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I Was 61. My Hands Had Been Aching for Three Years. I'd Stopped Telling Anyone. Here's What I Tried Before I Gave Up Gardening for Good. I want to share what I did, because my sister asked me about it last month and I realized I'd never written any of it down. I'm 61. I live in a small house on a half-acre lot in central Ohio. I've been a gardener for thirty years. Not the casual kind. The serious kind. I have a vegetable patch in the back that runs the full length of the lot. I have three raised beds for tomatoes. I have a strawberry patch that took me four years to get right and that I'm still proud of. I have an herb garden by the back porch. Rosemary, thyme, oregano, three kinds of basil. The basil is an annual that I plant from seed every April. I have a flower bed along the side fence that I started in 1997 and have been adding to ever since. Coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, salvia, phlox, a small clump of irises that came from my mother's garden. I have a compost system that I built myself out of cedar in 2008 and that has been making me black gold ever since. Gardening is not what I do. Gardening is who I am. For the last three years, gardening has slowly been getting harder. I want to be careful about how I describe what's been happening. This isn't a story about arthritis. I'm not making any claims about what my body has or doesn't have. I'm describing what I've been feeling. And what I've been feeling is that, somewhere around the time I turned 58, my hands stopped being my hands. Not all at once. In small ways at first. My grip wasn't quite what it had been. I'd be opening a jar of pasta sauce and I'd have to put it down and try a different grip and try again. I dropped a coffee cup in 2022. It just slipped out of my hand. I stood at the kitchen sink staring at the broken pieces for a few minutes before I cleaned them up. I noticed I was using my non-dominant hand more often for small tasks. Twisting open a bottle of water with my left hand because my right hand wasn't really up to it. The mornings were the worst. I'd wake up and my hands would feel like they belonged to a different person. Stiff. Slow to wake up. Like wood instead of flesh. I'd run them under hot water at the bathroom sink for two or three minutes before they'd start to feel like mine again. I didn't tell anyone. I figured I was just getting older. I figured this was 58, then 59, then 60. I figured I'd been gardening for thirty years and the hands were just letting me know. It wasn't just the hands. My knees started talking to me when I stood up out of a chair. My lower back started talking to me when I bent over to weed. My shoulders started talking to me when I lifted a watering can. I'd been a person whose body just did things, without comment, for sixty years. Now I had a body that had opinions about everything. Standing up was an opinion. Sitting down was an opinion. Reaching for the salt was an opinion. Putting on a sock was an opinion. I had not been a person who took ibuprofen on a regular basis. I'd taken it after a long day of weeding. I'd taken it after I'd helped a neighbor move furniture. I'd taken it the few times in my life I'd had a bad headache. Around 60 it became a daily thing. Then it became a twice-a-day thing. I kept a bottle in the kitchen. I kept another one in the bathroom. I kept a small bottle in my gardening apron. I didn't think about it much. Until I started thinking about it. The thing that finally made me pay attention was the strawberry patch. I have a strawberry patch that I'm proud of. I told you that. Strawberry patches need a lot of work in the spring. You have to weed them carefully — strawberry roots are shallow and you can pull a plant out by accident if you're not careful. You have to mulch around the plants. You have to net them as the fruit starts to come in. Every spring for the last twenty years, I spent two full Saturdays getting the strawberry patch ready. Two summers ago — the summer I turned 60 — I did the work over four Saturdays instead of two. Last summer — the summer I turned 61 — I did it over six Saturdays. This past spring, I was looking at the patch in early April, and I caught myself thinking: I don't know if I can do this this year. I stood there in the path between the rows for about five minutes. The strawberries were already starting to flower. The patch had survived another winter. My body was the thing that had not. I didn't say it out loud. I didn't tell my husband. I didn't tell my sister. But I felt something quiet and hard settle in my chest. I was thinking about giving up the strawberry patch. A strawberry patch I had spent twenty years getting right. Because my body couldn't do what it had always done. I went inside that afternoon and sat at the kitchen table. I didn't make tea. I didn't put on the kettle. I just sat there. I thought about the strawberry patch. I thought about the flower bed by the side fence. I thought about the three tomato beds. I thought about the herb garden by the back porch. I thought about how all of it was going to have to be smaller, soon. Or stop entirely. I thought about a friend of mine — a woman named Patricia, who lives a few streets over and who used to garden the way I garden — who gave up her vegetable garden three