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My son Dale repaved my driveway for Mother's Day this year, and I stood barefoot on the wet concrete to leave a handprint like I did when he was 4, and that's when I realized I couldn't feel the warmth. The concrete was 78 degrees. The sun had been on it for almost two hours. Dale had finished the pour just before lunch and he'd called me out to the front porch with that big stupid grin of his and said, "Mama, get out here, you gotta put your hand in it." I walked down the front steps barefoot because that's how I did it the first time, in 1991, when he was a little boy with his cheeks still round. I knelt down at the edge of the slab. I put my hands flat on the surface. And I felt nothing. Not heat. Not cold. Not the rough wet grit of the concrete. Just pressure, the dull pressure of pushing something with the bottom of my palm. Like wearing a thick winter glove and trying to feel a doorknob through it. I pressed harder. Tried to make my hands work. Nothing. Dale was crouching next to me with his phone out trying to take a picture and he didn't see my face, and I'm grateful for that, because if he had seen my face right then he would have known. I made my hands smile. That's the only way I can describe it. I made my hands do the thing they were supposed to do. Pressed them down. Held them. Counted to three. Lifted them up. Looked at the prints in the wet concrete. Then I stood up and I told him it was perfect, baby, just perfect, and I went inside and I sat on the closed lid of the toilet in my downstairs bathroom and I cried so quietly that even Dale, who was 25 feet away on my porch, couldn't hear me. I'm 63 years old. My name is Patrice. I've lived in the same house off Chapman Highway in Knoxville for 38 years. And the moment I knelt on that concrete and couldn't feel the warm slab my son had poured for me, I knew I was losing pieces of myself I hadn't even noticed leaving. Let me back up. Dale is my middle child. He's 38. He owns a small concrete company that does residential pours all over east Tennessee. Driveways. Patios. Pool decks. The kind of guy with permanently grey hands and a sun-bleached company hat and a Ford F-250 that smells like coffee and silica dust. He's a good son. Calls me every Sunday. Brings his two girls over once a month so they can wreck my couch cushions and eat the cinnamon rolls I keep in the freezer just in case. My driveway had been cracking for about six years. Big spiderwebs at the top by the garage. A whole section near the mailbox that had heaved up about an inch and a half. Every time Dale came over he'd shake his head at it and say, "Mama, I'm gonna do this for you one of these springs." This was the spring. He showed up on the Saturday before Mother's Day with three guys and a Bobcat and a delivery truck, and they tore the old driveway out by 11 AM, prepped the base, laid the rebar, and poured a fresh slab by lunchtime. It was the nicest thing anybody had done for me in years. And I couldn't feel it. I want to tell you when this thing started, but I have to be honest. I don't know. That's the worst part. It snuck up on me so slowly that I can't point to a Tuesday in March of some particular year and say, "There. That's where it started." It just got worse one piece at a time. I'd been having trouble with my feet for maybe four years. The first thing I noticed was that I'd stub my toe on the corner of my bed frame at night and not really feel it. I'd hear it, that little wood thunk. I'd see the toe later, sometimes a little purple. But the moment of stubbing didn't hurt the way stubbing your toe is supposed to hurt. I told my doctor about it at my annual physical maybe three years ago. She's a nice young woman, Dr. Hayes. She asked me to walk a line, heel to toe. I did fine. She tapped my knees with the little hammer. They reacted. She poked the bottom of my foot with a thing that looked like a fishing line. I felt some of it, missed some of it. She said the words I hate now, looking back. "Patrice, some of this is just aging." Aging. She said it kindly. She didn't mean any harm by it. But that word, "aging," has been used against women in my body for 200 years to explain away every single thing that goes wrong with us, and I want you to remember that as you read the rest of this story. She said it could be a touch of neuropathy. Said to watch my blood sugar, even though my blood sugar has always been fine. Said to wear good shoes. Said to come back if it got worse. It got worse. Of course it got worse. The next year I started having trouble at night when I'd get up to use the bathroom. The carpet in my hallway felt strange under my feet. Not painful. Not really anything. Like walking on cold sand through socks. I'd