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I stopped halfway up the four steps at the Cracker Barrel on I-75 outside Knoxville last Sunday and my grandson Cooper looked at me from the porch and said, loud enough for the whole rocking chair lineup to hear, "Grandma, are you broken?" He's 6. He didn't mean it mean. That's the part that destroyed me. He genuinely wanted to know. The way a kid asks if the dog is okay. The way a kid asks if the car has enough gas. Just a question, asked out loud, in front of 14 strangers in rocking chairs and a hostess holding two laminated menus and my daughter Allison frozen in the doorway with her mouth half open. Grandma. Are you broken. I tried to laugh it off. I said something stupid like "just slow today, buddy" and I gripped the railing harder and I made it up the last two steps and I sat down at the booth and I ordered the country fried steak even though I wasn't hungry anymore, because that's what you do, you order the country fried steak and you let your daughter and your grandson talk and you smile at the right places and you don't say what you're actually thinking. Which was. He's right. I am broken. My name is Diane. I'm 56. I've been a dental hygienist in Chattanooga for 32 years and I have cleaned the teeth of half this town including the mayor's wife and the man who owns the Krispy Kreme on Lee Highway. I have two grown daughters. Allison in Knoxville with Cooper, and Megan in Atlanta who's getting married in April. I've had bad knees since I was 41. It started after the second pregnancy. The right one went first. Then the left. Then both of them just settled into a kind of background pain that I learned to call normal because what was I going to do, stop working. Stop standing. Stop bending over chairs all day looking into mouths. I tried everything. I want you to know that. Before you think I'm one of those women who just gives up. I did the glucosamine for three years. Two bottles a month. Forty dollars at GNC. Nothing. I did the turmeric. The one with the black pepper in it. The one my hygienist friend Cheryl swore by. Nothing. I did the Tylenol Arthritis at the dose printed on the box and then at twice the dose printed on the box and then at the dose my friend Cheryl's daughter who's a pharmacist told me to use which was somewhere in the middle. Nothing meaningful. I did the cortisone shots. Both knees. Twice. They worked for about 11 days each time and then they stopped and the second round didn't work as well as the first and my orthopedist said that's just how cortisone goes. He said the next step is replacement. I said how about no. I'm 56. I'm not getting a knee replacement at 56. I have a wedding to walk into in April and another grandkid on the way from Megan and I am not doing this from a recliner. I did the physical therapy. Six weeks at the place over by East Brainerd. The therapist was a sweet 26 year old named Brittany who kept telling me to engage my core. I engaged my core. My knees still hurt. I did the knee sleeves. The compression ones. The expensive ones. The cheap ones. Two at a time stacked. Nothing. I did the bone broth thing for four months because Cheryl's daughter the pharmacist said her aunt swore by it. Nothing. So when Cooper said "grandma, are you broken" on the Cracker Barrel steps off I-75 outside Knoxville last Sunday, what he was really doing was confirming something I'd known for two years and refused to look at. I'd run out of road. The drive back to Chattanooga that night was the longest two hours of my life. I dropped Allison and Cooper at their house in Farragut and Allison gave me a hug at the door and she said "Mom, are you okay" and I said "I'm fine, sweetie" and we both knew I was lying. I cried on I-75 South between Cleveland and Ooltewah. The kind of cry where you have to pull off at a Pilot and sit in the parking lot for 20 minutes because you can't see the road. I got home at 9:42 PM. I sat at my kitchen table. I ate two crackers because I hadn't really eaten since lunch and I drank a glass of water and I went to bed. I didn't sleep. I want to tell you what I was thinking that night, lying in the dark in my own bedroom at 56 years old. I was thinking that the wedding in April was going to be a humiliation. That Megan's photographer was going to catch me limping down the aisle on the way to my own daughter's ceremony. I was thinking that I had told myself a story for 15 years that I was just unlucky with knees, that I had bad genes, that it was the second pregnancy that did it, that it was the long days standing over patients, that it was running in my 30s. All of those stories. None of them had ever made the knees better. They had only made me feel less ashamed about the knees not getting better. I was thinking that Cooper was 6 and he had seen me as broken before he was old enough to see me as anything else, and that was going to be his memory of me when he grew up. Broken grandma. The one who couldn't climb four steps. I cried again. Just lying there. Quietly. Then I fell asleep. Three weeks later I was at a continuing education conference in Nashville. You have to do these every couple of years for the hygienist license. Two day thing at the Gaylord. Most of us treat it like a vacation. You go to the seminars in the morning and you have wine in the lobby at night and you catch up with people you went to school with. I was sitting in the lobby on the second night with a glass of pinot grigio when I heard somebody say my name. "Diane Pruitt, I will be damned." I looked up. Renee Castellano. I hadn't seen Renee in probably 11 years. We were in hygiene school together at Chattanooga State in 1990. We were friends. Not best friends. Just the kind of friends where you sat next to each other in the periodontal class and you complained about the same instructor and you ate lunch in the same student lounge. After