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I built things for forty-one years. At sixty-three I retired two years early, because my body had quietly stopped keeping up. My name is Charles. People have called me Chuck since I was a boy. I am sixty-five. I live with my wife outside Spokane, Washington, in the small house we have owned for twenty-eight years. We have two grown sons. One is in Seattle. One is in Boise. I have one grandson in Spokane who is nine and plays Little League baseball. I was a commercial construction supervisor for forty-one years. I started on a framing crew when I was twenty-two. I worked my way up. The last twenty-two years of my career, I was a project supervisor for a regional construction firm — the man who walked the site at six in the morning, made the day's calls, climbed the scaffolding when somebody needed to climb the scaffolding, drove the four hours to the remote sites when a remote site needed someone to drive to it, and locked up at six at night. I was good at it. I had planned to do it until I was sixty-five. I retired at sixty-three. That is the part I want you to hold while you read this. I have been on a low-dose blood pressure medication for ten years. My doctor — Dr. Klein, a careful man I have been seeing for twelve years — put me on it when I was fifty-five. The numbers had been creeping a little. He started me on the lowest dose. I have been on the same low-dose for ten years. My numbers have been in the ranges Dr. Klein wants them in ever since. Not borderline. Not perfect. In the ranges. I had been doing the careful prudent things alongside the medication for ten years. Walking forty minutes a day with my wife. Eating the way a man with my numbers should eat. Sleeping seven hours a night when the job let me. Not drinking more than one or two beers on a weekend. I had been a man whose chart said he was fine for ten years. That is the other part I want you to hold. The chart was not what told me I had to retire. What told me I had to retire was three years of quietly slowing down on the job in ways the chart could not see. I am going to tell you what I mean. It looked like the scaffolding. There is a feeling a man gets in his legs and his chest when he climbs a ladder onto scaffolding three stories up with a thirty-pound tool belt around his waist. For forty years that feeling had been the feeling of a man's body doing what a man's body does. Somewhere in my late fifties, the feeling started to be the feeling of a man's body asking for a moment. In the last three years of the job, the feeling had become the feeling of a man's body asking for several moments. I had been having to stand on the second platform for thirty seconds before I went up to the third. I had not stood on the second platform for thirty seconds in thirty-eight years. Nobody had seen me do it. I had been doing it when nobody was looking. It looked like the drive. I had been driving four hours to a remote site every other week for twenty years. The drive had been four hours of country highway in my truck, with a thermos of coffee and the radio. For forty years, the drive home at the end of the day had been the drive home. In the last three years of the job, the drive home had become the hardest part of the day. I had been pulling into rest areas to put my head against the steering wheel for ten minutes. I had not been telling my wife. I had been arriving home an hour later than I had been telling her I would arrive. I had been telling her there had been traffic. There had not been traffic. It looked like five-thirty in the morning. I had been a five-thirty-a.m. man for forty-one years. The job started at six. I had been at the kitchen counter at five-fifteen for forty years. In the last year of the job, I had been at the kitchen counter at five-fifty. I had been showering at five-thirty when I had been showering at five for forty years. I had been getting to the site at six-oh-five when I had been getting there at five-fifty for forty years. Nobody had said anything about it. They were not going to say anything about it. I had been the boss. I had been losing fifteen minutes off the front of my day. It looked like the foreman. We had a young foreman on the last big job of my career. His name was Eric. He was thirty-one. I had hired him out of his community college program five years earlier. He was good. He was going to be very good. I watched him, on the last job, do the things at the end of the day I used to do at the end of the day. I watched him climb back up onto the third platform at four-fifty in the afternoon to check something he had been thinking about. I watched him walk a quarter mile of the site one more time before locking up at six. I watched him with the energy at the end of the day that I had been a man with at thirty-one. I was a man with no energy at the end of the day at sixty-three. I sat in my truck in the parking lot on a Friday in October two years ago and I said, out loud, to no one: the job needs more than you have left to give it. I had been saying that quietly to myself for two years. I had not let myself say it out loud. I came home that night. I sat with my wife at the kitchen table. I told her. She had been waiting for me to tell her. She had been watching me for three years. She said: Chuck. The job is not going to stop being the job. You have to be the one who steps back. I called my company on Monday. We worked out a six-month consulting transition. I was off the site by the end of April. I was retired by the end of October. Two years earlier than I had planned. I had not been ready. I had been right anyway. The first year of retirement was hard. Not because I missed the work. I missed the work some, the way a man misses anything he did for forty-one years. The harder part was that I did not know what to do with the body I had now. I had retired because the body could not do the work. Now the body had no work. I