39. Why We Built a Transparency-First Functional Medicine Podcast

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I'm Dr.
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Mark Sue and welcome to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast.
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Join me and our community weekly as we bring you unfiltered health from inflation to longevity.
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Real stories, real people, real solutions.
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Experience real life health changes from both patients and practitioners and learn how to turn cutting-edge information into real results in your own life so you can feel better, live longer, live healthier, and be confident and clear in your healthcare choices.
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Let's get real and get results.
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Hey again, this is Dr.
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Mark Sue, your host at the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast.
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We are taking an opportunity with this session to step back and just do a little bit of a sort of reflection and review about what this podcast is all about and reframing it for everyone as well as ourselves.
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And using this opportunity to invite each and every one of you to help make this of even greater value to you and your friends, your family, and especially to making this world a better place.
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All right.
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So let's just step back for a second because we've had a lot of feedback from our interviewed guests, our co-hosts, and others, all kinds of friends, family, folks on social media, et cetera, about the what what we've experienced to date.
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And I just want to share that with everyone because it's a it's really coming from a place of real gratitude.
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And furthermore, again, we want to just keep moving in a positive direction to serve humanity.
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So let's just step it back a second.
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What is the what's the point of this functional medicine reality podcast, right?
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There are so many podcasts out there these days.
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I mean, this is it's it's a dime a dozen.
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It's it's a jungle, right?
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Uh it's it's become the norm.
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And so certainly we did not start this to just add to the noise.
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That by all means, we do not want to add to the banter and just jungle of talking heads.
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We also did not do this for a business purpose.
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We're not trying to climb rankings and get ad space and whatever else.
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I still, to this date, do not really under I I don't think I've learned anything new about how podcasts generate income or revenue in some kind of independent manner.
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All right.
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I'm sure there's a way.
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I have no idea.
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I'm just telling you now, I 100% integrity, have no idea how that's done.
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And it's not something that's been on our radar, it's not something we've been approached with, it is not something of uh part of our mission, our intentions, et cetera, et cetera.
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We are true to that integrity.
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So why did we start this podcast?
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Let's be straight up, all right?
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It's not a sales job.
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Having said that, our intent, first and foremost, was to be transparent in making to the public, the general public, awareness of how we at Rootseek, as a virtual functional medicine practice, help care for patients.
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That is the singular and primary goal of the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast.
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Be an extension, an outreach to the public at large, saying, hey, RootSeek Health is a virtual functional medicine consultation practice.
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And we get it that there is skepticism about functional medicine.
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There are so many options for providers, practitioners, online programs, et cetera.
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What makes you different?
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And what am I getting into, right, as a potential, not customer or buyer, but as a potential patient, okay, trusting you.
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Why would I trust you at RootSeek Health with my healthcare needs and my healthcare journey?
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And so our goal with the Functional Benson Reality Podcast is to display with full transparency and with no holds barred who we are from leadership and founder, myself and our team, as a trickle-down effect in reflection of our team, who we are and what you can expect.
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All right.
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Our character, our integrity, how we diagnostically think through patient needs and presentations and symptoms and conditions, and how we think through functional medicine.
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Because let's be real.
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Functional medicine is a jungle.
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All right.
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That is not a knock.
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It's not a criticism.
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It's just there's a lot of spectrum and variety, all right?
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And that's no different than conventional medicine.
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I can say that because we, I, I'm fully immersed in both worlds.
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And without going into detail, I continue to spend time in the conventional medicine model, in that conventional medicine system, and simultaneously in the functional medicine world.
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It's, it's, there are the challenges are different, but they are similar in that it you do a a given patient cannot predictably say with confidence what they are getting when they're walking through that door to work with any given practitioner or practice without having stepped in and experienced it on some level.
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All right.
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And so our goal with the Functional Muslim Reality Podcast is to say, we get that, and we want to give you as much exposure and and understanding and familiarity, okay, with who we are, so that you can feel comfortable either yourself inquiring about potentially being a patient or having confidence in referring us or connecting others to the RootSeek health for their care.