years ago. She told me at the time that her body had told her it was time. She said it without bitterness. She said it the way you say something you've decided to accept. I had told myself at the time that I would never get there. I sat at my kitchen table that April afternoon and I realized I had been getting there for three years and hadn't admitted it. I want to tell you something about my husband. His name is John. He's 63. He's been my husband for 38 years. He's a quiet man. He'd been watching me struggle for the last few years and hadn't said anything because he respected me enough to wait until I was ready to talk about it. That afternoon, when he came home from work and found me at the kitchen table, he sat down across from me. He didn't ask what was wrong. He said: "Sue. Tell me when you're ready." I started crying. I told him about the strawberry patch. I told him about the hands. I told him about Patricia. I told him I was scared I was going to have to give up the garden. I told him I'd been taking ibuprofen twice a day for almost a year. I told him I hadn't told anyone. John didn't say anything for a long time. Then he said: "Have you talked to your doctor about any of this?" I said: "No." He said: "Will you?" I said: "Yes." He said: "Okay." He got up and made us dinner. We didn't talk about it the rest of the night. But I went upstairs that night and got my laptop out for the first time in about a year. I started reading. I'm not a researcher. I'm a retired bookkeeper for a small accounting firm. I read murder mysteries and gardening books. I do not read medical journals. But I read for about a month. I read about hands. I read about how the body, after a certain age, gets less efficient at the small housekeeping work it used to do without anyone noticing. I read about the body's natural antioxidant balance and how it shifts as the years pile up. I read about how a lot of people my age describe exactly what I'd been describing — stiff mornings, hands that don't feel like their own, joints that have opinions about everything. I read about a lot of things people add to their routines for general comfort and wellness as they age. Omega-3s. Turmeric. Boswellia. Ginger. Tart cherry. Glucosamine. Beetroot. The beetroot one surprised me. I'd thought of beets as something my grandmother used to pickle. Not as something worth taking seriously. I kept reading. What I came away understanding — and I'm not a doctor, take this for what it's worth — was that beetroot contains compounds called betalains. They support the body's natural antioxidant balance. They're the same compounds that give beets their deep red color. Beetroot has been studied for cardiovascular wellness, circulation, and recovery for a long time. I read for several more evenings. I read about how betalains are sensitive to processing. Heat-processing is faster and cheaper. Slower methods preserve more of the active compound. One brand name kept coming up in the threads I was reading. Rosabella. Small company. 1,300 milligrams per serving. Cold-pressed at low temperatures. Grown in Lancaster County, in a small farming community there. The thing that made me consider it seriously was that it wasn't positioned as a replacement for anything. I wasn't on much. A low-dose thyroid medication I'd been on for twelve years. That was the whole list. This wasn't about going off anything. It was about whether there was anything I could add to what I was already doing. It supports the body's natural antioxidant balance and overall wellness. Structure-function. Not a treatment for anything. You add it to what you're already doing. You don't replace your doctor's care. It just adds. I went to my doctor about ten days after that night at the kitchen table. I'd called the office the morning after. I told the nurse I wanted a longer appointment than the usual. I told her I'd been holding off on bringing some things up for a few years and I wanted to talk through all of them properly. She scheduled me in. I went on a Thursday morning. John came with me. He asked me at breakfast if he could, and I said yes. I hadn't wanted to do it alone. I told the doctor everything. The hands. The knees. The strawberry patch. The ibuprofen — both bottles of it. The way I'd been getting smaller, slowly, without telling anyone. He took it seriously. He didn't dismiss any of it. He didn't tell me I was just getting older. He examined my hands. He examined my knees. He listened to me. He ran additional bloodwork. He took x-rays of my hands and one knee. He scheduled me to come back two weeks later to go over the results. When we went back, he told me roughly this: he didn't see anything that required a new medication. He didn't see anything that required an intervention. He didn't see anything alarming. But he agreed with me that what I was experiencing was real. He told me a lot of women my age experience this — a slow, gradual loss of the comfort the body used to provide for free. He told me the standard panels don't always capture all of it. He told me the most important things were to keep moving, keep eating well, manage stress, stay active. He told me to ease off the ibuprofen and to use it only when I really needed it, not preventively. He told me to come back in three months and tell him how things were going. I asked him about the