Virus Killer: Cold and Flu Formula

Where's my Virus Killer?!

Ingredients:

Lomatium root

Blue vervain herb in flower

Chuan xin lian – andrographis herb

Yarrow leaf and flower

Elecampane root

Pu gong ying – dandelion root and herb

Niu bang zi – burdock seed

Jing jie – schizonepeta herb

Sheng gan cao – licorice root

Poke root

Ethanol

Water

Effects:

Reduce or eliminate symptoms of cold and flu, especially fever, sore throat, cough, and body aches.  Virus Killer should also be considered for ear infections, staph or strep infections, herpes, shigellosis, and most other illnesses in which a viral or bacterial origin is suspected.  NOTE: this formula is for TREATING cold and flu; don’t take it long-term to try to avoid getting sick.  The formula to strengthen the immune system to AVOID cold and flu is Jade Defense REISHI.

Dosage:

The best way to take this formula is at the very start of a cold, in combination with steam inhalation.  So, when you first start feeling like you might be getting sick, don’t shrug it off and go to bed!  Take some Virus Killer and do fifteen minutes on your personal steam inhaler, inhaling deeply through the nose so that the heat of the steam weakens the virus’ ability to adhere to your mucus membranes.  Repeat the next morning.

First couple days: take six squirts of Virus Killer every three hours.

Next few days: even if you are asymptomatic, take four squirts of Virus Killer every eight hours (three times a day).  This is important, as colds can come roaring back after first appearing to go away, if you don’t continue with the herbs.  Sometimes a virus is just too strong and will successfully resist your attempts at killing it.  Even so, don’t give in and stop taking your herbs.  Virus Killer can shorten the duration and intensity of a cold or flu.

This is one formula that I recommend NOT squirting into boiling water to boil off the alcohol.  Many of the active compounds are aromatics that you want to get into YOU, not into the air.  Take it straight up or cut with cold water.

Product Description:

At the risk of sounding immodest, I think I've discovered the cure for the common cold!  This is an original formulation that has been in research and development for the last year or so.  Its three main actions are antiviral, diaphoretic (makes you sweat), and expectorant.

The largest component of the formula consists of the three main antiviral herbs: lomatium, blue vervain, and andrographis.  Lomatium dissectum, a large-rooted plant growing throughout the Great Basin, has been used as medicine by Native Americans and settlers for many years.  Its many aromatic resins act as an expectorant and disinfectant to the lungs and bronchi, as the body excretes them through the alveoli.  During the influenza epidemic of the early 1920’s, it was noticed that mortality among Native American groups using the herb was far lower than that of the surrounding population.

Blue vervain grows widely in our region, seeming to do fine in sunny dry dusty areas, where it stays small and compact, and thriving as a large showy plant when transplanted into gardens.  With its purple flowers that climb up its long branching spikes during the course of a summer, it is quite beautiful.  In addition to its antiviral properties, blue vervain acts as a mild sedative, diaphoretic, antispasmodic, and expectorant.  Its bitterness acts not only to clear heat but to settle the stomach.  It also helps to allay the aches and pains that often accompany the flu – especially when that pain is in the neck area.  Overall, an excellent herb when you’re sick (“the best herb for flu,” according to my teacher Brian Weissbuch).

Andrographis is an extremely bitter herb used in Chinese medicine and in Ayurveda.  Unlike blue vervain, whose bitterness I find to be pristine and bracing, andrographis' bitterness is shudder-provoking and kind of disgusting.  This makes Virus Killer one of my worst-tasting formulas.  Like lomatium, andrographis is not only antiviral but broadly antimicrobial, making it valuable in the treatment of infections of all types.

One last herb that is included as an antiviral is poke root (Phytolacca americana).  In addition to being a promising anti-cancer herb, poke includes a component known as “pokeweed antiviral protein” (PAP), making it useful against various types of viruses.  In larger doses poke root is quite toxic, and in this formula I use a near-homeopathic dosage of one drop per four-squirt dose, to stimulate the immune system.

