The Blood Pressure Journal Facebook ad: “Feel Like Yourself Again”

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I sat down on the curb outside Harrisburg Baptist Church on a Sunday morning in June and I could not stand back up. That's how I found out something was wrong with me. Not from a doctor. Not from a machine at the CVS. From a stretch of concrete outside a church parking lot in Tupelo, Mississippi. I remember the exact moment. 10:22 in the morning. Service started at 10:30. I'd parked in the third row from the sanctuary door like I always do. It's maybe 60 steps from my Buick to the front entrance. I've made that walk twice a week for 23 years. In my Sunday shoes. Never thought about it. That morning, I got out of the car, I closed the door, I started walking, and by step 20 my head felt like it was full of cotton. By step 30, the parking lot was tilting. By step 40, I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears like somebody had put a seashell up to my head. And by step 50, I had to sit down. Right there on the curb. In my navy blue dress. With my little white church purse in my lap. Sweating so much my back was wet. A young man I didn't know saw me. Nice young man in a gray suit. He came over and said, "Ma'am, are you alright?" I said, "Baby, I just need a minute." I sat there for 6 minutes. I know because I kept looking at my little wristwatch trying to figure out if I was going to make it into the sanctuary. I didn't make it in. The young man walked me back to my car. Sat me down in the driver's seat with the door open and the air conditioning running full blast. He asked if he could call somebody. I told him no thank you, I was going to be alright, I just needed to catch my breath. He waited about 15 minutes with me. God bless him. Then he went inside for the second service because he had somewhere he was supposed to be. And I sat in that Buick in the church parking lot with the AC on and I cried into my church purse for 20 minutes. I did not go to church that day. I drove home. Slow. 10 miles under the speed limit the whole way down Gloster Street. I went in my house. I laid down on the couch in my Sunday dress and shoes still on. I stared at the ceiling. And I thought, Delores. Something is very wrong with you. I'm Delores. I'm 61 years old. I live in a little yellow house on Green Street in Tupelo, Mississippi. Elvis was born about a mile and a half from where I sleep. I've lived in this house for 28 years. My husband Curtis and I bought it in 1998 when he got on at the Cooper Tire plant. Curtis passed 4 years ago. Heart attack in our kitchen while he was scrambling eggs on a Saturday morning. He was 63. I work part time at Little Blessings Learning Center off North Veterans, in the room with the 3 year olds, 4 mornings a week. I take my babies to the fenced playground, I sing them songs about frogs and buses, I wipe their little noses, and at noon I hand them back to their mamas and I drive home. I have one son, Marcus, who lives up in Memphis and works for the water department. He calls me every Sunday night. I have three grandbabies I don't see near enough. My best friend since 1979 is a woman named LaVerne. LaVerne lives 4 streets over. We met when we were 15 years old at a football game between Tupelo High and Amory. She was wearing a yellow sweater. She's been my best friend for 46 years. She was the maid of honor at my wedding. I was the maid of honor at hers. She sat next to me at Curtis's funeral and held my hand so tight I lost circulation in my fingers and I did not care. LaVerne is the one who saved my life. And she wasn't even trying to. That Sunday I couldn't get into church, I didn't tell anybody at first. Not Marcus. Not LaVerne. Nobody. Because here's what happens when you're a 61 year old Black woman in Mississippi and something goes wrong with your body. Everybody has an opinion. And the opinion is always the same. "You need to lose some weight, Delores." "You need to stop eating that fried food, Delores." "You need to be walking every morning, Delores." "You need to stop being so stressed out about everything, Delores." I had heard all of it. From my doctor. From my son. From ladies at church. From the pharmacist who fills my prescriptions at the Walgreens on Main Street. Everybody had a suggestion and every single one of them was some version of "this is your fault." I already knew my blood pressure was high. I'd known for 11 years. The doctor had put me on lisinopril in 2014. Then he added a water pill in 2018. Then he added a beta blocker in 2022. Every time I came in, the numbers were still high, and every time he added another pill. And every time he added another pill, he'd look at me over his little glasses and he'd say, "Delores. You've got