Traditionally used for
- Bowel health
- Skin
Cautions & contraindications
- Allergy risk
- Toxic — professional use only
☯ TCM Properties
Moistens the Intestines and Unblocks the Bowels; Clears Heat and Resolves Toxicity; Promotes Tissue Regeneration and Heals Sores; Alleviates Pain
Traditional Chinese Uses
Ma You (sesame oil) is a cool, sweet lubricating food substance used in Chinese medicine to moisten the Intestines and relieve constipation from dryness, soothe burns and skin conditions topically, and counteract food poisoning. As a cooking oil and medicinal lubricant, it is one of the most practically accessible preparations in Chinese dietary medicine, valued for its moisture-promoting and mild detoxifying properties in everyday health maintenance.
Western Herbalism Properties
Relationships
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Botanical Description
Sesamum indicum is an erect annual herb of the family Pedaliaceae, probably originating in Africa or the Indian subcontinent and now cultivated throughout warm regions of Asia, Africa and the Americas. The slightly succulent, quadrangular stem reaches 60-150 cm and bears opposite to alternate, ovate-lanceolate leaves 5-15 cm long, the lower often lobed. Solitary tubular, bell-shaped flowers 3-4 cm long, white to pale pink with darker throat markings, are borne in the leaf axils and are followed by erect, four-angled, oblong capsules 2-5 cm long that dehisce explosively at maturity to release numerous small, flattened-ovoid seeds about 3 mm long, white, cream or black depending on cultivar. The seeds contain 45-55% of a pale yellow, mild-tasting fixed oil rich in oleic and linoleic acids, expressed for culinary and medicinal use as Ma You.
Active Constituents
Linoleic acid
Omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (C18:2)Concentration: roughly 40-51% of total fatty acids
With oleic acid it makes up the bulk of the oil; together the unsaturated fraction is 82-85% of the total. As an essential fatty acid it supports the barrier function of the stratum corneum, which is part of why the oil is a workable emollient base, and it is the substrate whose oxidation the oil's lignans and gamma-tocopherol retard.
Oleic acid
Monounsaturated fatty acid (C18:1)Concentration: roughly 33-44% of total fatty acids
The second major fatty acid. Oleic-rich oils spread and penetrate readily and are mildly keratolytic at high concentration, which underlies the traditional use of the oil to soften crusted lesions and to carry other medicinals into the skin. Palmitic acid (about 8-10%) and stearic acid (about 4-7%) make up most of the small saturated fraction.
Sesamin
Furofuran lignanConcentration: the major lignan of the oil; content varies severalfold with cultivar and roasting
The lignan most often credited with the oil's systemic effects. In human supplementation trials sesame lignans are associated with modest improvements in lipid profile and blood pressure, attributed to PPAR-alpha-mediated fatty acid oxidation and to inhibition of angiotensin-converting enzyme with enhanced endothelial nitric oxide synthase activity. It also contributes substantially to the oil's unusual oxidative stability.
Sesamolin
Furofuran lignanConcentration: the second major lignan; falls as roasting temperature rises, converting to sesamol
Structurally close to sesamin but bearing an additional oxygen bridge that makes it the reservoir from which sesamol is generated during roasting and refining. Its own antioxidant contribution is largely realised through that conversion.
Sesamol
Phenolic (methylenedioxyphenol)Concentration: present in small amounts in unroasted oil and rising with roasting temperature as sesamolin breaks down
A potent chain-breaking phenolic antioxidant, and the main reason sesame oil resists rancidity far better than its high polyunsaturated content would predict. It is the compound largely responsible for the measured oxidative stability of the oil.
gamma-Tocopherol
Tocopherol (vitamin E isoform)Concentration: about 520-990 mg/kg of oil, with total tocopherols 530-1000 mg/kg; alpha-tocopherol is negligible at up to 3 mg/kg
Sesame oil is unusual among culinary oils in that its vitamin E is almost entirely gamma- rather than alpha-tocopherol. Sesame lignans raise circulating gamma-tocopherol, which is part of the mechanism proposed for the antioxidant endpoints seen in supplementation trials.
