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My Sister Called on a Thursday Afternoon. She Wasn't Calling About Anything. That's How I Knew Something Was on Her Mind. My sister Diane calls on Sunday mornings, usually. That's our time. We've been doing it since our mother died eleven years ago — just fell into it, the way you fall into things when you're both trying to hold something together that used to be held by someone else. When she called on a Thursday afternoon in February, I picked up on the second ring. "Everything okay?" I said. "Everything's fine," she said. "I just felt like talking." Diane is sixty-one. She lives in Raleigh. She teaches fourth grade, has for thirty years, and she has the particular quality that good elementary school teachers develop after long enough, which is that she never quite says the real thing first. She leads up to it. She lets you get settled before she hands you the thing she actually called to hand you. We talked about her students for a while. We talked about her husband Frank's retirement, which is coming up in the spring and which she is — she admitted — slightly terrified about. We talked about my daughter's new apartment and whether the neighborhood was as safe as my daughter claimed. And then there was a small pause. Not a dramatic pause. Just the kind that opens up when someone has been working up to something and has finally decided to say it. "I went to the doctor on Tuesday," she said. "Just the regular checkup." "And?" "And everything's fine," she said. "Mostly." I know my sister. I waited. "She mentioned my cholesterol," she said. "Said the numbers have been creeping. Nothing alarming. Just — something to keep an eye on." I knew exactly what that felt like. The way the doctor says it — careful, not urgent, more of a heads-up than a warning. The way you drive home from that appointment turning it over. Not scared, exactly. Just aware, in a new way, that something is moving in a direction you'd rather it didn't. "I've heard that before," I said. "I know you have," she said. "That's part of why I called." Two years ago, my doctor said almost exactly the same thing to me. My numbers had been drifting for about three years by then. Nothing dramatic. Just the slow kind of drift that shows up in the same column of your bloodwork every year, a little higher, a little more of a frown from the doctor, a little more emphasis on the diet conversation you'd already been having. I was doing what you do. I'd cut back on the things you cut back on. I was walking every morning. I was taking fish oil. I'd added oatmeal to my routine in a way that I would describe as dutiful rather than enthusiastic. The numbers would come down a little. Then drift back. Then come down. Then drift. My doctor, at that appointment two years ago, said: let's keep watching. She mentioned that if it kept going, we might want to talk about other options. She said it gently. I heard it clearly. I didn't want other options. I wanted to find something I hadn't tried yet. I'm not sure exactly how I found Rosabella. I think I was reading something about beetroot — I'd seen a few things here and there over the years, peer-reviewed research on beetroot for cardiovascular wellness, consistent enough across enough time that I'd started taking it seriously. Rosabella was a small company, and what caught my attention was how they processed it. The compounds in beetroot that the research kept pointing to — the betalains, the dietary nitrates — are heat-sensitive. Rosabella cold-presses at low temperatures specifically to preserve them, from the time the beetroot leaves the ground to the time the capsule is sealed. That kind of deliberateness tends to mean someone has actually thought about what they're doing. I called my doctor's office before I ordered anything. I want to say that plainly because I think it matters: I called first. I described what I was reading about, what I was thinking of adding, and asked whether it made sense given everything I was already doing. The nurse called me back the next day. The doctor said it sounded like a reasonable thing to try. Not a replacement for anything. Just something to add alongside what was already in place. So that's what I did. Two capsules in the morning with a glass of water. 1,300 milligrams of organic beetroot, cold-pressed. Added to the fish oil and the oatmeal and the morning walks — not instead of any of it. I've been taking it for almost two years now. At my last appointment, my doctor looked at my chart and looked at me and said my bloodwork was in better shape than it had been in a while. She seemed pleased in that quiet, professional way doctors have when something is going in the right direction and they don't want to make promises. I walked out of that office feeling like the thing I'd added was earning its place. I can't tell you with certainty that it was the beetroot. I'm not a scientist. I'm not in healthcare. I'm a fifty-eight-year-old woman who went looking for one more thing to try and found something that, going by what my doctor said at my last visit, seems to be worth trying. That's as far as I'll take it. I think that's as far as anyone should take it. I told Diane all of this on the phone. Not in a rush. The way you tell a story to someone who already knows most of the people in it. She listened the way she listens — without interrupting, the way she probably listens to her students when they need to find their own way to the end of a thought. When I finished she said: "And your doctor was fine with it?" "She was the one who told me to keep doing what I was doing," I said. A pause. "I'd want to ask my own doctor," Diane said. "That's exactly what I'd tell you to do," I said. "Call the office, describe what you're thinking of adding, let them weigh in. It took me one phone call and a day to get a callback. That's it." She said she'd think about it. I know my sister. That means she'd already decided. I'm writing this down because Diane asked me to. She said she wanted to be able to read it again instead of trying to remember what I'd said. And if you've been in a similar place — the slow drift, the annual conversation with your doctor, doing everything you're supposed to do and watching the needle move anyway — I think it's worth knowing that there are things worth asking about. Not as replacements for what you're already doing. Just as additions. One careful conversation with your doctor is the right place to start and it's a shorter conversation than you'd expect. The brand is Rosabella. 1,300 milligrams of organic beetroot per serving, cold-pressed at low temperatures. Two capsules in the morning with a glass of water. Added to whatever else you're already doing — not replacing any of it. P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. I'd give it a few weeks at minimum before forming an opinion. Some people notice something within the first week or two — others take longer. Bodies are different, and I think patience is part of the deal with anything like this. P.P.S. They're a small operation. They harvest and bottle on their own schedule, so availability isn't always guaranteed. I keep a spare bottle in the house now just because I'd rather not have a gap. P.P.P.S. Diane called me on a Sunday morning about three weeks after that Thursday call. Our regular time. She said she'd talked to her doctor, who said it was a sensible thing to try alongside everything else she was already doing. She'd ordered a bottle. She'd been taking it for about two weeks. I asked how she was feeling. She said: "I don't know yet. But I feel like I did something." I understood that completely. Sometimes that's the whole thing — just the feeling of having done something deliberate, something considered, instead of waiting for the drift to continue. P.P.P.P.S. Decades of peer-reviewed research on beetroot for cardiovascular wellness. The betalains. The dietary nitrates. The antioxidant support. It's not new science. It just took me a while to find my way to it. P.P.P.P.P.S. She teaches fourth grade. Thirty years. She reads the research before she makes a decision about anything. She called her doctor before she ordered a single capsule. If you're the kind of person who does things the careful way — that's who I'm talking to. That's who I am too. https://track.tryrosabella.com/cdc16426-3e48-40a7-9fad-21098084f6cf DISCLAIMER 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.