graduation she went up to Nashville to work and I stayed in Chattanooga. We sent Christmas cards for a few years and then we stopped because that's what happens. Renee was 56. Same as me. We were in the same class. But Renee did not look 56. I'm not saying she looked 30. I'm saying she looked like a healthy, happy 56. Her skin was good. Her eyes were bright. She moved like a woman who had no quiet pain. She walked across the lobby toward me and she didn't favor anything. She didn't compensate. She didn't take the stairs to the lounge with that two-second hesitation at every step that I'd been doing for so long I'd forgotten I was doing it. She hugged me and I was a wreck before I even got her name out. "Renee. You look. You look so good." She laughed. "Diane, you look like you've been through it." I burst into tears in the Gaylord Opryland lobby in front of two women I didn't know and a bellhop. To Renee's credit she didn't make a thing of it. She just sat down next to me and she got the bartender to bring me a water and a napkin and she waited until I could talk again. I told her about the Cracker Barrel. I told her about Cooper. I told her about Megan's wedding in April. I told her about everything I'd tried. The glucosamine. The turmeric. The cortisone. The physical therapy with 26 year old Brittany. The bone broth. The knee sleeves stacked two at a time. Renee listened the whole way through. Then she said "Diane, can I tell you something. And can you promise me you'll actually listen and not do what we both do, which is nod and forget." "I promise." "Two years ago I was where you are. Worse. I had stopped going to my granddaughter's soccer games because the bleachers were killing me. I had cancelled a trip to Charleston with my sisters because I couldn't face the airport. I was 54 years old and I was making decisions like an 84 year old and I knew it." "What did you do." She told me. She told me her son in law is a researcher at Vanderbilt. Not a doctor. A researcher. He works on cellular metabolism. She said he sat her down at his kitchen table in Brentwood one Sunday afternoon and he drew her a picture on the back of a Domino's pizza box. He drew a little engine. He drew a construction site. He said "Mom, here's what's happening to your knees." Then he explained it to her and she explained it to me right there in the Gaylord lobby with her finger drawing on a cocktail napkin. It went like this. The cells in your joints are alive. They aren't just structural. They aren't just cartilage and cushion. They're living cells that have to do work. They have to maintain the cartilage. They have to keep the joint lubricated. They have to manage inflammation. Every single day. That's their job. And to do that work they need energy. Actual cellular energy. Not metaphorical. The cells need fuel to do their job, the same way a construction site needs power to run the saws and the lifts. The fuel comes from tiny engines inside every cell called mitochondria. The mitochondria are what turn the food you eat and the oxygen you breathe into cellular energy. Here's the part Renee's son in law said is the part nobody talks about. As you get older, and as your body goes through 30 years of stress and processed food and not enough sleep and pregnancies and pollution and the kind of life all of us actually live, the mitochondria slow down. They wear out. They get sluggish. They make less cellular energy than they used to. And the cells that feel it first are the ones that have the hardest jobs. The joint cells. They're trying to maintain cartilage and manage inflammation and keep things lubricated, and they don't have enough power to do all of it. So they start cutting corners. The cartilage gets thinner. The inflammation goes unmanaged. The lubrication drops. Now imagine, Renee said, that you've got a construction site that's running out of power. The framers can't run their saws. The roofers can't run their nail guns. The cement mixer is barely turning. What do you do. You don't deliver more lumber. You don't keep dropping pallets of materials at the gate. You fix the power. She said her son in law looked at her and he said "Mom, you've been delivering lumber to a job site with no power for 15 years. The glucosamine is lumber. The turmeric is lumber. The cortisone is lumber. None of it does anything if there's no power to use it." I'm telling you. I sat there in that lobby and I felt 15 years of frustration finally get explained to me in two sentences. You don't deliver more lumber. You fix the power. "So what did you do." "He gave me amla." I said "What." "Amla. A.M.L.A. It's a fruit from India. Indian gooseberry. They've been using it for 3,000 years for joints and energy. He found a brand called Alevia that makes a standardized extract of it." I made a face. I'm sorry but I did. A fruit. A berry from India. After everything I'd tried. After cortisone shots in both knees twice. A berry. Renee saw the face and she laughed. "I know. I made that exact same face. He didn't care. He said Mom, this is what the research is on. Amla activates a pathway in your body called AMPK. Think of AMPK as the master switch for your mitochondria. When AMPK is active, the mitochondria can produce cellular energy more efficiently. That's the power coming back to the construction site. He said amla also has one of the highest antioxidant profiles ever measured in a food, which matters because the same oxidative stress that wore the mitochondria down in the first place keeps wearing them down." "How long did it take." "About 5 weeks before I noticed anything. Then 9 weeks before I really noticed. Then by 4 months I went up the bleachers at my granddaughter's soccer game without thinking about it." "Without thinking about it." "Without thinking about it, Diane." I sat there. I want to tell you what was going through my head. I was thinking about all the times I'd lied to myself that the next thing was going to work. The next bottle. The next protocol. The next supplement Cheryl raved about. I had a graveyard of half empty bottles under my bathroom sink at home and every single one of them was lumber. Just lumber. Delivered to a job site that didn't have the power to use it. I was thinking about Cooper on the porch. I was thinking about Megan in April. "What's it called again." "Alevia. A.L.E.V.I.A. Their amla one. Let me find it." She pulled out her phone and she found the website and she texted me the link. I still have the text. It's from October 14 at 9:47 PM. The link was alevia.com/amla/33. I ordered it that night in my room at the Gaylord. 