The Magic of Kimchi in Restoring Your Gut & Your Health with Dr. Susanne Bennett

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It doesn't matter where you live, jj, if you're in the tundras of the Siberia or you're down to the Amazon. If you give me one vegetable that's indigenous to your land and you give me sea salt, garlic and ginger, I am going to make you kimchi.

Here's jj, Virgin triple board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time New York Times bestselling author. It's time to reignite wellness.

Hey, it's JJ And I have a longtime friend coming back on the show today. In fact, this is probably the oldest friend, not oldest in terms of how old she is, how long we've been friends, is coming back today because she has a new book out I'm so excited about and we are going to be talking about the magic of the Kimchi diet. If you are looking for that thing that you can add into your diet that can help you lose weight, can help with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, you have come to the right place. And I have the perfect person to talk about it because Dr. Suzanne Bennett was actually started eating kimchi when she was four months old. Crazy. When she grew up. She grew up in South Korea until the age of 12. So she has really great firsthand experience with kimchi. I've actually experienced kimchi firsthand with her and we're going to talk all about it. Let me tell you a little bit about her first. She's a holist, chiropractic physician. She specializes in allergies, detoxification, gut health and anti aging medicine. She's the number one best selling author of the Kimchi Diet, Mighty Mido and the Seven Day Allergy Makeover and a talk show host of the Wellness for Life radio show on radio MD and iHeartradio. She lives in Pacific Palisades with her husband George and her pap Lola and loves organic living, living, snorkeling with whale sharks and of course eating kimchi. Now before we dive into this interview, I want to do a shout out to Celeste Arambulo and she left a review that says your podcast is worth the review. Five stars. I'm a podcast junkie over the past several years. I've grown fond of listening to podcasts during my daily commute to work. Actually whenever I drive and for many miles logged as a competitive distance runner daily I'm recommended to review podcasts, which I think is very important in order for others to find and enjoy like I have. I keep telling myself I wonder how I can write a review. One of these days. I will take the time to figure it out. Today is the day. Your podcast is the only one that I consistently listen to and enjoy all of your topics and guests. I love your format, delivery, simplicity and message on ways we can care for ourselves. Your motivation and energy are inspiring and I always pick up a few pearls when I listen weekly. Thank you for making a difference in my life. I Celeste Arambulo Physician, wife, mother of three teenage girls and competitive masters runner who loves staying in the game of life and she's got like a runner and a little avocado. Love that. So good.

All right.

I super appreciate that. I want to tell you like you talk about weekly and we are moving. We've been doing twice a week now we're moving to three times a week. So excited about that to introduce Q and A Fridays and then my solo episodes and interviews. And I am really lucky. I am the founder of something called the Mindshare Summit, where hundreds of doctors and health experts get together each year to collaborate and share ideas. And we've got an amazing community throughout the year. And that is why I have the most incredible guests. And one of the first people to join that was Dr. Suzanne Bennett. So it's going full circle here we now, before I dive into this interview, I've got another favorite to share with you.

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Hello listeners, this is Anne Boeckle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try.

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So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.

Dr. Suzanne Bennett, you are my oldest friend ever to be on. Not that you're old, just my oldest friend to be on the podcast.

Well, I don't mind. You know what? You and I, it's over 30 years, girl.

We go long back.

Yes, long.

And welcome back. Your second time on the podcast.

I know. I'm so excited to talk to you. You know what, jj? You and I have gone through so many different time if you think about it, you know, from the 80s when we were younger and all the changes that we've gone through and however we're serving people now, you know, in such a different way. Wasn't it before you were a major trainer and you did all kinds of stuff with tv and look at you now.

I know before, I was just gonna say before there was the Internet, oh my gosh, we're dating ourselves. But you look better now than. And I know a lot of that is because of what we're gonna be talking about today. So that's the other Cool thing is, we've known each other 30 years, and you are, like, swimming with whale sharks and looking fabulous and just doing amazing things in your career. And you have, you know, you're Korean. Correct And. Right. And one of your things that I like, the first way I really kind of knew you were Korean, besides fact that I knew you weren't, like, straight Caucasian. It was obvious by looking at you. But it was because you had that amazing mask, the purigenix mask from Korea. I was like, okay, so you had all these, like, secrets that you brought over from Korea. And what we're going to be talking about today is another one of those secrets, and it's kimchi. So in fact, you dig it so much that you've written a book about it. So, like, besides the obvious of you're Korean, it's a Korean food. How the heck did you get into this?

