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My endocrinologist told me depression wouldn't kill me and to just stay on the Fosamax and that was the last appointment I ever paid a copay for. 6 months later my lumbar spine T-score improved for the first time in a decade, and the Fosamax pack was still sealed in my bathroom drawer. Here is how that happened… I am 62 years old. I have exercised my entire life. My husband calls me the most disciplined woman he has ever met about her own health, and he is not usually generous with compliments. My first DEXA came back at 59. Lumbar spine negative 2.4. Femoral neck negative 2.2. Osteopenia. The beginning of the end. My doctor said the usual things. Take calcium. Take D3. Do weight-bearing exercise. Come back in 2 years. I did everything she said. Calcium citrate 1200mg a day. D3 5000 IU. Magnesium glycinate at night. I added AlgaeCal on top of all that because 1 women in my support group swore by it. I was spending almost $250 dollars a month. I walked 4 miles a day. I did Silver Sneakers three times a week. I even added a weighted vest. 2 years later I sat in a dark room while a technician slid me through a DEXA machine for the second time. Lumbar spine negative 2.8. Femoral neck negative 2.4. Worse. I had fallen out of osteopenia and into full osteoporosis. My doctor sent me to an endocrinologist. She pulled up my scan on her screen and said the word I had been terrified of for three years. Prolia. I told her I was not going to take Prolia. I had read about it. Once you start the injections, if you ever stop, the rebound bone loss is worse than where you started. Women end up trapped on it for life. Or they switch to Evenity when the Prolia stops working, and then to Tymlos when the Evenity stops working, and the drugs get more expensive and more dangerous with every step. That is not a treatment plan… That is a ladder with no top. She sighed like I was wasting her time and wrote me a prescription for Fosamax instead. I told her I was worried about depression… I had read that Fosamax patients are 14 times more likely to suffer depression than people not on it. I had finally weaned off SSRIs after 30 years. I was not going back. She looked at me and said, "Depression wouldn't kill me." Then she told me a broken hip would. And then she told me to just go back on the SSRIs. I left her office and sat in my car for 20 minutes. I did not drive. I just sat there with my hands on the steering wheel and thought about my mother. My mother took Fosamax for 9 years. She broke her hip at 72 stepping off a curb at the grocery store. She was in rehab for four months. She never walked without a walker again. The woman I had known my entire life disappeared inside a shrinking, quiet version of herself. She died at seventy-six. I was 62. I had 14 years to figure this out before I hit her age. That is when I picked up my phone and called Janet. Janet is an old friend of mine. Retired research nurse who spent her career at Johns Hopkins before she moved out to her daughter's place in Pennsylvania. I had not talked to her in years. Desperation makes you do strange things… I told her the whole thing. The drugs. The depression. I told her I had been taking everything. She was quiet for so long I thought the call had dropped. Then she said, "Where do you think all that calcium is going?" I did not have an answer. I had spent 20 years researching forms and dosages and timing and I had never once asked where the calcium was ending up. She let me sit with it for a second. Then she explained it the way she used to explain things to the first-year residents on her floor. Think of your bones like a construction site, she said. Every morning I had been sending truckloads of bricks. Calcium. Good bricks. But a construction site does not build itself. It needs workers. Those workers are called Osteoblasts, your bone-building cells. And they run on fuel. That fuel is a naturally occurring molecule in all trillion of your cells called NAD+. When you are young and your hormones are balanced, their energy is full. The workers show up, load the bricks, and build. But between your 40s and your 60s, NAD+ drops by almost 50%. The moment menopause hits, it drops even faster. They run out of energy. The bone builders sit down on the curb. But that’s not all… On the other side of that construction site there is a demolition crew. Those cells called Osteoclasts never run out of energy. Tearing down bone around the clock. Meanwhile every brick you send to the site just piles up with nowhere to go. Into your arteries. Your kidneys. Your soft tissue. Everywhere except your bones. "You are not building stronger bones," she said. "You are depositing calcium everywhere else while your bones starve because the workers have no fuel." 20 years of calcium. Almost $6,000 dollars on supplements over 3 decades. And the only thing I had to show for was calcified arteries and kidneys, Oh brother… That was the first time I understood why my DEXA kept getting worse. I asked her what I was supposed to do. She was quiet again. Then she said something I was not expecting… "I am going to tell you something I have not told anyone outside my family." 