Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a great tea. Despite some comments that it doesn't taste that great, I think it's a matter of individual taste. I have tried it, it wasn't sour, it had a kind of earthy taste. Both my husband and I drank it every morning for a month or so, more to see what it was like than anything else. We used 1 oz of the made tea, then added an ounce of hot water. Yes. it's a hassle to make, but as you only need to do it once every two or three weeks, it's really not bad. And it's boiling it up once, letting it sit overnight, and then getting it hot again, straining and bottling it. No brains needed! I really bought it to take to my sister who lives in South Africa. She is suffering from metastatic breast cancer which has gone into her lungs and bones. She has been on four different chemos over the years, and the one she is using at present is experimental. Her feeling is that she is tired of chemo, doctors, having blood drawn, and wants to stop it all. As a caution, some have mentioned that the 8 herb essiac is better than the 4 herb, this one is the 4 herb. It may be that the 8 herb is better, but if you have breast cancer, depending on whether it is estrogen receptive, one of the herbs in the 8 herb, I believe it's red clover, should not be taken if your cancer is estrogen receptive. A friend who had tried the 8 herb told me that the 8 herb really does taste bad. My sister didn't want to try this at first, but as she was feeling so bad, she asked me to make it up for her. I did, using just half the amount of herbs and water mentioned on the packet, as it will last quite a while. We asked family to save bottles with screw on caps and used those to store the tea. She got up in the night to take 1 oz from the pot as she wanted to get started. She started taking just 1 oz three times per day, and after a couple of weeks increased that a bit to about 2 oz. She just drinks it straight and cold, but drinks plenty of water during the day. And she says she actually likes the taste of it. By the third day of taking it she said she was feeling so much better. She wasn't taking a nap in the morning and afternoon as she had been. She was down to just one nap per day! She had also been coughing badly, unable to get her breath. After a week, she was only coughing occasionally. She kept telling me how much better she felt. I was also making a smoothie for us every evening that was full of fruit and vegetables, so I have to credit that for some of the improvement. She had blood drawn while I was there to check her tumor markers. On chemo alone they were normally coming down by 10 points every month. She was sure that they would have come down more because she was feeling so much better. Well, they had only come down by 9, so she was disappointed. But at the beginning of November she had them checked again - and they had come down by 19 points! She was very pleased, as they had never come down by that much in a month before. The doctor was pleased too, though he doesn't know she is taking essiac at the same time as chemo. The information I had found for her stated that essiac tea would not affect chemo, but that the chemo might lessen the effectiveness of the essiac. So we don't yet know how well she will continue to do. I will try to update this from time to time with her progress, or lack of. But what I can say is that based on what I have seen with her, it is worth a try, as even if it doesn't cure her, it has made her quality of life much more comfortable.