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I found my dad's prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet last September. It still had pills in it. He'd been dead for 3 weeks. I stood there in the bathroom of the house I grew up in, holding an orange bottle of Lipitor with 22 pills still rattling around inside it, and I had a thought that I'm only now able to put into words. My dad followed every single instruction his doctor ever gave him for 11 years. And it killed him anyway. My name is Karen. I'm 54 years old and I live in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in a small blue house off of Calumet Drive with my husband Tim and a cat named Margaret who hates everyone except him. My dad's name was Donald. Everybody called him Don. He died on August 24th of last year. He was 64. He died of a heart attack in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly on South Business Drive at 11:18 in the morning. He was carrying a 12 pack of Diet Rite back to his truck. The cashier told me he'd just been joking with her about the Brewers losing again. She said he looked fine. His truck keys were still in his hand when the EMTs got there. His Lipitor was at home in the medicine cabinet, where it had been every morning for 11 years. I want to tell you about my dad's house, because that's where this story really starts. After the funeral, after my brother Greg flew back to his life in Phoenix, after the casseroles stopped coming, somebody had to clean it out. Greg has 3 kids and a job and a wife who would not get on a plane for our father's belongings. So that was me. I drove up there every Saturday for 8 weeks starting in September. The house is on Riverdale Avenue. It's a small white ranch. My parents bought it in 1983 when my mom was pregnant with Greg. My mom passed in 2018 from her own heart attack at 64. My dad lived there alone for 6 years after. The first Saturday I walked in and his work boots were by the back door. Steel toed. Caked with mud from the property. He used to walk the back acreage every Sunday morning to check the fence line and look for deer tracks. Those boots had been by that door since the Sunday before he died. I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried for an hour with my back against the dishwasher. You don't expect a pair of muddy boots to take you out. You expect the photo albums. You expect the wedding ring. You expect the closet full of his shirts that still smell like Old Spice. Nobody warns you about the boots. But I cleaned the house anyway. Saturday after Saturday. Box after box. And the second Saturday is when I went into the bathroom. The medicine cabinet was full. I want you to know exactly what was in it, because it matters. Lipitor. 40 mg. 22 pills left in the bottle. Lisinopril. 20 mg. Half a bottle. Metformin. He'd been pre-diabetic for 4 years. Aspirin. Low dose. The bottle was almost empty. Tums. 3 different containers. Pepto. The pink kind in the bottle. A bottle of fish oil that was 2 years expired. A pill organizer with Monday through Sunday across the top. Sunday was still full. He never got to take Sunday. I stood there in front of that medicine cabinet and I counted 7 prescriptions and supplements. My father took 7 things a day to manage his cholesterol and his blood pressure and his blood sugar, and on a Tuesday in August he walked out of the Piggly Wiggly with a 12 pack of Diet Rite and his heart stopped. I put everything in a plastic bag and I drove it to the pharmacy at the Walgreens on the way home so they could dispose of it. I sat in the parking lot for 25 minutes with the bag in my lap before I could go in. Two days later I went and got my own bloodwork done. I hadn't had it done in 3 years. I'd been putting it off the way you put off the thing you don't want to know. The results came back the next Friday. LDL 187. Total cholesterol 261. Triglycerides high. My doctor, Dr. Bjornson, who I've been seeing for 9 years, sat across from me in his office and reached for his prescription pad. He said, "Karen, with your family history, we need to get on top of this. I'm going to start you on atorvastatin. We'll check you again in 90 days." I watched his hand. I watched the pen move. I felt like I was watching my dad's story start over with my name written at the top. I said something I have never said in a doctor's office in my life. I said, "Hold on. Let me think." He looked up at me. Surprised. I said, "My dad just died of a heart attack. He took Lipitor for 11 years. His numbers were good. His doctor said his numbers were good. He died anyway. I need to think before I take a pill that's supposed to do the exact same thing that didn't save him." Dr. Bjornson is a kind man. He's a good doctor. He didn't push me. He said, "Karen, I understand. Take a week. But please don't take more than that. We need to start treatment." I took the unfilled prescription home and I put it on the kitchen counter and I stared at it for 5 days. Tim, my husband, didn't say anything. He's a quiet man. He works at the Kohler plumbing plant. He has been watching me clean out my father's house and I think he was waiting to see what I was going to do. That weekend I drove back up to Riverdale Avenue. I was supposed to be cleaning out the garage that day. Greg had asked me to ship him the toolbox if there was anything good in it. I was in the garage at about 2 in the afternoon when a truck pulled into the driveway. It was Walt. Walt is my dad's oldest friend. He's 67. He owns a small concrete business in Plymouth, about 20 minutes from Sheboygan. He and my dad went to Sheboygan North together. They went deer hunting together every November for 41 years. Walt was a pallbearer at my dad's funeral and again at my mom's 6 years before. He'd come to help me haul a bunch of junk to the dump. We worked for about 2 hours together loading up the trailer he'd brought. Old paint cans. A broken air compressor. A push mower