Oh, gosh. You know, I never ever even looked at kimchi as a major food that can be a superfood in our lives. I never looked at it. I've been eating kimchi. JJ I always say that I've actually had kimchi before. I had my mother's breast milk. The truth of the matter is, I was never fed my mother's breast milk at all. But I started having kimchi juice probably about three, four months old when, you know, most babies start to eat a little something. Right?

That was your first thing.

Well, you know what? I was not at all. That was the first time I ever experienced kimchi in my body. And I was born in Korea, South Korea. And kimchi is our traditional, iconic food that's been around for over 2000 years in our country. And it's basically a fermented food. Fermented vegetables, various vegetables. That way back when in the thousands of years ago, people decided, you know what? You know, in the wintertime when it's so super cold, we cannot preserve our vegetables. The vegetables, there's nowhere to be found. So they found a way to use fermentation, the magic of the bacterias that naturally are on the vegetables that naturally produce the actual lactic acid bacteria. And they're going to use that as a way to preserve food so that the wintertime when there's no vegetation, they're going to actually have some vegetables to eat during the winters. So, you know, I really believe that when you think about the refrigeration and all the light, you know, the electricity, I think that's created a major problem to our health because fermented food and fermentation of food is really what allows us to have diversity in our gut bacteria. It allows us to have reduced levels of pathogenic bacteria and all that. But what ended up happening was when I went back to Korea, I left when I was 12 years old in 1975. And when I went back, I was 50 years old. Many, many years. I've been already a doctor for, you know, at least 25 years.

So long time. You stayed away that long.

Can you believe it? It's amazing what, what life will do for you. And I really didn't have a huge desire until my son asked me. This is what amazing what children do to you is My son asked me, mom, I want to go and visit your homeland. And he wanted to go before he left for college. So we made a huge family reunion. And all my family members, my siblings, in fact, said, I want to go too. So we all went for our first time where we got together. I was 50 years old and I go to Korea and I'm finding that the place is so different. And it was all Americanized and westernized. With every fast food, you know, all the things that we've got here in America, all the fast food joints, burger joints, pizza joints, sandwich places, pastries and all that is all in Korea now.

In the city in Seoul, we are just corrupting everywhere.

It would.

Well, it's like crazy thing. Everyone there are so amazingly lean and beautiful and energetically vibrant. It.

Wait, are you telling me you can eat pastries and. And kimchi will negate the pastry effect? I just want to know.

I. I don't want to tell you that, but I'm going to tell you what I found. What I'm going to tell you is this, is that these people ate enormous amounts, volumes of carbohydrates. And they're. It's. It's. It's like ridiculous. I'm talking about not a thousand, you know, calories of a noodle dish. They're having 2 to 3,000. It's enormous amount in one sitting.

Well, I've seen you. You eat enormous amounts of food. You're a little bitty thing. Like little, like you're what, five, five one?

I'm about 100. I'm five one. About 100. 105 pounds. That's usually. That's just like soaking wet.

And I mean, you're just a 6ft and 150. So like you're just a little bitty thing and you put way more food than I do.

