Carla Benning

9g Collagen with Calcium, D3, K2 and Magnesium

Three months ago I lay on my own garage floor for 40 minutes because I couldn't get up. Last Tuesday I sat down on the floor of my doctor's exam room in a paper gown and stood up without using my hands. He made me do it three more times. My name is Carla Benning. I'm 64. I dispatched school buses for the county for 27 years. 61 buses, about 4,000 kids, out the gate by 5:40 every morning. I started a weight-loss shot last fall. My doctor and I chose it together, and I'm still on it. I'm down 41 pounds. I'm not here to talk anybody out of anything. I'm here because of the floor. If you've ever sat down on the rug to play with a grandbaby and quietly planned how you were going to get back up, you already know why I'm writing this. Let me tell you how I got there. It was a Saturday in July. I dropped my car keys in the garage and they slid under the bumper. I got down on my knees on the concrete and reached. Got them. Then I tried to get up. My knees wouldn't push. My arms wouldn't push. There was nothing to grab but the bumper, and my hand slid right off it. I tried three times. On the third try I tipped over onto my hip and just lay there. Nobody was home. My phone was on the kitchen counter, twenty feet and one step away. I know it was 40 minutes because I'm a dispatcher. I watch clocks. The oldies station on the garage radio played nine songs and two rounds of commercials while I lay there working out a plan. The plan was to crawl. I went on my elbows to the workbench, reached up, and pulled myself up by the vise one inch at a time. Then I sat in the car with the door open and shook. I didn't tell anyone for two weeks. Not my sister. Not my daughter. Because the whole time I was on that concrete, all I could think about was Bonnie. Bonnie Sikes drove Bus 22 for the county. For 19 years, hers was the first voice on my radio every morning. She drove Route 9 through a whiteout once with 40 kids on board and never raised her voice on the radio. She changed her own tires. She kept butterscotch candies in the visor of Bus 22 and never once offered me one. Two winters ago, Bonnie got up in the night to switch a load of laundry. She never made it back to bed. Her hip broke in the laundry room. She lay on the concrete next to the dryer for eleven hours, until the mail carrier heard her. Lying on the floor for an hour or more after a fall is dangerous all by itself. Bonnie lay there for eleven. She lives in a care center two counties away now. Her daughter sold her house last June. When I visit, she asks if I'll take her to the Walmart on Highway 30. I can't. She can't get into my car anymore without two aides. About half of people who break a hip never get back the independence they had before. Bonnie is in that half. Here's the part I can't put down. Two years ago, Bonnie told me she'd lost an inch and a half of height at her physical. I laughed. I said, "We're all shrinking, honey. You should have seen my Aunt Dot." Dot was 5'2" in her wedding pictures and 4'10" by 80. I drove her to her appointments for six years and watched her get into my car one piece at a time. A hand on the door. Then a hip. Then a long breath. I always figured that was just getting old. Bone loss doesn't hurt. There's no symptom you can feel. Very often the first sign is the break. Bonnie told me. And I made a joke. I should have known. After the garage, I started noticing things I'd been stepping around. I was handing jar lids to my son-in-law. I was carrying groceries in from the car in two trips, then three. I got out of low chairs the way Dot got into my car. Hand. Hip. Long breath. I'd stopped getting down on the floor with my grandson at all. I told him Grandma's knees were tired. Dinner fit on a saucer. Most mornings coffee was all I could face before noon. And at every checkup, I stepped on the scale, counted what came off, and called it winning. Nobody ever asked what I was keeping. Including me. So I did what everybody told me to do. I asked around about bones. My sister. The ladies at church. The young man in the vitamin aisle with the name tag. Everyone gave me the same answer. One word. "Calcium." I'd taken the same calcium pill since I was 55. I'd already quit a tub of collagen from the grocery store with a woman's face on the front. Two heaping scoops, for your skin. I lasted six days. So I went bigger on the one word. A bone formula from the pharmacy. Calcium, vitamin D, the works. A serious-looking box. $83. Six tablets a day, each one the size of my thumbnail and chalky as sidewalk chalk. I lined up the week's worth on my kitchen windowsill like buses at 5:30. On the shot, six tablets on an empty stomach felt like swallowing gravel. On the eleventh morning I sat in the pharmacy parking lot with the third one in my hand and gagged. I never swallowed another one. The rest sat on the windowsill. I asked my online group for people on the shot what to do when you're never hungry. Forty women gave me the same answer. "Just eat what you can." So I did. Some days what I could was a piece of toast and the rest of my coffee. And every night that month I got down beside my bed to practice getting up. I couldn't do it once without hauling myself onto the mattress like a sack of feed. A box of chalk. A tub. One word. "Just eat what you can." I was doing everything I was told. And Bonnie's laundry room felt a little closer every week. That Sunday at the care center, Bonnie's room smelled like hand sanitizer and the lunch cart. Her car key was still on a hook by her door. Her daughter left it there because