3 years ago her own DEXA had come back negative 2.1 lumbar spine. Osteopenia. Not where I was, but on the same road. And she told me that during her last decade at Hopkins, researchers had been presenting work at Grand Rounds on NAD+ and bone density. She remembered the data. Filed it away. Forgot about it for twelve years. When her own scan came back, she spent three evenings digging it back up. She had been taking it for 2 years. Her last DEXA came back negative 1.6 lumbar spine. She had climbed out of osteopenia entirely. She said, "I will send you the paper I would have wanted somebody to send me when I got my scan. Read it tonight and call me back tomorrow." The paper came through a minute later. Here is what the research showed. The women in those studies were not all on high-dose calcium protocols. NAD+ on with these 2 other compounds began shifting their t-scores. Because it was never a calcium problem. When NAD+ was restored in postmenopausal women, women were seeing an average increase of 17.3% in their lumbar spine and femoral neck bone mineral density. Later in the papers, it was explained that one of the biggest causes of bone loss was chronic inflammation. And that is where the other two compounds in the formula played their role in the studies, resveratrol and quercetin. Quercetin significantly reduced the inflammation that gives the bone demolition crew its extra shift. Resveratrol was activating the signal that estrogen used to send to keep the demolition crew in check. And the best part is that none of these were foreign chemicals or synthetic compounds. These were real, naturally occurring things. I read the papers twice before I went to bed. The next morning, I called Janet back. I told her I was going to look for it. She did not push back on anything. She just said good. She said, "Then the next thing you need to do is be careful about what you buy. If you are going to try it, 2 things matter. Write them down." Actual NAD+ in the formula. Resveratrol and quercetin alongside it. Not one without the other. All three or you are leaving the job half done. Made in the USA. Because if you cannot verify what is actually in the capsule, you are back to guessing. I looked on Amazon first like everyone does. Single-ingredient NAD+, random chinese brands. Most of what was there failed all three of Janet's criteria. Then I found Thryve by a North American brand called Thirmik. NAD+, resveratrol, and quercetin. All 3. Made in the USA. Not on Amazon. Not at GNC. Direct from their own site. I sent Janet the label. She read it and called me back and said, "That is the exact one I would take." Two capsules with breakfast. That is the whole protocol. I asked my primary care doctor if it was safe to take with the medications I was already on. She said yes. I kept taking my calcium and my D3 every morning alongside it. They were just the bricks. Now the workers finally had fuel to use them. The first 2 weeks, nothing. Week 4, I caught myself walking down my own stairs without gripping the railing. I had not gone down stairs without gripping the railing in two years. I had not even noticed I was doing it anymore. Month 2, my husband asked if I had changed something. He said I looked different. Not younger. Just awake. Month 3, I got on the floor to play blocks with my three year old grandson. I got back up without pulling myself up on the coffee table. My daughter stopped in the doorway and stared at me. Month 12, I drove forty minutes back to the imaging center for a follow up DEXA. Lumbar spine negative 1.9. Negative 1.5 femoral neck. I had come up from negative 2.8. I had crossed out of osteoporosis and back into osteopenia. In 12 months. Going the right direction for the first time in a decade. Last week my daughter asked if I wanted to hike the trail at the state park we used to do when she was in high school. 2 years ago I would have said no. We hiked 3 miles. I did not stop once. On the drive home she said, "I thought you were going to end up like Grandma." I said, "Me too." But not anymore... Because Janet asked me one question my endocrinologist never did. This is my story and if you are where I was 2 years ago, that is the advice I would tell you. It is the same thing Janet told me. 90-day money back guarantee. I will drop the link below for anyone who wants to look into it for themselves. I would not sit on it. https://thirmik.com/products/thryve-nad-blend-for-her-strong-bones-formula I have one DEXA left before I hit the age my mother was when she broke her hip. I would rather reach that age the way my father did. Gardening. Driving. Standing up at church without gripping the pew. My mother never had this option. But I do.