I have a huge amount of food. And that was the one Thing that everyone knew about. She eats so much food, I don't know where it goes. She must have, like, an amazing metabolism. Well, I'm going to tell you what it really is. It's really my entire gut microbiome, because my microbiome, I've been feeding it kimchi my whole life. So when I got to Korea and I'm seeing all this going on, I'm going, what's going on? And everyone's so beautiful and energized and they're so happy, and they're just, like, full of, like, life. So I started doing more research, and every one of my family members are taking pictures of, you know, the beautiful surroundings and. And the countryside that we go to. But I'm only taking pictures of people and their. Their way they look and what they're eating, because it just blew my mind. And at the end, by the time two weeks, our trip was over, I realized it wasn't what they were eating, jj. It wasn't all the junk that they were eating. The white rice, the white flour products. They eat tons of flour. I mean, gluten, like, ridiculous, and a lot of sugar. But what was really interesting is that every time they eat, they eat kimchi with it. They eat kimchi with it. There's always kimchi around every single time they're eating. So what I realized is that there's something in the side dish. Not the main dishes, it's the side dish. And that's where the magic is, the secret is. So I started digging. When I got back, I'm like, oh, my goodness. This was. I was 50 years old, and I started incorporating this to my patients lives because I want to know, like, you know what? I see a lot of patients, and I want to see, does this work? And one by one, as my patients are making their own kimchi. And I. And I started in, in the beginning, I started giving in them regular kimchi, which is napa cabbage, which everyone knows about. But I realized that napa cabbage, after doing some studying with my patients, that that's not the best kimchi to give in the beginning because napa cabbage will give you a little bit more gas and bloating. It is a fermentable carbohydrate, meaning it's a fodmap food. I'm sure you've talked about fodmaps, and these are foods that have a lot of fermentable sugars that can give us gas and bloating.

Right.

So I figured out a way to create a program called the kimchi diet, where you start with cucumber kimchi, then you go to the next. After a couple of weeks of that, you start eating the. The mustard greens or the bok choy. After that, you go ahead and elevate to the radish kimchi or the turnip kimchi. And then finally the phase four, which is, you know, phase that's like six weeks later, you're going to be eating napa. And if you do it in that manner, you're going to completely change the diversity of your gut completely. Where you could even change it from an obesity gut to a thin person's gut. That's crazy.

When you think about that, that is totally crazy. It's interesting. I didn't know, like, I wasn't quite sure what kimchi was made out of.

Right.

I didn't know that it was a diversity of different vegetables. I actually had no clue what vegetable it was. So.

Well, kimchi, there's over like 200 in Korea. It's been known to. There's at least about 200 different types of kimchi that Koreans eat. That's a lot. There's many, many different kinds of kimchi.

Wow.

But there's the typical ones that people really love to eat. And within kimchi. And I tell this to everyone. It doesn't matter where you live, jj, if you're in the tundras of Siberia or you're down in the Amazon, if you give me one vegetable that's indigenous to your land and you give me sea salt, garlic, and ginger, I am going to make you kimchi. We can do this even without any electricity, gas, or any heating element. You don't need any of this. This is like what totally the ancient people used to make. We are making ancient food, this ancient superfood which will change the way your body and transform, in fact, your way, your gut is regarding your inflammation. Your. It's like to me, kimchi is like a gut sealant. And what I mean is that leaky gut that a lot of people suffer from and then which leads to autoimmune diseases and a lot of inflammatory diseases.

You.

Kimchi is like the sealant, meaning it'll tighten up those junctions. It'll improve the mucus lining of that gut barrier so that it thickens it. And then you're going to bring in, of course, all the nutrients that you need, but leave out the bad bugs, leave out all the toxins, toxic waste that you don't need. Kimchi does all sorts. And, you know, you mentioned about the vegetables. There Are certain types of vegetables in kimchi that actually can promote a certain type of bacteria. That's only in kimchi. You know, there's, there's a bacteria called we Sella corensis. And that. Why. So that bacteria itself can help with different types of anti obesity, anti inflammatory agents, which is amazing when you think about it. And when you have red pepper in kimchi that actually up levels, up levels. That level of bacteria did, you know, you know what? We all.

I did not realize that all these vegetables did different things. I just have to, okay, so I have to do the shout out. Then I want to dig deeper into some of the things that, you know, how we can make it. But here's, here's the biggest challenge. So you, at four months old, were introduced to kimchi. It's native to you. One of the challenges, I think, that happens in the US is that fermented foods for so many of us, like our whole, the only thing we know of fermented foods is wine and chocolate. Right? Like, it was just, it's just not part of our traditional diet. Right. And you know, with me, like, I get near kimchi, I'm like, it stinks, you know, and I'm like afraid of it. And. And then I had Donna Gates did a video training with me for sugar impact diet, or I think virgin diet, and taught me how to make fermented foods. And they made me try them. And there's like literally the video of me like spitting out all this stuff. So what you say to someone who wasn't raised on fermented foods who might be a little like they're hearing all this going, all right, like, this sounds amazing. I definitely want to try it. But first of all, am I going to like it if I don't like it? How long does it take to stir to get used to the taste? What about the smell and how do I make it? Like, what do you do with that?