Sometimes, herbs like lomatium and andrographis are marketed as “herbal antibiotics.”  But this approach is too simplistic.  Andrographis is so cold and bitter that, by itself, it can wreck the digestion and cause diarrhea.  Lomatium by itself can cause an outbreak of hives.  As with regular antibiotics, the use of a single intense herbal medicine can result in unwanted side effects.  It is for this reason that we craft herbal formulas: teams of herbs working together in your body to mitigate unwanted effects while maximizing the desired ones.  In the case of Virus Killer, the pairing of lomatium and andrographis is a kind of a “formula within a formula:” lomatium is warm and spicy, offsetting the cold bitter nature of the andrographis.  To make this formula even more balanced, we also add diaphoretics, additional expectorants, and a liver-stimulating diuretic.

When we get sick with a cold or flu, this signals that a pathogen has managed to get past the body’s “defensive qi,” whose job is to circulate near the surface of the body, keeping invaders out.  Therefore, we have to use diaphoretics: herbs that make us sweat.  The idea is that along with the sweat that the herbs push through our pores, the invaders are also being pushed out.  At the same time, the cooling effect of the sweat helps to lower fever.  The chief herbs that accomplish these things here are yarrow, schizonepeta, and burdock seed.  The yarrow is itself antimicrobial, adding to the pathogen-fighting power of the formula, and also pairs nicely with blue vervain to settle the stomach.  Schizonepeta (jing jie), one of the stronger diaphoretics in Chinese medicine, is useful not just for colds but for skin rashes of many types, a trait shared with burdock seed (niu bang zi).  My belief is that the surface-relieving power of these diaphoretics helps to dissipate any tendency towards hives that the lomatium could bring out in sensitive individuals.  Burdock seed is also one of the main herbs for sore throat, one of the most annoying early symptoms of cold and flu.

In addition to diaphoretics, we add herbal expectorants to the mix.  The main one here is elecampane root.  Like lomatium, elecampane is rich with resins that help to disinfect and dislodge mucus in the lungs.  Because of the tendency of cold and flu viruses to settle in the lungs, it is extremely important not just to kill the virus but to moisten and clear the lungs.  Elecampane and licorice are both excellent herbs to do this.  Licorice has the added benefit of helping the burdock seed treat sore throat.

Finally, dandelion stands alone as a strong diuretic and stimulant to liver metabolism.  Following Michael Moore, I believe that we need to support the liver during the active phase of cold and flu treatment.  Just as dead bloodied bodies can clog the landscape after a big battle, our bodies can get clogged with the junk that accompanies viral die-off.  The expectorants help move this junk out of the lungs, and the diaphoretics help move it out the skin, but the liver (of course with an assist from the kidneys) can help move it more directly out of the blood and into the urine, with which it leaves the body.  In a similar vein, by enhancing liver function, dandelion lessens the probability that you will develop hives from the sometimes-metabolically-problematical lomatium.  Dandelion also pairs well with andrographis to “relieve heat and toxicity” and treat infections.

Production Notes:

The blue vervain, yarrow, dandelion, and poke root were extracted as fresh tinctures using 70 – 95% ethanol.  The remaining herbs were purchased dried, then were ground and percolated with 50 – 60% ethanol.  Overall strength is about 1:4.  Lately I have been using a larger volume of solvent to percolate, feeling that it is wasteful to not extract every last bit of good out of the herbs (even with a good press, I have this inkling that thar’s some good stuff left in them dregs).  I’ve also been experimenting with hot percolation, heating the solvent to the boiling point of ethanol just prior to percolation.

Why Are There No Herbs for Stuffy Nose In This Formula?

Yes, that stuffy drippy nose is another bothersome symptoms of many colds and flu.  However, I believe that drying out the nose and sinuses too early in the progression of a cold is not a good thing.  The reason for the copious snot output in the first place is precisely to help your body flush out the virus.  If you follow my advice and do the steam inhalation at the first signs of infection, you may find that the steam precipitates a bout of sneezing and nose-blowing that hastens the nasal/sinus phase of the cold and gets it over within twenty minutes.  If, despite steaming and Virus Killer you end up with a stuffed up or runny nose, give it a few days and then combine with (or switch to) Nasal/Sinus Formula.  In my experience, Nasal/Sinus Formula is great for allergies and for the tail end of a cold, but not for the start of a cold.  Some saline flushing (neti pot) will also help move the mucus out of your nose and sinuses.