to make some lifestyle changes." Like I hadn't been trying. Like I hadn't cut out fried chicken. Like I hadn't been walking the block in the evenings until my knees started hurting. Like I hadn't spent 4 years trying to grieve my husband and hold down a job and be a mama to my son from a distance and be a granny to those babies and pay my bills. Like all of that was just something I was doing to myself on purpose. That Sunday on the curb was the first time I really understood something. Whatever was wrong with me, the pills weren't fixing it. Because I was taking every pill they gave me. Every day. On time. With water. And I still couldn't make it 50 steps across a church parking lot without the world tilting sideways. So the next Wednesday evening, I went to prayer meeting. I made myself go. I parked closer. I walked slower. I made it in. But when I sat down in the pew next to LaVerne, my hands were shaking. She looked at me and she said, "Delores. What is going on with you." I didn't say anything at first. I just kept staring at my Bible. She put her hand on top of mine. She said, "Delores. This is me. Talk." So I told her. About the parking lot on Sunday. About the young man in the gray suit. About sitting in my Buick with the AC on crying into my purse. About the pills that weren't working. About being scared. I said, "LaVerne. I don't want to end up like Curtis. I don't want Marcus to get a phone call one morning that his mama fell over in the kitchen. I have three grandbabies I need to see grow up and I can't even make it into church." She sat there quiet for a long time. The preacher was up front talking about Psalm 91. I wasn't hearing any of it. Then LaVerne squeezed my hand and she said, "I'm gonna call you tonight. I want to tell you about something. Not right now. Tonight." She called me at 8:47 that night. I was on the couch in my house robe with the TV on but the sound down. She said, "Dee. You remember my niece Jasmine?" I said, "The one that's in school up at Ole Miss?" She said, "That's the one. Nursing school. She's about to finish." I said, "Alright." LaVerne said, "Jasmine was down here 3 weeks ago and she was telling me about something she'd been learning about. Not from a class. From her own reading. Because you know she's like that." Jasmine is the smart one in that family. Straight A's since she was in kindergarten. Wants to be a cardiac nurse. LaVerne said, "Jasmine was telling me about how blood pressure actually works. Like, actually. Not what the pill bottle says. She said, Aunt LaVerne, the reason so many folks in our family have this problem is because we don't understand what's really going on inside the blood vessels." I said, "Alright. Well what's really going on." LaVerne was quiet for a second. And then she started explaining it to me the way Jasmine had explained it to her. And I want to say this careful, because I'm not a nurse and neither is LaVerne. But this is what she told me, sitting on her couch on Green Street on a Wednesday night. She said, the inside of your blood vessels has a lining. It's not just a pipe. It's a living wall. And that wall has a job. Its job is to help your vessels open up when they need to, so blood can flow through easy. It does that job by making a chemical called nitric oxide. Little tiny amounts of it. All day. Every day. And when there's enough nitric oxide flowing, your vessels relax. They stay open. Blood moves through them the way it's supposed to. She said, but years of stress, years of eating what most of us eat, years of just being alive in this world, that wall wears down. And when the wall wears down, it can't make as much nitric oxide as it used to. So your vessels stay tight. They don't relax the way they should. And your heart has to push blood through vessels that aren't opening up for it. That pressure is what shows up when the cuff goes on your arm. She said, and here's the part Jasmine said nobody explains. The pills don't fix the wall. The pills force the vessels open from the outside. But the wall keeps getting worse underneath. And every year, you need more pills to force it open, because the wall keeps deteriorating. That's why you go from one pill to two to three. It's not because you're doing something wrong. It's because nothing you've been given is actually supporting the wall. I sat on my couch and I put my hand over my mouth. Because that was the first time in 11 years anybody had explained to me why the pills kept adding up. LaVerne said, "Dee. Are you still there?" I said, "I'm here. Keep talking." She said, "Jasmine said there's something they've been looking at. A fruit. From India. It's called amla. Been around for 5,000 years. They eat it over there. What it seems to do, based on what Jasmine has been