Melissa Hayes

Everyone with joint issues needs to see this ☝️

My best friend of twenty-eight years quit her daily anti-inflammatory in July. She was dead of a heart attack by Halloween. We toasted her around the fire. I'm writing this on my back porch at 11 PM the night before opening weekend. There are four chairs around the fire pit at the cabin this year instead of five. The paddle she always brought hasn't been in the water. It leaned against the dock post all weekend in October and nobody touched it. It's still at the cabin. If you're a woman over 50 with arthritis who takes something for her knees every morning, or you know someone who does, please read this whole thing. I know it's long. I know your phone is buzzing. I know there's other things to do. Eight months ago I would have torn up every magazine and inbox I had to find what I'm about to tell you. Barb Henderson was my best friend for twenty-eight years. We met at a craft show in Indiana in 1996. From that fall on, we went up to a cabin in Wisconsin every opening weekend with three other women, while our husbands disappeared into their tree stands. Twenty-eight Octobers. Same five chairs around the same fire pit. Same routine, the canoes out on the lake at first light and the fire going by dark. Barb brought her paddle. She'd been bringing the same paddle for twenty-eight years. Last July, she stopped paddling. By October, Barb was in the hospital. Barb went in for a routine physical on June 21st last year. She was 59. She felt good. Fourteen years of arthritis in both knees and two naproxen every morning, and the woman could still get herself down into a canoe and back out again at 59. She still carried the cooler up from the dock by herself. She told me at breakfast the morning of the appointment that she was only going because her husband had been pestering her for six months. Three days later her doctor called her at the shop. Top number 156. Bottom number 94. "Your blood pressure is up, Barb. We need to talk about your daily anti-inflammatory." Barb called me from her truck that night. I was the first person she told. Not her husband. Me. She said, "Doc says I have to quit. Completely. No exceptions. They want to re-check in three months." I said, "What are you going to do?" She said, "I'm going to quit, hon. What else can I do?" She called her husband. She drove home. She threw every painkiller in the house into the kitchen trash. The naproxen. A bottle of Aleve she kept in her purse. A bottle of Advil her daughter had left in the truck. Two economy bottles of ibuprofen from Costco in the garage. I heard about it from her husband months later. He said it was over inside an hour. He said he stood in the doorway watching her do it and he didn't know what to say to her so he didn't say anything. For 102 days, Barb didn't take a single painkiller. Not at the Fourth of July cookout I hosted. Not at her sister-in-law's retirement party in August. Not at our preseason cabin meeting in September when the four of us sat around my kitchen table for three hours and Barb stood at the counter the whole time, because getting up out of a chair in front of everybody was the part she couldn't face. She stopped going to her Friday line dancing with the girls from the shop because she couldn't dance on those knees anymore and she couldn't sit there on a bench watching it. She told me on the phone in early September that she felt like she'd lost a piece of herself. She took glucosamine. Her doctor had said it wouldn't hurt to try. The bottle sat on the windowsill above her kitchen sink, next to her multivitamin and a bottle of fish oil her husband had bought her. She walked two miles every morning before opening the shop, bad knees and all. She dropped twenty pounds in those three months. The woman bought a juicer. Barb. With a juicer. I still can't picture it. She did every single thing her doctor told her to do. The follow-up was on September 30th. Blood pressure: 150 over 92. She had given up the pills, the Friday line dancing, three social events, and a piece of her identity for ninety days. Her blood pressure dropped six points. She called me from her truck the same afternoon. She sat in her truck in the doctor's parking lot for forty minutes before she could drive home. She said, "Melissa, I gave up everything. Everything. And it didn't work." I told her to give it time. I told her the doctor said six months. I told her to keep walking, keep juicing, keep at it. I told her I'd see her at the cabin in three weeks. October 18th. Cabin weekend. Four of us drove up Friday. Barb drove up Saturday because she'd had to work a half day at the shop. She showed up at the cabin at 4 PM looking gray. Not a touch off. Gray. Like somebody had drained the color out from under her skin. I thought it was the cabin light at first. By dinner she was rubbing her jaw and holding her left arm. She laughed it off. Said she'd pulled something carrying the cooler up from the dock. By 11 PM she was doubled over on the cabin