Essiac Teas

My blog has been a little quiet lately as I've been participating in the Elimination Diet, as per my kind Naturopath's instructions. I could write a whole post about what that entails, but, suffice to say: you remove a bunch of stuff from your diet for a few weeks and then reintroduce the foods and assess how your body responds. 


I'm not eating any gluten, lactose, soy, processed foods, sugar or flour. There are also a bunch of fruits and vegetables that you are not supposed to eat like eggplant, tomatoes, corn, strawberries and melon. I'm not as worried about 'accidentally' eating the contraband produce, but I've been really good about the gluten, lactose, soy and processed foods so far. I'm interested to see how my body reacts when I bring them all back one by one.


In my lonely and aimless wandering of the natural food section, I've been discovering and rediscovering all sorts of good food products: apple butter, Prana sesame snaps, seaweed and brown rice pastas.


One item that recently caught my eye was Essiac tea with it's steep price tag ($35-$40) and ancient label.


Further research revealed that this ancient brew is used to boost the immune system with it's special blend of herbs and spices. A lot of information seemed geared particularly towards cancer-fighting properties. As I scoured forums, I found a surprising number of posts that preached genuine cancer- curing benefits.


All this was a revelation to me, as I'd only discovered Essiac tea very recently. It seems strange that there might be some very positive immune system benefits for people who are sick, and yet the tea remains relatively obscure.


Have you ever tried Essiac teas? Are you familiar with claimes about the tea's anti-cancer properties?