Ribose: The Supplement You Can Feel

By Kelley Herring

Ahhh. Ski season. Blue skies, powdery white snow... sore muscles and injuries. When my husband and I booked our recent ski trip to Colorado, I knew I needed to find a way to reduce "Skier's Plight." If you're a vacation skier, I'm sure you can empathize with this scenario: You have an amazing first day on the slopes, only to awaken on day two and find you can barely move your legs, let alone suit up and actually ski. What a bummer.

This time, I refused to miss out on a single bluebird day on Purgatory's magnificent slopes. And I didn't. In fact, I never even got sore, despite eight-hour ski days and 27 inches of powder! And I attribute it to one sweet supplement: ribose.

Ribose is actually a sugar. It's the base sugar for both DNA and RNA, and the building block for adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cell's energy currency. Because ribose is a 5 carbon sugar (not a 6 carbon sugar) it doesn't add to your glycemic load or raise blood sugar levels. What it does do is help put tissue in better physiological condition during and following stress. Ribose improves recovery time after intense exercise. It also helps keep your muscles "fed" with energy, giving you stamina during a workout. The result is a better workout, with fewer sore muscles.

Dr. Jacob Teitlebaum, MD, author of From Fatigued to Fantastic, recommends taking D-ribose (a powdered form) and starting out with a higher dose to increase the concentration on the cellular level. For the first three weeks I used ribose, I took five grams three times daily, then reduced to twice daily. (I use Jarrow Formulas.)

The benefits of ribose don't stop on the slopes (or in the gym). This amazing cell fuel has been shown to help increase energy levels in patients with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and heart problems as well.

It's Good to Know: Polysyndetonic Syntax"

By Charlie Byrne

"Are you kidding? Oh, you've GOT to check out some of his stuff!"

Michael Masterson and Jon Herring had brought up Cormac McCarthy's writing at the office last week, and Jon was surprised I wasn't familiar with his work.

"I guess I should find time to read more than business books," I lamely offered.

After our meeting, I dove into some research to allay my embarrassment. That's when I found out McCarthy's written All the Pretty Horses, The Road, No Country for Old Men, and 7 other novels.

But one note on Wikipedia really piqued my curiosity...

"All the books of the Border Trilogy are written in an unconventional format, omitting traditional Western punctuation, such as quotation marks, and making great use of polysyndetonic syntax."

Polysyndetonic syntax? Huh? Of course, now I had to look THAT up. Here's what I found...

According to A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms by Richard A. Lanham, polysyndeton is the "use of a conjunction between each clause. Milton says that Satan, in his course through Chaos, 'pursues his way, /And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies' (Paradise Lost, II, 949-950)."

Here's another example, straight out of McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses: "Rawlins took one of the lengths of a siderope from around his neck where he'd hung them and made a slipnoose and hitched it around the pastern of the hind leg and drew the leg up and halfhitched it to the horse's forelegs. He freed the catchrope and pitched it away and took the hackamore and they fitted it over the horse's muzzle and ears and John Grady ran his thumb in the animal's mouth and Rawlins fitted the mouthrope and then slipnoosed a second siderope to the other rear leg." (p. 104)

[Ed Note: Charlie Byrne is Creative Director at Early to Rise.]

Word to the Wise: Incipient

Something that's "incipient" (in-SIP-ee-unt) is just beginning to exist or appear. It is derived from the Latin for "in" + "to take."

Example (as used by Shena MacKay in The Artist's Widow): "She sighed for him; so young, and yet so passe, and with an incipient beer belly."

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2319, 04-02-08], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.