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And as I say to everyone whenever I'm creating uh when I've had visits with folks through RootSeek or creating uh video explanations as we do for these personalized health maps that I will not go into detail here about, it is genuinely and truly an honor and privilege, not just for me.
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I know I speak for our our entire team.
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It is a is an honor and privilege to be part of an individual's healthcare journey.
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It is, we do not take it for granted.
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It is not we do not take it lightly that someone is entrusting us with their care and that they are opening up to us about a variety of struggles, hurts, many times, even on the including the mental and emotional pieces, and sometimes and many times including trauma.
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This is a true privilege to serve others and connect with people on a human level, in a at a true deep human level.
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So having said that, how are we?
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The next big question, how are we trying to make ourselves more familiar with people, help help others people feel more familiar and comfortable with us through this podcast?
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So we again we've structured this podcast with a variety of types of interviews and content.
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All right.
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Half on a rotating basis.
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Two out of every four podcasts are interviews with professionals, with colleagues of various types, right?
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This is the what most of us are familiar with with podcasts is interviews with experts in the field, key opinion leaders, et cetera.
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Okay.
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The other half, the other two out of four rotational recordings and and and sessions are with patients.
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Because again, we want to be able to demonstrate for people the raw reality of who we are and how we engage with patients.
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All right.
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So having said that, within each of those two groups, with both the professionals and the patients, we have one of each of two segments that are with a recurring co-host and one with a recurrent rotating guest.
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So when it comes to the professional interviews, many of you, most of you, maybe all of you already know, we have a recurring interview between uh discussion between Mike Schrantz and I.
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He's the doctor of homes.
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I'm I'm the doctor of people, and we talk very much to date.
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We've talked not maybe not necessarily exclusively, but heavily, heavily about the interface with between these two fields or industries expertise between what he does and his colleague what he and his colleagues do as indoor environmental professionals, IEPs, and what col uh myself and our colleagues as human clinical clinicians do, that interface when patients are living in sick environments or working in sick environments, right?
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Moldy homes, sick buildings, water damage buildings, and how do we work together or how do we best come together to serve a patient's need needs?
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And and for that matter, not just individual patients, but families' needs when when they're living in a sick home, right?
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On the patient side, you've all come to know or have already known Mary Jo Anderson as the recurring every four-week rotation co-host, as a patient co-host.
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We've had a lot of laughs.
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We are in-town neighbors, and she has gone through and shared at a very deeply personal level her long-standing dark journey with chronic Lyme disease.
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And then we transitioned and into talking about where she's at now and looking forward into wellness and longevity optimization of health, right?
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Sprinkled in in between, going back to the professional sessions, that is the rotating piece.
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We've we've talked with my first boss and best friend, George Papaniccolo, Dr.
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George Papaniccolo, who works for Mark Hyman's Ultra Wellness Center, right?
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We've talked with my wife, Jessica Lasky Sue, who's a world-renowned researcher at Harvard, and the variety of projects and underlying root cause mechanisms that uh projects and and studies and and such that she's involved with, both in the chronic inflammation world as well as the longevity world.
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And the list goes on and on.
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We've talked about HRV, we've talked about microbiome topics, we've talked to others about mold-related issues and besides Mike as a doctor of homes, if you will.
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And on the flip side, with the patient interviews, we've had some rotating guests.
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We've had patients who wrestle with these exact same topics, not just Mary Joe with chronic Lyme, other individuals with chronic Lyme, with mold illness, long COVID, autoimmune problems, stubborn and recalcitrant and hard to treat, can't figure out why, weight problems, sick buildings syndrome, the the listed the mast cell conditions.
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And then more recently, individuals who have given their stories about, well, our very first interviewee actually, as well as more recently, our more recent interviewee, talking about that that pivoting from it's similar to Mary Joe's story, from years and years of illness and complexity and struggle and suffering and being able to turn the corner into longevity, th thriving in life and vitality, right?
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And and giving hopefully with the intent, not hopefully, the intent of giving people hope and inspiration to, as Mary Jo likes to say, just keep going, right?
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If you're coming from a place of chronic illness, to just keep going.