Okay. There's no doubt that there's a natural odor. And I get it. I remember, you know, when, when I, when we had our little, one of our meetings, I brought some kimchi and. And then someone said.

And stunk up the ground.

Exactly, exactly. The reason why it smells is because of, number one, the combination of the vegetables in there. And naturally bacteria will. From when it ferments, it produces carbon dioxide gas and just a natural gas that it comes out when you've got more garlic in food, it smells a little bit more. We all know that because some people, they can smell a little bit more odorous Right. Or they might even have a bowel movement and you can even tell that it's just, oh, they've got a lot of garlic in their, in their food. The garlic is super important though. In kimchi. You don't have to put a lot of garlic in. For instance, sauerkraut. JJ Sauerkraut doesn't use garlic. And sauerkraut is the closest type of food that's very similar to kimchi and it doesn't smell similar to kimchi. And the reason is it doesn't have a lot of garlic, but the properties of garlic in itself. Did you know that garlic has its own microbiome, its own bacteria? So that. Yeah, so does ginger, so does the cabbage, so does the radish, so does the cucumber. Every vegetable has its own microbiome. So what happens is that when you mix it all together and then you let it sit in room temperature for about a day or two, you're going to get the actual fermentation occurring and that's natural. So the juices, the odors are all going to come out. So some people, if they like pickles, right, but they don't like the kimchi smell, then what you can do is you can make cucumber kimchi, but without the garlic and without a lot of the red pepper, you can make it as a non spicy cucumber. It just is going to be a little bit different because we're going to add other types of vegetables. The vegetables are key. The different vegetables give it the different diversity of the flora. The, the lactic acid bacteria. The key here is lactic acid bacteria and the most.

And where do you get that?

The lactic acid bacteria. This is a wild ferment. Everyone asked me, what starter do you use? You don't use any starter. The starter is naturally in the food, the vegetables and then on your hands. People don't realize we've got a lot of lactobacillus. We got bacteria on our hands. You know what I mean? So if when you're making the kimchi, you're using your hands, it's just a full of love and energy that you're putting into it. And the whole mixture, the, the salt is the salting, which is the brining, which is the first step of making kimchi. You have to brine it. If you don't get the first step.

Right, let's go through the process.

Let's do that.

How hard is it to make? Because this is going to become like a new big, like most of we do a lot of recipes on my blog, but what I find with most people is they are not looking to spend more time in the kitchen.

Okay, so kimchi is super easy. All you gotta do is know the four steps. The first step, you brine it, and you brine it with sea salt. Solar sea salt is the word I use. But sea salt basically is salt that's been dried in the natural sun. Solar sun. You can use Celtic sea salt. You can use. I use Korean sea salt, but you can use Celtic sea salt for this. I don't like Himalayan sea salt because it doesn't have the natural ocean with the high levels of other minerals. So you use the solar sea salt. Kosher sea salt is fine. And you brine it. And you just brine it. What that means you sprinkle. And I show you exactly how to do it. In the book the Kimchi Diet, you sprinkle a certain amount of salt and on the vegetable that's fresh, and then you let it sit there. And sometimes it's for one hour, sometimes it's up to two hours. Sometimes it's even four hours, depending on what you're doing. So there's a. There's a time period of you've got a brine, so you got a little. You got to watch it. So what I do is I do it and I make other things, and I make dinner, whatever, and it's very easy. Then all you do, the second step is putting together the. The putting together all the ingredients, extra ingredients. I talked about garlic, ginger, red pepper. I like stuff like garlic chives, which are my favorite garlic chives. You can put, like, other types of sea vegetables in it.

Like, now I know everyone listening. You've got recipes. So if everyone's going, oh, my gosh.

Okay, so first I got a recipe.

