COPD And Nothing Comes Up? This 60-Second Method Shifts It

Respiratory therapist breaks ranks on why 15 minutes at a sink yields one teaspoon - and the 60-second habit that changed it by week two

Dear friend with COPD,

If fifteen minutes at a sink gets you about a teaspoon...

If your ribs ache from the effort before breakfast...

If you have started counting it and wishing you had not...

Then what follows could save you from the ratio you have been reading as a verdict on your lungs.

But I need to warn you first.

This is going to make you angry.

Because it is not complicated, and it is not new, and it is not hidden.

And before any of it, three things it is not.

It is not that the lungs got worse this year.

It is not age, and nobody on this page is going to say that word to you again.

It is not that you did not try hard enough, because there is a shelf in that bathroom that proves you did.

So why has nobody said it.

Not because anybody is hiding it.

But because nobody can bill for it.

There is no code for sixty seconds in your own kitchen, and the people who actually see it are standing over somebody at two in the morning.

Nobody writes down what they know.

And here is the part that should annoy you.

Three inhalers, taken for life, at the three hundred dollars a month one customer wrote to us about.

That is three thousand six hundred dollars a year, every year, forever.

Nobody has to hide anything to want that to continue.

They only have to keep answering a question you did not ask.

So the shelf grows.

And nothing else does.

My name is Glenn Rasmussen.

I am a respiratory therapist.

Twenty six years, twenty two of them at a hospital in Spokane, Washington.

I get called at two in the morning when somebody cannot finish a sentence.

I have looked at what comes out of people in a clear plastic jar under a strip light, most nights, for all of it.

And until it was a woman called Ruth Ann, I believed that the teaspoon is a measure of how far gone the lungs are.

THE MORNING I RAN OUT OF THINGS TO SAY

It was twenty past six on a Tuesday.

I stood in the bathroom doorway with a mug of coffee going cold in my hand.

Ruth Ann had both hands on the edge of the basin. The tap was running.

She had been there eleven minutes. I know because I looked.

At the end of it she rinsed the basin and wiped it with the corner of the towel so nobody would have to see.

Then she said good morning.

Here is the part I have not got over:

Twenty six years of getting things out of people's lungs for a living.

And I did not know what to tell her.

Three inhalers. Prednisone twice. A shelf of cough medicine in every strength they make.

Every appointment added something. Not one ever took anything away.

I had nothing that was not already on that shelf.

WHAT I FINALLY WORKED OUT, AND HOW LONG IT TOOK ME

I went at it the way you go at something when it is your own family.

And then one night on a shift I was looking at a jar under a strip light, the way I have looked at a few thousand of them.

But this time I actually looked at it.

Because there were two different things sitting in that jar, and there always had been, and in twenty six years not one person had ever drawn me the second one.

And what I landed on was not complicated, and that is the part that still annoys me.

It is not that her lungs had run out of road.

It is that everything she had been given was arriving in the wrong place, and had been for nine years.

Let me show you what I mean.

THE PART NOBODY HAS EVER DRAWN FOR HER

This is the part I wish somebody would draw for every single person with this.

There is a loose wet layer sitting on top.

That is the layer a thinner works on.

And that is the layer she hauls up at the sink every morning, and it is back by the afternoon.

Underneath it there is an older layer that has gone hard and set itself onto the wall of the airway.

Think of a chimney that has not been swept in nine years.

The air still goes up the middle. It always does.

But it never touches the walls, so what is baked onto the walls does not care how much air goes past it.

And underneath both layers there are tiny hairs whose entire job is to sweep the whole business up and out.

Bury those under something that has already set and they stop.

They are not broken and they have not given up. They are pinned.

So fifteen minutes of work produces a teaspoon.

Because the work is going into the top layer, and the part that costs her the morning is welded underneath it.

WHAT ACTUALLY TAKES A LAYER LIKE THAT OFF

Think about the shower head in that same bathroom.

Nine years of hard water and it has crusted up on the inside.

