Episode 63 – Recovering from Long Covid and MECFS with Lorrie Rivers

Now, and welcome back to another episode of the chronic fatigue and burnout recovery podcast. In today's episode, I do a guest interview, and I interview Lori Rivers. Lori is a holistic wellness coach and founder of Living from Inspiration. She is the creator of the Relief and Transformation, Managing Long COVID and ME/CFS, Full Eight Week Online Course and Mentorship. She is also a bestselling co-author with Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer and the creator of Yoga and Strength Training for Long COVID ME/CFS course. After healing from severe ME/CFS that kept her housebound and bedbound for eight years, she was sought out as a coach by others who were experiencing post viral chronic illnesses. She developed a step by step program to regain control of life, even when dealing with ME/CFS and now Long COVID. In this conversation with Lori, we talk about some of her own experiences. Initially, her own journey with ME/CFS and how all the lessons that she learned in that 80 year period helped her to recover after a bout of COVID much more quickly than some of the other people experiencing Long COVID. And she was able to develop tools and resources to help others in their own journeys and healing. We talk about parasites, we talk about fungi, we talk about the gut, and we have a lot of shared points of view that are reflected in this episode when it comes to things like pacing and supporting the nervous system. It's a really inspirational episode, it's a really valuable episode in terms of getting context about where you are and what support you may need in your own journey. The one thing I'll just say as you begin to listen to the full episode is that Lori's audio in this episode is fantastic. Mine, on the other hand, is slightly muffled and unorderable at times, which I apologize for. Because Lori does most of the talking, and I'm only just around offering a few questions, I've decided to keep the episode as is. But please excuse my muffled little bits of audio as you listen to the full episode. I hope it won't take away from any of the value that Lori has to offer. So, Lori, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. I know you've got some fantastic things to share with us today. Where I usually like to start with the guests that I have on the show is to give them the opportunity to share a little bit of their personal story. I know it helps the listeners to just really connect with probably elements of their journey that are represented in your journey. So, tell us about you and your own journey with your health and how you've overcome those challenges in your life. Sure, start. Thank you. So, you know, when I look back to before I had more serious issues, we'll call it. I, you know, throughout my childhood, I was actually in and out of hospitals and doctors' offices and stuff like that. And already at that point, I was flabbergasting doctors and, you know, they would put me on all sorts of medications, even when I was pretty young. Which now, of course, I know, ended up causing problems later on, yep. Yeah, but so, you know, looking back at that, I can see that things were building along the way. But I developed severe ME/CFS, so myalgic encephalomyelitis chronic fatigue syndrome, when I was in my 20s and spent most of that time bedbound and a lot of it housebound as well. And really, I mean, this was back when the internet was still really new, so there wasn't a whole lot of information out there about what to do and not to do. And my doctors didn't, you know, they just, I finally got the diagnosis of ME/CFS, but they didn't tell me about pacing, they didn't tell me about anything like that, you know. So I did finally pull out of that through just things that I pieced together and there was one doctor that kind of knew what he was talking about and kind of got me on the right path as far as eating plans and things like that, but still, you know, looking back and knowing what I teach now still wasn't quite the right thing. But it was, you know, to the point where just to see that doctor, my father would have to drive me down, you know, three hours away every week and then three hours back every week, which at that point was, I mean, I would be in the bed until the following week, you know, so IVs and tests and all that stuff that I'm sure all of you who are listening are probably familiar with. So yeah, I did finally pull out of that, but I realized finally that I'd had lifelong fibromyalgia. So even aside from the severe ME/CFS and for me, for some reason, would happen according to weather patterns and I finally realized that because when I moved to Los Angeles and lived there for many years, I had what I call my my Wonder Woman days, they were mostly Wonder Woman days. And then when I moved back to the East Coast, and actually when I lived in London for a little while as well, I So you lived in London. Yeah, yeah, I did. Love it. Love it. And yeah, and then when I when I moved back to the East Coast and I started have more what I call couch days, which means I couldn't move or days when I was curled up on the floor because I was in so much pain, brain fog, all those things. And so I realized that I mean, I could look at the weather map and just watch what would happen there and my symptoms. And I realized that this is what had been happening my whole life. Really, you know, I missed like weeks and weeks and sometimes months of school when I was growing up because of this thing that I never, you know, had a diagnosis for. So anyway, all of these things that kept leading me back to now that I know lead back to root cause, right, because then I also ended up developing long COVID. And it was much more mild than you know what happens for most people, but I already knew what to do and not to do because I actually started