Sesame seed allergens (Ses i 1 to Ses i 7, including 2S albumins and oleosins)
Seed storage and oil-body proteinsConcentration: trace; substantially removed by refining, but present in cold-pressed and unrefined oil, which is the form used medicinally
These proteins, not the lipids, are what make sesame a major food allergen. Because the oleosins are oil-body proteins they partition with the lipid phase, so unrefined and cold-pressed sesame oil can carry enough protein to provoke a reaction in a sensitised person. Sesame became the ninth major allergen requiring declaration in the United States under the FASTER Act, effective 1 January 2023, and the labelling requirement covers sesame oil explicitly.
⚠ Drug Interactions
Sesame-oil-vehicle depot injections (testosterone enanthate, haloperidol decanoate, progesterone injection USP)
Sesame oil is a standard vehicle for slow-release intramuscular formulations; haloperidol decanoate, for instance, is formulated in sesame oil precisely because the oil depot gives slow sustained release, and testosterone enanthate injection uses the same vehicle. Where a product's excipient is sesame oil, a known sesame allergy is a hypersensitivity to a component of the formulation. Clinically this matters in both directions: a patient who reacts to a depot injection may be reacting to the vehicle rather than the active drug, and a patient known to react to sesame should not be given medicinal sesame oil, orally or topically, either.
Clinical note: Ask about sesame allergy before prescribing Ma You in any form, and check the excipient list of any oily depot injection the patient is already receiving. Where a reaction to a depot injection is unexplained, sesame oil is a candidate culprit worth naming to the prescriber.
Antihypertensive drugs
Meta-analysis of human trials finds a modest but consistent blood-pressure-lowering effect of sesame products, attributed to lignan inhibition of angiotensin-converting enzyme and enhancement of endothelial nitric oxide synthase activity. The effect size is small and the evidence is graded rather than definitive, but a patient consuming medicinal quantities of the oil daily alongside an ACE inhibitor or other antihypertensive can plausibly see additive lowering.
Clinical note: No reason to avoid the combination, but if a patient begins taking the oil in quantity, monitor blood pressure over the following weeks rather than assuming the antihypertensive dose is still right.
Oral hypoglycaemic drugs and insulin
Systematic reviews of sesame products in humans, including in patients with type 2 diabetes, report small improvements in glycaemic control alongside the lipid and blood pressure findings. The magnitude is modest and would not on its own require a dose change, but it is real enough to be worth knowing about in a patient titrating insulin.
Clinical note: Monitor glucose as usual; no specific action needed unless the patient is taking large quantities of oil or seed daily.
Fat-soluble drugs and vitamins, when the oil is used as a lubricant laxative or retention enema
The classical internal use of Ma You is to moisten the intestines and unblock the bowels, which it does as a bulk lubricant rather than by any pharmacological action on the gut. Any non-absorbed or slowly absorbed oil used repeatedly as a laxative can sequester fat-soluble drugs and vitamins in the lumen; this is the well-known caution with mineral oil and applies by the same physical mechanism, although sesame oil differs in that it is itself digested and absorbed.
Clinical note: Separate oral doses of fat-soluble medication from an oil laxative dose by a couple of hours, and do not use the oil as a daily laxative for months on end.
Hemp seed oil (Huo Ma You) sold or dispensed as Ma You
In the materia medica Ma You is sesame oil, Oleum Sesami, pressed from Sesamum indicum, and is the same substance as xiang you; the seed itself is Hei Zhi Ma or Hu Ma Ren. The character ma in ordinary Chinese also means hemp, and hemp seed oil from Cannabis sativa is called huo ma you, so the abbreviated name is ambiguous outside a pharmacy context. The two oils differ substantially: hemp seed oil is far richer in alpha-linolenic acid and carries none of sesame's lignans or its allergens. The scientific name on this record is unambiguous and correct; the caution is about what arrives from a supplier.
Clinical note: Specify Oleum Sesami or Sesamum indicum when ordering, particularly for a preparation where the lignan content or the allergen status matters.
Evidence Tier
Strong evidence · 5 studiesRecorded studies by study design, strongest design at the top. This is a study-design tier only, not a GRADE rating: it does not weigh risk of bias, consistency or precision.
