Do I need all these? Really?

Ponce De Leon must have been turning 65 when he sailed all over the world looking for the fountain of youth.  Of course he never found it, and I'm sure he died a shriveled up old man with wrinkles, bags and acid reflux. I am confident if he would have visited my little Health Food store down the street, he would have been outfitted with every conceivable vitamin, mineral, herb and homeopathic remedy under the sun...and he probably still would have died with wrinkles, bags and acid reflux, but he would have felt better for trying to maintain some semblance of proper health and nutrition.

Yes, I am turning 65 this year, and I am on the Ponce De Leon mission. I can't do much about the way my skin has chosen to be like my mother's, who incidentally is 87 and healthy as a horse.  And I can't stave off the gravitational pull's effect on my once fabulous gams, or the tiny little pot belly that every old lady has unless she's anorexic. But at least I can learn to eat better, drink more water and cut out all the refined and processed foods...and according to my little man at the health food store, I can live to be 100, if I "just add a couple of things" to my diet.

"Well, I'm not going for the Methuselah record here, Mr.___________, I just want to feel better and be more healthy. You know, 'be all that I can be'?"

"Okay, we start you off with some minerals," he says in his best customer service call center voice. He heads for the biggest bottle on a shelf stocked with no less than 50 different varieties of 'minerals'.

"You take this one...has everything...good for your bones."  'This one' is in a gigantic brown glass jar and only has 60 caplets.  I am immediately nervous.

"And you need some of these to go with those or they not work for you," handing me another mega jar of some little clear pellet-looking orbs.

"And you need oils.  You eat fish? No matter...you need Omegas.  Here, this one has all the things you need. How's your female stuff?" Now I'm starting to get edgy. What stuff is he talking about?

"How old you? You need this hormone cream over here.  You rub on...this fix that problem," as he points somewhere in the direction of my slightly sagging neck.  This guy's brutal...and I was thinking I was holding up pretty good.

My eyes glaze over as he starts ringing up all the things I "need" and I walk out of the store $350 poorer.  I get home and open up the bottles, eager to start my new health regimen, and much to my chagrin, several of the pills are quite large. Actually huge. And I have to throw my head back to swallow my tiny little blood pressure tablet every morning. I am officially freaked out.

But my desire to be healthy trumps the thought of triggering my gag reflex, so I take them all, choking down the horse pills one by one. Somewhere between the second and third day, I develop a rather scary case of intestinal distress...which leads to an even scarier UTI. After getting some medication from my doctor, I go back to my little guru and tell him I'm not doing too well on my new healthy regimen.


"ohhh...you need cranberry...have three womens in my house...no infections...never." Oh geez...it's another huge brown bottle of God knows what size pill.

"You know, Mr. ____________, all that stuff you gave me kinda upset my intestines," I explain.

"Oh, you take pro biotic?" Are you kidding me?

"No," I answered. "My system is a little delicate right now, and I'm afraid to take anything else."

"Oh, this fix all that...I have three womens in my house...never have problem."

I can see that I'm not going to win this one, so I leave with another $85 worth of brown jars. And miraculously, he was right...'it fix(ed) all that'. It's been a while and I'm pretty much in the groove of taking all my supplements. I even have one of those old lady pill holders with the day and night compartments so I can keep them straight.  I am going to be 65, you know, and my memory is a tad bit faulty.

I wonder if he has something 'to fix all that'?

Laurel.  Happy aging!