teaching I started coaching people at the tail end of when I had the severe ME CFS. So I've been a coach specializing in ME CFS for over 20 years now. So I pulled out of the long COVID within about eight months, which is very short for for that kind of thing. But I still had the Fibromyalgia, the lifelong Fibromyalgia that, you know, I was like, I'm going to get to the root of this. I really am. And I finally did and I'm now at the place where I no longer have that lifelong Fibromyalgia. I cannot even realize that a weather front is coming through, you know, no longer in pain. I have consistent energy because I did treat that root cause, which I'm sure we'll be talking about later on. So yes, you know, amazing thing is that when I did get long COVID totally spiral out of control, emotionally for a couple for about two days. Loud. Yeah, right. Yeah, because because I mean I knew that it was ME CFS again. I just and this was early on. This was like first wave really And I actually got in touch with a couple of doctors that I knew about who are experts in ME CFS. And I said, Hey, is this going to be a thing since this is a pandemic. And they were like, Absolutely. People are going to be developing ME CFS all over the place. And I was like, All right, we got to we got to get this information out there. So I ended up seeing that as as a real blessing that I got, you know, that I developed long COVID. And I'm sure in terms of like your life path as well and all the experiences you'd had before it was in a way that getting it so early and understanding what was happening, but also knowing that you have the tools to support yourself back to health again. And then now you're creating your relief and transformation managing long COVID and CFS course. Like it's almost like you needed to have that experience so that you could then go on and then create those things to support others. As you say, like a blessing in disguise. Exactly, exactly. And actually, I've been able to change the name of the course to recovering from long COVID and ME CFS. So it's relief and transformation course recovering actually from managing to recovering. That's that last bit that I was able to actually bring into, you know, into the course for my students is that, Hey, like, this isn't just about managing now. We're going to get you to fully recovered. You're going to get you to fully recover. Yeah, and I love that distinction. Something I talk about like there are stages in your journey where you really do just have to manage because of whatever else is going on in your life. You have like a management stage and then there's like more of a healing stage when the deeper layers of healing actually happened that allow you to achieve that recovery and improve quality of life again. So I love that distinction. I love that you're able to offer that to your clients. And I do want to get you talking about the root cause, but before we'll just take that one hanging so people can wait to hear what it was all about. But before we do that, how would it be just to share a little bit more about some of the big lessons that you learned in your first journey recovering from ME CFS and those big things that really helped you once you had the COVID experience to know what to do. What were some of the things that you found helped the most for you? Yeah, well, you know, I'll take it in a little bit of a reverse order. When I had long COVID, I knew what to do and not to do because I've been teaching it for, you know, 20 plus years. And so that was a part of that emotional shift that happened where instead of my mind going, oh my gosh, I would rather die than live with this thing for eight years, 10 years or longer, you know, again. And it shifted from that to, hey, you know what, I know what to do. I know that even if I have these symptoms for the rest of my life that I can be happy, you know, I know how to do that. And it started to just feel like there was an old friend who was not a welcome friend had come stay with me again for, you know, for a while. And I honestly think that between that and the pacing that I did and really getting very honed in on my eating plan and, you know, a couple of other things, think that that's what allowed it to be that mindset shift. Because then it took, you know, it took my body from being in fight or flight to being in that rest digest state so that it was able to do what it needed to do. And so I think that for sure, along with, again, because I ended up needing to go completely carnivore for about a year because I just had developed so many sensitivities to plant foods. To the anti nutrients. So that was something that worked best for for my body. And I'm not saying that, you know, that's the thing to do for everybody. It depends from person to person, which you're very familiar with. Yeah, as well. So yeah, the all the things that I have learned from that previous experience of having the severe ME/CFS, you know, 20 plus years ago, I was able to, and what I've been teaching people, I was able to implement with the long COVID. So that was a really big and honestly, I was really proud of myself to kind of watch that mindset shift and to know that all of this emotional practice, these emotional practices and the emotional intelligence that I've developed over the years that it really works, you know. And that was really a beautiful moment to have that that realization. Yeah. Yeah, that was incredible. Yeah. Now, back when I had the ME/CFS that was a totally different experience because I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know anybody else who had it. I was debilitated to the point where my father had to feed me a lot of days because I couldn't lift the, you know, the utensils and people had to take me to the bathroom sometimes and things like that. So that was really tough, but I do remember actually one of the shifting