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I Met a Man at the DMV Who Was 78 Years Old and Renewing His Driver's License. What He Said About His Blood Pressure Pills Made Me Stop Eating My Lunch. I was at the DMV last spring. I had been there for over an hour. I had a sandwich in my bag and the kind of long flat afternoon that only the DMV can produce. There was a man sitting two seats over from me. He had to be in his late 70s. White hair, trimmed bearuskay d, button-down shirt tucked into khaki pants. The kind of older man who still irons his own clothes. He had a thick folder in his lap with what looked like every document he owned organized into clear plastic sleeves. He smiled at me when I sat down. We did the small-talk dance for a couple of minutes. He was renewing his driver's license. So was I. He'd been coming to this DMV since 1979. I told him I was 62. He told me he was 78. I said, "You don't look 78." He laughed. He said, "Honey, that's the nicest thing I've heard all week, but I've earned every one of these years and I'm not going to pretend I haven't." I liked him immediately. We sat there for another half-hour waiting for our numbers to be called. I pulled my sandwich out and ate half of it. He pulled out a paperback and read for a while. At some point — I don't remember exactly how the conversation drifted there — we started talking about getting older. He told me he'd been thinking a lot lately about the difference between how a body looks on paper and how it actually feels to live in it. I asked him what he meant. He said his bloodwork had been excellent for 14 years. His blood pressure had been well-controlled. His doctor was a good doctor — careful, attentive, took his time at appointments. He said he had no complaints about his medical care. But somewhere along the way, he said, he had stopped feeling like himself. Not because of anything wrong with the care he was getting. The care was doing exactly what it was designed to do. It was just that the care had a limit. Bloodwork could tell him his numbers were fine. It couldn't tell him whether he felt like a person. That, he said, was on him. He told me he wasn't anti-medicine. He told me he wasn't one of those people who thinks doctors are out to get him. He had been on his blood pressure medication for 14 years and had taken it religiously the whole time. He said the medication was doing exactly what the doctor had prescribed it to do. But somewhere along the way, he said, he had stopped feeling like himself. Not all at once. Slowly. Click by click. The energy went first. Then the spring in his step. Then his willingness to plan things in the evenings, because the evenings were when his battery was empty. He said his bloodwork was always fine. He said his blood pressure was always fine. But the man was not fine. He said his doctor would look at the chart and say "you're doing great" — and that was accurate. The numbers were great. The chart was doing its job. But he would walk out of the office feeling worse than he had walked in, and the chart hadn't asked about that part, because the chart wasn't designed to. He said one morning, after about ten years of this, he had a thought he couldn't shake. He said, "I realized the doctor's job and my job were two different jobs. The doctor's job was to keep my numbers in a safe range. The doctor was doing that beautifully. My job — the part nobody else was going to do for me — was figuring out how I actually felt inside this body and whether there was anything I could be doing alongside the medical care to support the parts the chart wasn't measuring." He said the thought had bothered him for a year before he did anything about it. He told me he had brought it up with his doctor. He had asked, plainly: is there anything I could be doing alongside this medication that might support my body's overall energy and circulation, beyond just keeping the numbers down? He said the doctor thought about it for a minute. The doctor said the medication was doing its job in its lane. The doctor said that for the other stuff — the general energy, the cellular-level support, the feeling-like-yourself part — there were some sensible things he could explore, and to come back and tell the doctor what he wanted to try. He said he thanked his doctor and meant it. The doctor wasn't dismissing him. The doctor was being honest about what the prescription was designed to do and what it wasn't. He said the conversation was, in his words, "one of the most useful ten minutes I've spent with a doctor in 20 years." Because the doctor had been clear about what was the medicine's lane and what was his lane. And he had walked out knowing what his lane looked like for the first time. He told me he started reading. He told me he wasn't a fast reader and he wasn't a scientific person. But he read for a long time. What he ended up coming back to, over and over, was beetroot. He said the compounds that matter in beets are called betalains. The deep red pigments. They support the body's natural antioxidant balance and cellular energy. He said he had tried beetroot before. Powder. Juice. He'd felt nothing. He'd assumed beetroot was overrated. What he hadn't known — and this was the thing he kept emphasizing to me — was that betalains are sensitive to heat. Most beetroot supplements are processed at high temperatures because high heat is fast and cheap. The betalains get damaged before the powder ever reaches the bottle. He said this was why he hadn't felt anything from the powders. He'd been taking damaged product. The processing that preserves the betalains, he learned, is cold-pressing at low temperatures. He told me he'd looked for a beetroot supplement that explicitly described its processing approach that way. That filter cut the field considerably. He'd settled on a small company called Rosabella. I asked him what he did next. He said he called his doctor's office before ordering anything. He told the nurse exactly what he was thinking about — a beetroot supplement, cold-pressed, for general antioxidant and cellular energy support — and asked whether there was any reason not to add it given his medication. The nurse came back and said the doctor had no concerns and thought it was a sensible addition. The doctor told him to keep taking his blood pressure medication exactly as prescribed. He told me he wanted to be very clear about something. He said, "I never went off my medication. I didn't change a single thing my doctor told me to do. I added one thing. I called the doctor first. That phone call was the most important step of the whole thing. Not the supplement. The phone call." He said that twice. I wrote it down on the back of my DMV ticket. I asked him what happened after he started taking it. He said the first few weeks, nothing. He said he had almost stopped, because he had been disappointed by supplements before. He said somewhere in the second month, he started waking up without the heavy feeling that had been sitting on his chest in the morning for years. It wasn't dramatic. He didn't suddenly feel like he was 40. He just stopped having to sit on the edge of the bed for two minutes before he could stand up. That was the