beetroot supplement. He nodded. He said it was a sensible thing to add. He said he had several patients my age who had added it to their routines and reported back that they felt steadier. He said there were no interactions with the thyroid medication. He told me to let him know how I was feeling at the next appointment. I ordered the bottle that afternoon. The bottle arrived about a week later. I opened it at the kitchen counter. I noticed the color. Deep, dark red. Almost purple. I'd read about the color. It was the visible marker of the active compound being intact. I set the bottle next to the coffee maker. The next morning I took two capsules with a glass of water before I had my coffee. I drank my coffee. I went out to the garden to look at the strawberry patch. I didn't feel anything that morning. I wasn't expecting to. These things don't work like a switch. The body needs more than one morning to respond to anything, and I wasn't expecting it to. I just kept going. Two capsules. Water. Coffee. The day. I'm going to be careful about how I describe what happened next. I know how it sounds when people tell stories about supplements. I'm not going to tell you anything dramatic happened in the first week. Nothing dramatic happened in the first week. About three weeks in, I noticed something. I was at the kitchen sink one morning, washing the breakfast dishes. I realized I was washing them with hot water. That sounds like nothing. But here's the thing — for the last two years, I'd been washing dishes with hot water specifically because the heat helped my hands feel less stiff. The hot water was a tool. It was something I was using to manage what my hands were doing. That morning, I was washing dishes with hot water and I noticed I wasn't really thinking about my hands. I was just washing dishes. I stood there at the sink for a minute with a soapy plate in my hand. I dried my hands. I held them out in front of me. They felt like my hands. Not in a dramatic way. In a regular way. The way they used to feel before I started keeping ibuprofen in three rooms of the house. I didn't say anything to John. I didn't make a big deal of it. I just made a note of it in the back of my head. A few weeks later, I was in the garden. I'd been working on the flower bed by the side fence. I'd been out there for about an hour. I realized I hadn't taken any ibuprofen that morning. I hadn't even thought about it. I went inside. I looked at the bottle by the kitchen sink. It hadn't been opened in five days. The bottle in the bathroom hadn't been opened in eight. The bottle in my gardening apron was still half full from a month before. I stood at the kitchen counter and looked at the bottle. I want to be precise about what I'm claiming. I'm not claiming the supplement made my hands stop hurting. I changed a lot of things at the same time. I'd finally talked to my doctor. I'd told John the truth. I'd started doing some gentle stretching in the morning that the doctor had shown me. I'd cut my evening glass of wine back to once a week. I'd started drinking more water. I'd been paying attention to my own body for the first time in years instead of telling it to be quiet. I can't separate one variable from another. What I can tell you is that something shifted, and the shift held. I want to tell you about the strawberry patch. I did the strawberry patch this past June. Three Saturdays. Same pace as I used to do it. I weeded the whole patch by hand. I mulched it. I netted it. When I was done on the third Saturday, I sat on the path between the rows. I took my gloves off. I looked at my hands. They were dirty. The way they used to be at the end of a Saturday in the garden. I didn't feel them. I mean — I felt them. They were on my body. They worked. But I wasn't feeling them the way I'd been feeling them for three years. They were just hands again. I sat on the path and cried for about five minutes. John came out the back door at some point. He saw me. He didn't come down. He just stood on the porch and waited until I was done. When I came back to the porch he handed me a glass of cold water. He said: "How was it?" I said: "It was the way it used to be." He said: "Good." He kissed the top of my head. That was the whole conversation. We're in October now. I had my three-month follow-up with my doctor about a month ago. I told him roughly what I'm telling you. I told him about the dishes. I told him about the strawberry patch. I told him about the ibuprofen bottles. He listened. He examined my hands. He asked me a few questions. He told me whatever I was doing, to keep doing it. He didn't change anything. He told me to come back at my regular six-month appointment. I walked out of that appointment feeling something I hadn't felt in a long time. I felt like I had been seen. Not just my numbers. The woman in the chair. I'm still taking the supplement. Two capsules every morning with water before my coffee. The bottle is by the coffee maker. It's part of the routine now. I don't think about it most mornings. I just take it. I'm in the garden most days. I'm pulling things out for winter now. I'm cleaning up the tomato beds. I'm cutting back the perennials. My hands are doing the work. I'm not pretending the hands are 25 again. They're not. I'm 61. There's a degree of stiffness in the morning that's just there