And you can run water through it every morning for another nine years and it will not shift, because the water goes straight down the middle and out the end.

So you take it down and you sit it in something strong, and you leave it overnight.

Not because scrubbing is lazy. Because there is nothing to scrub. It is on the inside of the thing.

And in the morning it comes away in bits, and some of them are darker than you were expecting.

That is the whole of it, and it is three things and not one.

Something strong enough to matter. Sitting against the thing itself and not running past it. And left there long enough to do the work.

Take one of those three away and you have a shower head you have run water through.

THE THREE THINGS THAT HAVE TO BE TRUE AT ONCE

For anything to move what is actually sitting there, three things have to be true at the same time.

One. It has to be strong enough to matter.

Tea is leaves and hot water. What ends up in the cup is mostly water.

That is not an opinion about the plant. It is arithmetic about the cup.

Two. It cannot go through the stomach.

Anything swallowed meets acid, then the liver takes its cut, and whatever survives gets spread through every drop of blood in the body on its way to everywhere at once.

The airway gets whatever is left of what is left.

Three. It has to be held long enough to go in.

Two seconds and a swallow is the same as swallowing it.

Miss one of the three and you get exactly what she got for years.

Nothing.

That is why the tea did nothing.

That is why the capsules did nothing.

And that is why the cheap dropper squeezed into a glass of water did nothing, and it was never the plant.

SO WHY HAS THE INHALER NOT DONE IT

Because that is the fair question, and she is going to ask it before she gets to the end of this page.

The inhaler already goes into the airway. That is true and it is not a small thing.

And it works. It opens the tube so the air gets through, and every one of them stays exactly as her doctor wrote it, forever.

But a puff is a mist, and a mist settles on the wet layer on top.

And the wet layer is the one she hauls up at the sink, so by the afternoon whatever landed on it has gone up with it.

It never sat against the wall. Not once in nine years.

Same with the syrup. Same with the tablets. Same with the machine and the mask if there is one in that house.

Not one of them was ever aimed at the wall, because every one of them was aimed at the middle, and the middle was never what was costing her the morning.

WHAT SHE TAKES NOW

✓ It is concentrated. Not leaves in hot water. There is something in the dropper worth arriving.

✓ It goes under the tongue. Held there, not tipped down the throat, so it is not starting at the stomach.

✓ It is timed. A full sixty seconds by a clock on the wall, before food and before coffee.

All three. Every morning. That is the whole of it.

So I put a bottle on the window ledge over Ruth Ann's kitchen sink, next to the radio.

And I did not make a speech about it.

I said sixty seconds, before the coffee, and I will ring you Sunday.

She did it because I asked her to, and not because anybody sold her anything.

It is called Veylor.

Wild mullein, which is the one that works on what is set on the wall, and it has to be the wild kind, because the farmed sort is grown fast and comes out thin.

Bromelain, out of pineapple stems, which is in there to break the old stuff up so it has somewhere to go.

Ginger, so the whole business keeps moving instead of sitting in her chest.

Cordyceps, which is for the part she has stopped mentioning to anybody, which is the stairs.

And a little lemon peel, because otherwise nobody keeps anything up for thirty mornings.

It is the only thing I have found that does all three at once.

It is concentrated, so there is something in the dropper worth arriving.

It goes under the tongue, so it does not take the long road through the stomach.

And it is held there for a full sixty seconds by a clock, not counted in her head, because that is how long it takes to go in.

Two full droppers, first thing, before food and before coffee.

Every prescription stays exactly as it was written. Every one of them, forever.

Nothing here replaces anything, and nothing here asks her to stop.

THE SAME DOORWAY, NINE WEEKS LATER

It was twenty past six again and I was standing in the same place with the same mug.

But the tap was not running.

And the coffee in my hand was still hot, which is how I knew before anybody said anything, because that coffee has never once been hot in that doorway.

Ruth Ann was at the basin about four minutes and then she came out.

And she still wiped it round with the corner of the towel, out of nine years of habit, and there was nothing on it to wipe.

