Wild yam caused a stir years ago because it was claimed to be a natural contraceptive. While this hasn’t been confirmed, yam root does appear to have a positive effect on female hormone levels, with studies now demonstrating three effects: Wild yam strengthens bones, protects blood vessels, and helps with estrogen dominance—both before and during menopause.

What Is Wild Yam?

Wild yam (yam root) has been used for centuries as a food and medicinal plant. The wild yam belongs to the yam family. With around 800 species, they are found primarily in tropical regions, where they serve as a food and medicinal plant—both in the past and today.

The best known is the Mexican Wild Yam species, which originally comes from Central and North America but is now also cultivated and used in other parts of the world.

Native American women once used the wild yam root primarily as a contraceptive and as a remedy for all female ailments, while men swore by its rejuvenating and strengthening effects.

Wild Yam and the Birth Control Pill

As unbelievable as it may sound to us today to use a plant for contraception, it is actually a plant – namely the wild yam – without which the modern contraceptive pill would probably not even exist.

In the 1930s, scientists attempted to synthesize artificial estrogen and progesterone to create a contraceptive. Although they achieved their goal, they only achieved it using extremely expensive raw materials. At that time, the commercial use of these hormones was unthinkable.

The breakthrough came in 1942 with the American chemist Russell Marker. While searching for a plant rich in hormone-like substances, he came across the wild yam (1).

He isolated the substance diosgenin—a precursor to progesterone—from the plant’s root and was able to convert it into natural progesterone in the laboratory. Soon after, production of the first birth control pills began. (The estrogen required for this was also obtained from mare urine.)

Does Wild Yam Work as Contraception?

Although the original form of the birth control pill would have been unthinkable without wild yam, the contraceptive effect of the root is based on a completely different mechanism than that of the birth control pill.

Diosgenin is highly unlikely to be the only substance in wild yam that has a contraceptive effect—if any. It’s much more likely that it’s an interaction of various ingredients, not all of which are yet known.

Scientists are still arguing about whether the human organism is capable of converting diosgenin from wild yam into progesterone or not – and diosgenin alone does not provide contraception.

So, we don’t know exactly what might be involved in wild yam to prevent pregnancy. However, the following mechanism is suspected: Wild yam causes the formation of a natural protective mucus in the cervix, which prevents sperm from sliding off and thus from reaching the egg.

The contraceptive pill, on the other hand, changes the hormonal balance in such a way that ovulation does not occur at all and the fallopian tubes are paralyzed, which is of course not the case with the wild yam root.

Prerequisites for the contraceptive effect of wild yam

For wild yam to actually work as a contraceptive, it’s said that certain conditions must be met. First of all, you need to be very patient. The contraceptive effect is said to only become apparent after about 6 to 12 months of daily use—especially in very young women.

Although some say that the contraceptive effect occurs after just 9 weeks because the protective mucus has built up by then, reports from people’s experiences (baby was conceived despite wild yam) show that this is not always the case.

Another requirement for women taking wild yam supplements is that they practice a healthy diet and lifestyle. Wild yam is believed to be effective contraceptive among indigenous peoples, among other reasons, because they live so naturally and healthily.

Smoking, alcohol, sugar, obesity and lack of exercise are said to impair the contraceptive effect of wild yam, so that pregnancy can occur despite regular consumption of wild yam if one indulges in one of these vices.

Consequently, there are no real studies that would prove that wild yam can actually be an effective contraceptive for women, because hardly any (young) woman would live so consistently that one could in good conscience recommend contraception with wild yam to her.

Proponents of the yam root therefore simply rely on the centuries-old traditions of many indigenous peoples and on the experiences of women from our time, which, however, include both positive and negative ones.

A midwife’s experience with wild yam for contraception

Midwife Willa Shaffer chronicled her experiences with wild yam in her booklet “Wild Yam: Birth Control Without Fear.” She recommends that her patients take 3000 mg of wild yam daily, with 1500 mg of wild yam capsules taken in the morning and evening.

According to Shaffer’s reports, almost 100 percent of women were able to achieve contraception using wild yam alone. However, attention must be paid to the quality of the product, ensuring, for example, that it is not a heated yam root, but a raw wild yam product.

While the contraceptive effect of wild yam isn’t entirely proven, the situation is quite different with its bone-strengthening effect. Several studies have shown that wild yam has a very positive effect on bone health, which is particularly interesting for women during and after menopause.

Wild Yam for Bone Health and Osteoporosis Prevention

In 2010, Harvard Medical School in Boston tested a combination drug (2) (Drynol Cibotin) made up of eight different bone-strengthening medicinal plants , all of which have been used for many centuries in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to treat osteoporosis – including Chinese angelica, shiny privet, tragacanth and, of course, wild yam.

The results of the study were very positive, as it showed that the medicinal plants significantly stimulate the proliferation of bone-forming cells (osteoblasts) (3) and at the same time prevent their increased destruction – as is the case with osteoporosis.

Additionally, it was discovered that the plants improved calcium absorption into the bones – both in the short and long term. The medicinal plants also significantly stimulated the formation of two key proteins important for bone formation (collagen I and laminin B2).

The researchers then explained that the bone-strengthening medicinal plants can be used either alone or in combination with vital substances to prevent osteoporosis.

One year later (2011), Korean scientists showed that diosgenin from wild yam root could noticeably increase bone activity (4).

They also found that wild yam promoted bone formation, particularly through increased production of collagen and other proteins (5), all of which are responsible for good bone health.

And in 2014, the journal Preventive Nutrition and Food Science also published an article by Korean researchers. They confirmed the previous findings and wrote that both the root and bark of wild yam can activate bone function.

According to the researchers, under the influence of wild yam, the bone matrix becomes more mineralized, which means that more calcium can be incorporated into the newly built bone tissue (6).

