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I canceled Easter dinner this year because I couldn't button the pants I bought specifically for Easter dinner. That's the line I keep going back to. That's the sentence I said out loud to my husband Dale on a Tuesday afternoon in March, standing in our bedroom in my bra and the open pants, with the dress I'd planned to layer over them on the floor next to me, and the wall mirror in our closet door reflecting back a woman I did not recognize. Dale didn't know what to say. He's a man who's been married to me for 32 years and he has learned, the hard way, that there are moments where saying anything is worse than saying nothing. He just sat down on the edge of our bed. He folded his hands. He looked at me with the kind of look you give a wife who you're not sure whether to hug or leave alone. I said it again, more for myself than for him. I said, "I'm canceling Easter." He said, "Cher. You've hosted Easter for 18 years. You can't cancel it." I said, "Watch me." I sat down on the floor of our bedroom in my bra and my open pants and I called my older daughter Macy and I told her Easter was off this year. I told her we could do an Outback. We could do nothing. We could all just stay home and watch a movie. Macy said, "Mom. Are you sick?" I said, "I'm just tired, honey. I love you. We'll figure it out." I hung up before she could ask me anything else. Then I sat on that floor for 22 minutes crying into a pile of dry cleaning that I'd had on a hook for three weeks because I couldn't bring myself to walk it back into the closet. I'm telling you this because I don't think I'm the only one. I think there's a lot of us. A lot of 54 year old women who used to host things. Who used to pull off a holiday with 14 people and three dishes you can't find recipes for anymore. Who used to walk into a room with a tray of deviled eggs and laugh too loud and have a real waist. And who, somewhere in the last few years, became swampy. That's the word I use in my head. Swampy. Bloated. Puffy. Foggy. Heavy. The pants don't button. The face in the mirror looks held under water. The energy that ran the family runs out by 2 PM and never comes back. I want to tell you what happened to me. I want to tell you what my sister Becca drove down to my house with on that Easter Saturday that I almost didn't open. And I want to tell you why, three months later, I'm wearing those pants right now as I type this. My name is Cheryl. I'm 54. I'm a dental office manager in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I run the front desk and the books for Dr. Mike Tucker's family dental practice off Scottsville Road. I've worked there since 2011. My husband Dale is a regional manager for a company that distributes industrial cleaning supplies. We have two grown daughters, Macy who is 28 and lives in Nashville, and our younger one Kayla who is 25 and lives in Louisville. I have a younger sister, Becca, who is 51 and also lives in Louisville and is, by everyone's account including her own, "the weird one." Becca is a yoga teacher. Becca went vegan in 2014. Becca puts something called bone broth in a thermos and drinks it on car rides. Becca had a thing happen to her gut three years ago that I'll tell you about in a minute. Becca and I love each other and have always loved each other but for about 20 years now I have rolled my eyes at most of what comes out of her mouth, and she has rolled her eyes at most of what comes out of mine. I'm the older one. I'm the one who hosts. I'm the one who makes the ham. I'm the one who buys the new pants for Easter. Until this year. I want to walk you through the last four years because I think if you're a woman reading this you might recognize the staircase I went down. It wasn't a cliff. It was a staircase. One step at a time. So slow I didn't see it until I was at the bottom. In 2021 I went up a pants size. I told myself it was the pandemic. I told myself everybody did. In 2022 I went up another. I told myself it was perimenopause. I told myself my mother had gained weight at the same age. I told myself I'd lose it in the spring. In 2023 I started getting bloated after dinner in a way I never had before. I'd eat a normal meal, a salad and chicken, and by 8 PM I'd be undoing the top button of whatever I was wearing. My face in the bathroom mirror at night looked like I'd been crying for an hour. Puffy. Soft. Held under water. The 3 AM wake ups started in early 2024. I'd been a good sleeper my whole life. Slept through both of my babies as infants, which my mother in law has never forgiven me for. Started waking up at 3:14, 3:22, 3:47, like clockwork. Heart not racing. Mind racing. Just lying there in the dark staring at the ceiling fan thinking about nothing in particular. I'd be back asleep by 4:30 most nights. But the damage was done. I'd be exhausted by 1 PM the next day. The cravings showed up at work. I have never had a sweet tooth. My whole life, you could put a piece of cake in front of me and I'd eat the icing and leave the rest. By the summer of 