She did not mention it. Neither did I.

Then she said good morning, and that was the whole of it, and it was the first morning in nine years that it was.

WHAT HAPPENS, IN ORDER, INCLUDING THE WEEK PEOPLE QUIT

Day one.

Sharp and bitter, nothing like the drops before it, and about halfway through the count a warmth comes up under the jaw.

Days three to seven.

More comes up, not less. Thicker and heavier than it was.

That is the first sign anything down there is moving at all, and it is also where people stop, because nobody tells them what it means.

Days eight to fourteen.

It goes dark. Brown going to nearly black, dense enough to sink in the basin instead of sitting on the water.

That is the week nobody expects and the only one that proves anything is happening.

Weeks three and four.

Fifteen minutes comes down to about eight, and then to about five, and she notices because the coffee is still hot.

Weeks five and six.

She gets her end of a conversation back, and the person on the other end stops asking whether she is alright.

Weeks seven and eight.

She stops working out in advance where she would have to sit.

See the thirty mornings →

THEN OTHER PEOPLE IN THE CLASS STARTED ASKING HER

It did not stay quiet.

Somebody noticed she was not at the sink as long and asked her what had changed.

She told one person.

That person told two more, and inside a month I had women I had never treated stopping me in a corridor to ask about a brown bottle.

None of it came from me.

It came from women comparing notes about their own mornings, which is the only way anything actually travels in this.

WHAT OTHER WOMEN HAVE WRITTEN IN

Carol Estes, 67, North Carolina
“I told my neighbour the whole mullein thing was nonsense, because I had done the tea years ago. I want it on record that I was wrong about the plant and right about the tea.”

Denise Karras, 71, Ohio
“Week two got worse and I nearly put it in the bin. My daughter told me to finish the bottle. Day eleven what came up was dark and it sank.”

Wendy Ashcroft, 74, Adelaide
“The sink used to be fifteen minutes. It was five this morning and the kettle had not boiled.”

Dorothy Ferrante, 79, Michigan
“My great grandson had his birthday at the park and I was there the whole thing. I had picked out a chair beforehand and never used it.”

Check Availability →

AND IF YOU ARE READING THIS FOR SOMEBODY ELSE

Because a lot of the people who write to us are not the one standing at the sink.

They are the daughter who already does all the websites, reading this at half past eleven at night with the phone on the arm of the chair.

So two things, and then I will leave it.

It can arrive without a conversation. Nobody has to be talked into anything. She just has to find a small amber bottle on the counter and be told sixty seconds before the coffee.

And the second week is going to look like it is making her worse, and she is going to ring you about it, and that is the week it is actually working.

Do not let her put it in the cabinet. That is the entire job.

NINETY DAYS, AND SHE IS MEANT TO USE THE WHOLE BOTTLE

Ninety days from the day it lands on the mat.

One bottle is thirty mornings.

And thirty mornings is far enough in to know, because the thing people notice first shows up somewhere in the second and third week, well inside one bottle.

So the window is deliberately longer than the bottle.

Nobody is deciding against a clock, and nobody has to commit to anything past the first one to find out.

If she gets to the end of those thirty mornings and nothing deep has moved, the bottle goes back, empty, and she keeps her money.

There is no form to fill out.

Nobody asks her to prove she took it, or to explain what she means by nothing moved, or offers her something else instead.

That is the whole policy and it fits in a paragraph, which is more than most of them manage.

THE PART THAT IS GENUINELY OUT OF OUR HANDS

The mullein in this is wild.

Not farmed, not grown to order.

It is cut by hand in a short window once a year, and when a run is gone it is gone until the next picking.

There is no countdown on this page and I am not going to invent a number to put in front of you.

If the page still takes an order, there is still some of it on the shelf.

WHAT IT IS ACTUALLY BEING WEIGHED AGAINST

Three thousand six hundred dollars a year.

That is the routine she is already on, at the figure one customer put in writing, and it does not stop.

Then there is the shelf. Two winters of cough medicine, the box replaced every fall whether it did anything or not, the syrup bought twice because she forgot she had one.