had been planning to do small construction projects in my garage workshop. Build a bench for the entryway. Build a small shed for a friend. Maybe a workbench for my grandson when he was old enough. I did not do any of them. I sat in my recliner more than I had ever sat in a recliner. I drove my wife crazy. She did not say so. She did not have to. I knew. I went into Dr. Klein's office for my annual physical in February of last year. Bloodwork in the ranges. He looked at me across his desk. He said: Chuck. You look like a man who is sitting in a chair more than he is used to. How is retirement? I told him. I told him about the recliner and the bench I had not built and the year I had been quietly losing alongside the years I had been quietly losing on the job. He listened. He told me he was not surprised to hear what I was telling him. He told me a lot of men in their early sixties who retire from physically demanding work go through what I was going through. He told me there was nothing on the chart he would do anything about today. He told me to keep walking, keep eating the way I was eating, keep taking the medication, and to start asking myself, gently, what one small additive thing I might bring back into my mornings that was not the job. I drove home from his office thinking about that. I sat with it for a few weeks. I started reading. I read for almost three weeks. I am, by temperament, a careful man. A man who runs commercial construction sites for twenty-two years does not put anything into his body without understanding what he is putting in. I read about beetroot. I read about the deep crimson pigment in the root. It is called betalain. It is the color that stains your cutting board for three days. It is also, according to a long and patient body of research the cardiovascular community has been quietly building for decades, one of the more potent antioxidants in the food supply. I read about the long, slowly built relationship the structure-function research has had with this vegetable. In the context of supporting healthy circulation. Supporting cardiovascular wellness. Supporting the body's own cellular energy. In people whose numbers are already in the range their doctors want them in. None of what I read was a fireworks story. It was the opposite of one. It was a vegetable that has been quietly studied for a long time by careful people who were not making outlandish claims. The language being used in the careful, structure-function corner of the conversation was the language I had been waiting to find. Supports cardiovascular wellness. Not fixes the body. Not reverses anything. Not replaces the medication I had been on for ten years. Just supports. In a man whose numbers were already in the ranges his doctor wanted them in. That was the shape of the language I had been hoping to find. I came across a small company called Rosabella. I want to tell you what I liked about it, plainly. The first thing was the chemistry. The betalain pigment is heat-sensitive. If you process beetroot the standard way, with heat, you lose some of the compound to the heat. Rosabella cold-presses at low temperatures because they want as much of the compound as possible to make it from the field into the capsule. That is a slower way to make a supplement. It costs them more. They made the choice anyway. After forty-one years of watching contractors take shortcuts on jobsites, I have come to pay close attention to the small decisions companies make when no one is watching. Those decisions tell you everything. The second thing I liked was the simplicity. Two capsules in the morning with a glass of water. That is the whole protocol. I am a sixty-five-year-old retired construction supervisor. I am not interested in a protocol that requires its own shelf. Now I am going to tell you the most important part of this letter, the part I want every man my age who reads this to hear. Before I added anything to what I was taking, I called my pharmacist. His name is Carlos. He has been the pharmacist at the small independent pharmacy in our part of town for eight years. I have been filling my blood pressure medication there for as long as he has been there. I called him for a specific reason. I am on a blood pressure medication. Beetroot supplements and blood pressure medications can interact. The interaction is not necessarily dangerous. It is not necessarily anything. But it depends on the specific medication, the dose, what else you are taking, and what your prescribing physician would want. That is exactly the kind of small, specific, individualized question that a pharmacist can answer in two minutes. It is not a question I, as a careful patient, was going to answer on my own. I called Carlos. I told him what I was thinking about adding. I told him the brand, the dosage, the protocol. He pulled up my profile. He looked at my prescription, the dose, the history, and the other small things I was taking. He told me he had no concerns about adding it at the dosage on the label. He told me to take it in the morning, with the blood pressure medication, the way the bottle suggested. He told me to come back to him if Dr. Klein adjusted my prescription or added anything new. He told me, before we got off the phone, that he wished more of his patients made the call I had just made. I also called Dr. Klein's office that afternoon. I left a message with his nurse, with the same information. She called me back the next day to tell me Dr. Klein had no concerns and to let him know how I was doing at my next appointment. I want to say something now, plainly, to every man my age who is reading this. If you are on a blood pressure medication. If you are on a cholesterol medication. If you are on any prescription medication at all. Please make the call. I called Carlos. I called Dr. Klein's office. I would not have added anything to a prescription without those calls. Neither should you. The two minutes the