I Lost Three Women I Loved to the Same Disease. So I Became a Pharmacist and Spent 10 Years Looking for Something That Could Have Saved Them.

Dr. Chris Jackson, PharmD

Pharmacist & Former Army Combat Medic

Published
February 2026
7-min read

I was seven years old the first time I watched someone I loved struggle to breathe.

My grandma Shugy (her real name was Charlotte, but to me she was just Shugy) had a tube running into her nose and a cough that sounded like it came from somewhere deep and broken.

I didn't know what emphysema was. I just knew she always smelled like smoke, always had butterscotch candies in her purse, and always seemed tired.

And then one morning, she was gone.

I didn't get to say goodbye. I was too young to understand what had happened. All I knew was that the woman who held me on her lap every Sunday was never coming back.

I thought it was a one-time tragedy. Something that just happened to our family.

I was wrong.

Then I lost my Aunt Theresa.

Same cause. Decades of cigarettes. A chronic cough that turned into chronic bronchitis, and lungs that slowly gave up.

I was older this time. Old enough to notice the pattern. Old enough to be angry.

Then I lost my Aunt Deb.

Emphysema. Then a stroke. The same slow, suffocating decline I'd already watched twice.

Three women. Three funerals. Three times standing in a room full of people who didn't know what to say.

Same cause every single time.

After Aunt Deb's funeral, something shifted.

I was already in pharmacy school. But now I had a reason that went beyond the textbook.

I wasn't going to stand behind a counter and staple bags. I was going to figure out why this kept happening, and what could actually be done about it.

I became a pharmacist because three women I loved couldn't breathe.

For the next decade, I worked directly with smokers and vapers. I helped people quit. Guided them through relapses. Celebrated the ones who stuck with it.

But here's the thing nobody warned me about, the thing I kept seeing over and over again:

Let me be blunt about something most people don't want to hear.

Quitting is only half the battle.

Your lungs don't just spring back because you threw out your last pack. After years, sometimes decades, of filtering tar, chemicals, and toxins, the damage sits there.

The mucus is still trapped. The tiny cleaning hairs in your airways (called cilia) are still flattened. The inflammation is still simmering.

That's why you still:

It's not in your head. It's not "just getting older."

Your lungs are still buried under years of damage, with no support to recover.

I spent years watching my patients try everything.

Over-the-counter expectorants that masked the cough for a few hours and did nothing about the underlying buildup.

Supplements packed with 15 different ingredients at doses too low to matter, designed by marketing teams and not pharmacists.

Breathing exercises and steam inhalation that felt nice in the moment but didn't move the needle.

And the most common advice of all, the one I got so sick of hearing that it's practically burned into my brain:

Time. That's what they told my grandma. That's what they told my aunts.

I watched three people run out of time.

I was done waiting.

So I did what I was trained to do. I went back to the research.

Not the headlines. Not the wellness blogs. The actual peer-reviewed literature on respiratory support.

And I found something that kept showing up, a plant that had been used for lung conditions since ancient Greece, but had been largely overlooked by modern medicine.

Mullein leaf.

Specifically, the saponins in mullein. They do two critical things most remedies don't:

First, they decrease mucus viscosity, making the thick, sticky buildup in your airways thinner and easier to move.

Second, they increase cilia activity, waking up those tiny cleaning hairs that have been flattened by years of smoke, so your lungs can actually start expelling what's been trapped.

Most lung supplements throw 12 ingredients at the wall and hope something sticks. But the research kept pointing me back to this one plant, and to one companion ingredient that made it work even harder:

Chlorophyll.

Not the trendy wellness drink version. The real thing, shown to support oxygenation at the cellular level and deliver antioxidant properties that help combat the oxidative damage smoking leaves behind.

Two ingredients. Working on two different pathways. One clears the wreckage. The other helps rebuild.

This wasn't complicated. It was overlooked.

Two ingredients. Two pathways. Thousands of years of traditional use, now clinically studied.

Here's where most supplement companies would stop.

They'd slap these ingredients in a bottle, write some marketing copy about "ancient herbs," and call it a day.

I couldn't do that.

Not after what I'd been through. Not with the faces of Shugy, Theresa, and Deb in my mind every single day.

I needed to know, not believe, not hope, but truly know that this actually worked.

So I did something most supplement companies won't do.

Won't. Not can't. Won't.

We Put This Formula Through a Real Clinical Trial. Here's What Happened.

We partnered with Citruslabs, an independent third-party contract research organization based in Las Vegas, and commissioned a formal clinical trial.

Not "based on studies." Not "clinically inspired." Not ingredients that were studied individually 30 years ago.

A randomized, triple-blind, placebo-controlled study on the actual finished product.

100 participants. 60 days. All of them dealing with mucus buildup, breathlessness, and low energy.

Triple-blind means nobody knew who got the real formula and who got the placebo. Not the participants. Not the coordinators. Not even the data analysts.

This is the gold standard of clinical research. The same methodology used in pharmaceutical drug trials.

And we applied it to a supplement.

Because you deserve to know if something works before you spend a dollar on it.

Here's What Happened After 60 Days

This isn't marketing copy. This is IRB-approved methodology. Real participants. Measured outcomes. Published by an independent third party.

We did the work so you don't have to wonder.

The study gave me confidence. But these messages? That's what told me we'd built something that mattered.

Real customers. Real results. 836,000+ people trust BetterLungs® for daily respiratory support.

That formula is called BetterLungs®.

It's a mullein and chlorophyll tincture, liquid not pills, designed for faster absorption and higher bioavailability. Trusted by over 836,000 customers and stocked at major retailers nationwide.

Two ingredients. Two pathways. One purpose: give your lungs what they need to start recovering.

No drugs. No steroids. No junk. No 15-ingredient kitchen sink formula.

Two ingredients. Clinically studied. Pharmacist formulated.

Every morning, with your first meal:

For best results, use consistently for 60+ days. That's the duration of our clinical study that led to the results above.

Two full droppers in water or juice, done in 30 seconds.

I couldn't save my grandma Shugy.

I couldn't save Aunt Theresa or Aunt Deb.

But I spent ten years making sure their deaths meant something.

Every bottle of this formula carries their names with it. Every person who tells me they can breathe again, every message from a dad who can play with his grandkids, every email from an ex-smoker whose mornings are finally quiet, that's for them.

Your lungs have carried you this far. Through every cigarette, every vape hit, every year of damage.

They're not done. They're waiting for support.