90 days money back. Two capsules a day. Made in the USA. Free shipping. Three bottles came in the mail four days later when I was already back in Chattanooga. I'd like to tell you I felt it on day three. I didn't. Week one. Nothing. Week two. Nothing. Week three. I was getting out of my car in the Publix parking lot on Gunbarrel and I stood up and there was no sound from my right knee. There's a sound my right knee has been making for two years when I stand up out of a low seat. A kind of pop click thing. I'd stopped noticing it. It didn't make the sound. I stood there in the Publix parking lot and I crouched down and stood up again on purpose to test it. No sound. I crouched down a third time. No sound. A woman walking by with a baby in a carrier looked at me like I was insane. I didn't care. Week 5 I climbed the stairs at the office without using the railing. I clean teeth on the second floor of a building on Brainerd Road that has stairs and an elevator. I've been taking the elevator for 6 years. That Tuesday I took the stairs because I'd been talking to my receptionist Tonya and we kept talking as we walked and I forgot to stop at the elevator. I just kept walking. I went up the stairs while talking about her son's wrestling tournament and I didn't notice I was doing it until I was at the top. Tonya didn't notice either. That was the moment I understood Renee. Without thinking about it. Week 8 I went on a walk with Allison and Cooper at Greenway Farm in Hixson. A long walk. Like a mile and a half. We went all the way to the river and back. Cooper found a rock he liked and I bent down to look at it with him and I didn't have to hold onto anything to stand back up. Cooper didn't say anything about it. Why would he. He's 6. He just thought I was his grandma. But Allison saw. She watched me stand up off that ground without holding anything. And she didn't say a word. She just stared at me for a second and then she looked away and kept walking and I knew she'd seen it. Week 12 Megan called from Atlanta on a Saturday morning. "Mom. The wedding planner is asking about the mother daughter dance. Like, the song. And I told her, I don't know if Mom can do a dance, you know with the. With the. So can you just text me what you want me to tell her." I sat with the phone for a second. Then I said "Megan. Pick the song you actually want." There was a long pause. She said "Mom." She said "Mom, are you doing okay." I said "I'm doing okay, baby." She cried. I cried. We sat on the phone for 11 minutes and we picked the song. It's an old one. Carole King. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow." Her dad and I used to dance to it. She wanted it for me. So look. I'm not going to tell you what Alevia Amla is going to do for you. I don't know you. I don't know your knees. I don't know what you've already tried. I'm a dental hygienist from Chattanooga and I'm not a doctor and I'm not a scientist and the only thing I can tell you with certainty is what happened to me after 15 years of delivering lumber to a job site that didn't have the power to use it. What I can tell you is the research on amla and AMPK and mitochondrial function is real. You can read it. Renee's son in law reads papers for a living and he gave it to his own mother. That mattered to me. What I can tell you is Alevia ships free. It's made in the USA. It's just standardized amla extract, no kitchen sink formulation. Two capsules a day. That's the whole protocol. What I can tell you is they have a 90 day money back guarantee. Three bottles. If after three months you don't feel anything, you send the empties back and you get every dollar. What I can tell you is here's where you go. 👉 alevia.com/amla/33 P.S. Cooper turned 7 in February. We went up to Knoxville for his birthday. Same Cracker Barrel on I-75. Same four steps. I walked up them holding his hand and I didn't even register the steps were there. When we got to the top he didn't say anything because the steps weren't a thing anymore. They were just steps. That's the part that gets me. He doesn't remember asking me if I was broken. He won't remember. But I will. And that's why the steps not being a thing is the thing. P.P.S. The 90 day money back guarantee is real and it's on all three bottles. Not a sample. Three full 30 day bottles. They want you to do the full 90 because they know what Renee told me, which is that the mitochondria don't wake up in a week. They wake up over months. You give it the months. If at the end of three months nothing's happening, you ship the empties back to the address on the bottle and you get your money. Every dollar. The risk is on them. That's why I ordered it. Because I had three months of nothing-to-lose left in me, and that turned out to be enough. P.P.P.S. Renee, if you're reading this somehow, I picked the song. Will You Love Me Tomorrow. Megan picked it for me. We danced to it at the Westin Buckhead on April 18th and I didn't sit down once the whole reception. Not once. Thank you. Thank you for being in the lobby that Tuesday. Thank you for being honest about your knees. Thank you for texting me the link. You gave me back the wedding. 👉 alevia.com/amla/33