Where this bone-strengthening effect of wild yam originates is unknown. What is certain, however, is that the hormonal imbalance during menopause promotes osteoporosis. If wild yam—as is suspected—has a hormone-balancing effect, this could explain its positive influence on bones.

Wild Yam in Menopause

Some experts are now certain that the typical menopausal symptoms (dryness of the skin and mucous membranes, urinary incontinence, osteoporosis, etc.) are not, or not always, due to a pure estrogen deficiency, but rather to a so-called estrogen dominance.

This means that the balance between estrogen and progesterone is disturbed, favoring estrogen. The affected woman may, of course, still have too little estrogen. However, if there is significantly less progesterone in relation to the remaining estrogen, this is also referred to as estrogen dominance—despite the estrogen deficiency.

Furthermore, it’s important to remember that progesterone levels decline much faster than estrogen levels during menopause. Even after menopause, certain amounts of estrogen are still produced in the adrenal cortex, adipose tissue, and ovaries, while the body’s own production of progesterone ceases almost entirely. Consequently, progesterone should initially receive much more attention than estrogen.

Wild Yam is said to have a progesterone-like effect due to its diosgenin content, so the plant can gently counteract estrogen dominance and is worth a try at the first signs of menopausal symptoms.

The synthetic hormones commonly prescribed can have severe side effects – from breast cancer to thrombosis and cardiovascular problems. Hence you should always use bioidentical hormones if you want to go down that route.

Is wild yam an alternative to hormone therapy?

Conventional medicine often prefers to administer estrogens to compensate for the estrogen deficiency so typical of menopause, while completely ignoring the possibility of estrogen dominance. If progesterone is also administered, this is usually also in synthetic form.

However, the possibility of so-called bioidentical hormones is no longer unknown, and some doctors now even recommend them. These are hormones that are absolutely identical to the body’s own hormones. However, these bioidentical hormones can also cause side effects if the dosage is not correct for the individual woman.

If menopausal symptoms are mild, it is a good idea to first try gentle herbal remedies with no side effects, such as wild yam root.

However, estrogen dominance is not only a problem for women during menopause. Rather, it is a very widespread, yet unfortunately often unrecognized, cause of many women’s complaints that often have a significant impact on their entire lives.

Wild Yam for estrogen dominance and PMS

Estrogen dominance is therefore a very common problem in women of almost all ages, and not infrequently in men as well. Because chemicals have an estrogen-like effect, we are all surrounded by estrogens (7) or substances that can mimic the effects of estrogens.

Estrogen dominance can manifest itself in a wide variety of symptoms in women. Some of these are collectively referred to as environmental chemicals (PMS):

1. migraine
2. Tension in the breasts
3. Depression and severe mood swings
4. Sleep disorders
5. Fatigue and reduced performance
6. Water retention
7. Myomas and cysts
8. Shortened cycles and spotting in the second half of the cycle
9. infertility
10. Skin problems such as acne
11. Hair loss

There are no official studies on the effects of wild yam root on estrogen dominance and PMS. However, physician and medicinal plant expert Heide Fischer, who specializes in women’s naturopathy, conducted her own small “study,” which she describes on her website:

Wild Yam is ideal for premenstrual syndrome

In 2002, as part of a professional training course on “Women’s Naturopathy with a Focus on Phytotherapy” led by Heide Fischer, she developed a yam root gel that 20 volunteer women with premenstrual or menopausal symptoms used for two months.

It was now shown that women with premenstrual symptoms experienced a significant improvement in almost all symptoms, whether it was breast tenderness and water retention or mood swings and spotting.

There was also improvement in menopausal symptoms, especially at the beginning of menopause when premenstrual problems were also present.

However, in cases of advanced menopause with hot flashes, etc., the benefits of wild yam were less evident. However, it was also unclear whether a higher dose or a longer duration of use might simply have been necessary.

Wild Yam as an antioxidant against arteriosclerosis

Arteriosclerosis is a problem in middle and old age, which is when osteoporosis is also a threat. Anyone considering wild yam for osteoporosis prevention could kill two birds with one stone, as wild yam can also protect blood vessels from plaque buildup.

At least that is what a 2005 study conducted at the China Medical University suggested.

Three groups of subjects with arteriosclerosis received either a cholesterol-lowering drug, wild yam, or served as a control group that took nothing at all.

It was found that in the control group, 80 percent of the vessel walls (in the aorta) were covered with deposits (8), while in the wild yam group it was only 40 percent, so that it is assumed that wild yam is a useful measure for reducing arteriosclerosis.

The wild yam: conclusion

In summary, wild yam appears to be an excellent additional measure for osteoporosis prevention, which can also protect blood vessels from plaque buildup.

Wild yam can also be helpful for mild menopausal symptoms, especially those associated with estrogen dominance. However, for more severe menopausal symptoms, bioidentical hormones may be more effective.

For women of childbearing age who suffer from premenstrual syndrome or other symptoms of estrogen dominance, wild yam root represents a very good component of natural therapy.

However, we would not recommend wild yam for contraception.

How to Use Wild Yam

Wild yam is available in several forms:

• Capsules
• Creams or gels (applied to arms, chest, or thighs)
• Vaginal gels

Supplements are usually taken after ovulation during the second half of the menstrual cycle. For best results, choose high-quality wild yam products that are raw and not heat-treated.

Conclusion: The Benefits of Wild Yam

Wild yam root offers multiple health benefits:

• Supports bone strength and may help prevent osteoporosis
• Helps balance hormones during menopause
• May ease PMS and estrogen dominance
• Shows potential for heart and vessel protection

While wild yam has a long history as a natural contraceptive, its reliability in this area is not proven. Still, yam root remains a valuable herbal ally for women’s health.