an antioxidant, a powerful detoxifier, and a memory enhancer. Other molecules found in Shilajit are: eldagic acid, some fatty acids, resins, latex, gums, albumins, triterpenes, sterols, aromatic carboxylic acids, 3,4-benzocoumarins, amino acids, polyphenols, phenolic lipids, polysaccharides and lignins.
Some of the multitudinous health benefits of Shilajit are:
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Improving digestive health thanks to the fulvic acid which carry nutrients that improve and retain overall intestinal health including the absorption of nutrients in the intestinal tract.
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Can act as a histamine blocker
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Helps to regulate inflammatory symptoms ( has been effectively used to treat eczema for this reason)
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Assists the body in maintaining healthy collagen levels and thus has been used historically as a rejuvenating and restorative beauty tonic.
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Helps promotes brain health
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Regulates hormones
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Regulates the immune system
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Alleviates pain response in the body
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Supports skeletal health
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Supports the heart and blood
- A natural aphrodisiac
- Fertility support
- Helps regulate stress as a natural adaptogen
- Acts as a detoxifier through the chelation that the fulvic acid naturally provides
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And so much more
Dangers Of Not Knowing Your Sourcing...
Although Shilajit has been used medicinally for thousands of years, in recent decades it has gained widespread attention and popularity. Unfortunately, this popularity has given rise to a market flooded with companies selling contaminated and impure products to unsuspecting consumers. With many innocent people not knowing the difference between pure and impure, Shilajit products have become a huge industry and the majority of what is marketed as "Shilajit" on the market today is between 30%-80% impure.
Not all Shilajit is created equally. In fact, getting your hands on any powdered form/ capsuled form of Shilajit is usually guaranteed to be anything but pure Shilajit powder. Every single Shilajit powder that has been tested (as far as we know) has shown to have no more than only 30% Shilajit with the rest of the 70% serving as some sort of filler. This is also why the powdered Shilajit industry tends to set a very low price for their capsules, it is simply not a pure product. It is important to realize that if a Shilajit pitch costs $55 for 7 grams of pitch, a powdered product of an equal weight would be significantly more expensive since it would be a much more concentrated product. So what is in the 7 grams of powder might actually be closer to 50 grams of actual pitch, dehydrated out. Phoenix Aurelius has actually tried making a Shilajit powder before with a dehydrator and knows just how challenging the process actually is. He believes making dehydrated Shilajit powders are simply not commercially viable based on his own R&D experience.
Something else to be aware of is that any Shilajit product you buy should be sourced from pristine ore, something with red or gold tones. A lot of companies end up sourcing their Shilajit from a lower quality ore. They will simply grind up the raw ore material without purifying it, and then turn the raw ore into a powder to be sold for consumption. This is actually quite dangerous because there are tons of impurities in the raw Shilajit ore and it is not safe to consume as such. To make proper Shilajit pitch (and further dehydrated into powder) , it needs to go through a water extraction process, be filtered multiple times, and ideally always sent off to a 3rd party lab for purity verification to make sure there are NO contaminants.
These shady companies simply powder raw Shilajit ore, mix it with maltodextrin, and then soak the product in humic acid so it resembles the earthy taste of actual Shilajit. Sometimes these powdered products contain as little as 5% actual Shilajit powder, with the highest ever being tested only at 30%.
It is SO important to know that unless you have vetted the company and have found an exception to this rule, if you are taking any sort of powdered Shilajit it is a huge sham and please stay far away.
Something else to realize just like any industry, is that unless you are paying fair trade wages, there are people and habitats getting screwed. In Russia there are slave gangs that hike up the mountains to harvest raw Shilajit ore and end up raping the mountains of a miraculous substance that in some cases carbon dates up to 4 million years old! The earth at this time only has a limited supply of Shilajit ore and if we are not careful, it can be really easy to over harvest the ore, depriving any future human and animal generations of this valuable medicine.
What makes Alpine Gold Shilajit unique?
Here at the Phoenix Aurelius Research Academy, we want to set a new standard for Shilajit because we actually have an entirely upleveled product compared to most of the rest of the world. We are some of the only suppliers in the world carrying Shilajit sourced from our very own American Rocky Mountains. Because our Shilajit is sustainably wild-harvested and slow batch processed by the same supplier (who happens to be our good friend), we are able to directly track and ensure the purity of our finished Alpine Gold Product.
Our personal supplier of Alpine Gold Shilajit is deeply committed to harvesting the highest quality Shilajit Ore as well as preserving the quantities that are around so that future generations can harvest from certain locations hundreds of years from now.
It is important to realize that the reason Shilajit has always been so rare and hard to come by is because it is actually hard to procure a good quantity from, even harder when you are trying to do it sustainably for larger groups of people. This is why our supplier will only ever have a set amount of Shilajit pitch for sale, and he only sells to small businesses/distributors who won’t wipe him out of the product. Therefore, our prices are higher because we are paying fair-trade living wages to our supplier who harvests and processes each small batch lovingly by hand. He has a very strict manufacturing process which includes cold extraction, filtration down to 0.03 microns, slow evaporation, and always ensuring the purity of his product by getting a sample of each batch produced tested by a 3rd party lab. We always include the most recent lab results for the batch of Shilajit we are selling on our product page in the images section.
You truly do get what you pay for with this product, as our Shilajit is truly some of the very best in the world in terms of taste, purity, ethics, and vitality.
Resources:
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