couch. I drove her to the ER in Eau Claire at 2 AM. The other girls followed in Barb's truck. The ER admitted her at 4:15 AM. The doctor was young. Couldn't have been thirty-five. He looked at Barb's bloodwork and his face shifted in a way I can't unsee. Troponin 18,400. Heart pumping at 20 percent. Massive heart attack. Barb said, "But I quit the naproxen three months ago." The young doctor said, "I know, Mrs. Henderson. I'm so sorry." Barb spent ten days in the ICU. I drove home on Sunday and drove back to Eau Claire on Tuesday with her husband. We took turns sitting with her. The other girls from the cabin came up on Thursday. I learned things about the heart I never wanted to know. I learned that when a heart gets too weak to pump, the blood stops reaching everything else that runs on it, the kidneys, the lungs, the brain. They call it cardiogenic shock. It means the woman you've sat around a fire with for twenty-eight years stops being her. She looks at you like she's trying to place you. On Day 5, Barb asked me three times in fifteen minutes if I'd remembered to feed the dog. She doesn't have a dog. Her dog died in 2011. The nurse explained one of the numbers on the whiteboard. She said it was something called CRP. CRP is a blood test any doctor can order at a regular physical. She told us it measures how much inflammation is running loose in the body, the fire underneath everything else on that board. She said normal is under 3. Barb's was 14. She said at this stage it was the number that explained how she got there. Nobody had ever run it. Not once in fourteen years of appointments for her knees. It took a heart attack for anyone to measure it. Day 7 her kidneys started failing. The doctors talked about a heart pump. A transplant. Then they talked about her not being a candidate because of how fast she was crashing. Then they stopped talking about transplants. Day 9 her lungs filled up until she sounded like she was breathing through a wet towel. They drained 1.8 liters of fluid from around her lungs. The nurse called it a pleural effusion. Day 10. October 27th. 5:42 AM. I was in the family room down the hall. Her husband had asked me to drive him up the night before because he didn't want to drive home alone if something happened. A doctor I'd never seen walked in. I knew. I drove her husband home at 8 AM. The juicer was still on the kitchen counter. The walking shoes were by the back door. The glucosamine was on the windowsill above the sink, next to the multivitamin. Her paddle, the one she'd brought up to the cabin and never used, was leaning against the dock post still. I went back up the following weekend to clean out her bunk and I left the paddle where it was. It's still there. The funeral was November 8th. We carried her. Five chairs at the cabin became four. After the funeral I tried to go back to normal. I couldn't. Because every time I opened my phone I saw women from the cabin, women at the salon, women at church my age, posting things in the local Facebook groups. "Doc says my blood pressure's up a bit and it might be the Aleve, anyone tried coming off it?" "Got my physical results back, borderline blood pressure, knees about the same, no big deal." And I knew. I knew some of them were doing exactly what Barb did. Quitting. Eating clean. Walking. Juicing. Taking the glucosamine. And dying anyway. I couldn't just sit there. So I started reading. Not because I wanted to. Because if Barb gave up everything for nothing, and I can't save a single one of these women from what happened to her, then I can't live with that. I read for three weeks straight. Medical journals I barely followed. Arthritis forums. Studies out of Japan and Germany. And one thing kept showing up that no doctor ever explained to Barb. The reason Barb's numbers didn't move is that quitting takes away one strain. It does not put out the fire. The thing that was burning was inflammation. Arthritis was never just in her knees. It's a fire that starts in the joint and runs through the whole body. Every flare, every bad week, every morning she held the dresser to get her feet under her, all of it was the same fire working on her cartilage and her arteries at the same time. Your heart cannot do its job with that fire in its walls. And her pill never touched it. There are two things happening in an arthritic knee. The pain you feel. And the damage underneath it. They are not the same thing. The pain is the alarm. Underneath it, the joint is releasing enzymes that eat away the cartilage. The pill silences the alarm. It never stops the enzymes. And the fire feeding those enzymes keeps burning, in the knee and everywhere else. I'm not telling you to throw your pills in the trash. Barb threw hers out because her doctor told her to, and that's the only way anyone should. A bad day is a bad day, and that's between you and your doctor. But understand what they are. They quiet the alarm. They never stop the fire. And taken every morning, year after year, they add their own strain to the