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I Used to Take the Stairs Two at a Time. Last Fall I Realized I'd Been Pausing on the Landing. I want to share what I've been doing the last few months, because a friend asked me about it over coffee last week and I realized I'd never said it out loud to anyone. I'm 57. I have a desk job at an engineering firm in our city — project management, mostly, which means a lot of meetings and a lot of email and a lot of sitting. I've been at the same company for nineteen years. My office is on the third floor of an old converted brick building downtown. The building has an elevator, but I've taken the stairs for almost two decades. Three flights. For most of those nineteen years, I'd take them two at a time on the way up — not because I was in a hurry, but because that's what my body did. That's how it moved. Sometime in my early fifties, the two-at-a-time stopped feeling automatic. I'd consciously decide to do it. I'd push. By the time I was 54 or 55, I was taking the stairs one at a time and telling myself I was just being sensible. Last fall — I think it was October — I caught myself pausing on the landing between the second and third floor. Not for a long time. Maybe ten seconds. I leaned against the wall and I caught my breath and I kept going. I didn't think much of it that day. But I noticed it. The next morning I did it again. Pause on the landing. Catch my breath. Keep going. By the third or fourth time, I had to admit to myself that this was a thing now. I was a 57-year-old man pausing on the stairs in my own office building to catch my breath. I want to be clear about something before I go any further. I'm not out of shape. Or — okay, I'm not in great shape, but I'm not in bad shape either. I walk almost every evening. About forty minutes, around the loop near our house, with my wife. I weigh about what I weighed in my forties. My annual physical bloodwork has been clean for years. Cholesterol fine. Blood pressure fine. Blood sugar fine. I'm not a guy whose doctor pulls him aside and tells him to make changes. I'm a guy whose doctor smiles, says "see you next year," and moves on to the next chart. So when I started pausing on the landing, it wasn't because there was a number somewhere telling me I should have been. It was just that something was different. The body I'd lived in for fifty-seven years was reporting back to me, in its very quiet way, that something underneath had changed. I tried to figure out what was going on. The first thing I thought was: sleep. I went through a phase in my forties where I didn't sleep well and I learned to take it seriously. So that's the first place I looked. I was sleeping fine. Seven hours most nights. Sometimes eight. I wasn't waking up exhausted. I was waking up rested and then getting tired by mid-morning. Then I thought: stress. There had been a big project at work in the spring that had been hard on everyone. But that had wrapped in July. By October I should have been past it. Then I thought: am I depressed? I don't think so. I wasn't sad. I wasn't uninterested in things. I was looking forward to my granddaughter's birthday and to deer season and to the Thanksgiving trip my wife and I had been planning. I just had less in the tank than I used to. Less in the tank getting up the stairs. Less in the tank making it through the workday without a 3 PM slump. Less in the tank on our evening walk — I'd be the one suggesting we turn around at the halfway point, when I used to be the one pushing us to add another loop. I went to my annual physical in November. I told my doctor about it. Dr. Mendelsohn has been my doctor for about six years. He's a careful man. He doesn't rush. He listened to the whole story — the landing, the 3 PM slump, the shorter walks. He ran my bloodwork. Full panel. Plus a few extras: vitamin D, B12, thyroid, ferritin. A week later he called me himself. He said: "Your bloodwork is fine. Vitamin D is on the low end of normal. Everything else is right where I'd want it." Then he said something I've been thinking about ever since. He said: "Some of what you're describing is what we see in healthy men in their late fifties. It's not a deficiency. It's not a disease. It's the gradual cellular slowdown that's part of how the body changes after fifty. Mitochondrial efficiency drifts. Recovery takes longer. The tank doesn't fill back up as fast as it used to. There's no medication for that. It's the part of aging that's normal but real." He suggested I look at three things. Sleep — keep protecting it. Movement — keep walking, and add some light resistance training if I could. A thoughtful approach to what I was putting in my body — fewer ultra-processed foods, more vegetables, more antioxidant-rich food. He said: "If you want to add something supplemental to support that, I won't talk you out of it. Just call the office first so we can make sure it doesn't interact with anything. And don't expect a miracle. Expect a foundation." I thanked him. I drove home thinking about the word he'd used. Foundation. I'm not someone who jumps into supplements. I've watched too many guys at my office come back from the GNC at the mall with a bag full of bottles and three weeks later it's all in the kitchen cabinet behind the cereal. I wanted to add one thing. One thoughtful thing. The way Dr. Mendelsohn had described it. I sat with it for a few weeks. I did some reading. I asked around. A friend of mine I've known since college — he's 59, a structural engineer, the kind of guy who reads research papers for fun — told me he'd added beetroot capsules to his morning about a year earlier. He didn't make a big sales pitch about it. He just said: "It's a reasonable thing. I'd been wanting one input on the cellular side that wasn't another piece of broccoli. I added it. It's been fine. I feel like I've got a little more in the tank in the afternoons. Can't prove it's the beetroot. But it's been fine." That was his whole review. I trust that guy. I went online and did my own reading after that. What I learned was that beetroot has been studied for decades for cardiovascular wellness and cellular energy support. The active compound is something called betalains — that deep crimson red pigment that stains your cutting board when you slice a beet. Betalains are one of the more potent antioxidants in the food supply, and they have a particular affinity for the cardiovascular system. They support the body's natural antioxidant balance. They support healthy circulation — and circulation, as I understood it, is what delivers oxygen and energy to the cellular level where the slowdown happens. Beetroot is a structure-function ingredient, not a medication. It supports healthy cholesterol levels already within the normal range. It supports healthy circulation. It