now. But it's not the stiffness it was a year ago. It's the stiffness of a 61-year-old woman who's been gardening for thirty years. Not the stiffness of someone who's about to give up the garden. There's a difference. I'm not going to tell you the supplement did all of this. I told the truth. I told the doctor the truth. I told John the truth. I started moving the way the doctor told me to move. I cut back on the wine. I drank more water. I stopped using ibuprofen preventively. I paid attention. I added the supplement. I changed a lot of things at the same time. I can't separate one variable from another. What I can tell you is that something shifted, and the shift held. Here's what I'd say to anyone who's been quietly making themselves smaller because their body has been talking to them in ways they don't know what to do with. You're not imagining it. The things you're feeling are real. And "your bloodwork is fine" doesn't always mean you're fine. The standard panels measure a handful of things. The body is doing a hundred things they're not measuring. If you've been doing what you're supposed to do and something is still off, there might be something to be added — not something to be fixed. That's the reframe that helped me. Not "what's wrong with me." But "what does my body need help doing." Tell your doctor. Tell them everything. Don't decide for them whether something is worth mentioning. Let them decide. Tell whoever loves you. Don't carry it alone for three years the way I did. It doesn't make you stronger to carry it alone. If you want to add a beetroot supplement to what you're doing, call your doctor's office first. I cannot stress this enough. Especially if you're on any medication — for thyroid, for blood pressure, for anything — talk to your doctor before adding anything new. The brand I used is Rosabella. 1,300 milligrams per serving. Cold-pressed at low temperatures. Grown in Lancaster County. Two capsules with water in the morning. That's the whole protocol. I'm not a doctor. I'm not in healthcare. I'm a 61-year-old gardener in Ohio who almost gave up her strawberry patch and didn't. Take it for what it's worth. P.S. A few practical notes for anyone thinking about this. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked. That's a sensible policy for a supplement. It gives you time to actually see whether it does anything for you. I'd give it a few weeks at minimum before deciding anything. Bodies are different. Some people notice something within the first week or two. Others take longer. Mine was somewhere around the third week. Be patient with yours. P.P.S. I keep an extra bottle in the cabinet now. They're a small operation and the harvest is seasonal. I learned to stock up after the shipping took longer than I expected one month. I don't want to have a gap. P.P.P.S. A note about the doctor's office call. I'm going to come back to this because I think it's the part people are most tempted to skip. The temptation is to think: it's a supplement, it's not a drug, I don't need permission for a supplement. That's not why you call. You call because supplements can interact with medications. You call because your doctor knows things about your body that you don't. You call because if anything ever comes up later, you want your doctor in the loop on what you've been taking. I went one better than calling. I went in. I asked for a longer appointment than usual. I sat in the chair and told him everything I'd been holding back for three years. That appointment was the most important thing I did. The supplement was the second. P.P.P.P.S. My sister called me last month and asked me what I'd been doing. She'd seen me at our mother's 90th birthday in September and noticed I looked different. She'd been having her own stiff mornings for the last couple of years and hadn't told anyone. I told her roughly what I'm telling you here. She called her own doctor's office and made an appointment. She told me last week that she'd started the supplement about ten days ago. I told her to be patient. I told her to give it a few weeks. I told her to keep me posted. She's going to call me on Sunday. I'm not promising her anything. I'm just glad she made the appointment. P.P.P.P.P.S. One last thing. If you've been quietly counting the things you can't do anymore — the jars, the doorknobs, the stairs, the garden — and you've been telling yourself this is just what aging looks like — I want you to consider that it might not be. Or at least not entirely. I'd been counting for three years before I stopped. The counting added up to fear. And the fear made me smaller. I don't know what's going on with your body. I can't promise you anything. But I'd ask you to do what I did. Tell whoever loves you. Then call your doctor's office. Then ask the question — not "what's wrong with me?" — but "what does my body need help doing?" Then see what happens. The strawberry patch is mulched for the winter now. I'm going to plant garlic this weekend. The bench by the back porch has dirt on it from the last time I sat down to take my boots off. I haven't wiped it down yet. Some things you don't wipe down. They're proof you were out there. That's the whole thing. That's all I have. https://track.tryrosabella.com/cdc16426-3e48-40a7-9fad-21098084f6cf Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.