Systematic review / meta-analysis
1
1 verified · 0 unverified
Randomized controlled trial
2
1 verified · 1 unverified
Show 2 studies
- The Effects of Topical Sesame (Sesamum indicum) Oil on Pain Severity and Amount of Received Non-Steroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs in Patients with Upper or Lower Extremities Trauma
- Effects of topical sesame (Sesamum indicum) oil on the pain severity of chemotherapy-induced phlebitis in patients with colorectal cancer: A randomized controlled trial
Other clinical trial
0
Observational / case report
0
In vitro / animal
0
Other / unclassified
2
2 verified · 0 unverified
Show 2 studies
- Clinical evidence of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) products and its bioactive compounds on anthropometric measures, blood pressure, glycemic control, inflammatory biomarkers, lipid profile, and oxidative stress parameters in humans: a GRADE-assessed systematic review and dose–response meta-analysis
- The effects of sesame oil on metabolic biomarkers: a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials
Verified: design read from PubMed for a DOI that resolves to the cited paper Unverified: taken from the study's recorded description
Clinical Studies
Clinical evidence of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) products and its bioactive compounds on anthropometric measures, blood pressure, glycemic control, inflammatory biomarkers, lipid profile, and oxidative stress parameters in humans: a GRADE-assessed systematic review and dose–response meta-analysis
Dose–response meta-analysis of human trials of sesame seed, oil and isolated lignans, with GRADE assessment of certainty. Reports improvements in blood pressure, lipid profile, glycaemic markers, inflammatory markers and oxidative stress parameters, with the proposed mechanisms being PPAR-alpha-mediated fatty acid oxidation, ACE inhibition and enhanced eNOS activity. Effect sizes are modest and certainty varies by outcome; this is a food-level nutritional effect, not a drug effect.
The effects of sesame oil on metabolic biomarkers: a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials
Meta-analysis restricted to sesame oil rather than sesame products generally, pooling clinical trials of its effect on metabolic biomarkers. Useful because it isolates the oil, which is the form this record describes, from whole-seed and isolated-lignan studies that dominate the wider literature.
The Effects of Topical Sesame (Sesamum indicum) Oil on Pain Severity and Amount of Received Non-Steroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs in Patients with Upper or Lower Extremities Trauma
One hundred and fifty patients with upper or lower extremity trauma were randomised to topical sesame oil alongside routine care or to routine care alone, with pain severity and NSAID consumption followed over ten days. The intervention group reported lower pain and used fewer NSAIDs. The trial was not blinded to the oil application, which limits how much weight the pain outcome can carry.
Effects of topical sesame (Sesamum indicum) oil on the pain severity of chemotherapy-induced phlebitis in patients with colorectal cancer: A randomized controlled trial
Randomised trial of topical sesame oil for the pain of chemotherapy-induced phlebitis in colorectal cancer patients, reporting reduced pain severity in the sesame oil arm. Supports the traditional external use of Ma You on inflamed and damaged tissue, at the level of symptomatic relief rather than of healing.
Alleviating severity of limb trauma pain with coadministration of topical sesame oil and standard treatments: A GRADE‐assessed systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomised controlled trials
Pools the randomised trials of topical sesame oil added to standard care for acute limb trauma pain, with GRADE assessment. The authors note that the individual trials had produced inconsistent findings, which is the appropriate caveat to attach to the single-trial results above.
Historical Texts
Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing
Han dynastyBen Cao Gang Mu
Ming dynastyReferences
- Arab R, Casal S, Pinho T, Cruz R, Freidja ML, Lorenzo JM, Hano C, Madani K, Boulekbache-Makhlouf L. Effects of Seed Roasting Temperature on Sesame Oil Fatty Acid Composition, Lignan, Sterol and Tocopherol Contents, Oxidative Stability and Antioxidant Potential for Food Applications . Molecules (2022) [DOI]
- Jafari A, Mardani H, Ghalichi F, Talebian F, Mokhtary F, Razavi F, Eslamian G. The beneficial effects of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) products and their bioactive compounds on cardiovascular disease risk factors in patients with diabetes: A GRADE-Assessed systematic review and meta-analysis . Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews (2025) [DOI]
- Vahedi H, Atefi M, Ghanbarian M, Darand M, Bahraniniya Z. Sesame oil improves blood lipid profile in patients with metabolic disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials . Nutrition & Food Science (2025) [DOI]
This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before using any herbal remedy, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, or taking medications.
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