from the 1990s that nobody had used in a decade. After we were done, we sat on the tailgate of his truck in the driveway and he handed me a Diet Rite from his cooler and we just sat there for a minute looking at the house my dad lived in for 41 years. Walt said, "How are you doing, Karen?" I told him about the bloodwork. I told him about the prescription on my kitchen counter. I told him I couldn't bring myself to fill it because I kept thinking about my dad's medicine cabinet, and the 22 pills left in the Lipitor bottle, and how every morning for 11 years my dad had taken his pill and felt like he was doing the right thing, and how the right thing hadn't saved him. Walt didn't say anything for a while. Then he said something that changed the direction of my life. He said, "Karen, your dad and I used to fish on the south end of Lake Winnebago every spring. Two years ago I had my own bloodwork done. My LDL was 192. Doctor told me the same thing he just told you. I was 65. I'd watched your mother go. I knew where this was headed. So I started reading." He set his Diet Rite down on the tailgate. He said, "Your dad and I talked about this 6 months before he died. I told him what I'd found. I told him what I'd been on for 18 months. I told him to read about it. He said he would. He never did. Your dad was the most stubborn man I ever knew, Karen. He thought if the doctor handed him a pill, that was the answer. He didn't have a second answer in him." He looked at me. He said, "I'm going to tell you what I told him. I'd rather give it to you and have you laugh at me than not give it to you. I think about your dad every morning when I take it." He pulled out his phone and he wrote something down on the back of a receipt from the dump and he handed it to me. The receipt said one word. Alevia. And underneath, the word amla. He said, "It's a berry. It grows in India. Read about it. That's all I'm asking. Read about it tonight. Don't fill that prescription until you've read about it." I drove home with that receipt on the passenger seat. I made dinner. I ate it. I waited until Tim was in bed and I sat at the kitchen table at 10:15 PM with my laptop. I read for almost 3 hours. What I learned, and what I want to tell you now in the simplest way I know how, is this. Cholesterol is not the bad guy. I want you to read that again because it's the thing I didn't understand for 54 years. Cholesterol is something your liver makes. Your body needs it. It's a building block. It builds hormones. It builds the membranes around your cells. It's like lumber. Cholesterol becomes a problem when it gets damaged on its way through your bloodstream. The thing that damages it is oxidation. Free radicals. The same kind of damage that causes a sliced apple to turn brown on the counter. When cholesterol gets oxidized, that's the form that sticks to your artery walls. That's the form that builds up. That's the form that causes the plaque. And here's the part that broke me at the kitchen table. When your body sees damaged cholesterol getting stuck to your artery walls, it sends more cholesterol to try to repair it. Like a construction crew that keeps showing up to a site that keeps getting torn up. That's why the number on the bloodwork keeps coming back high. The number isn't the problem. The damage is the problem. The number is just the construction crew that keeps responding to the damage. So you can take a statin. A statin tells your liver to stop making so much lumber. The number on the test comes down. Your doctor says good job. You feel like you're doing the right thing. But the damage is still happening. The oxidation is still going on. The artery walls are still getting torn up. The construction crew is just smaller now. That's why people on statins for 11 years still have heart attacks. That's why my dad walked out of the Piggly Wiggly with a 12 pack of Diet Rite and never got to put it in his truck. I sat at the kitchen table at 1:08 AM and I felt like I was hearing my dad explain something to me from beyond. The next part of what I read is what made me order it. There's a compound in amla called emblicanin. It's an antioxidant. It has been studied for what it does to cholesterol on a molecular level. Specifically, it can help protect cholesterol from oxidation. So less of it gets damaged. So less of it ends up in the form that sticks. And when less is getting stuck, the body's replacement cycle can start to ease up. The number can come down. Not because you're telling your liver to stop making cholesterol. But because the cholesterol you already have is being protected. The construction crew doesn't need to keep showing up because the damage isn't happening as fast. I ordered a bottle at 1:34 AM. I want to be honest with you about something. I am not the kind of woman who buys things off the internet at 1 in the morning. I am a controller for a small accounting firm. I am skeptical for a living. I look at numbers and I find the lie in them. But I had spent the last 9 weeks cleaning out my dead father's house, and I had counted 22 pills in a bottle of medication that was supposed to be keeping him alive, and I had read for 3 hours about what nobody had ever explained to me before. I didn't tell my doctor. I didn't tell Tim. I didn't tell Walt. I just started taking it. 2 capsules every morning with my coffee at 6:22 AM, sitting at the same kitchen table where I'd read about it the night before. I gave myself 90 days because I had read that the bottle came with a 90-day money-back guarantee, and I figured if it didn't work, at least I'd have my money back. That was the deal I made with myself. The first 4 weeks I didn't feel anything different. I almost stopped twice. In week 5, something small happened. I was on the phone with my sister-in-law in Phoenix and I noticed I was breathing easier. I hadn't realized I'd been breathing kind of shallow for the last year. It wasn't a thing I would have ever told a