29 June 09 Restful Night Essentials Dr. Whitaker
Dear Dr. Whitaker,
I’m a 73-year old male with good health in most ways. I’m a former marathoner, having done 13 marathons, including Boston, Pike’s Peak, and a 50km run-walk (on the 30th of June 1979 in Austin, TX. We should have staged it in winter, but at least we started at 6 AM. On the other hand, I did one marathon, Cowtown, in Fort Worth, when the temperature was 23 to 25 degrees during the 3 hours and 34 minutes it took, resulting in hypothermia (treated with hot beef stew by my wife, Gail). My best marathon was Woodlands, TX in February of 1980, in which I averaged 7:03 per mile, when I was 44 (3:05:01). My latest marathon was in October, 2008. I did it in six hours and four days.
I have been using Restful Night Essentials (RNE) for almost two months, now. For 4 days I took only one, but from 9 May to 28 June I’ve taken two each night. In the last couple of years, I’ve been getting a lot of exercise. I walked the Capitol 10 km run 30 March 2008 and 29 March 2009. Before the run this year, I got up to 25 miles a week, walking, at about 3 mph. I have a balance problem, but on a rubber track as at U of Texas Rec. Sports, or O’Henry Middle School, I can actually run. With a 3-inch vertical jump, it’s hard to distinguish it from walking, however. On the treadmill, I can get up to 4 mph or so with the wind in my hair, hanging on for dear life. I walked 8 miles in a day a couple of times. I got the feeling during that time that I needed to walk 3 miles one day to sleep well that night. And, as I got in better shape, I seemed to need 4 miles. By “sleeping well” I mean getting up only once or twice a night. Well, at my age, it seems to go with the territory. By the way, I drink a quart of water early in the morning and again, as early as possible, each day, with orange juice or decaffeinated tea substituted for some of the water. (I weigh 156 lb.).
Then when I started taking Restful Night Essentials, it didn’t seem to matter whether I had exercised, or not. I sometimes got up only once on days after not exercising at all. Now that’s phenomenal! I still feel that exercise is good, but maybe I can do something else 2 or 3 days a week.
I had had a somewhat sore toe during the last few weeks, and after getting it treated by a podiatrist, I let it rest for almost 2 months. During that time I’ve been swimming for most of my exercise, usually a km 3 or 4 times a week.
Starting maybe ten years ago, I always got up 3 or 4 or more times a night, until 29 Dec 2007. Then, after the Alamo Bowl football game in San Antonio that night, and about 3 miles of walking before the game, I got up only one time that night. Since that time it’s gotten a lot more common, especially when I’ve walked several miles. I went to a couple of weddings in my family, and danced for an hour or two, starting at midnight, in one case, and felt great. I think all of the exercise paid off, at that time.
In the 56 days that I’ve taken Restful Night Essentials (RNE), I’ve gotten up to go to the bathroom 1 time/night 12 times, 2 times/night 35 times, 3 times/night 8 times, and 4 times/night 1 time. The latter night I was worrying about a certain personal non-threatening problem.
I may be prejudiced in favor of Dr. Whitaker. My grandfather was a doctor, Dr. Samuel Davis Wall, and his father was a doctor, Dr. Williams (sic) Davis Wall, and my great-grandmother was Annie Augusta Whitaker. Our family tree, as far as we’ve gotten it, is at http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=dixon3026

Genealogy

My mother, Katherine Louise Wall C., was gifted in languages and was very interested in genealogy. She was fluent in English and Spanish and German, and could follow the Latin mass in the Catholic church, having had 5 years of Latin in high school and at SWTSTC, now Texas State university. She found, along with others, about a thousand of our ancestors. When I got started, I had the advantage of the use of computers. I used Ancestry.com to find another thousand or so kinfolk, including aunts and uncles, which are hard to show on paper after a generation or two or three. On the computer, that's not a problem.
Some of the highlights of our genealogy: 6 or 7 or 8 Mayflower ancestors. I found some that I've lost. A legend that we are descended from Jefferson Finis Davis. I've searched high and low, and couldn't find the connection. Our grandchildren are descended from an English duchess through our daughters-in-law. The duchess, Margaret Beaufort, is the great-grandmother of King Henry VIII. One daughter-in-law is descended from the duke, and the other is descended from her second husband. One daughter-in-law is descended from the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams. Roger Williams and Oliver Cromwell have a common ancestor, Elizabeth Cromwell. Some of the children took her surname and some took her husband's, Morgan Williams. There must have been a little set-to there. In my family, my mother's maiden name is Wall. This name goes back a longish way to some Thomas Walls, and then a male Wallis, who was married to a female Wall. I'll try to get the details straight, some time. We are descended from King Edward III. One time, I offered to try to trace the lineage of one of my college roommates, and was able to find he was descended from King Edward IV. One more king than I had. When you hook on to one king, you get a bunch more, because they liked to keep it in the family. Yesterday, I typed in my ancestors reputedly going back to Adam. A friend of my mother's, Antoinette Yokum, had sent her a partly handwritten, partly typed genealogy going from King Edward III back to Adam and Eve. Of course any real genealogist would have to see more proof than I have, but I typed in all into my Reunion genealogy program, based on something a math prof at UT said, years ago. He said he didn't care how you proved a theorem, or something. He just wanted to get his hands on an answer! It's a lot easier to prove something than to come up with the thing originally.
In my wife's family, a long-lost cousin read something about me in the Waco paper. She figured out who we were and got in touch with us. We got together several times, meeting at the Stage Coach Inn in Salado, roughly half-way between Austin and Waco. On one such get-together she gave us a long genealogy, going back from Gail's father's mother to about 1200 AD. Then, a few years later, a lady in Arizona that I had met on-line came up with an even more extensive lineage of Gail's father's father's family.
Well, that's enough for today, 13 July 2009. I need to go get some exercise. Dixon WC