2024 I was eating two Reese's cups every afternoon out of the candy bowl at the front desk. By the fall I'd added a Coke. By Christmas I was leaving the office at 3:15 to drive through Sonic for cherry limeades that I'd drink in the parking lot like a teenager. The brain fog I noticed when I started double charging patients. Not on purpose. I'd run a card, get distracted by something, come back five minutes later, and not remember whether I'd run it. I'd run it again to be safe. Two weeks later a patient would call confused about a duplicate charge and I'd have to refund them and apologize. Dr. Tucker never said anything but I knew he noticed because he started double checking my work in a way he hadn't in 14 years. By the spring of this year I had gone up four pants sizes from where I was in 2020. My face didn't look like my face. I was exhausted by 2 PM. I was wired and miserable at 3 AM. I was driving through Sonic three times a week. And my brain felt like it was permanently swimming in honey. I went to my doctor. Of course I went. I went twice. The first time he ran bloodwork. Thyroid was fine. Blood sugar was creeping but not diabetic. Cholesterol was creeping but not awful. He said, "Cheryl, you're 54. You're perimenopausal. Welcome to it. Try cutting carbs and walking 30 minutes a day." I tried. I cut bread. I walked. I lost three pounds in six weeks and then it stalled. The bloating didn't change. The fog didn't change. The 3 AM wake ups didn't change. The second time I went back and I cried in his office and I said, "Something is wrong with me. I'm not the same person. I can't explain it. I just need you to look at me and believe me." He patted my hand. He prescribed me a low dose of an antidepressant. He said, "Mood can be a big part of this, Cher. Let's give this a try and see how you feel in three months." I filled the prescription. I never took a single pill. I drove home and put the bottle in the back of the medicine cabinet behind my old contact lens case where I keep things I don't want Dale to find. I cried in the car in our driveway for 35 minutes before I went inside. That was a Friday in February. The Easter pants thing happened three weeks later. The cancellation happened that same afternoon. I called Macy. I texted Kayla. I left a voicemail for Dale's mother who I host every year and who I love and who would have made it through Easter dinner with grace anyway. I called my sister Becca last because Becca is the one who would ask questions. She picked up on the second ring. She said, "Cher. What's going on." I said, "Nothing. Easter is off. I just don't feel up to it." She said, "Cheryl Lynn. You haven't canceled Easter since Mom was alive. What is going on." I started crying. I told her. All of it. The pants. The Sonic. The 3 AM. The brain fog. The double charging. The doctor's office. The prescription in the back of the medicine cabinet that I didn't want to take but didn't know what else to do with. Becca listened. She didn't say a word for almost 10 minutes. Just little hmms. When I was done, she said, "I'm coming down Saturday. I'm bringing a casserole. You're hosting Easter. Trust me on this one. I have to tell you something." I said, "Becca. I can't button my pants." She said, "Trust me." She hung up. She drove down from Louisville the next Saturday afternoon. Two hours on I 65 with a casserole dish in the passenger seat seat-belted in like a child. She walked into my kitchen, set the dish on the stove, took off her coat, hung it on the back of a chair, washed her hands, made herself a cup of coffee in our percolator, sat down at our kitchen island, looked at me, and said: "I'm going to tell you what happened to me. And I'm going to tell you what I did about it. And you are going to listen even though I am the weird one. Deal?" I said deal. Becca had been through her own thing in 2022. I knew about parts of it but not all of it. She'd had a rough year that she didn't talk about much. She'd dropped weight she didn't need to drop. She'd been pale. She'd seen four different doctors who'd run every test in the book and told her she was fine and to try meditation. Becca, who already meditated for an hour a day, did not find this advice useful. What she told me, sitting at my kitchen island on that Saturday afternoon with the casserole getting cold on the stove, was that she had finally been seen by an integrative medicine doctor in Cincinnati who took 90 minutes with her and asked questions nobody had asked her before. That doctor had walked her through something I'm going to walk you through now. Because if you're sitting where I was sitting, you need to hear this. Becca said: most women in their 40s and 50s in this country are walking around with stuff living in their bodies they don't know about. I made the face. The face you're probably making right now. The face that says oh come on Becca, you're being dramatic. Becca said, "Hear me out. This isn't a hippie thing. This is the CDC. Look it up later. Look up giardia and crypto and toxo and the rest of them. Look up the rates