My Summer

Pumpkin, with small cup for size comparison

It's been so long since I've posted that I actually started feeling a little guilty.  The truth of the matter is is that I've gotten a little bored with writing about herb formulas.  Plus the fact that my extract pharmacy has grown to over sixty herb extracts, so I'm more in the habit of whipping up custom formulas as the need arises (not that I don't keep the favorites in stock - allergy formula, cold/flu formula, perimenopausal formula, pain formula, cancer support formula, etc. - so feel free to contact me if you are interested in purchasing some).  But most of all, the main reason I haven't been writing is that I've been having too much fun!  Let me tell you about my summer so far:

It started off with a zero-gravity chair that my wonderful wife Annette gave me for my birthday.  Have you ever tried one of these things?  You sit down in it, then the thing stretches out and back and you are suspended like an astronaut in space. It's so comfortable that you really don't want to do anything else!  It has become an indispensable part of my daily heliotherapy practice.

Annette and Kaz in Big Sur

One of the best things about summer is that it's when my daughter Sara comes home from college and we get to be with her more than a few days at a time.  So it's been great hanging out with her, going to the river, hiking, having the whole family back together again.  Earlier in the summer, she and Dylan and I made a large batch of kimchi-style pickles that we called We Qi (Kimchi!  No, it's Kaz Qi!  No, we're all making it so it's We Qi!), some of which they then took on their trip to Montana.  Lukas of course is on summer vacation too, which he is enjoying to the max - getting to sleep in, playing on the Xbox with friends, going to the beach, animating, etc.  Annette and I continue to be the working shlubbs who support all this leisure activity going on around us.  Well, I shouldn't complain too hard; Annette and I got to get away for a few days in June to celebrate our 25th anniversary with a trip to Big Sur, which was really wonderful (ah, the Gorge!  The coast!  The purple sand!  Deetjen's!  Hot tub!).  Plus, after my busiest month ever in June my practice has hit a predictable summer slump, giving me all the more time to work in the garden.

Speaking of which, my garden has been super-prolific.  The star of the season is a volunteer pumpkin plant who picked the perfect spot to sprout and has since taken over a third of the garden.  Now there are five pumpkins, the largest of which is over fifty inches around!  Our plum trees fruited like crazy this year, and for several days I was picking fifty or more plums daily, most of which I smushed and fermented in five-gallon buckets to turn into plum liquor (more on that in a minute).  Our fig tree was also more productive than ever; it seems like every year we live here it makes more fruit.  I never really liked figs that much but after tasting this sweet mild green/yellow variety, I am a convert.  I planted an artichoke for the first time ever and we have enjoyed five or six delicious pan-seared, wine-steamed artichokes so far (thank you Akemi for your splendid example of "living the dream," and the recipe).  The leaves of this plant make a strong and delicious bitter that's great for the liver and gallbladder and is an essential ingredient in my Indian Summer Bitters. What else has been growing?  Lettuce, radish, daikon, zucchinis a few pounds per week, and eight or nine tomato plants, mostly Purple Giants, who are still green and not yet giant, though promising-looking.  Finally, I have five specimens of young ashitaba - three to nibble on over the next couple years, and two to harvest at their peak in a few months to make a full-strength fresh extract.  Ashitaba is a delicious Japanese herb/vegetable that is one of the most vibrant plants I know, and good for you in so many ways.  (Thank you Darren for donating the babies!  I gave most of them away and am really enjoying the company of these five).

Herbwise, I've been busy in the field, in the garden, and in the lab.  Sara and I picked and blended some fresh gotu kola this morning.  Last week we spent the day at the river and collected hedge nettle on the way home (hedge nettle, the fuzzy "stink mint" so emblematic of our redwood forests, is a medicine I've never prepared or used before.  It's supposed to be a decent anti-inflammatory, and especially good for headaches).  A few weeks ago I distilled three cases of red wine generously donated by a patient, thus ending up with wine liquor which I keep at 45%, 75%, and 85% ethanol for various extraction and enjoyment purposes.  Currently in development: gotu kola and tulsi (holy basil) leaf and flower liqueurs.  My thinking is that gotu kola and tulsi are both excellent and delicious adaptogenic tonics that would be of great benefit to my cancer patients - the gotu kola to treat or potentially prevent the debilitating peripheral neuropathy that often accompanies chemotherapy, and tulsi whose radioprotective flavonoids show promise in protecting healthy cells during radiation.  Plus, especially if you're already swallowing tons of pills each day, what better way to take your herbs than a yummy end-of-the-day schnaps!