points. First of all, was when I realized that when I did happen to actually feel kind of okay that it was not a good idea to go out and try to walk around the block or God forbid, run around the block. I had no idea about post-exertional malaise. So I just finally figured that out through trial and error, but it took me a good probably five years to figure that out, which kept setting me back and kept setting me back and kept setting me back. So pacing is very important. Now, of course, the goal and what I teach is for people to get to the place where they don't have to pace anymore. But certainly while you're doing the healing process, that is an absolute for these types of conditions where post-exertional malaise is a thing, because otherwise you keep setting yourself back. And I'm so it's so interesting to hear you talk about it. I'm so much in agreement with your philosophy as well. I know there are some sort of schools out of thought out there that you don't need to pace and you should be able to override the sort of fight or flight signals with nervous system work. And I was just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit because I think it's it is potentially damaging messaging that some people are receiving. Yeah, I'm so glad that you brought that up. I just got goosebumps, which always lets me know that it's important to talk about. You know, I know that that kind of approach of the kind of all or nothing with no pacing with completely ignoring symptoms and things like that. I think it works for some people, but I also think that it can be dangerous for some people for a lot of different reasons. And one of those is that because I know that even when I was sick with me CFS the first time around and I hadn't even run across any brain retraining or limbic system retraining or anything like that. I still beat up on myself a lot that, you know, wasn't able to to get well and I should be able to get well. And so I feel like sometimes those types of systems can really lend themselves to feeling inadequate and feeling like you're not doing it right or you're not doing enough or, you know, all those different things. Now, I think that that they're very helpful, but taken with a grain of salt and knowing that it's not going to happen all at once and knowing that retraining your mind is not something that you're going to be able to do in like month, even honestly, it takes several months and even then you're not going to go from zero all the way to 100. So it really depends on where people are to begin with. Now, when I say it's not going to go from zero to 100, I don't necessarily mean like there are people who can do a brain retraining program and they might be bedbound. And they can maybe get to 90% better within a fairly short amount of time. It just depends so much from person to person. So for me, as far as the pacing thing and brain retraining, I just feel like there has to be a happy medium there because, again, otherwise you end up if it doesn't work for you, then you end up making things worse, not only physically, but also emotionally and mentally. So yeah, that's a great question. You gave such a fantastic answer. And I think the brain retraining theme is unfolding quite quickly at the moment before our eyes, especially with so many people falling unwell now due to COVID. And I think it's so new to a certain extent, even though people have been doing brain retraining for years as well, but sort of popularity and lots of different programs popping up. And I think it's still kind of like finding a space in terms of the messaging and, as you say, it can be so helpful. And I know so many people who it's been helpful for, but there can also be downsides as well, which you've highlighted so clearly. So thank you so much for answering that so beautifully. And I feel like I completely sidetracked you by asking that question. But is there anything else that you wanted to share also from your journey with any CFS that was profound or useful? Well, you know, kind of along the same lines, there were several big things that that I could tell shifted me physically and emotionally while I was having that particular journey of the ME/CFS for those eight to 10 years there. And I mentioned the pacing, which was very important for me. And then another one, which is actually related to the brain retraining in a way, is that I realized, you know, I hadn't run across anything, any formal kind of programs or anything like that. But I did realize at one point, finally, that the messages that I was telling my body was they were not helpful. They weren't doing anything beneficial, and they were causing a lot of harm, because I started to look into studies about how cells respond to stress, you know, and that if you're telling yourself these negative things, like for me, what would happen when I would have severe symptoms is I would start a brain would start telling the story of, Oh, my God, I'm going to die. I am dying. My cells are dying on a cellular level, like they're turning themselves inside out and, you know, all these different things. And as I was looking at these studies and what happened to the body when when we tell ourselves things like that, it's that the cells just shut down. They on a cellular level, you know, even, even aside from the nervous system, the cells actually shut down, which means that they don't let any nutrients in and they don't let any toxins out. Whereas, when you are telling yourself easing thoughts or soothing thoughts, then they open back up and nutrients are allowed to get in and waste is allowed to leave. So I shifted fairly quickly to instead of telling myself those other stories when I had symptoms to saying, Hey, you know what, my body knows what it's doing right now. This is my body taking care of itself, which luckily for me at that point was not too big a jump. So it's not even