Nobody adds that up, because it goes out five and ten dollars at a time.

Against all of that, this is one bottle and thirty mornings.

And if it does nothing, the bottle goes back empty and she keeps her money.

So the question is not what it costs.

The question is what another year of the same shelf costs.

TWO WAYS THIS GOES FROM HERE

You close this page in a minute either way, and only one thing is different about the two of them, so I will just lay them both out and you can pick.

PATH ONE, TOMORROW IS TODAY AGAIN

Nothing has to change and mostly it wont. The recliner stays where it is and the blanket stays folded over the arm of it, because that is where the blanket lives now. You get up and you go to the sink and you run the water the whole time so nobody else in the house has to listen to it, and fifteen minutes later there is a teaspoon of something in the bowl of the sink and you rinse it down. The phone goes around ten and you look at who it is and you let it go to the machine, because talking is work in the morning and you would rather call her back when things have settled. Then there is another appointment and they add another thing to the list and you take that exactly the way they wrote it, and the one after that is eleven weeks out.

PATH TWO, YOU START ON A TUESDAY

The first week is sharp and bitter and the second week is worse than the first, and you keep going anyway because somebody in the comments told you that is where everybody quits. Then what comes up goes dark and it goes heavy, and you stop calling it a teaspoon. The fifteen minutes turns into five, and one morning you are done before the coffee is. Your daughter calls around ten and you pick it up and you hold up your half of it, and she hears it before you do. And then you are two states over in a folding chair in somebody's backyard, and the ceremony runs long, and the woman next to you talks the whole way through it.

Start the thirty mornings →

WHAT TO DO NOW, IN ORDER

1. Open the order page (the button below goes straight there and there is nothing on it you have not already read on this page)
2. Put the order in (name, address, card, about two minutes, and the confirmation email lands before you have gotten up out of the chair)
3. Watch the mailbox for a plain box (one 2 fl oz amber dropper bottle inside it, thirty mornings, and it fits in the box so nobody has to sign)
4. Take it before anything else (two full droppers held under your tongue for sixty seconds by a clock, first thing, before food or coffee, then swallow, and every inhaler stays exactly the way your doctor wrote it)
5. Get yourself through week two (the second week it gets thicker and worse and that is where most people quit, so write the start date on the calendar and keep going, because what comes up after that is what people write in about)

Check Availability →

Wild mullein is harvested, not farmed, so stock runs out.

With respect,
Glenn Rasmussen
Respiratory therapist, 26 years

P.S. - Ruth Ann sent me a picture from the wedding and she is squinting into the sun in it and holding somebody else's purse, and she told me the drive back took nine hours because of the traffic on the interstate and she did the second half of it herself.

P.P.S. - The mullein in this is picked wild, not grown in rows, so there is only ever so much of it that comes in and when it is gone we wait for the next picking instead of buying the farmed stuff to fill the gap. That is the whole reason it goes out of stock now and then, and there is no clock on this page counting anything down at you.

P.P.P.S. - If the second week is worse, that is the week that proves it. Do not put the bottle in the cabinet. Everybody who writes in about their sixth week got through their second one first.

CommentsNewest

Add a comment…

• 
  Marilyn Hodgkiss

  Has anyone here actually taken this or are we all just reading the article. I did the mullein tea for the better part of a year and nothing came of it, so im not sure what to make of this one.

  Like · Reply · 👍6 · 5 h
• 
  Denise Faraday

  Marilyn, the tea did nothing here either and I told my husband it was money down the drain. The drops are not the tea though. I'm on my 19th morning and what came up Tuesday I had to look at twice.

  Like · Reply · 👍9 · 4 h
• 
  Rosemary Kilbride

  week 3 for me now. week 2 was awful and thicker than when i started and i nearly gave up on it, but my son said give it two more weeks and he was right, because it goes dark after that and heavy.