reading, is help support that inner wall. Not force anything. Support what's already there. And when the wall gets better support, it can start making its own nitric oxide again. The way it used to when we were young. And the vessels can start relaxing on their own. And the pressure can start to come down. Not because something is forcing it. Because the wall is doing what it was designed to do in the first place." I was quiet. LaVerne said, "I've been on it 4 months, Dee." I said, "What?" She said, "I didn't tell you because I didn't want to jinx it. I've been on it 4 months. I started because my numbers were creeping up too and my doctor was talking about adding a second pill. My last reading at the clinic was better than it's been in 5 years. He asked me if I'd been walking more. I said no. He asked me if I'd changed my diet. I said no. I didn't tell him. I don't know why. Maybe I just didn't want to argue about it." I said, "LaVerne. Why didn't you tell me." She said, "I'm telling you now." She told me she'd been ordering it from a company called Auniva. Made in the USA. 30 servings a bottle. 2 capsules a day, she took hers with her breakfast. It came in the mail. Free shipping. Had a 90 day money back guarantee, which is what convinced her to try it in the first place. She said if it didn't work, she was going to send it back and get her money returned. She never sent it back. I said, "Send me the website." She texted it to me while I was still on the phone with her. auniva.co/amla/33 I ordered 3 bottles at the kitchen table at 9:38 that night. Because LaVerne had said the real change for her came around week 6 or 7 and I wanted enough to actually see it through. The box came 5 days later. I opened it and I put the first bottle on the counter next to my other pills. I want to tell you what happened over the next 3 months. And I want to tell you the truth, not a Facebook fairy tale. Because I've read those posts too. Woman found a miracle and now she runs marathons. And I don't believe them. I never have. So here's what actually happened. Week 1. Nothing. I felt exactly the same. I called LaVerne on Sunday after church and I said, "I don't feel any different." She said, "Dee, it's been 6 days. Give it time." Week 2. Nothing. Except I noticed I got out of my recliner on Tuesday night without having to grab the armrest. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I only noticed later because Wednesday and Thursday I did it again. Week 3. This was the first week I felt something. My mornings were different. I've been waking up at 6:47 for years to start my routine. For a long time, waking up felt like climbing out of a hole. The first 30 minutes of every day was thick and slow. Week 3, I noticed I was standing up out of bed and just walking to the kitchen. No pause. No sit on the edge of the bed for 10 minutes gathering myself. Just up and going. Week 4. Little Blessings has a fenced playground with a gentle slope up to the swing set. It's maybe 25 feet. I've been walking my babies up that slope for 7 years and I've been getting winded on it for 4. Week 4, I walked up it on a Tuesday morning holding a little boy named Elijah's hand and we got to the top and I realized I was still talking to him. Full sentences. Not stopping to catch my breath. I stood at the top and I looked back down the slope and I thought, when was the last time I did that without pausing. I couldn't remember. Week 5. LaVerne and I went to lunch at Neon Pig. We split a burger. I was full for the first time in a long time without feeling swollen. My rings had been tight for years. My wedding band. My mama's ring. Week 5, they were sliding again. Week 6. This was the week LaVerne had told me about. And she was right. On a Wednesday morning at Little Blessings, we had a fire drill. The fire drill means all the teachers have to walk their classrooms out the back door, across the parking lot, to a fenced meeting area on the far side of the property. It's maybe 80 yards. I've been dreading fire drills for 3 years because I've had to sit down at the meeting area to catch my breath and one of the other teachers has always had to bring me a bottle of water and act like everything was normal in front of the children. Week 6, we did the fire drill. I walked my 3 year olds across that parking lot holding two of their little hands, singing "The Wheels on the Bus." We got to the meeting area. I checked in each of my babies. I stood there under a magnolia tree in the shade. My chest wasn't heaving. My head wasn't cotton. I didn't need to sit down. Nobody noticed. Which is exactly why I remember it. Because for once, nobody had to notice. Week 8. I went to my regular checkup with Dr. Ridgeway. He put the cuff on. Read it. Put it on again. Read it