very heart that fire is already working on. Her doctor told her the pill was pushing her pressure up. Here is what nobody told her. Women who take a daily anti-inflammatory for their joints are up to 50% more likely to have a heart attack than a woman the same age who doesn't. And the risk can start in the very first week. By the time Barb sat down at her physical at 59, the fire had been working on her arteries for fourteen years, and two naproxen every morning had kept the alarm quiet the whole time. Her heart wasn't straining because of the naproxen alone. It was straining because fourteen years of fire had been stiffening the arteries it pumped through. The same two pills she'd handled fine at 45 were landing at 59 on a heart that was already fighting for every beat. Read that again. The pill didn't change. Her arteries did. And here is why quitting alone didn't save her. Stopping the pills took one weight off her heart. It does not put out a fire that is already burning. The fire was fourteen years deep by the time the doctor told her to quit. The damage was already cascading. The juicer, the walking, the glucosamine, those things take a little strain off. They do not touch the fire. That's why her numbers wouldn't move. She gave up everything she loved to slow the bleeding from a wound that was already inside her. I sat with that for four days at the cabin by myself. I drove up there alone after Thanksgiving and I sat in front of the fire pit with her paddle leaning against the dock post down the hill in front of me and I read studies on my phone until the battery died. When I got home I called my own doctor. Not Barb's. Mine. A woman who's been my doctor for twelve years. I trust her. I told her the whole story. I asked her what was on Barb's windowsill above the sink. She said, "Glucosamine?" I said yes. She said, "Melissa, glucosamine is building material for the cartilage you still have. It cannot do anything about the fire that's eating it. It hands lumber to a house that's still burning. It does not put the fire out." Then she said it again: Glucosamine patches the walls. It does not put anything out. I asked her why nobody had given Barb something that would actually put out the fire. She was quiet for a long time. "Because we don't prescribe supplements. And the one thing I've seen actually bring that CRP number down isn't a prescription." I asked her what it was. "Anthocyanins," she said. "The compound in tart cherries." I drove from her office to the Walgreens on the way home. I stood in the supplement aisle for almost an hour. Glucosamine in three different brands. Turmeric capsules in a bottle with a leaf on it. Collagen powder in a tub. A thirty-day "joint repair" kit with seven different bottles in it. Multivitamins with "joint support" on the label. Store-brand tart cherry capsules, $13.99, the cheap stuff. I bought the tart cherry capsules. I took them for two weeks. My next checkup came back unchanged. So I started reading again. And what I found made me throw the bottle in the trash. Heat destroys anthocyanins. The powder in that capsule was heat-dried before it was ever bottled, the same way the grocery-store juice is boiled so it survives six months on a shelf. By the time either one reaches the aisle, what mattered is already gone. You're paying $13.99 for red dust. Cold-pressed bypasses that. Cold-pressed never touches heat. I had been doing the right thing in the wrong form. I was furious. I'm still furious. About three weeks after that, I was scrolling Facebook on a Saturday morning. There's a private group I'm in for women over 50 with arthritis in the upper Midwest. One of the women posted a long letter her husband had written. His sister had gone through almost exactly what Barb went through. Quit her arthritis pills after a doctor's call. Same protocol. Numbers barely moved. She'd then found a cold-pressed tart cherry extract, stayed off the pills like her doctor said, and her blood pressure went from 146 over 92 to 124 over 79 in eleven weeks. I read that post six times. I started looking into what she took. What I learned is that there are four things a real tart cherry has to be at the same time, or it's not worth your money. It has to be an extract. Not a powder. Not a "blend." That's where the anthocyanins are concentrated, the compounds that work upstream, on the switch that lights the fire in the first place. The same fire that read 14 on Barb's whiteboard in the ICU. Not a vitamin. The actual compound. It has to be a real dose. 3,600 milligrams equivalent per serving. That's the kind of dose the research actually used. The extract goes after the fire. The dose makes sure enough of it gets there. Without it, the fire just keeps burning in the walls of your arteries no matter how much weight you drop on a juicer. It has to list every amount. No proprietary blends. So you can see what's actually in there instead of trusting a picture of a cherry on the front of the bottle. And it has to be cold-pressed. Because heat kills