We're going to give you a basic recipe. And then there's also more. We'll link to your. Your kimchi diet book, too. That's got a ton of recipes. I think what's important here that I'm hearing is that there's all these different varieties. So you can, like, kind of start basic and beginner and then go more advanced. So and while you're brining it, you can do other stuff, too. It's not like you have to stand there and stare at it.

Exactly. If you've got the brine going, then it's only 15 minutes, because you just got to make the paste, kimchi paste. You mix it into the brined vegetable, and then you stuff it into a Glass jar. That's it. That's it. It can be in 15 minutes, you're done. And then you just let it sit there and really the patience of just sitting there for a day or two and you can taste it after 24 hours and you're going to start to see the changes and it gets tangier and all the flavors come out and the fresh taste of like say cucumber fresh taste, which is a phase one, the first recipe that I want everyone to start with it, you definitely can see the changes of the cucumber that's fresh and it gets a little bit more tangier and then, then you, it tastes almost like a pickle, but more than a pickle because of all the other flavors. Now the difference between sauerkraut and kimchi is that sauerkraut you need three to four weeks to, to ferment. Korean kimchi is one to two days maximum. So that's a huge, huge difference. It takes a lot less to make kimchi and you can make kimchi every week, which is what I do. I make kimchi pretty much every week.

Now. What about like, if someone didn't want to make it, can they buy it at the store or do you need to make it yourself?

Most grocery stores have kimchi these days. Most grocery stores even like the regular ones, I'm talking about the health food stores have a lot of ones that are made by different companies and they could be organic. So you got to try it out. Now I've tried every kimchi out there that's at the regular stores and it doesn't taste like the Korean kimchi that I'm used to. Right. It's only because it has different types of flavors. And their recipes are a bit different. Mine, my kimchi recipes are, are from my mother's line for generations. Generations. I am fifth generation natural medicine doctor in my family, in my mother's lineage. Lineage. And so my kimchi is very, very old, ancient recipe. I've changed it a little bit here and there. You know, the benefits of kimchi is not just to help you with your gut flora, to help you. You know, when you think about gut flora, we take the supplements and we eat supplement, take supplements. I'm talking about probiotics and there might be five or 12 strains in kimchi. There's thousands. You can go eat up to hundreds to thousand different bacterias so that your diversity ends up being humongous. So much greater, which will reduce the inflammation. And nowadays we talk a lot about inflammatory anti inflammatory markers such as Butyrate or propionate, that's very high in kimchi. So if you eat that, you're going to reduce your inflammation. You're going to help you with your cardiovascular health. Diabetes kimchi helps with sugar balance, and it's known to be help with insulin resistance. That's another big thing that people don't realize either. Insulin resistance, which is what we all suffer from here in America. Right?

So what's super cool here is one of my first nutrition mentors always said, add before you take away. And what I really love about this is there's a couple super cool things. Number one, like, the benefits are incredible. Number two, you can use a variety of different vegetables. So one of the challenges with fermented foods is sometimes you can get gas, but depending on the type of vegetable you have, you can shift that. Number three, you're really just adding before you. Like, you're adding these things in. So we're not even saying, hey, take these things out. We're saying, let's just every day add a little bit of this to your diet. I know you're going to give us all one basic recipe and some information to get started, and then we'll also link to the book in the show notes. But it's like, this is a very easy thing. How quickly, Suzanne, could someone start to notice a difference from eating kimchi?

Some people can be immediate. I've had people with constipation, people who haven't been able to go to the bathroom for the whole week, once a week, twice a week, and they start going right away, the very next day after they start eating kimchi. With kimchi, though, you want to do it gradually. You want to start with one to two tablespoons per day. Do not do high levels. This is what I put in my book, the Kimchi diet, and of course, the freemium, the free gift I'm giving you guys. You guys will learn all that, too. So you do it little by little, every day. And if you eat it daily, the changes that you see will be exponential over time. I've been doing it for the longest. You know, I don't know anyone who's eaten kimchi as long as I have, except my mother, of course. But we all. When you've been doing this, and if you make it yourself, if you can't make it, I get it. But if you can make it once in a while, it'll also. You'll see the difference in tastes. But.