so much that I maybe fully believed it at the beginning, but it felt a whole lot easier and a whole lot nicer than telling myself all these other things. And I did start to see some symptom shifts at that point as well. So I really do think that it's a combination. I'd already been eating in a certain way that was, you know, helpful and was able to continue with that. And I also fairly early on started doing some energy healing, which was mainly helpful emotionally. It didn't really help me personally out with symptoms so much it does help some people out with symptoms. But that's something that I still do in my program. It's a, it's a part of the program, which is, I mean, it has so many different aspects to it. But yeah, that's a part of it too. Oh, it sounds amazing. I'm a big fan of energy work as well. I sort of dabbled in all of that myself. And I think it's part of the healing journey is just finding the toolbox of tools that work well for your system at the time. Because as you move through the journey, different things are more useful. And as you say, like in the beginning, like you have to do the pacing, but later on, maybe not as much, but there's like another tool that's really helpful. So to have a multi-passage toolbox of different things that you can use, I think is really, really powerful for a lot of people. I love that. I love, love, love it. Yes. And I definitely find that as well. Yeah. Yeah. And so anything else you wanted to share from that stage of your journey, or shall we talk about that carrot that redangled the root cause that you still hadn't quite uncovered. Let's get the carrot. Let's get the carrot. So you said that even once you had recovered, you were still getting these fibromyalgia type symptoms and they were very much brought on by changes in the weather. What was all of that about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So over the years, I've tried many different things to address the, we'll just call fibromyalgia. And nothing had really worked. You know, run across something that I would make so much sense to me like high dose thiamine. You know, I was really excited about that for a little while. And that actually ended up making me personally worse. It is helpful for some people. And so, you know, I was my own guinea pig, which I think that you're probably familiar with. Which I really feel like it's necessary for us to really fully recover from any chronic illness. But one of the things that I was trying out was ozone therapy. So I got a home ozone therapy kit. And I was doing rectal insufflations. Lots of fun. Actually, it's neither here nor there now. But what I was finding was that even at the lowest lowest level of that ozone therapy, that I was having really bad herxes. So I was having a lot of die off. It would exacerbate my symptoms, which to me said, hey, there are pathogens in my body still that need to be taken care of. Which kind of blew my mind because because I've been looking for this for so long. And because it seems so obvious. And also because I had what I thought I had treated and taking care of that in that first round of ME/CFS. But I was I was like, okay, well, if if I'm having this much die off, if I'm having this many symptoms just from the very lowest setting of this, there's something going on. So it started to do more research. And I ran across a couple of people, different doctors, researchers who said, hey, you know what, absolutely. If you have a chronic illness, you have a parasite problem, which equals any sort of pathogen really basically. So anything that is using your nutrients or taking away from you. And at the same time, releasing toxins and causing harm to the body. Right. So we're talking about, yes, we're talking about worms, we're talking about protozoa, we're talking about fungus, we're talking about Lyme, we're talking about viruses as well. So I was like, all right, well, let me, let me dive into this. And what I found was some really good information about how to approach this. Now, the thing about treating for all of these things is that these critters are, they're kind of wily, right. So you can go in and think that you've done one cleanse. And, you know, what a lot of the places who create these cleanses says, you know, you do this a couple times a year and you'll be great. First of all, I could not tolerate a cleanse, could not tolerate it. So I had to, to work out how to get the detox systems ready and all those things. And these are things that I thought that I'd already taken care of. But not to the extent that they needed to be taken care of. And then the next thing that I found was that they need to be done in a certain order. So, in other words, you don't jump in trying to take care of Lyme first thing because of several different reasons. So it's best really to focus more on the worms. So the larger parasites to begin with. And one of the reasons for that is because the parasites actually have their own little microbiomes within them. So they carry heavy metals, they carry Candida, they carry fungus, they carry sometimes viruses and, you know, all the B ones, the, the Bartonella, the Borrelia, right, exactly. Right. All all the bees. And, and other, you know, other things that we're not even talking about and other, other larva. So, you know, it's just crazy that so when you can take care of those larger ones first, they will take some of that toxic load along with them so that you don't like, for example, if you try to treat for heavy metals before you've done, you know, treated several times for these larger parasites, then you're actually pulling the heavy metals out of the larger parasites, which just makes them angry and is makes it harder on your body overall and just doesn't do a really great job of taking care of the heavy metal either. Same kind of thing with doing like a like a liver gallbladder flush. If