call takes is the most important two minutes of your engagement with any supplement. I started on a Monday in late March. I set the bottle on the counter next to the coffee maker. I took the two capsules with my first sip of coffee. The first two weeks I felt nothing in particular. I had read enough to know that bodies are different. Some men notice something within the first week or two. Some men take much longer. Some men don't notice much at all. I was prepared to land in any of those camps. I was prepared to be honest with myself about the result. What I noticed, I noticed slowly. The first thing I noticed, around week six, was the workshop. It was a Saturday morning in early May. I went out to the garage at nine. I had not been out there in eight months. The bench I had been planning to build for our entryway was still on the workbench in pieces from where I had cut the rough boards in October. I worked on it for three hours. I cut the dadoes. I sanded the seat. I started on the joinery for the legs. I came in at twelve with sawdust on my sleeves and asked my wife what she wanted for lunch. She did not say anything about the sawdust. She did not have to. I went back out after lunch and worked for another two hours. I finished the bench the following Saturday. It is in our entryway now. The second thing I noticed, around week nine, was the truck. I had been needing to make multiple trips to the hardware store for things that I used to do in one trip. A run for project materials had become two runs. A weekend brush hauling had become a Saturday and a Sunday. I had been telling myself it was my back. It was not my back. It was a man at sixty-five who had been quietly running out of the energy to load a truck the way he had loaded a truck for forty years. A Saturday morning in early June, I went to the hardware store for materials for a small shed I had agreed to build for our neighbor. I bought everything in one trip. I loaded the truck myself. I drove home. I unloaded the truck myself. I did not need to sit down on the workbench after. I started on the shed. The third thing I noticed was at my grandson's Little League game. His team plays at the field at the elementary school three miles from our house. I had been going to his games for two years. I had been sitting in my folding chair the whole time, holding a thermos of coffee. He had not asked me to play catch with him at the field in two years. He had stopped asking. A Saturday in July, around month four, my grandson walked over to me at the start of the warm-up. He said: Grandpa. Would you throw with me? He had a glove for me. He had brought it without telling anybody. I went out on the grass with him. I threw with him for fifteen minutes. He was nine. He was throwing harder than he had been throwing two years before. I caught everything he threw. I threw it back to him at the speed I had been throwing for forty years. I came back to my folding chair after. I sat down. My daughter-in-law was sitting two seats over. She did not say anything. She did not have to. I had not played catch with that boy in two years. I had been the kind of grandfather who sits in the chair. I was, that Saturday, the kind of grandfather who goes onto the grass. I want to be careful with what I am telling you. I am not telling you Rosabella did any of those things on its own. I had been walking more deliberately for several weeks before the workshop. I had been doing the careful things I had been doing for ten years, just a little more carefully. Something had unlocked in me the afternoon I drove home from Dr. Klein's office in February that had nothing to do with a capsule on a saucer. There were several things changing at once, the way there are when a man in his sixties finally decides to start asking the body again, after a year of letting it sit in a recliner. All I am telling you is that I added one small thing to a long list of things I was newly doing. I kept everything else exactly the same — including the blood pressure medication Dr. Klein has me on. And a stretch of months followed that was qualitatively different from the year that had preceded it. That is the honest version. I would not give you a cleaner one. I went back into Dr. Klein's office for a follow-up in October. Bloodwork the week before. He studied the results. He looked at me. He said: Chuck. Your numbers are in better shape than they have been in three years. Whatever you are doing, keep doing it. I told him about the workshop. About the shed. About the catch with my grandson. About the beetroot. I told him I had called Carlos before I started. He nodded. He said: that is a sensible thing to add at your dosage. There is good research on antioxidant support. Keep doing what you are doing. I drove home from his office that afternoon. I had been driving home from Dr. Klein's office for twelve years. That afternoon I drove home thinking that I had been planning to retire at sixty-five and I had retired at sixty-three, and I was now sixty-five and I was, on a different chart that I was not going to be able to show anybody, in better shape than I had been at sixty-three. I am still a retired man. The job is gone. But the body that I retired because of is doing more than it was doing a year and a half ago. That is more than I had expected. I am telling you all of this because I think you might be where I was the afternoon I sat in the truck in the parking lot two Octobers ago. In fine shape, on paper. In a body that has been quietly slowing down on you for years. In a job, or a marriage, or a life, where you are quietly losing the fifteen minutes off the front of the day that you used to have. If you are a man in your sixties — or a woman reading this for a man you love — who has been telling himself it is fine because the chart says it is fine, I want to say a few things plainly. I do not know you. I do not know your medications, your bloodwork, or what your