Bonnie asked her to. She saw me look at it. "I keep it so I remember I used to go places," she said. I drove home and sat in my garage with the engine off, looking at the spot by the bumper. I'd started to think this was just what 64 looks like. That I'd end up the way Dot did and Bonnie did, and the only question was when. Then my daughter came down for the weekend. Renee is 39. She teaches seventh-grade science two hours north of me. She has a husband named Mitch and two boys, and she calls me every Sunday after church. Every Sunday she'd ask how much I'd lost, the way everybody does. Two Sundays after the garage, I finally told her the truth. She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "I'm coming down Saturday." She walked into my kitchen carrying a plastic container like she was bringing potato salad. Inside were two chicken leg bones. "I do this every fall with my seventh graders," she said. "Pick that one up." The first bone had soaked for a week in a jar of vinegar. I picked it up and it bent. I could have nearly tied it in a knot. "The vinegar pulled out the minerals," she said. "The calcium. What's left is the frame. Collagen." The second bone she'd baked in the oven for three hours. It looked like a normal bone. I pressed it with my thumb and it cracked like a saltine. "The oven cooked out the collagen," she said. "All mineral, no frame. Looks fine. Breaks." She set them side by side on my kitchen table. "Mom. Which one is your calcium pill feeding?" I looked at the windowsill. Six chalky tablets. "Bone isn't a rock," she said. "It's living tissue. Most of your skeleton gets replaced about every 10 years. It's being replaced right now, out of whatever you feed it." "It's a frame of collagen with minerals laid down on it. Collagen is about 90% of that frame. Calcium is the mineral. Everybody tells you calcium. Nobody tells you about the frame." "So everyone I asked was half right," I said. "Half right." Then she said the thing I've thought about every day since. "Mom, when you lose weight fast, it isn't all fat. Some of it can be lean tissue. And when you eat a lot less, there's a lot less room for the protein and nutrients food used to bring." She picked up the bent bone and held it in front of me. "You keep telling me what's coming off. What are you keeping?" I didn't have an answer. That was the problem. "So what am I supposed to do?" "You're the list person," she said. "Where's your list?" I took it off the refrigerator. I'd made it at 4 a.m. a few weeks before, after an article about these shots kept me up. 1. Protein at every meal. Real food first, even when the shot says I'm not hungry. 2. Move. Something heavier than a grocery bag, twice a week. 3. Take the list to my doctor before I change anything. 4. Fill in the nutrients there's less room for now. Item three had a check mark. My doctor kept the shot right where it is, and his nurse gave me a protein number to hit at each meal. Item two didn't. Renee tapped it. "There's a strength class at First Methodist," she said. "I already called." I tapped number four. "I tried. That tub. That box." She was ready for that. "That tub is made for your face. Two scoops you couldn't finish, and no minerals in it. That box is the mineral with no frame, six tablets of it, on an empty stomach. You need both. And it has to fit in six ounces of coffee, because that's all you're getting down." "I spent two weekends reading labels at the store and online. Most calcium has no collagen. Most collagen has no calcium. So write this down." She turned over one of her science worksheets and handed me a pen. I wrote under item four, one line at a time, while she talked. "Collagen in grams. Not a 'blend' with a sprinkle in it. Studies on collagen peptides commonly use 2.5 to 15 grams a day." "Calcium. Calcium helps build and maintain strong bones. Everybody gets that part right." "Vitamin D3 sitting right next to it. D3 helps your body absorb calcium. Without enough D, you absorb only a small fraction of the calcium you eat." "K2, the MK-7 kind. It activates osteocalcin, a protein that helps bind calcium into bone." "Magnesium. About 60% of the magnesium in your body is in bone." "Vitamin C, because it's needed for normal collagen formation. And copper, which is needed to cross-link collagen fibers. Those two go with the frame." "And it all has to fit in one scoop that disappears in hot coffee. Because some mornings coffee is all you can face." I counted. Seven lines. My pharmacy box covered two of them. The tub covered one. Neither one would go down in six ounces of coffee. "Don't buy anything that misses a line," she said. That Tuesday I walked down the steps into the basement of First Methodist. I almost turned around at the door. Hal taught PE at the middle school for 31 years. Now he runs a strength class for women over 60 down there. Tuesdays and Thursdays, $5 a session. Eight of us, a rack of dumbbells, and folding chairs we're not allowed to sit in. I lifted a 5-pound dumbbell and felt like I'd pushed a school bus. Hal said, "Good. Again." Then he made all eight of us practice getting down on the mat and back up. "Every woman in this room is going to be able to get off a floor," he said. "Not because it's pretty. Because nobody should lie on a floor for hours waiting for somebody to find her." I had to go stand by the coffee urn for a minute. That Thursday, Hal's wife Lou was standing at that urn with a thermos. She's 71. She saw Renee's worksheet sticking out of my purse and read it upside down. Then she unscrewed the lid and held it under my nose. It smelled like coffee. Just coffee. "One scoop," she said. "Every morning for two years." She tapped the bottom of the worksheet. "DensiaPlus." I went home and checked it against Renee's list line by line, the way I used to check bus routes. 