doctor. It was just a thing my body had been doing. In week 7, I went on a walk with Tim to the lakefront, which we used to do every Sunday before my dad got sick and we stopped. We walked the whole boardwalk. About 2 miles. I came back and I wasn't tired the way I used to be tired. Week 10, I went to Dr. Bjornson for my 90 day follow up. He had the prescription on file. He was going to ask why I hadn't filled it. I knew the conversation that was coming. He pulled up my chart. He looked at the screen. He looked at me. He said, "Karen, did you fill the prescription?" I said, "No." He looked at the screen again. He said, "Your LDL is 156. Your total cholesterol is 224. Triglycerides are improved." LDL had been 187. Now it was 156. He looked at me with this strange expression. He said, "What did you do?" I told him. He wrote it down on the back of the prescription pad. The one he was about to use to write me a statin script 3 months earlier. He said, "Karen, I can't recommend something I don't know enough about. But whatever you're doing, keep doing it. We'll check again in 90 days. And we'll talk again." I drove home with the prescription, unfilled, still in my purse. I want to be careful about what I am telling you here. I am not telling you to throw away your statin. I am not telling you to ignore your doctor. I am telling you that I had a father who died at 64 with a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions and a pair of muddy boots by the back door, and I was 22 weeks from following him into the same story, and somebody told me to read about a berry, and I read, and I am not where he is. That's what I'm telling you. It's been 9 months now since I started. My last bloodwork in March put my LDL at 132. Still not where Dr. Bjornson would like it. But the trajectory matters. The trajectory is what he watches now. My dad's boots are at my house now. I brought them home in October. I keep them by the back door of my own house off Calumet Drive. Tim asked me once why I kept them. I told him because I want to see them every day. I want to remember what 22 pills in a bottle looks like. I want to remember that the right thing isn't always the only thing. I want to remember Walt sitting on a tailgate with a Diet Rite, telling me he thinks about my dad every morning when he takes it. If you are reading this, and you have a parent who died too young, or you have a number on a piece of paper that scared you, or you have a prescription on your kitchen counter that you have been staring at and wondering if there's another way to think about it, I want you to know there is another way to think about it. The number is not the problem. The damage is the problem. And the damage can be addressed. Alevia Amla is what I take every morning. 2 capsules with my coffee. There are 30 servings in a bottle. It's shipped from the USA. It's made in the USA from amla that's sourced from where it actually grows in Asia. They offer a 90-day money-back guarantee. You can use the whole bottle. You can use 3 bottles. You mail them back, even empty, and they refund you. No phone calls. No arguments. They know what they have. Try it for 90 days the way I did. Worst case, you mail the bottle back and you get your money. Best case, your next bloodwork looks different than the last 5 did. P.S. Walt and I still get together every couple months. He came down to my house in February for my birthday. He brought me a Diet Rite and a hand carved wooden bird from a guy he knows in Plymouth. He told me my dad would have loved this. The reading. The being skeptical. The making him explain himself. He told me my dad never asked the second question in his life. He just took what the doctor handed him and trusted it. Walt said, "Karen, the best thing you ever did was ask the second question." I keep that bird on my kitchen windowsill above the sink. I see it every morning when I take my 2 capsules. P.P.S. The 90-day money-back guarantee is real. I asked. I called Alevia and asked them to spell it out. They said mail the bottle back, even empty, and they refund the whole order, no questions. That is not how my dad's Lipitor worked. The Lipitor he took for 11 years did not come with a money-back guarantee when his heart stopped in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. The drug company did not refund his $40 a month or the 11 years he was on it. The pharmaceutical industry doesn't do refunds. Alevia does. That tells you something about who's confident in their product and who's just confident in their subscription model. P.P.P.S. Alevia is a small company. They run out. I have had to wait once already on a reorder. I keep two bottles in my cabinet at all times now. I am not going back to 187. I am not going back to a prescription on my kitchen counter. If you have a bloodwork appointment coming up in the next 30 to 60 days and you have been wondering if the number is going to keep going up the way it has been for the last 5 years, please don't wait until after the appointment. Please don't wait until the doctor reaches for the pad. Walt told me he thinks every day about whether he should have pushed harder with my dad in February of last year, 6 months before he died. He told me he stops thinking about it when he takes his amla in the morning. Please don't be the person somebody else can't stop thinking about. P.P.P.P.S. My dad's boots are still by my back door. They will be by my back door for the rest of my life. They are not a sad thing anymore. They are the reason I asked the second question. They are the reason I read for 3 hours at my kitchen table. They are the reason I am not where he is. If you have a person in your life whose boots are by a door somewhere, who walked the property every Sunday morning, who joked with the cashier at the grocery store, who took every pill the doctor gave him for 11 years and died anyway, this is for them. This is for the second question. 👉 https://alevia.com/amla/33