touch the wall to keep my balance even though I wasn't actually unsteady. I just couldn't quite tell where the floor was. Then it started in my hands. This one I noticed at my church. I sing alto in the choir at Mount Olive Baptist on Western Avenue. Have for 22 years. We hold hymnals. Two hundred Sundays a year, I've held a hymnal in my left hand and turned pages with my right hand and sung "Blessed Assurance" and "How Great Thou Art" and "I'll Fly Away." Last summer I dropped the hymnal three times in one service. Just slipped right out of my fingers. The first time, our director Earlene gave me a look from the front row. The second time, my friend Beverly next to me leaned over and whispered, "You alright, baby?" The third time, I just held the book in both hands the rest of the service and pretended I'd been doing that all along. I went home that Sunday afternoon and I sat at my kitchen table and I tried to pick up a dime off the placemat. I could see the dime. I could put my fingertips on the dime. I could not feel the dime well enough to pick it up. It just slid around under my fingers like it was greased. That was the day I started hiding things. I want you to hear that, because I think a lot of women my age are doing it and not telling anybody. I started hiding it. I stopped wearing earrings because I couldn't feel the backs to put them on right. I stopped buttoning the small buttons on my church blouses and started wearing zip-up sweaters instead. I stopped picking up the change at the grocery store and just left it on the counter for the cashier to push back at me. I stopped going to the nail place because I couldn't tell whether the technician was hurting me or not, and she'd look up sometimes and ask if I was okay, and I'd nod because I didn't know what else to do. I stopped walking barefoot in my own house, because my feet would step on a balled-up sock or a hair tie my granddaughter Aniyah had left on the floor and I wouldn't know until I looked down and saw it. I stopped reaching into the back of the dryer to grab the last sock, because once I burned the inside of my wrist on the metal drum and didn't feel it until I saw the red mark. I stopped a lot of things. And the whole time, Dr. Hayes was telling me my A1C was fine and my B12 was fine and there was nothing wrong, and that some of this was just aging, and that I should wear good shoes. I knew it wasn't just aging. A 63 year old woman can stub her toe in the dark and feel it. A 63 year old woman can pick up a dime. A 63 year old woman who has been a soprano then an alto in a Baptist choir for 22 years does not drop the hymnal three times in one service. Something was happening to my nerves. And nobody had any idea what to do about it. So I sat on the lid of the toilet on Mother's Day, after pretending to my son that his driveway felt perfect under my hands, and I cried, and I made a decision. I was going to find out what was happening to me. Even if my doctor wouldn't. That night I sat up in bed with my laptop and I typed in "loss of feeling in hands and feet aging not diabetes" and I went down a rabbit hole that ended at 2:47 in the morning with me having a different understanding of my body than I'd had at 9 PM. Here's what I learned. The cells in your nerves are some of the hungriest cells in your entire body. They need more cellular energy, what scientists call ATP, than almost any other cell type. Because nerves are doing a lot of work. They're maintaining their protective coating, called the myelin sheath. They're sending and receiving electrical signals all day long. They're keeping themselves alive and functional through a constant process of cellular maintenance. All of that work requires cellular energy. Cellular energy comes from the little power plants inside your cells called mitochondria. When you're young, your mitochondria work great. They produce all the cellular energy your nerves need to do their job. Sensation is sharp. Feedback is fast. Your fingers feel a dime. Your feet feel a warm slab of concrete. Your body is operating on full power. But over decades, mitochondria get worn down. Processed food wears them down. Stress wears them down. Toxins wear them down. Pollution wears them down. Certain medications wear them down. The plain old accumulation of oxidative damage that comes with being alive a long time wears them down. And when mitochondria start running on a deficit, who feels it first? The hungriest cells. Your nerve cells. Because they need the most cellular energy. So when the supply starts dropping, the nerves are first in line to feel the shortage. They can't quite keep up with maintaining the myelin sheath the way they used to. The electrical signals don't fire as cleanly. The feedback loops between