doctor has told you. Bodies are different. Some men notice something within the first week or two of adding something like this. Some men take much longer. Some men don't notice much at all. That is the honest version. Anyone offering you a cleaner one is selling you harder than I am. Here is how I think about Rosabella now, in the words I would actually use. It is something the body uses. The research community talks about it in the context of supporting healthy circulation, supporting cardiovascular wellness, and supporting the body's own cellular energy. In people whose numbers are already in the range their doctors want them in. It is not a fix for anything. It is not a substitute for a medication. It is not a treatment for the quiet decline a man can have in his sixties. It is one small thing you add to the long list of things you are already doing for yourself, alongside everything else. Please call your pharmacist or your doctor's office before you add it. If you are on any blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, or anything cardiovascular at all, this is non-negotiable. I called Carlos. I called Dr. Klein's office. I would not have added anything to my prescription without those calls. Neither should you. The people who know your chart will tell you in two minutes whether the supplement is safe for you to add given what you are already taking. I am a sixty-five-year-old retired construction supervisor in eastern Washington. I am not the person to ask. Your pharmacist or your doctor is. The company has a ninety-day satisfaction guarantee. If you are not satisfied — for any reason at all, including just changing your mind — they refund you. It is not tied to anything you have to prove. If you are not satisfied, you are not satisfied. That is the whole policy. The beets are grown on a small operation that harvests on its own schedule. There are stretches when they are in stock and stretches when they are not. I mention that not to push you — please do not let anybody push you into a health decision — but so that if you go to the site and they are out, you know why. That is all I have. Thank you for reading this far. I hope something here was useful to you. I hope, somewhere today, you are throwing a ball with a nine-year-old who has been waiting to ask you for two years. — Chuck P.S. I want to come back to the cold-press for a second. The betalain pigment — the deep crimson, the part the research community keeps circling back to — is heat-sensitive. That is the chemistry of the molecule. Process beetroot the standard way, with heat, and you lose some of the compound to the heat. Rosabella chose the slow way. Cold-press. Low temperatures. More of the compound through to the capsule. It costs them money. It costs them time. They made the choice anyway. After forty-one years on construction sites watching subcontractors choose the slow careful way or the fast cheap way, I have come to believe that the small decisions companies make when no one is watching tell you everything. P.P.S. Two capsules. In the morning. With a glass of water. That is the entire protocol. No powder to mix. No afternoon dose to remember. No schedule taped to the inside of the cupboard. I keep the bottle on the counter next to the coffee maker. I take the capsules with my first sip, alongside my blood pressure medication. That has been the rhythm of my morning for almost a year. A simple morning. I have earned one. P.P.P.S. I am going to say it one more time, because I have to. Please. Call your pharmacist or your doctor's office before you add anything new to what you are already taking. Especially if you are on a blood pressure medication, a cholesterol medication, or anything cardiovascular. They have your whole picture in front of them. I have written you a letter. There is a difference, and the difference matters. The two minutes it takes to ask are the most important two minutes of your engagement with any supplement. P.P.P.P.S. The guarantee, again, in case you skimmed. Ninety days. Any reason at all. You do not have to prove a single thing — not to them, not about your numbers, not about how you feel. If you tried it and you are not satisfied, you are not satisfied. They send the money back. That is the whole policy. A small-company policy. The kind of thing companies used to do when companies still answered the phone. P.P.P.P.P.S. The moment that took me to Dr. Klein's office in February was not anything dramatic. It was a Tuesday afternoon in my recliner with a baseball game on the television. The game was the World Series the previous October that I had been re-watching on a replay channel. I had watched the same inning twice without realizing I had watched it twice. I was sixty-four years old. I had been sitting in a recliner in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon watching the same inning of a baseball game I had already watched two times. The man in that recliner was not the man I had been at fifty-five. If you are a man in your early sixties, in a recliner, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, watching something you have already watched, I want you to know you are not alone. You are also not stuck there. I am not telling you a capsule got me out of that recliner. I am telling you it was one of several small things I added, alongside the careful work I had been doing for years, after a doctor I trusted asked me what one small additive thing I might bring back into my mornings that was not the job. That is the question I want you to sit with. Not the capsule. The question. I hope you find your own answer. I hope you read carefully. I hope you call your pharmacist before you add anything. I hope, in a year from now, you are out on a grass field somewhere, throwing a ball with somebody small who is waiting to grow up. I hope that for you. That is the whole reason I wrote this. — C. 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.