you're into doing that kind of thing. If you do that prematurely, then you might have liver flukes that are better blocking the bile ducts in the liver and gallbladder, which means that you're just going to make yourself really, really super sick. Rather than actually flushing out the gallstones and things like that. So there are all these little nuances that are really fascinating. And so I did took me a good eight to 12 months. Talking like full on cleansing, you know, full on doing infrared saunas and all these things just consistently. It's, it's quite an endeavor, which is what I try to make sure that my students understand. Now, within that, when I'm working with a student, we make sure to go at their pace because everybody's body is different. So, for example, you know, it might take somebody three months to even work up to the place where they're able to actually start the, you know, the parasite cleansing process because three months or more. So we, we do, you know, I do tailor that one of my favorite things is when student first starts the course and they say, Hey, I just had all these parasite tests done and they all came back negative and I'm like, All right, let's see what happens in there. Yeah, and then they, they, you know, they'll be on the community or be in the group coaching call and they'll say, Oh my gosh, I just passed a bunch of worms. So we do the happy worm dance all together. And, and they say, like, I had no, I really didn't think that was going to be a thing. I can't tell you how many times I hear that from people. And that's only the stuff that you can see because, you know, the worms can be broken down in the digestive system or, you know, other. And the other thing is that these parasites, they don't just live in the GI tract. They don't only live in the intestines. They're all throughout your body, especially, you know, there's a microbiome in your head. There's your whole body is a microbiome. And I think that's place that people can get a little confused as well. They can live in your blood, your organs, your bones, your spine, your brain sinuses everywhere. So the, the good news is, Hey, we know what's causing all these issues now and it can be addressed. And yeah, you can do something about it and you can feel better provided you have the correct guidance to, to do with the right pace and in the right order. Yes, yes. And I'll just say that going back to that beginning of doing the ozone, the home ozone kit, having to do it at the very lowest and still getting symptoms. I now do it. Very highest setting almost every day and I don't have any negative responses at all. And, you know, I think my students, for example, she's had me CFS for 25 years of her life and she's only in her 30s. And she's starting to see improvements and she was, she was one of the ones who said, you know, I don't think that it's a parasite problem and she's seen now worms and so it's, it's fascinating and really uplifting ultimately. Yeah, after a lot of hard work. And I'm just curious what your thoughts are in this. I appreciate probably just catching you off guard here. What are your thoughts about parasite cleansing and people with autoimmunity? Because I know it can be quite a controversial topic if in some cases like the helmets in particular can be regulating for the immune systems. I'm curious how you approach that with some of your students. That is a great question. My thing is that if somebody does have chronic symptoms, then there is an imbalance in their microbiome, which means that they have too many of the bad pathogens, right? So, absolutely, it needs to be taken care of. Now, I do agree that having a kind of a normal amount of pathogens or helmets, whatever in the body is helpful because they do hoover up those heavy metals and they can have some immune modulating benefits. But, you know, there's my experience. We still don't want there to be too many of them. And if you have chronic illness, if you have chronic symptoms, then right now, you have too many of them. Yeah, it is showing up as like active in fiction. Yeah, for sure. And so this sounds like it's something that you're working with a lot with your clients. But tell us a little bit more about how you support people in this area, but more specifically. Yeah, so really the relief and transformation course. That's how the name went from managing long COVID and MECFS to recovering from long COVID and MECFS. And that's now the backbone is treating those underlying hidden infections. And, you know, what we do is we actually have a group zoom meeting each week where they'll send in their questions beforehand. So we work together through that and through email and through the online community and sometimes through one on one sessions for them to create their treatment plan. And so they have a whole pre-treatment checklist that they need to take care of first, and then the treatment plan they, you know, they create and they send to me and I say, "Oh, we'll take a look at this and this and this. Let's tweak this." And then, and so then they start with that. And then according to how they progress with it and what happens with it, we make those adjustments that need to be made. You know, if it's going too fast or too slow or if there's something else that maybe might support them because, as you well know, everybody is different. So, you know, for example, I'll just give you an example. Some of my students find that methylene blue is very helpful to start playing around with early on in the process, whereas for others, it can really do some not good things for them. So, you know, going back to this, using ourselves as guinea pigs, it is that to a certain degree, but it's always, we always do low and slow, which I'm sure you do as well. Yeah, to see how the body's going to And I also think it's really important to highlight for the listeners, like whatever practitioner you're choosing to work with on your journey, it's never as simple as here's the plan, follow it. Like it's always, it's always here is the starting point of the plan. Let's see how you respond to the plan and the plan is probably going to have many, many, many adjustments until we find The perfect dose that's right for you. So it's great that you're empowering people to almost create their own plan, but then helping them with that like fine tuning and tweaking that we know is an inevitable part of the process. