Sooo…. Having discovered that I apparently have a dire condition of Olde Age that is likely to render me a vegetable — or at best, insure that I can’t remember my name — I discovered STILL MORE: It develops that a woo-woo product called inulin MAY help preserve brain function for those of us who have reached an age where we have holes in our head. It’s cheap and apparently it does no harm, even if it does no good. Actually, it appears the stuff may have some unpleasant side effects, but none of them are life-threatening or likely to put you in the hospital.
Tried to order the dope on Amazon, which carries it a-plenty. But I simply could not get through! Amazon would not take my name, it would not take my credit info, it WOULD NOT cooperate.
Soooo….
Sprouts, as you may know, carries vast shelves full of woo-woo alternative “medicines.” And lo! There’s a Sprouts just down the road from the Funny Farm.
Hop in the car, drive down there, and try to find the stuff.
No luck, of course.
Find a clerk. She appears to have no more functioning brain cells than I do…. But after several attempts to explain what I’m looking for, she finally grasps the message, and yes! She DOES find a whole plastic bottleful of the stuff.
Fly home. Bolt one of the gigantic pills down. Hope for the best.
Let’s see what it does. With any luck, it won’t make me sick (a lot of these types of woo-woo do exactly that). With a WHOLE lot more luck, maybe it will address the fast-growing cognitive failure.
As you may guess by this little flap, I am scared sh!tless of this latest ailment. Truly, truly I would rather die than end up in a nursing home. That isn’t living, after all. I know: I watched my father’s old age. And he did NOT have Alzheimer’s.
Neither, we might add, did any of the relatives on either side who lived long enough to get it…that we know of.
Problem is, we DON’T know much of what happened on my father’s side. His father apparently committed suicide (there’s a good probability that he was murdered). His mother, a Choctaw woman, apparently lived to a ripe age, but it’s unclear what kind of shape she was in at the end. Far as I can tell, none of her three sons lost their marbles in old age…but I don’t know enough about the cowhand brother to be sure of that.
My mother’s grandparents? Her paternal grandmother: diabetes. The grandfather: unknown.. Her mother: died of a reproductive cancer in early middle age. Her maternal grandparents? Grandmother lived into her 90s in high health; grandfather died in middle age of causes unknown to me. But…he was only 65 when he died, if online information is correct.
What that boils down to is…two of my grandparents died in middle age.
Presumably, if this probiotic woo-woo has any positive effect, it will be weeks before we can tell. But…it looks like the stuff is unlikely to do much harm, other than inducing diarrhea. We shall soon see….