Dear MrsDoubtfyre .....

Wow.... You have given me so much to read and so much to seriously think about, deal with... And I'm dropping my Fosamax back to once a month while I consider losing it entirely....

I think of the cartilage part --- perhaps the reason I ended up with a SEVERE cartilage injury of the elbow, simply because I firmly twisted an object, first once in one direction, then in the other --- and ended up with a "tennis elbow X 2" injury that has scarcely begun to heal in what is now four months.

And since I began the drug, I aged more (facially) in that first year than I had in the entirety of the prior TEN years (depressing to say the least). And what is envolved in "looking older"? The breakdown of the collagen supporting the skin's firmness.... and shrinkage of the bones, especially the jaws (already had given them a beating using nicorette over a period of years (yeah, I know - CRINGE)

And my mom has taken Fosamax since it came out, decades of use - yet she has lost about 5 inches in height. Why? Perhaps because she did not take in nearly enough calcium, not enough magnesium, covers up with sunblock, long sleeves, work gloves and shade caps when she goes outside to do yard work (no Vit D)... and no estrogen.

So, she eats a better diet overall than I do --- So the Fosamax didn't rebuild and retain her bone since it didn't have extra ingredients needed.

but like I have learned.....
In having a stalled horse where I was responsible for every morsel eaten, nutritional adequacy is a balancing act - the highest protein hay and a quality grain addition may seem "all a horse needs" --- but then add a vitamin-mineral-omega oil supplement powder and watch the coat smooth and glisten, the eyes brighten up, a more spirited energized animal emerge.

I also learned that a daily senior centrum PLUS a super-B complex was falling short when Rose encouraged me to try sublingual B-12 to bypass the age-diminished gut absorption.... My brows went completely dark again and I lost most of my gray hair. True, after another 8 years, age is forcing the issue, but my mother, mid-eighties, went from snowy white spanning decades to an astonishing amount of black hair after HER being on sublingual for the past several years. She is now gray-haired again, even if still mostly white (her father was white-haired by the time he left public school - early white hair for all her siblings and virtually all the grandchildren on her side of the family, too).

So I thank you... And give praise to Rose for having introduced me to the world of sublingual B-12.

I wish my weekend her at my friends would be longer, but I have to head home soon or else I'd keep writing and posting. I dropped into BoardTracker and found it such a wonderful search engine for these communities (as well as BT).

Thank you for your time spent giving me feedback, your kind suggestions, the great links. May this be a great year for you and yours.

Theresa / Teri