A reader who knows only the fasting doctrine might take the herbs for garnish—a hobbyist's tea shelf beside the real teaching. The archive does not support that reading. In an August 2020 livestream, Joe reduces a decade of advice to three items and ranks them: OMAD, the mushroom drops, and distilled water—“those are the things you should listen to me on if you listen to nothing else.” Herbalism is not an aside in this catalog; it is stated protocol, taught with the same confidence as the meal itself.
That is precisely why it needs careful handling. Nearly everything in this layer is a health claim—about immunity, blood pressure, blood sugar, thyroid function—offered from Joe's experience and reading rather than from evidence this site can assess. The page therefore reports the apothecary as it appears in the archive, attributes every claim to Joe, and evaluates none of them. Where his own record contains corrections and cautions, those are reported too, because they are part of the protocol as he taught it.
The stated top three
The centerpiece is the mushroom blend he calls the “tonic of the emperor”: droppers of maitake, shiitake, cordyceps, and reishi extracts—alongside a rotating cast of he shou wu, gotu kola, goji, and ginseng—stirred into his daily coffee. In Why I Haven't Been Sick in Years (2019), Joe dates the habit to mid-2017 and credits it with the streak in the title: no cold, no sore throat, even after close contact with the sick. By the August 2020 stream the streak is three years, and the claim has hardened into a recommendation second only to OMAD itself.
The delivery rules are as fixed as the claim. Drops, never pills: Joe argues liquid tinctures absorb while multivitamin caplets pass through—“expensive pee”—and he treats brand as irrelevant, pointing viewers to ordinary store tinctures at grocery-store prices with an expected three-to-six-week ramp before effects. The full weekday stack, with its imperial legends and potency comparisons, is demonstrated in Taking The Tonic of the Emperor (2022), and the strand runs on through a companion video on cordyceps, eleuthero, moringa, and maca. All of the disease-prevention content here is Joe's description of the products, not an effect this site can verify.
Third on the list is the water. In Benefits of Distilled Water on OMAD (2017), after six weeks of drinking nothing else, Joe declares he will “never go back” to tap—“zero parts per million... H2O only”—and reads out a long self-reported benefits list, from mood and concentration to joints and cramps, explicitly framed as personal experience with a request for viewers' own experiments. By 2020 the prescription is quantified—half a gallon daily—and carries new claims about dissolving gallstones. The inorganic-minerals theory underneath it is his; the site notes only that the practice sits in his stated top three and stayed there.
The founding tea craft
The apothecary is as old as the channel, and it began as craft. Triumphant Longevity Tea! (2016) blends black, green, hibiscus, and cactus-with-aloe teas into a 44-ounce, stevia-sweetened “stability beverage” for the fasting window, with brewing doctrine attached: boil one minute, steep fifteen to twenty-five minutes and no longer, or “you're going to start killing the antioxidants.” The same video rejects the word superfood as marketing—“healthy foods are healthy foods”—even while attributing an expansive list of benefits to the teas, a tension the archive never fully resolves.
Each staple has a role. Hibiscus is “the blood pressure reducer.” Chamomile is the downer tea—a caffeine-free evening sedative for calming the stomach mid-fast—taught with Joe's own cautions about early pregnancy, blood thinners, and overbrewing (Sooth Your Mind and Body With Chamomile Tea, 2016). Ginger begins as kitchen improvisation—fresh root in jasmine green tea, “you feel like the king of the world,” with the telling instruction to “forget the supplements... go right for the real deal” (Ginger Green Tea for Mood & Metabolism, 2016)—and returns four years later as a treatise. In Ginger Tea, the Game-changing Beverage (2020), ginger is ranked “a strong number three” in his personal arsenal behind OMAD and the mushrooms, credited with effects on joints, cramps, cholesterol, and blood sugar, and taught with a slow-boil method and a two-to-three-cup ceiling so the blood does not thin too far—plus an abstention warning for anyone on prescription blood thinners. The continuity matters editorially: the 2020 herbalist is not a late detour but the 2016 tea-maker with a larger cabinet.
Blood pressure: the five-step protocol and his own log
The apothecary's most developed application is hypertension, and it is where the caution must be sharpest. The Five-step High Blood Pressure Cure (2016) prescribes cranberry juice, blueberries (“if you have only one fruit in your life, let that be blueberries”), daily hibiscus or nettle tea, cayenne in tomato juice, and water—atop weight loss via OMAD as the real lever—and even warns medicated viewers, on his own authority, to expect their dosing needs to change. Later that year he published his numbers: a peak of 221/129, then a descent after 2013 into the 120s-over-70s unmedicated, with hibiscus called “the most powerful blood pressure reducing tea” (Hypertension Help: My Numbers & Tips Reminder, 2016). The late-era version is leaner: cap sodium at 1,500 milligrams and drink hibiscus, per the same August 2020 stream that named the top three.
The word in the 2016 title is “cure,” and the archive itself walks it back: the same early video has Joe still managing systolic hypertension, and across the decade his register moves from promised cures to conditions managed for life—an arc told in full on the personal account and limits page. The log is his testimony; the protocol is his claim; neither is a result this site can evaluate.
The condition stacks
Two named supplement stacks anchor the layer. For his own Hashimoto's, Joe reports a naturopath-guided regimen of zinc, selenium, eleuthero, magnesium, and ashwagandha—“the magic bullet if there is one”—taken with the meal, ramped up gradually, and credited with clearing his symptom list in about a month (Hashimotos Help, 2018). That is a personal medical choice he describes, made after declining prescribed medication, and this site reports it without endorsement. The same video states his standing philosophy: supplements “are there to help you be a better you” where deficiency is real, not to work magic.
For blood-sugar instability there are the “three golden supplements”—chromium, potassium, and magnesium at the meal—inside the reactive-hypoglycemia protocol, with daily dandelion tea and his advice to request a fasting insulin test rather than the standard panel (How to Beat Reactive Hypoglycemia, 2017). A parallel cabinet for PCOS—licorice root, inositol, fennel and ginger teas—appears in OMAD Tips for Ladies with PCOS (2019), hormonal mechanisms included, all his.
What got tapered, capped, or corrected
The apothecary has its own revision history, which is the best reason to trust the site's account of it as protocol rather than lore. Apple cider vinegar, the founding era's signature accessory, was dosed, loosened, and by 2020 largely retired from Joe's own routine; that arc is told on the fasting boundary page. And the sharpest correction came from his own body: after the 2021 kidney stone, Joe blamed not OMAD but his excessive pattern of particular foods and drinks he had regarded as healthy, and restated the rule he says he had failed to follow himself—to “be a moderate consumer” of everything, healthy things included (In ER With a Kidney Stone, Part 2). Read back through the cabinet, the moderation rule was always present in miniature: the chamomile bag limit, the ginger cup ceiling, the steeping caps. The craft carried its own dosage warnings before the stone made them personal.
The archive, then, forces an unusual editorial posture. A channel famous for mocking supplement hucksters maintains a working apothecary; in the videos above, Joe squares the two by pointing away from commerce—no product line of his own on offer, brands declared irrelevant, cheap roots and grocery-store tinctures—while reserving his scorn for pills and marketing. This site does not resolve whether that distinction holds. It records that the herbal layer is inseparable from the teaching as the archive presents it—and that every claim within it, from the emperor's tonic to the last cup of hibiscus, is Joe's own.
This page is an independent editorial synthesis of the views Joe expresses in the linked videos. The videos remain the primary sources for his full remarks and context.