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And for those who are looking into wellness optimization, we've started to venture into the various nuances and the evolving directions of clinical care and research with longevity medicine.
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And we'll continue to do that.
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All right.
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So that being said, I just want to summarize again.
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Our goal with the Functional Medicine Reality Podcasts is first and foremost to be of service to patients.
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We know there's a lot of people out there suffering who are not getting sufficient care and getting their needs met through the conventional medicine model.
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And that's not even meant to be a knock.
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It just is.
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The system is, we all know the system is broken.
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And we we've also covered before that the functional medicine system is not anywhere ideal either.
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All right, we know that.
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But we know that there are so many more tools in the toolbox beyond what we are offered and familiar with in the conventional medical system.
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And we want to share this breadth and wealth of knowledge and experience that the RootSeek Health team of practitioners have collectively learned and experienced in other patient cases to help more and more people going forward.
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And we're not going to get into details here as to how RootSeek operates, but we have made all intentional efforts that we can to keep costs as low as possible, to be accessible as possible, and to be as personalized and customized as possible, knowing full well that we're working with some of the really sick and complicated people.
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Not everyone is that complicated, but many are.
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And we have created this system to meet that lowest common denominator.
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And we are not promising to be perfect.
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We are not saying that we are the right answer for everyone, but we have made our best attempt over many years with different iterations and configurations on how we deliver the care, not just the content of care, the diagnoses, the treatments, not just the content, but the delivery and the operations of that care to meet as many people's needs as we possibly can.
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And so with that being said, I truly hope that to date, this functional medicine reality podcast has in some way or another served that purpose to help people feel more comfortable with at least with who I am as the founder of RootSeek Health.
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And by proxy, my team, our team, which has been assembled with selectivity in mind and with patience in mind, perhaps that's you, perhaps that's your family member, your friend, perhaps that's you in the future, or someone you know who's come across who you know of with autoimmunity, lung COVID, fibromyalgia, chronic gut problems, and digestive issues, or on the flip side, who is a gung ho health enthusiast about longevity medicine, but has lots of questions about prioritization of different diagnostic tools or treatments, what is the best answer for me to obtain my goals in health optimization, right?
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I I hope and pray that we are meeting that need.
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And from the feedback we've received over the many months now, over the half year, we are uh we are making that, we are making progress and we are meeting those needs for many people.
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But we'd love to hear from you.
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So if you've not given us feedback before, we openly invite any kind of feedback, whether it's about content for this podcast, whether it's about bringing about more clarity as to how RootSeek operates or clarity about content that we are discussing in this podcast.
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We are certainly more than open to suggestions for both topics and guests as for future podcast recording sessions.
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And especially, I want to reiterate this very poignantly and emphatically, those rotating patient consult interviews, the podcast sessions where I am effectively interviewing a patient as a as an intake visit, as a consultation, those are unscripted, they're raw, they're they're they're not pre-planned, they are not uh framed out in any kind of detailed way.
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That is how we approach patient care.
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And if if you or someone you know can use that kind of consultation and just sounding board, that that check, that feedback, that consultation medical advice, if you will, those are free medical consultations, all right?
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In exchange for sharing your story in that podcast session with an opportunity to pay forward to others who may be hearing about new tools and perspectives on healthcare for the first time, being a voice for others, bringing light into someone else's darkness.
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Those are free consultations that we are glad to offer folks in exchange for your willingness and heart to share your story with others.
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So we thank those who have um been on the podcast to date, and we look forward to the forthcoming recordings and and conversations and interviews, if you will.
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And we look forward to any and all feedback, recommendations that we that you may have for us.
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And of course, thanks for sharing and referring this podcast to others.
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We are confident it will bring value to others' lives, and we certainly pray and trust that it has done the same for you.
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So again, thanks for tuning in with us.
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Thank you for your support.
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This is the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast.
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I'm Dr.
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Mark Sue.
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Our hearts and gratitude go out to you, and we look forward to continuing to be even greater of greater value to humanity at large.
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Thanks for tuning in.
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Check you next time.