9 grams of collagen peptides. 660mg of calcium citrate. D3, K2, magnesium, vitamin C, copper. Every line. I looked at the bent chicken bone. Renee had left it on my counter in a sandwich bag. I didn't have another argument. I ordered that night. Not because I understood all of it. Because my daughter drove two hours with chicken bones in a plastic container, and a 71-year-old woman had it in her coffee. Before the bag came, I took the label, Renee's worksheet and that pharmacy box to my doctor, the way item three said. He read the label against my medication list and told me how to space it from my other pills. The rest of the box went in the trash on the way home. One thing I want to be plain about. Collagen isn't a complete protein. My scoop doesn't replace a protein-rich meal. That's why it's item four on the list, not item one. My second week with Hal, the bag came. One scoop in my coffee at 5:40, out of habit. The coffee still tasted like coffee. Eggs at breakfast. I hate eggs. I eat them anyway. Week 4 with Hal, I practiced the floor beside my bed every night with both hands on the mattress. Week 6, one hand. Week 8, I hadn't missed a morning scoop or a single class. Week 9, in Hal's basement, I got down on the mat and stood back up with no hands at all. I cried. Hal said, "Good. Again." I want to be straight about that part. Getting off the floor was Hal's class, and practice every night, and eggs I don't enjoy. The scoop had nothing to do with it. It's just the part of item four I can get down every morning while I do the work. I don't know what's going on inside my bones, and nobody can tell you that from the outside. That same week, the 12-pound dumbbell moved in under my bed. Then last Tuesday came. My monthly checkup. The nurse is a woman named Tammy who's weighed me every month since I started the shot. "Shoes off, Carla. Step on up." "Not yet," I said. "Watch this first." I sat down on that speckled linoleum in my paper gown. "Carla. What are you doing? You'll hurt yourself." "I won't. I practice every night." I crossed my ankles, leaned forward, and stood up. Hands at my sides. That's when my doctor walked in. He looked at Tammy. Tammy looked at him. "She just got up off the floor with no hands," she said. "Do it again," he said. I did. "Again." I did. He made me do it once more, slower, watching my knees. Then he sat down on his rolling stool. "What are you doing?" I told him. The garage. Bonnie. Renee's chicken bones. The worksheet. Hal. Lou's thermos. The eggs. The scoop in my coffee at 5:40. He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he said keep up the class and the protein. The shot stays where it is. We'll talk about a bone scan at my physical in the spring. I don't know what it will say, and neither does he. That's his department. Then I stepped on the scale. 41 pounds. And for the first time since I started the shot, I asked a different question. Not "How much did I lose?" "What am I keeping?" He said nobody can see that on a scale. I can tell you one thing I'm keeping. I can get off a floor. That Sunday I told Bonnie all of it at the care center. She listened with her walker parked next to her chair. When I got to Hal's line about lying on a floor for hours, she looked out the window for a long time. "Nobody ever told me to practice getting up," she said. Nobody ever told her any of it. That's why I'm telling you. If you're on a weight-loss shot and you're past 60. If every checkup is about what came off, and nobody's ever asked what's staying. If you've sat on a floor and planned your way back up. If you hand your jar lids to somebody younger. If you asked about your bones and got one word back. If there's a box of chalky tablets on your windowsill or a tub with a woman's face on it in your pantry. If "just eat what you can" means toast and coffee. If you know a Bonnie. Think about what you're keeping, not just what you're losing. DensiaPlus is built the way bone is built. 9 grams of collagen peptides for the frame. 660mg of calcium citrate and 198mg of magnesium for the mineral. 1,320 IU of vitamin D3 to help absorb calcium and 132mcg of vitamin K2 (MK-7) to help bind it into bone. Vitamin C for normal collagen formation and copper to cross-link collagen fibers. Zinc and boron to round it out. Unflavored. No gluten, dairy or added sugar. One scoop in your morning coffee. That's the whole routine. Right now it's up to 70% off: buy 2 bags, get 1 free, or buy 3, get 2 free. It's covered by a 90-day money-back guarantee, empty or full. What are you keeping? Carla Benning, 64, retired school bus dispatcher, gets off the floor with no hands P.S. If you take a blood thinner like warfarin, talk to your doctor before starting anything with vitamin K, this included. Calcium can affect how some medications are absorbed, so ask your doctor or pharmacist about timing. Keep taking anything you've been prescribed, including a weight-loss shot. Your doctor makes those calls. P.P.S. Renee put a bag in her own kitchen. She says she'd rather start the habit at 39 than wait until 64. She and the boys practice the floor after supper now. The 8-year-old wins. P.P.P.S. Up to 70% off: buy 2, get 1 free, or buy 3, get 2 free, and the 90-day guarantee, empty or full. Before you order, the link asks you one question. It's the one I should have asked a year ago, and the one Bonnie never got asked. What are you keeping?