of exposure in adults in the United States. We have all eaten sushi. We have all walked barefoot in a yard. We have all owned a pet or had a friend who did. We have all eaten in a restaurant. We have all drunk water somewhere where the system wasn't perfect. We have all been exposed." She said most of what people pick up doesn't leave on its own. It moves in. It finds a warm dark quiet place in your gut. And then it does something I want you to understand because this is the part that changes everything. It builds a wall around itself. A slime layer. A biofilm. A protective coating made of the organism's own secretions that hides it from your immune system. Your white blood cells can't get through it. Your stomach acid can't penetrate it. Your immune system genuinely doesn't know it's there. It's sitting in your gut, behind a slime fortress, for years. Decades. While it's hiding, it eats. It pulls nutrients out of your food before your body can absorb them. That's why your hair gets thinner in your 50s when you're eating the same food you ate at 35. That's why your skin looks puffy and held under water. Your body isn't getting what you're feeding it. It also produces waste. The waste sits in your gut, where your immune system has to deal with it constantly. That constant low-grade immune activation is what shows up as fog. Fatigue. Bloating after a salad. The 3 AM wake ups. Your body is fighting a quiet little war and losing because it can't see what it's fighting. And the cravings. Becca leaned forward when she got to this part. She said this was the part that broke open her whole life. She said the organisms living in your gut produce compounds that affect your gut to brain signaling. They literally tell your brain what to crave. They want sugar. They want refined carbs. They want anything that lights up their food supply. So you, the host, drive through Sonic three times a week for a cherry limeade you've never wanted in your life. She said, "Cher. The Reese's cups are not you. The cherry limeade is not you. Something in your gut is sending those orders to your brain." I had to put my coffee down. She said most cleanses do nothing about any of this. Most cleanses are basically a laxative and a fiber supplement. They scrub the surface. They wash right over the biofilm. The slime stays. Whatever's behind the slime stays. You feel a little lighter for three days and then everything comes back. She said the thing that finally moved the needle for her was a specific compound called allicin. It comes from garlic. I almost laughed. I said, "Becca. I cook with garlic every night. I make pasta sauce. I'm half Italian on Dad's side. There is no garlic shortage in this house." She said, "Sit down, Cher. The garlic in your fridge is dead." She walked me through it. Allicin is the active sulfur compound in garlic. It's the only compound in nature that's small enough and reactive enough to actually disrupt biofilms. Other natural compounds can't get through the slime. Allicin can. It interacts with the structure of the biofilm and breaks it down in a way that gives your body the chance to address what's been hiding underneath. But allicin is unstable. It's destroyed by heat above 140 degrees within seconds. The clove in your spaghetti sauce that simmered for an hour, dead. The minced garlic in the jar in your fridge door, processed and dead. The garlic powder, dead. Even raw crushed garlic loses most of its allicin within minutes of being exposed to air because the compound is incredibly fragile. You cannot get a useful amount of allicin into your system from cooking, no matter how much garlic you use. The only way is a concentrated standardized garlic extract that protects the allicin and delivers it where it needs to go. The gut. Where the biofilms live. Becca reached into her bag. She pulled out a small white bottle with a clean blue label and the word Alevia across the front. She set it on my kitchen island next to the casserole dish. She said, "I drove down here knowing I was going to give you this. I bought this for you in February. I've been waiting for you to be ready to hear me. The cancellation phone call was you being ready." I sat there looking at a small white bottle on my kitchen island. I said, "Becca. I will smell like garlic. I work in a dental office. I cannot smell like garlic." She laughed for a long time. She said, "Cher. Do I smell like garlic right now?" I leaned over. I sniffed. She did not. She said, "I've been on it for three years. I've never smelled like garlic. I've never burped garlic. There is no garlic breath, no garlic body odor, nothing. It's a concentrated extract in a capsule that gets past your stomach before it dissolves. You won't smell." I sat at my kitchen island with my sister, who I have been rolling my eyes at for 20 years, who drove two hours down I 65 with a casserole strapped into her passenger seat to tell me my body had been talking to me and I hadn't been listening. I cried again. The third time that month. I was getting tired of crying. I said, "OK. Tell me