doesn't replace anything else you're doing — it works alongside it. That last part is what made me comfortable. I wasn't replacing anything Dr. Mendelsohn had told me to do. I was adding one thing to what I was already doing. The brand my friend had used was called Rosabella. He said they were a small operation in Lancaster County that cold-presses their beets at low temperatures, which takes longer but preserves more of the betalains. Before I ordered, I called Dr. Mendelsohn's office the way he'd asked me to. I told the nurse exactly what I was thinking. Told her the brand. Told her the dose on the bottle. She talked to Dr. Mendelsohn and called me back the next day. He said it was a sensible thing to add. No interactions to worry about with anything I was on — which was nothing prescription, but I do take a daily multivitamin and fish oil. Have me mention it at my next visit. I ordered the bottle. When it arrived, I noticed the color of the capsules before anything else. A deep, almost-purple red. The reading I'd done explained why — that deep color is the visible marker of the betalains being intact. I set the bottle on the kitchen counter next to the coffeemaker. The next morning I put one capsule on the saucer next to my mug and took it with my first sip. I'm not going to tell you something happened in seventeen minutes. I don't think these things work like a switch flipping. I'm an engineer. I'm skeptical of supplement stories by default. What I will tell you is what happened over the next couple of months. The first thing I noticed was the 3 PM slump. It got less severe. Not gone. Less severe. I'd be sitting at my desk at 3:15 and I'd realize I was still working at the same pace I'd been working at 10 AM, instead of staring at my second monitor wondering when I could go home. The second thing was the stairs. About four weeks in, I caught myself on the landing between the second and third floor. Not pausing. Just passing through. I didn't realize I hadn't paused until I was at my desk. I had to walk back to the stairwell at lunch to make sure I'd remembered it right. I had. The third thing was the evening walks. I stopped being the one suggesting we turn around at the halfway point. I'd be at the halfway point and my wife would say "ready to head back?" and I'd say "let's go around once more." We started going the longer route again. I want to be careful about what I'm claiming. I don't know how much of that was the beetroot. I don't know how much was the fact that I'd started lifting some light dumbbells in the basement a couple of times a week because Dr. Mendelsohn had mentioned resistance training. I don't know how much was the better attention I was paying to sleep, or to vegetables, or to the cumulative effect of finally being honest with my doctor about what I was feeling. It's probably all of it together. Bodies are different and lives are different and I can't tell you that what worked for me would work for anyone else. What I can tell you is what I did. I noticed what was happening to my body and I didn't ignore it. I told my doctor. I let him do the bloodwork to rule out anything specific. I listened when he told me the answer wasn't a prescription but a foundation. I added the things he asked me to add — sleep, movement, food, one thoughtful supplemental thing. I called the office before I ordered the supplement. I waited for the doctor's approval. I added the supplement to what I was already doing — not in place of anything. At my follow-up appointment six months later, Dr. Mendelsohn pulled up my labs and said the same thing he'd said in November. "Your numbers look good. Right where I'd want them." I told him how I'd been feeling. The stairs. The walks. The afternoons. He nodded. He said: "That's the foundation working. Keep doing it." He didn't change anything. He didn't put me on anything. He just said keep going. That was about three months ago. I'm 57. I'm not 35. I'm never going to be 35 again. But the man who was pausing on the landing last October isn't the same man taking the stairs this morning, and I'm grateful for the difference. If you've been in a similar situation — you're in your late forties or fifties or sixties, your numbers are fine, your doctor is happy with you, and yet something in you has been quietly slowing down — it might be worth a conversation. Not a prescription conversation. A foundation conversation. What are you protecting in your sleep? What are you doing for movement? What are you putting in your body? Is there one thoughtful thing you'd want to add? That conversation is what got me here. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before adding any new supplement, especially if you're on medication for blood pressure or cardiovascular health. That one phone call is what made me comfortable starting, and it's what I'd tell anyone else to do first. The brand I used is Rosabella. 1,300 milligrams per capsule, cold-pressed at low temperatures, grown in Lancaster County. One capsule with a glass of water in the morning. That's the whole thing. P.S. My friend — the engineer — and I had coffee a few weeks ago and I told him about the stairs. He laughed and said: "Welcome to the club. The whole point of the club is that it's a quiet club. Nobody talks about it. We just feel a little better and we keep showing up." I thought about that on the drive home. There's a lot to be said for a quiet club. P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked. I think 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. Bodies are different. Some people notice something within the first week or two. Others take longer. P.P.P.S. I keep an extra bottle in the house just in case. They're a small operation and the harvest is once a year, so the bottling can run on its own schedule. P.P.P.P.S. Here's what I'd tell you to do. Call your doctor's office first. Tell them exactly what you're thinking and exactly what you're on. Wait for the callback. If the doctor approves, put one capsule on the saucer next to your morning coffee mug. Don't change anything else without your doctor's input. Give it a few weeks before you decide anything. And in the meantime — protect your sleep. Get out and walk. Eat something green that wasn't on your plate yesterday. The bottle isn't the whole foundation. It's one piece of it. P.P.P.P.P.S. I took the stairs two at a time this morning. Just the first flight. Not the whole way up. I'm not going to oversell it. But I caught myself doing it without deciding to, and that was the part that surprised me. There's something about your body doing a thing it used to do, without your permission, that reminds you it remembers who it used to be. https://track.tryrosabella.com/4a8944d3-6841-4daa-bcd5-c063901eeae6 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.