And if you make it yourself, how long does it stay?

Some kimchi could be two, two months, three months. I've got one kimchi right now.

You're gonna say two years. I'm like, well, I'll definitely cook once a year, but you can make it and have it for two months in the refrigerator, easy. And you could make it as presents. I keep wanting you to have start your kimchi line. I'm still waiting.

I'm working on that. Jj, I'm getting a lot of good.

I bet you're getting a lot of requests. Okay, so I know that you've got a great guide, the Magic of Kimchi Guide. What is everyone gonna find in this guide?

Well, in this guide, I give you a little history about kimchi, and then the some of the health benefits of kimchi is cardiovascular, you know, blood sugar control, all that Kimchi is even great for skin and all. So then I also give you the first phase, one cucumber kimchi recipe. This is the most important recipe because this is the start. This is beginning of seeding your microbiome and restoring your microbiome to a much more healthier. And so you'll start, little by little, adding that lactic acid bacteria back into your life.

Perfect.

So that's a good starting point, is to start with the cucumber kimchi recipe. So what I'm gonna do, you'll go to jjvirgin.com kimchi you spell that k I, m, c h I kimchi. Jjvirgin.com kimchI you're gonna get the guide. You'll get that starting recipe. We'll also link to Suzanne's book so that you can grab that too, and also some. Suzanne, I'm going to link to your amazing collagen face mask that I've been hooked on for 15 years. I'm going to link to that too. So lots of goodness here. And you'll be able to grab the kimchi diet as well. And I thank you so much for coming back on the show and sharing this and making it just something that's easy to add into our diet.

Thank you.

And as soon as you send me some, like, as soon as you're willing to make some for me, bring some to mind share, and I'll bring it home.

You know what? I'd love that. Yes, I'll do that. I'll drive it down.

All right. I know, I know you're bringing some. So, yeah, it's. It's awesome. So this is great. This is an easy thing to add into your life and lose weight. And I love the message out there with this great Job. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you, jj. Thank you for letting me share. It's all about health by addition. We're just adding one superfood. Thank you.

That's a great line. Health by addition. Now, after the break, I'm going to be sharing my top takeaway and issuing a challenge. So stay with me.

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Well, happy holidays, gifts, holiday decor and more. The holiday road is long. We're with you all the way, Walgreens.

Welcome back. So this is where I give you an action step and a challenge. And here's the thing. What I loved so much was that line health is additive. Like, what can you add to what you're doing to make you healthier? And that is just a fantastic message. I had a great mentor early on who said we should add before we take away. And this is such a perfect example of how to do that. So my big takeaway from this, this interview today, of course, fermented foods and kimchi. Amazing. And all the things they can do for your health, specifically by helping your gut microbiome. But even the bigger, higher level takeaway is what can you add? What can you add to your diet to improve the quality of your diet and therefore improve the quality of your health and therefore improve the quality of your life? What can you do? And my challenge for you is to decide on one thing. It'd be great if it was kimchi. And we make it easier for you. Go to jjvirgin.com Kimchi K I M C H I Suzanne has made it super easy for you to get started. Could be kimchi. It could be adding in another cup of deep green leafies every day. It could be adding in a little meditation in the morning. What can you add in every single day? Because consistency is really the key to great health. What can you add in? What are you going to commit to? What's the thing? That's what I'd love to hear from you about. Jump on over to my Instagram JJ Virgin or Facebook JJ Virgin official. Love to hear. What are you going to add in to your daily diet? And if it's kimchi awesome. That would be fantastic because this is definitely one that she's going to walk you through the process, exactly how to do that. All right. Again, you can grab that@jjvirgin.com Kimchi and I just want to give you a little nudge, just like our listener. Early on, Celeste said I'd never written a review before and I figured out how if you haven't taken the time to rate and review the show yet, boy, I would so appreciate it if you did. It helps a ton because people come and they go, should I go listen to this podcast? And your review might push him over the edge and, and push them over that edge into taking better care of themselves and their health. And that has such a massive ripple effect. And then, of course, while you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a show. Alrighty. See you next time. Bye.

Sam.