Pharmacist: Backed Up, Gassy, Poking at a Hard Stomach? Nothing Is Wrong With You. Here’s What’s in My Father’s After-Dinner Cup, and Why Those Herbs.

In my letter I told you about my mother, the nine years, and the back of a grocery list. This is the part I looked up afterwards, the way I should have for her: what’s in the cup, what each herb is for, and the peppermint trials, written out plainly.

I’m a pharmacist. For 24 years I have stood behind a counter and pointed people at a shelf. If you read my letter, you know I pointed my own mother at it for nine years, and then myself.

This page is the part I didn’t have room for. What was in my father’s cup, why those herbs, and what the trials actually say. I looked it up the way I should have looked it up for her.

The picture, one more time

My father put it this way, and it is the only way I have found that makes it click.

Think of your stomach as a sink with a drain, and a pipe under the drain.

At thirty the drain is wide open. You pour in a dinner, it goes, and it comes out the other end the next morning.

At fifty the drain is half the size. You are still pouring in the same dinner.

So the sink fills. That is the hard stomach you keep poking. That is the gas and the pressure by three in the afternoon.

And when the top is slow, everything under it is slow. What doesn’t leave the sink on time doesn’t reach the pipe on time. So you sit there in the morning with nothing to show. Not because there is nothing. Because it is still up here.

Nothing you did caused that. It’s what the years do. A lazy stomach. A slow drain.

Why nothing on my shelf opens the drain

Once I had the picture, I went down my own shelf, bottle by bottle.

The probiotic lives at the far end of the pipe. Nowhere near the drain.

The enzyme chops food smaller, in a sink that isn’t draining.

The fibre is more in the sink.

The laxative tea yanks the pipe from the bottom and leaves the drain exactly as small as it was. It worked, all at once, at the worst time, so I planned my days around it.

The antacid turns down the acid that was trying to do the work.

Not one of them opens a drain. I would have known.

And by the end I didn’t want another bottle anyway. I had four on the kitchen counter and I was tired of adding to the pile.

What my father wrote on the back of my grocery list

He named every herb his grandmother used. I wrote them down, then I looked each one up, the way I do for a prescription. The blend I found has his seven and four more from the same kitchens, so I’ve listed all of them, with what each one is for, and how much paper there is behind it. The labels are different, and I’ve kept them honest.

The one herb with trials behind it

Everything above is kitchens. Peppermint is kitchens and paper. Here is what the paper says, and it is smaller than the word “proven”. I’d rather you had the real size of it.

Why a cup, and not one more bottle

My father didn’t hand me a bottle. He handed me a cup, after dinner, when the stomach was working.

I had spent a year swallowing capsules into a sink that wasn’t draining and wondering why they sat there with everything else.

A cup is different. It is hot. It is liquid. It is twenty minutes at the table.

And it isn’t a dose. It doesn’t go on the counter with the other four. The first evening I drank it was the first evening in a year I hadn’t opened a cabinet.

The tea I found

My father’s mix comes from an aunt who is 91 and does not take orders. The closest thing I could buy was Equora Gentle Digest Tea. The same kitchen herbs, in bags, in whole pieces, the way he said.

• Eleven kitchen herbs: tangerine peel, peppermint, hawthorn, baizhu, patchouli, cardamom, fennel, licorice, chamomile, clove, rose
• Whole pieces in a pyramid bag, not dust
• One bag after dinner, boiling water, four to six minutes
• Not one more bottle. Caffeine-free, nothing to swallow.
• 90-day money-back guarantee, nothing to send back

To be clear: the trials tested peppermint oil, not this tea. The tea is how I have the cup every night without an aunt in China.

How I’d tell you to drink it

That is why I’d start with three or five pouches. A pouch is a month of evenings, and a month is not a fair log.

What it costs, next to what I spent

And the pouch price is locked on reorder. Whatever you pay for a pouch today is what you pay next time. I checked that the way I check everything.

Choose your pouches

1 Pouch30 bags · a month of evenings $17.95$34.95 Three months of evenings 3 PouchesBuy 2, Get 1 Free · 90 bags $35.90$104.85 Free shipping · best value 5 PouchesBuy 3, Get 2 Free · 150 bags · free shipping $53.85$174.75

One last thing from me

My mother spent the last nine years of her life fighting to go to the bathroom, and I chose her pills. My daughter is nineteen, and she has already watched me press my hand flat on my stomach under the table.

If you are backed up, or you are poking at a hard stomach, or every meal has become about fibre, I do not think anything is wrong with you. Your drain is smaller than it was. Nothing on my shelf opens it, and you do not need one more bottle.

Have the cup. Keep the log. Stay for dessert.

And if your mother has spent years not being able to go, send her this today, not next month.