your brain and your fingertips and your feet start dropping packets, like a bad phone connection. That's when feeling starts going. The tingling. The numbness. The "asleep" sensation that won't go away. The dropped hymnal. The dime that won't pick up. The warm concrete you can't feel. It's not aging. It's an energy problem. And here is the part that hit me so hard I had to close the laptop and put it on the nightstand and sit there in the dark. Every single thing I'd been told to try, every cream, every vitamin, every "just wear good shoes," none of it was addressing my mitochondria. I was being told to put thicker shoes on a house that had no electricity. I read for two more nights after that. Sleep was not happening. I was 63 years old and I had finally found a language for what was happening to me, and I was not going to let go of it. And on the third night, I found something called amla. It's a fruit. The Indian gooseberry. They've been using it in Ayurvedic medicine in India for thousands of years. They call it "the nurse," because of the way it supports the body. The research on amla is interesting. It contains compounds that have been studied for their ability to activate something called AMPK. AMPK is one of the master pathways your body uses to support mitochondrial function. When AMPK is active, mitochondria can produce cellular energy more efficiently. The way they did when you were younger. And amla also happens to have one of the highest natural antioxidant profiles ever measured in any food. Which matters, because the oxidative stress that wore your mitochondria down in the first place is still there, still working against you. Amla helps protect mitochondria from that damage while AMPK is helping them function better. It's a one two. Protection plus activation. And the cells that are most likely to start feeling the difference? The hungriest ones. The nerve cells. The ones in your fingertips and the soles of your feet. I sat there at 2:47 in the morning and I thought, my God. My God. I have been blaming my body for failing when my body has been running on a deficit nobody told me about. I want to be clear about something, because I'm a serious woman and I don't believe in fairy tales. Amla is not a cure. It's not a fix. It's not a magic berry. I don't want you reading this thinking that. What it does is support a pathway your body already has. Your body already knows how to support its mitochondria. Your body already knows how to send cellular energy to your nerves. It just needs the right input to do what it knows how to do. That's the part nobody had ever explained to me before. I ordered Alevia's Amla the next night. I went to alevia.com/amla/33 and I bought two bottles, because my niece Tasha who works in nutrition over at UT had told me on the phone the day before that small companies sell out, and to always order a backup. The bottles came on a Thursday. I started taking them Friday morning with my coffee. Two capsules. That's it. I want to tell you what happened, and I want to be honest about it, because there is too much lying about supplements in this country and I refuse to add to it. Week one, I didn't notice anything. That's normal. You don't repower a body in five days. Week two, I picked up a quarter out of the bottom of my purse without thinking about it. I want you to read that sentence again. I picked up a quarter out of the bottom of my purse without thinking about it. I'd been thinking about every single small object for two years. Every pen. Every key. Every grandkid's hair tie. I'd been bracing for the embarrassment, the dropped thing, the awkward second try. And one Wednesday afternoon at the Kroger checkout, I dug into the bottom of my purse, pinched a quarter between my thumb and finger, and put it on the counter, and only realized after I was back in the car that I had done it the old way. I sat in the parking lot and I cried. Week three, I noticed the carpet in my hallway felt like carpet again. Not cold sand through socks. Carpet. With texture and give and the warm familiar nap of a rug my late mother had picked out at a JCPenney in 1996. Week four, I held a hymnal in one hand for a full service at Mount Olive and turned the pages with my right hand the way I'd been doing it for 22 years, and Beverly didn't have to lean over once. I wept through "Blessed Assurance" that morning and Beverly thought it was just the spirit moving. It was the spirit moving. Just not the way she thought. Week seven was Aniyah's 7th birthday. She was running around my backyard barefoot, the way kids do, and she stopped on the patio and said, "Grandma, the bricks are HOT!" and she looked up at me with that question in her face that 7 year olds get when they realize the world is bigger than