Earlier this week I distilled the ten gallons of fermented plums, and tomorrow is a Ladle Day so I will superstitiously and auspiciously distill it a second time to clean it up for final bottling.  Part of the resultant plum liquor will be used to make a new product I intend to call Plum3 ("plum cubed"): fresh plums macerated in plum liquor for half a year, then distilling the liqueur-soaked plums and adding the distillate back to the liqueur for intense full-spectrum plumminess.  Mmm... I can hardly wait!

Still ahead: Pico Blanco backpacking trip with buddy Andy in ten days, on which I will dig my annual supply of aralia root, then family vacation to the Mendocino coast.

KICK CANCER: Herbal Support During Chemo and Radiation

Introduction and Disclaimer:

I have been treating cancer patients for some years now, and, for the most part, have used acupuncture as my primary modality.  The reason for this is that some of the oncologists and medical doctors that I work with and who refer patients to me are very uncomfortable about mixing herbs with chemotherapy and with Western medicine generally.  I accepted their conservatism in this regard, since herb-drug interactions are not well-understood and theoretically there is a possibility of doing harm by mixing herbs with drugs.  So I would use only acupuncture to treat my patients for their neuropathy, or their Tamoxifen-related joint pain, or whatever. 

More recently I have changed my thinking on this topic.  In China, oncologists have been combining herbs with conventional cancer therapy for decades, to good effect.  There is an entire branch of herbal medicine, called fu zheng therapy, that utilizes herbs to strengthen the patient and minimize side effects during chemo and radiation.  To disregard the clinical experience of thousands of Chinese doctors and their patients when it comes to optimizing outcomes and minimizing side effects during cancer treatment seems kind of crazy to me.  And for Western doctors to dismiss this accumulated knowledge and experience is arrogant and patronizing.

So, for my patients who wish to integrate herbal medicine into their cancer care, I have crafted this modified fu zheng formula.  About half the herbs here are Chinese herbs that research has shown to boost the immune system, regulate blood counts, etc., during cancer treatment.  The remaining herbs are plants that have a history of use as anti-cancer herbs.  After all, why stop at treating side effects?  I recently lost a patient, a patient who had become a dear friend, to brain cancer.  After she died, I had to do some deep and painful soul-searching.  What kind of physician was I, if I had not done everything in my power to prolong her life? After she died, I vowed to make available to my patients my best-bet formula not just to get them through their cancer treatment, but to try to eliminate their cancer altogether.

Please note that, despite the promise of its name, I am not claiming that this formula cures cancer.  I find nothing more despicable than companies and websites that prey on the desperation of cancer patients to sell dubious products cloaked in glowing claims and effusive testimonies.  What I DO want to offer is high-quality herbal support, and also to place a positive mental suggestion in my patient’s mind every time they take their herbs.  Kick Cancer!  Mobilize every resource you have available to do it!  Don’t give in to depressing statistics, genomic determinism, and feelings of powerlessness or hopelessness.  Positive attitude, a loving support network, healthy diet, rest and exercise, regular acupuncture or bodywork – these are all ways to nudge your body to overcome cancer.  As far as I’m concerned, the anti-cancer herbs are just one more nudge to the system, one more lever to push to urge your body to optimize and mobilize and beat this thing.  It is my deep and fervent desire that all these nudges do their job and leave my patients cancer-free.

Ingredients:

Huang qi – Astragalus membranaceus root

Ling zhi – Ganoderma lucidum fruiting body

Bai zhu – Atractylodes macrocephala rhizome

Nu zhen zi – Ligustrum lucidum fruit

Ji xue teng – Millettia dielsiana root and vine

Burdock – Arctium lappa root (fresh)

Dandelion – Taraxacum officinale entire plant (fresh)

Dokudami – Houttuynia cordata herb (fresh)

Ashitaba – Angelica keiskei leaf (fresh)

Pau d’arco – Tabebuia impetiginosa bark

Gotu kola – Centella asiatica leaf and stem (fresh)

Sheng jiang – Zingiber officinale root (fresh)

Ban xia – Pinellia ternata rhizome (treated)

Sheng gan cao – Glycyrrhiza uralensis root

Ethanol

Water

Effects:

Boost immune system, allay fatigue, stabilize white and red blood cell levels, reduce or eliminate nausea and vomiting, prevent or minimize allergic skin rashes.  This formula also contains herbs that have a long tradition of use in treating cancer.  Though the formula was designed for patients in active treatment, it is also recommended for patients with cancer who are not currently undergoing chemo or radiation.