about Easter." She said, "Don't cancel Easter. Take the first capsule tonight. Make the menu we always make. I'll come early. I'll help you cook. By Easter you won't be all the way better. But you'll feel different enough to know it's real. Trust me." I took the first one that night. I took the second one the next morning. I called Macy on Sunday and told her Easter was back on. She cried. I cried. We are a crying family this year apparently. Easter was three weeks away. Here's what happened in those three weeks. Week one. Almost nothing dramatic. I felt a little less bloated by Thursday. My face in the morning mirror on Friday looked a little less held under water. I didn't trust either of those things. I figured I was seeing what I wanted to see. Week two. I slept through the night on a Tuesday. Like, all the way through. From 11 PM to 6 AM. I woke up and looked at the clock and lay there for 10 minutes wondering whether I was dreaming. Wednesday night, same thing. Thursday night, same thing. By the end of week two I had slept through four nights in a row for the first time in over a year. I cried in my kitchen at 6:15 AM on Friday because I had slept and I'd forgotten what sleep felt like. Week three was Easter week. I went to Sonic exactly once that week, on Monday, on autopilot. I sat in the parking lot with my cherry limeade and I took two sips and put it in the cup holder and drove home. I didn't want it. I had wanted it on Monday morning out of habit. By Monday afternoon my body had stopped sending the order. I haven't been back to Sonic since. Easter dinner. 14 people. Ham. The cheesy potatoes my mother taught me to make. Becca's casserole. Macy and her boyfriend. Kayla and her two roommates from Louisville. Dale's mother. Dale's brother and his wife and their teenagers. Me, in the pants I'd bought for Easter that I had not been able to button three weeks earlier, which I buttoned that morning with two fingers of room to spare. I'm not making that up. Three weeks. I will not insult you by promising you the same. I'm telling you what happened in my bedroom that morning. The pants buttoned. I sat on the edge of my bed in those pants and Dale walked in and saw me and didn't say anything for a long time and then he said, "Cher. You look like you." I cried again. Of course I did. Easter dinner happened. I hosted. I laughed too loud. I made the deviled eggs. I made the ham. I made the cheesy potatoes. Kayla took a picture of me holding the ham with the carving knife in my hand and posted it on Instagram with the caption "she's back." She's back. It is now June. I have been on Alevia for 11 weeks. I have lost 14 pounds without trying, because I am no longer eating things my body doesn't want. I sleep through the night six nights out of seven. My face in the morning mirror looks like my face. The 2 PM wall is gone. I have not double charged a patient in two months. I am 54 years old. I work full time at a dental office in Bowling Green Kentucky and I host my family's holidays and I have a husband who looks at me when I walk into a room again. That's the version of me I almost lost. That's the version that came back. If you are sitting where I was sitting three months ago, with the pants on the floor and the dress next to them and a face in the mirror you don't recognize, I want you to look up Alevia. It's just garlic. Standardized. Concentrated. One capsule a day. No smell. No burp. No garlic breath. They have a 90 day money back guarantee. You try it for 90 days, and if you don't feel different in those 90 days, you send the bottle back and they refund you. That's the deal. The risk is on them. Your body has been talking to you. The bloating. The 3 AM. The fog. The cravings that don't feel like yours. The pants that don't button on a Tuesday afternoon in March. That's your body asking for help. I almost canceled Easter. I hosted Easter. I'm wearing the pants right now. 👉 alevia.com/garlic/7 P.S. Becca's casserole was a sweet potato thing with pecans on top that I refused to make for 20 years because she got the recipe from a yoga friend in Louisville. I am making it at Christmas this year. I am putting that in writing. P.P.S. If you're on the fence because you've tried supplements before and felt nothing, I get it. I had a drawer full of them. Magnesium for the sleep. A multivitamin. Some probiotic I bought at Whole Foods that did nothing. None of those things get past the biofilm. That's the difference. The allicin gets into places the other stuff can't reach. Try it for 90 days. If your pants don't button differently by then, send the bottle back and you got your money back. You're risking nothing. I was risking everything. P.P.P.S. Dale's mother pulled me aside at Easter dinner. She is 79 years old and she has known me since I was 22. She put her hand on my arm and she said, "Cheryl. Whatever you're doing. Keep doing it." She is on her second bottle as of two weeks ago. Her daughter, Dale's sister, started last week. This is what happens. One Easter dinner. A family at a time. 👉 alevia.com/garlic/7