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I love what you mentioned earlier about how something that you try out early on in your journey might not be, you know, right for that particular point. But it is, you know, it might be perfect. It might be the thing that takes you all the way later on. And so we take a look at that as well. And, you know, sometimes it can feel like you're going backwards even and then you have to, you know, there's one student, particularly that I'm thinking about right now. And, and he is completely bedbound and has been for three years and his mother's actually taking the course for him and they're such lovely Yeah, I just love them. And, you know, he's such a trooper and she's such a trooper. But what we found is that he had some really great progress just just with the eating plan with shifting to that over, you know, several months. I think he did it. We did it very, very slowly. And because he's so sensitive to everything, everything, everything. And, you know, and then we started on this one particular course and just was too hard. It was too taxing on him. So we had to take a step back and say, Okay, Let's look at a different approach to this. And so that's where we're starting to move forward again. So it's never absolutely it's never a linear process. And the thing I will say, though, is that you will get there if you're working with somebody who really knows what they're doing like Anna. Or if you're doing the relief and transformation course, you will get there. It's just going to take some time and they're going to be times where where you want to give up, which is totally fine. Like, give yourself permission to give up for a couple of days and just not focus Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and then there are going to be times where you feel like you just made a big step forward, or maybe even just a baby step, you know, we, we focus so much on how every single small little win is a big win. Right. So, so for example, one of my students, she she was able to reach down and take a fork out of the dishwasher. And that was the first time that she'd been able to do that in, you know, 20 years or something. That is a huge win. That's a huge win. And it's something that, you know, if you're not that sick that you take for granted completely, but we really focus on those and, and just again remembering that it's not a linear kind of thing and celebrating those those little wins. Yeah, absolutely. I'm so on board with everything you say. I think that the people that are working with you in such great hands. And yeah, I think it's probably not something that gets talked about enough is like the realities of recovery is just that it's not linear and there's ups and downs. And just because you've paid money to work with someone, it doesn't fix everything. It's so hard. Yes, it's really, really good to have this conversation with you today. And tell the listeners a little bit more about working with you. It sounds like you've got a few different offerings. I know you have a podcast as well. You've got a YouTube channel. So where can people get more of Lori? Yeah, so you can go to what I actually really recommend is signing up for my email list because that way you'll get all of the information about, you know, when the when registration for the relief and transformation course opens and any free workshops that I'm doing things like that. So you can go to livingfrominspiration.com and that's a great place to start the, as I said, the relief and transformation course that is the absolute best one that the Academy version of that, which is a 12 week program. And that's the absolute best way to go and that registration opens up three to four times a year. And then I also have a membership program and that is for more about managing the symptoms and things like that, which of course we go over in the relief and transformation course as well. But you can get that in the membership program also. And then I also do a long COVID and ME/CFS Holistic Healing Summit each year, where I do interviews with experts in all sorts of different areas. So like this past year, we had Dr. Mobine Syed, Dr. Bean on YouTube, which you may have heard of before, and we had Ancient Nutrition Jordan Rubin, one of the founders of Ancient Nutrition and Garden of Life. We had him and just some some really great speakers. So that's once a year as well. And then, like Anna said, you can find me on YouTube and Instagram and all those fun platforms too. And giving such value to the ME/CFS long COVID community. Very lucky to have you in the space. Before we wrap up, is there any final words of wisdom for the listeners and kind of message you want to share before we close things off? Yeah, overall, it's that it is totally doable and you can get there. And there are people out there that can help you along the way and who are really loving about it too. People like Anna, and I know that for myself, you know, my whole heart goes into, into this. And even if I never end up working with you, please know that my heart is with you, you know, and you can do this. You can totally do this. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for being here. I'm sure people will really enjoy listening to this episode and do everybody listening. We'll see you all in the next episode.