  Like · Reply · 👍8 · 4 h
• 
  Gail Prentiss

  How long is shipping, and is it before food or after. Im up at 5:30 and I dont eat until 8 so im not sure how to work it into the morning.

  Like · Reply · 👍4 · 3 h
• 
  Barb Vandermeer

  Gail mine took 4 days to Ontario. Before anything else, I stand at the sink and do it before the coffee goes on, and I count the sixty seconds on the stove clock because I lose track otherwise.

  Like · Reply · 👍5 · 3 h
• 
  Frances Otway

  Does this go in the refrigerator. Mine came and the box doesnt say either way and I dont wnat to ruin it before I even start.

  Like · Reply · 👍3 · 3 h
• 
  Jean Ashcombe

  This is mine on the windowsill, ive had it up there 5 weeks now so I see it when I turn the water on. Sorry about the picture, my grandson usually does these for me.

  

  Like · Reply · 👍7 · 3 h
• 
  Colleen Duffy

  Ruth Marchetti read this one. Its the thing I was telling you about after church on sunday, and the 15 minutes part is exactly what you said to me in the parking lot.

  Like · Reply · 👍3 · 2 h
• 
  Ruth Marchetti

  Colleen I read it. The part about running the water so nobody hears got me, because I do that and I have never told one single person that I do that.

  Like · Reply · 👍4 · 2 h
• 
  Sandra Boyce

  Sent a second one to my sister. She is worse off than me and she would never ask anybody for anything, so I had it shipped straight to her house and called her after to tell her what was coming.

  Like · Reply · 👍5 · 2 h
• 
  Alison Pryce

  I got this for my mother, thats her holding it. She wont order anything off the internet herself so I do it and I keep track of when the next one is due. She got through a whole phone call saturday without stopping, which she hasnt. anyway.

  

  Like · Reply · 👍9 · 2 h
• 
  Yvonne Rasmussen

  Day 6 and its worse than when I started and im bringing up more not less, so im not sure I want to keep at it.

  Like · Reply · 👍2 · 1 h
• 
  Patricia Nunn

  Yvonne, that is exactly where I was, and I quit taking it for two days and then went back on it, and around day 10 it went dark and thick enough that it sank. Don't stop in week two. Everybody stops in week two.

  Like · Reply · 👍8 · 1 h
• 
  Eileen Sowerby

  Has anyone in their seventies had any luck with this. Im 76 and my daughter thinks everything I try is a scam and she might be right, but I would like to hear from someone my own age first.

  Like · Reply · 👍4 · 1 h
• 
  Nora Pelletier

  Eileen im 78 and ive had it 9 weeks. I still stop on the stairs but I get up them without sitting down on the landing first, and I drive myself to the store again which I had quit doing.

  Like · Reply · 👍6 · 55 min
• 
  Glenys Harrow

  Just so people know, they were out of it when I first went to order and I had to wait on it, because its picked wild and not grown in rows. So I took two this time and im not getting caught without it again.

  Like · Reply · 👍5 · 45 min
• 
  Carol Ann Biggs

  I sat on this page for months and did nothing about it and then my husband went and ordered it himself. I wish I had done it the first time I read it, thats all I will say about that.

  Like · Reply · 👍7 · 35 min
• 
  Dorothy Slack

  Mine came this morning and it is on the counter next to the coffee so I can't miss it, and I start tomorrow first thing. My neighbor Pat has been on it a while and she is the reason I ordered at all.

  Like · Reply · 👍2 · 22 min
• 
  Maureen Fitzgibbon

  Started this morning. VERY bitter, worse than I thought it was going to be, but I got the sixty seconds done and had my coffee after and that was that. I will come back and say.

  Like · Reply · 👍3 · 18 min
• 
  Helen Grady

  Second bottle came today and I put it in the cabinet with the coffee so it doesnt get away from me. My husband is the one who watches the clock now, he counts it out loud.

  Like · Reply · 👍4 · 16 min

Check Availability →

Please read this part

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Keep taking everything your doctor has prescribed. Nothing here is a replacement for it. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Individual experiences vary.