Dosage:

Four full squirts of the dropper, twice a day.  I recommend squirting the tincture in a cup of boiling water, to boil off most of the alcohol before drinking it and to minimize the harshness of the alcohol before putting it into what may be your already chemo-irritated mouth.  Make sure to shake the bottle each time to distribute the abundant astragalus and reishi polysaccharides, which will have settled to the bottom of the bottle.  Finally, if you are currently undergoing chemotherapy, don’t take any herbs on the day of chemo, to minimize the potential for herb-drug interactions.

If after a couple weeks of use you don’t notice any change in how you are feeling, feel free to increase your dose from four squirts to six or even seven or eight. Some people will require a higher dose to see effects.  Also, chemotherapeutic agents can be so toxic that any positive biological effect of the herbs is trumped by the negative side-effects of chemo.  This isn’t necessarily a reason to discontinue the herbs, since they will continue to protect your healthy cells, detoxify your liver, benefit your circulation, etc. even if you’re not feeling great.

Product Description:

The astute reader of this blog will have noticed that the three herbs huang qi (astragalus), bai zhu (atractylodes), and ling zhi (ganoderma/reishi), are the chief herbs in my fall/winter tonic, Jade Defense REISHI. Indeed, this overlap is not accidental.  Just as it is important to boost the qi and mobilize the immune system to keep from catching colds, it is important to do these things to stay strong during cancer treatment.  From a biomedical perspective, these herbs increase interferon levels, boost white blood cell count, mobilize the immune system, and protect healthy cells from radiation damage.  They also help to increase appetite and energy.  In addition to their palliative and supportive effects, it is important to remember that astragalus and reishi polysaccharides also have anti-tumor effects as well.

In fu zheng therapy, it is considered important to tonify the blood and yin as well as the qi.  Nu zhen zi (ligustrum) and ji xue teng (millettia) are the main herbs that accomplish this.  These herbs help to keep white and red blood cell counts up, and the ji xue teng also helps combat damage to the microcirculation that occurs with some chemo agents and which can lead to peripheral neuropathy.  I would ordinarily include dang gui (Chinese angelica root) here because it is a great blood tonic, but have excluded it because its potential estrogenic effects are contraindicated in some cancers.

Burdock and dandelion is a traditional pairing often used by Western herbalists to treat cancer.  They are both cooling and detoxifying; cancer is thought of in many traditional medical systems as a disorder of heat and toxicity, and burdock and dandelion treat both.  Dokudami (houttuynia) and ashitaba (Japanese angelica leaf) are similarly used in Japanese folk medicine as anti-cancer herbs.  They are two of my favorite herbs to eat fresh (I grow them in my garden).  Speaking of which, the burdock, dandelion, dokudami, and ashitaba were all tinctured fresh, meaning that they were extracted at the peak of freshness from live plants rather than from dried plants.  It is my belief that fresh-tinctured herbs have a stronger vitality than medicines made from dry herbs.

The gotu kola (centella) in this formula is also home-grown and fresh-tinctured.  I include it here mostly for its neuroprotective, circulation-stimulating, and skin-healing effects.  My hope is that it will help prevent peripheral neuropathy and skin rashes due to chemo.  For the former effect it combines well with the ji xue teng; for the latter with the burdock and dandelion.

Pau d’arco (tabebuia) is the final anti-cancer herb in the formula.  It has a long tradition of use in South America, mostly for skin problems, autoimmune disorders, and cancer.

Sheng jiang (fresh ginger) and ban xia (pinellia) are included for their anti-nausea effects.  They work well with the huang qi and bai zhu to strengthen and protect the stomach to prevent nausea.  The final herb in the mix, gan cao (licorice), is added to harmonize the formula – its job is to make all the other ingredients get along and work well together as a team. Licorice is an important detoxifying herb in its own right; the compound in it known as glycyrrhizin is metabolized into glucoronic acid, which turns toxic non-water-soluble substance water-soluble so that they may be excreted by the body.