first thing he noticed. He said by the third month, he was reading in the evenings again. He'd put his book down sometime in his late 60s and just stopped picking it up. He'd assumed he was done with books. He said he hadn't been done with books. He'd been done with the feeling of having no battery left in the evenings. By the time he made it to his next check-up, his blood pressure was, in the doctor's words, "in better shape than it's been in years." The doctor was pleased. He told the doctor what he'd been doing. The doctor said to keep at it. He looked at me across the row of plastic DMV chairs. He said, "I'm going to tell you something, because you have a kind face and I think you might be the kind of person who needs to hear it." I waited. He said, "At our age, the medical system does a really important job. It keeps the numbers in range. It catches the things that need catching. It's doing that for me right now and I'm grateful for it." "But there's a part of being a person that the medical system can't really see, because it isn't designed to see it. The general energy. The way you feel walking through your own house. The willingness to read a book at night. That part is our job. Nobody else is going to do that part for us." "What I'd say to you is — pay attention to how you actually feel inside your own body. Tell your doctor about it. A good doctor will take it seriously and help you think through what's the medicine's lane and what's your lane. Then go do your part." He smiled. His number got called a minute later. He gathered his folder. Stood up. Tipped an imaginary hat at me. He walked to the counter. I watched him walk. He walked like a man whose body was still listening to him. Sixteen years older than me. I sat there for another twenty minutes waiting for my own number. I thought about my husband, who is 64, and who has been telling me for about a year now that he's "just tired." I thought about myself, and about the way I sit on the edge of the bed for a minute in the morning before I stand up, and how I had been telling myself for about two years that this was normal. I thought about the lane I'd been leaving empty. I thought about how I had never asked my doctor whether there might be anything I could explore alongside my prescription to support the parts of my life that weren't really about the chart. My number got called. I renewed my license. I drove home with the back of the DMV ticket in my pocket. That night, I sat with my laptop after dinner and I looked up Rosabella. I read everything on the site. I read it twice. The thing I kept coming back to, just like the man at the DMV had said, was the processing. Cold-pressed at low temperatures. Plain language on the bottle. No grand claims. The next morning, I called my own doctor's office. I told the nurse who picked up exactly what I was thinking about. A beetroot supplement. Cold-pressed. For general antioxidant and cellular energy support. I asked whether — given my age, given my own blood pressure pill, given my last bloodwork — there was any reason I shouldn't add it. She put me on hold for a few minutes. She came back and said the doctor had no concerns at all. She said the doctor often recommended general antioxidant support for patients in my age range. She said to make sure I keep taking my blood pressure medication exactly as prescribed. I want to stop here and say this clearly, because I think it's the most important part of the whole story. That phone call was the most important step. Not the DMV conversation. Not the man with the folder. Not the supplement. The phone call. If you take one thing from what I'm sharing, take that. You call your doctor's office before you add anything to what you're already taking. Always. Four minutes. The most important step in this whole process. Don't skip it. I ordered the bottle the same afternoon. I want to tell you what I noticed, and roughly when. The first few weeks, I didn't see anything I could point to. I had already been warned to expect this. Sometime in the second month, the bed-edge wait stopped. I didn't notice it the first morning. I noticed it the third or fourth morning when I realized I was already standing up at the dresser and I hadn't sat for the usual minute. Then later, I started reading in the evenings again — something I had stopped doing without noticing I'd stopped. By spring, I had signed up for a watercolor class at the community center. By summer, my husband and I were planning a trip we hadn't taken in five years. My most recent check-up was, in my doctor's words, "in good shape, keep doing what you're doing." I am still on my blood pressure medication. I have not changed anything my doctor told me to take. I am also, for the first time in a few years, reading my book at night instead of falling asleep in front of the TV by 8:30. The man at the DMV was right about the lane. P.S. If you've been carrying around the feeling that your numbers are fine but you yourself are not quite fine — that there's a part of feeling like a person that the chart isn't measuring — the first thing I'd say is talk to your doctor about it. Not about supplements. About you. About what you've been feeling alongside the medical care you're already getting. A good doctor will take that seriously and help you think through what the prescription is doing and what you might add to support the parts the prescription isn't designed to address. Don't let yourself wave it off as aging. Some of it might be. Some of it might not. P.P.S. If you decide to try Rosabella, call your doctor's office before you start. Like I did. Just to confirm there's no reason not to add it given whatever else you're taking. It takes one phone call. Most nurses will get you an answer the same day. That phone call is the most important step. Then put the bottle next to the coffee maker. Two capsules with water in the morning. Don't change anything else you're taking. Just add this one thing. Give it 60 days before you decide anything. Some people notice something within the first few weeks. Others take longer. Bodies are different. Be patient with yours. P.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. That's a sensible policy. It gives you long enough to actually see whether it helps before you decide. P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation. They harvest and bottle on their own schedule, so I keep an extra bottle in the cupboard. They currently offer a multi-bottle option that I went with myself. Worth a look. P.P.P.P.P.S. I think about the man at the DMV more often than I would have expected. I don't know his name. I never got it. But I remember what he said about the lane. About how the medical system does its job, and we have ours, and the two go together. I think about it almost every morning when I get out of bed without sitting first. I hope his license is still good for a long time. I hope he's still driving wherever he wants to go. I hope he's still having those ten-minute conversations with his doctor where they figure out which lane belongs to which. That's the kind of thing one stranger can model for another that you can't put a price on. 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.