the anthocyanins before they ever reach the capsule. Four things. All four. At the same time. Cold-pressed. I went back through every bottle I'd ever bought at Walgreens. Not one of them did all four. Most of them did one. The expensive ones did two. None of them were cold-pressed. The only one I could find that hit all four is called GoodGrove. Made in the USA. Capsules. Two capsules in the morning. They put a 90-day money-back guarantee on it. If it doesn't work for you, you get every penny back, no questions asked. I almost didn't order it. After everything. After the Walgreens aisle. After the glucosamine on Barb's windowsill. After watching what happened to a woman who did everything right. But the four of us at the cabin this year are all over 55. Two of us still take the same pills Barb took. And my younger sister Dana, 54, same bad knees, came back from her physical in February with a blood pressure of 146 over 92 and the same conversation Barb got. "It's the naproxen. You need to stop. Completely. We'll re-check in three months." I ordered six bottles. One for Dana. One for me. Three for the girls at the cabin. One for Barb's sister who lives in Texas. I sent Dana's bottle without asking. Wrote a note. Said, "Take this every morning. Seriously, just do it." Dana came off the naproxen, same as Barb. Same doctor's orders. But she took the capsules every morning with her coffee. She had not changed her diet. She had not started walking. Her follow-up was five weeks ago. Blood pressure: 128 over 81. Down from 146 over 92. In ten weeks. Without the juicer. Without changing one thing about her life except two capsules with her morning coffee. She called me from her car in the parking lot. My younger sister. 54 years old. She said, "Melissa, I think Barb died because nobody told her about this." I had to hang up. Then there's the Facebook sister-in-law. 56 years old. 146 over 92 down to 124 over 79 in eleven weeks. She had come off her pills too. My friend Marcy at the cabin. 58. Borderline blood pressure at her last physical. Started taking it eight weeks ago. She says the dull ache she'd had in her right knee for two years, the one her doctor told her was "probably just wear and tear," is gone. She says her afternoon energy crash at 2 PM is gone. Barb's husband takes it now. Two of Barb's sisters take it. The girls at the salon pass it around. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I'm a 57-year-old woman who owns a small hair salon in central Illinois and lost her best friend in October for nothing. I'm not getting a dime from this. I have no relationship with the company. I'm writing this at 11 PM on the porch the night before opening weekend because the cabin opens in eight hours and there's going to be four chairs again and I cannot stop thinking about my sister Dana and whether she'd have been the next chair if she hadn't gotten that bottle when she did. Here's what I know because I watched it. Quitting takes away one strain. It does not put out the fire. Glucosamine patches the cartilage you still have. It does not put out the fire that's eating it. Heat kills what's in a cheap capsule. Cold-pressed bypasses that entirely. Barb gave up everything she loved for 102 days, and it didn't save her, because nobody told her what was actually burning. I wish someone had told us before June 21st of last year. Before the physical. Before the pill bottles in the kitchen trash. Before 102 days of standing at the counter. Before October 27th at 5:42 AM. Not hiding it. Putting it out. That's the line that finally made it click for me. Read the page. Not for me. For whoever you'd leave behind. 👇 https://trygoodgrove.com/cherry Barb used to say at the cabin, "You can't unring the bell, but you can stop ringing it." You can stop ringing it. Melissa Hayes, age 57 Central Illinois P.S. The paddle is still leaning against the dock post at the cabin. None of us can bring ourselves to use it. None of us can bring ourselves to take it home. Opening weekend is in eight hours and the four of us will sit around the fire pit and the fifth chair will be empty and we'll say her name when we light the first fire. $63,000 in hospital bills. $11,200 for the funeral. 102 days of Barb giving up everything she loved for six points of blood pressure. And a bottle that costs less than our share of the cabin weekend. Up to 50% off on the official page. Please. Don't let your best friend's chair be empty next year. 👇 https://trygoodgrove.com/cherry P.P.S. I don't work for GoodGrove. They don't know I exist. I'm writing this at 11 PM because I'm leaving for the cabin at 5 AM and I cannot sleep. Dana is meeting me at the cabin tomorrow with her most recent blood pressure numbers in her back pocket. Barb won't be there. Send this to whoever you sit around a fire pit with in October. Send it to your best friend. Send it to your sister. Send it to your mother. Send it to the woman who's paddled beside you for twenty-eight years. Even if she hasn't picked up a paddle in a year.