Production Notes:

In the past couple years I have been expanding my liquid herb pharmacy, creating ethanol/water tinctures of single herbs that I use a lot.  This is my first Green Monkey Pharmacy product made entirely by combining single herb extracts rather than extracting the formula all at once.  The astragalus and the reishi were separately extracted in a relatively large amount of pure water over low heat in order to maximize the amount of immune-stimulating polysaccharides in the final solution, then boiled down.  The remaining dry herbs were separately ground and percolated to a final strength of 1:3.  The fresh herbs were extracted with 95% ethanol for maximal extraction of alcohol- and water-soluble compounds, at 1:2 fresh-weight to alcohol ratio.  Finally, these various extracts were combined.  Because the immune-stimulating polysaccharides are water-soluble and not alcohol-soluble, about half the polysaccharide mass precipitates out of solution once the extracts are combined.  This is why you need to shake the bottle well each time you take a dose.

One Other Herb You May Want to Consider:

I recently had the opportunity to dig up the root of pokeweed, Phytolacca americana.  Poke is a beautiful and vigorous plant common in the American South and Midwest.  It was used by the Eclectic physicians in the 1800s and by Native American tribes, doubtless for much longer than that.  Its primary uses are as a lymphatic stimulant, for swollen glands, sore throat, mastitis, skin problems, arthritis, and cancer - one of its common names, "cancer jalap," reflects its folk use as a cancer remedy.  (Probably THE primary use of poke is the berry juice as pediatric face paint, but that does not concern us here).  The whole plant is extremely toxic, and the effective dose is a mere drop of tincture up to five or six drops, mixed in a glass of water and drunk two or three times a day.  A very similar plant, shang lu (Phytolacca acinosa), is used in traditional Chinese medicine primarily for its toxic effects, i.e. to cause a cathartic expulsion of stool to treat severe edema and constipation.  It is also used topically for sores and carbuncles.

Poke's toxicity is clearly problematic, as a careless patient could easily cause severe gastric upset, blood clots, coma, or even death by taking too much.  For this reason I didn’t include it in Kick Cancer.  However, the potential benefits of careful low-dose treatments in my opinion outweigh the potential dangers, and I encourage patients – especially patients who opt to forego conventional treatment – to consider a course of poke treatment.

The chemistry of pokeweed is very interesting, and more compelling than any other anti-cancer herb I know of.  The active anti-cancer component is a lectin known as pokeweed mitogen (PWM).  Lectins are antibody-like chemicals that are involved in biological recognition phenomena.  They are sugar-binding proteins that attach selectively to specific sugars that they encounter.  When those sugars are part of a cell’s molecular signature at the cell membrane, lectins cause those cells to clump.  There is some intriguing research suggesting that pokeweed mitogen has an affinity for cancer cells, signaling the immune system to then clean up the clumps and eliminate the cancerous cells.

Additionally, PWM induces cell division in B and T lymphocytes – this is what makes it a mitogen: it induces mitosis or cell division. But what is interesting is that by increasing T and B cell proliferation, PWM enhances two separate mechanisms that target cancer cells. T cells directly and indirectly kill antigenic tumor cells, and B cells are raw material for plasma cells, which develop into antibodies, which check the growth of cancer cells.

It’s kind of like a special ops team marking a target with a laser beam from a mile away, then a jetfighter swooping over and bombing the marked target.  Poke serves as both the laser-wielding special operative and the jetfighter.

The idea of purposely causing cell proliferation may sound kind of scary, since after all what is cancer if not cell division run amok?  Here I think that dosage and duration of treatment is important, and this is why I’d rather talk to you in person if you’re interested in trying it out rather than just make it part of this formula.  I am currently making an alcohol extract for careful internal use, and an oil extract for external use (for lymphatic swellings, skin cancers, and close-to-the-surface tumors, such as many breast cancers).  

It is probably simplistic to think that poke will help in all cancers, since "cancer" is actually many different diseases.  Personally, I would be wary of giving poke extract to patients with one of the blood cancers, since they are already having issues with proliferation of certain kinds of blood cells.  Poke is strong medicine, far on the pharmaceutical end of the food-to-drug spectrum on which we can place herbal medicines.  But its novel mechanism for stimulating the immune system to go after cancerous cells, and its long history of use as a cancer treatment, make me very excited to be able to offer it to you as another powerful nudge (or should I say "poke"?) to encourage your body to kick cancer.