again. Looked at his little computer for a minute. He said, "Delores. Your pressure is the lowest it's been since you started coming to see me." I didn't say anything. He said, "What have you been doing different?" I said, "I've been walking a little more." I don't know why I lied. I think I was scared he was going to tell me I was being foolish and I didn't want to hear it. LaVerne told me later she'd done the exact same thing at her checkup. Neither of us had told our doctors. Two grown women lying to our doctors like teenagers who snuck out of the house. He said, "Well whatever you're doing, keep doing it. And we might be able to talk about pulling back on one of these medications at your next visit if you can hold this." I sat in my car in the clinic parking lot afterward for 15 minutes. I called LaVerne. I said, "He wants to talk about taking me off one of my pills." She said, "Dee. Dee." I said, "I know. I know." We were both crying on the phone. Two women in our 60s crying in parking lots in Tupelo, Mississippi. Because that's how big it felt. Week 12. I want to tell you about a Sunday in September. Because it matters. I got up. I put on a peach dress. I drove to Harrisburg Baptist Church. I parked in the third row from the sanctuary door. Same spot I always park. I got out of my Buick. I closed the door. I walked to the front entrance. 60 steps. I did not stop once. My heart was not in my ears. The parking lot was not tilting. My back was not soaked. I was walking. Just walking. Like a woman walking to church. I got to the front door. I turned around. I looked back across the parking lot at my car. And I said, out loud, to nobody, "Thank you, Jesus. Thank you." I walked in. I sat in my usual pew. Third from the back on the left. LaVerne was already there. She looked at me. She saw my face. She didn't ask. She just took my hand. And we sang. Now, here's what I want to say to whoever's reading this. I'm not a doctor. I never claimed to be. What I'm telling you is what happened to me and what LaVerne explained to me from what her niece Jasmine had learned. I don't sit here and tell you Auniva's Amla is a cure for anything. Because Jasmine was real clear with LaVerne that it's not. But what it seems to do is support your body doing what it was designed to do. And when your body starts doing what it was designed to do, a lot of things can start feeling different. You could be sitting there today the way I was sitting on that curb 4 months ago. Feeling like your body has quit on you. Feeling like the pills aren't enough and nobody has any answers except add another pill. Feeling like maybe this is just how it's going to be from here on out. I want you to check it out. That's all. Auniva's Amla is made in the USA. It's 30 servings a bottle. 2 capsules with breakfast. It has a 90 day money back guarantee, which means if you take it for 90 days and you don't feel any different, you send back what's left and they refund your money. That's the deal LaVerne told me about, and it's the deal that got me to try it, and it's the deal that's still there for anybody else who's ready to try something. You don't have anything to lose except being scared. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33 P.S. LaVerne wanted me to tell you this. She said, tell them the truth about the 90 days. Because the biggest reason people don't feel results is they quit after 2 weeks. Your body has been doing what it's been doing for a long time. It's not going to change on Tuesday. Give it the time. And if 90 days go by and nothing has changed, send it back and get your money. Auniva stands behind that. LaVerne said, "Delores, that's the fairest deal I've ever seen on a bottle in my life." P.P.S. This is not sold at the Walgreens on Main Street. I checked. I asked the pharmacist about it. He said he'd never heard of it. It's only through the website. The website is the one Jasmine told LaVerne about and the one LaVerne texted to me and the one I'm going to give you here one more time. P.P.P.S. My son Marcus called me last Sunday night like he does every Sunday and he asked me how I was doing. I told him. Everything. The curb. The parking lot. The Buick. Jasmine. LaVerne. The pills going down. He was quiet on the phone for a long time. Then he said, "Mama. I want the name of that." I said, "Baby, why." He said, "Because I'm 41 years old and my numbers are creeping up too. And I don't want to sit on a curb one day and figure it out too late." I gave him the website. If you have somebody in your family whose pressure is creeping up, or somebody like me who's already on 3 pills and still not right, this is where they go. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33

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