they thought. And I knelt down on those same bricks, on that same patio, and I put both my hands flat on them. And I felt them. Warm. Rough. Sun-baked. The little ridges where the mortar lined the seams. The slight grit of dust. The way the heat radiated up through my palms into my wrists. I felt my granddaughter's patio. I sat down right there on the bricks and I pulled her into my lap and I held her and I said, "Yes, baby. Yes they are. They are so hot." I'm 14 weeks in now. I called Dale last Sunday and I asked him if he could come over sometime and break up the corner of the driveway where my handprints are. I told him I wanted to do it again. Properly this time. He laughed at me. Said, "Mama, you can't break up a slab to redo a handprint, that's crazy." I told him I'd pay him. He's coming over next Saturday. Bringing a small sledgehammer. We're going to break up the corner with my old prints, and he's going to mix up a little patch of concrete, and I'm going to put my hands in it again. And this time I'll feel the warm wet of it. The grit. The cold of the cement before it cures. I'm getting it back. Piece by piece. The pieces I didn't know I was losing. If you've been hiding things, if you've stopped wearing earrings or buttoning small buttons or walking barefoot in your own house, if you've been told by a doctor that this is just aging and you've been believing it because what else can you do, I want you to hear me. It is not just aging. Your nerves are some of the hungriest cells in your body, and somewhere along the way the power got turned down. Not off. Down. And every cream and stocking and "good shoe" in the world isn't going to fix a power problem on the cellular level. What you need is to support the mitochondria that feed the nerves. That's what Alevia's Amla does. It supports AMPK. AMPK supports mitochondria. Mitochondria support your nerve cells. Your nerve cells start being able to do what they've always known how to do. And the world starts coming back to you. It comes back piece by piece. A quarter at the bottom of a purse. The carpet under your feet at night. A hymnal in one hand. A warm brick under your palm. Your son's driveway on a Mother's Day morning. Alevia's Amla has a 90 day money-back guarantee. Three full months. If you don't feel something coming back, you send the bottles back and you get every penny back. No questions. Nobody offered me a refund for the four years I spent thinking I was just getting old. Nobody offered me a refund for the hymnals I dropped. Nobody offered me a refund for the Mother's Day morning I knelt on my son's driveway and lied to his face because I couldn't feel his gift. Alevia gives refunds. That tells you who's confident in their product and who's just confident in the fact that you're stuck. 👉 alevia.com/amla/33 P.S. With me, it was small things first. The quarter. The carpet. The hymnal. Then bigger things. The patio. Aniyah in my lap. Walking barefoot through my own kitchen at 6 in the morning and feeling the kitchen tile cool under my feet for the first time in two years. You won't notice everything at once. You'll notice it the way you notice spring coming. Not the day it arrives. The week you realize it's already been here for a while. If you've stopped feeling things, you've adjusted. You've made the world smaller to fit. When the feeling starts coming back, the world starts getting bigger again. You'll remember what bigger feels like. P.P.S. Alevia's Amla has a 90 day money-back guarantee. 90 days. Three months. Longer than any cortisone shot lasted. Longer than any specialist appointment I waited six months to get into and got 11 minutes of conversation out of. If your nerves haven't started coming online in 90 days, every penny back. The specialist didn't offer me a guarantee. The vitamins from CVS didn't offer me a guarantee. The "just wear good shoes" advice didn't offer me a guarantee. Alevia does. Confidence lives in policy. P.P.P.S. Alevia is a small American company. They've sold out before. My niece warned me and I ordered two bottles anyway because I wasn't going to wait two weeks for the next batch. I keep one open, one waiting. Because I'm not going back to hiding the change at the grocery store. I'm not going back to dropping the hymnal. I'm not going back to lying to my son about a driveway. If you've been on the fence about this, go now. They currently have a buy 3 get 2 free deal that I used to stock up. Your nerves have been running on a deficit for years. Every week you wait, the deficit gets deeper. I waited four years. Don't wait four more. P.P.P.P.S. Do not forget about the 90 day money-back guarantee. You're risking nothing. I was risking the rest of my life with my granddaughter's hand in mine. 👉 alevia.com/amla/33