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The Most Overlooked Pillar of Longevity
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Are you following health trends that actually harm your body? In my eye-opening masterclass "The 7 Popular But Deadly Health Fads," I reveal how common health practices promoted by influencers and gurus might be ravaging your gut, accelerating disease, and shaving years off your life.
Discover which popular diets, supplements, and health rituals are secretly sabotaging your health and learn what to do instead. I explain why these seemingly healthy habits are damaging your body and provide actionable alternatives for true longevity.
Register for free access to this essential health information at https://www.livelongerformula.com
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Check out the first volume in the How to Actually Live Longer book series on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4dDXjxc
How to Actually Live Longer is your go-to podcast for cutting through the noise and discovering practical, science-backed strategies to not just add years to your life, but to add life to your years. Hosted by longevity author and functional health practitioner Christian Yordanov, this podcast dives deep into the truths (and myths) behind longevity, health optimization, and addressing chronic health problems.
Each episode offers actionable insights drawn from the host's own research, clinical practice, and personal journey, helping you make informed decisions to restore and enhance your health. Whether you're interested in reducing stress, boosting your energy and mental performance, improving your gut health, or simply looking to optimize your diet and lifestyle, this podcast delivers the tools you need to live a healthier, longer life.
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Transcript
The Impact of Breathing on Health
00:00:01
Christian Yordanov
Hey, it's Christian Yordanoff. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's topic is one that I think very few people have on their mind, right?
00:00:13
Christian Yordanov
And that is the topic of... how we are breathing on a day-to-day basis. And for many, I mean, it's becoming more popular, but I still feel like the large majority of people out there are unaware how impactful the way you breathe is on everything.
00:00:41
Christian Yordanov
We can use the umbrella term on your longevity and health, but when you hear some of the stuff I'm going to discuss today, it will make a lot more sense. And the basic TLDR spoiler is the way you breathe activates...
00:01:02
Christian Yordanov
your nervous system in a different way. So very simply put, if you do an experiment right now, as long as you're in good health and you're not driving and don't have heart issues or whatever, are not prone to Fainting or stuff like that.
00:01:18
Christian Yordanov
What you can do as an experiment right now is you can take 10 very fast and deep breaths in and out through your mouth.
00:01:29
Christian Yordanov
So oh This kind of thing and see what happens. So this is the easiest way that you can understand how how much leverage your breath has over your state, your nervous system state.
00:01:48
Christian Yordanov
And what did what that will do if you do actually try this exercise it will basically activate your fight or flight nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, right?
00:01:59
Christian Yordanov
so what what is How will you feel that? So you will feel your pulse increasing. If you were to measure your blood pressure, that would increase. If you could measure your adrenaline in the blood, that would increase.
00:02:14
Christian Yordanov
So those are some of the more... ah easily the more palpable things happening. But there's other subtle subtle things that you may not notice, at least at first. So when you activate the fight or flight nervous system, the blood tends to go away from the midsection to the limbs. So the idea we're going to fight something, run away using our legs, climb to safety.
00:02:43
Christian Yordanov
So it makes sense that those areas of the body are given priority. So what, but what does that mean? It means whatever's in your gut, ah in that torso area is probably not going to get um a lot of resources. And that's basically the the digestion is the thing that will begin to basically down regulating your digestion. So you can always digest things later. Your immune system can always deal with whatever it needs to deal with later.
00:03:16
Christian Yordanov
But for now, you need to fight or flee. So if imagine if you can do it in 10 breaths, if you can activate the sympathetic nervous system with 10 breaths like that.
00:03:32
Christian Yordanov
Imagine not such an extreme scenario, but one where you you're just activating it, know, 5, 10, 15, 20%. fifteen twenty percent So this is where a lot of people find themselves in the current world. They're breathing in a way that basically over activates the stress system and that can contribute to a ton of things from gut gut problems to brain fog to sleep problems to anxiety.
00:04:06
Christian Yordanov
You
Christian's Breathing Journey and Techniques
00:04:07
Christian Yordanov
name it. I mean, at the end of the day, we know that before even food and water, breath is the most immediate ah prerequisite for life.
00:04:19
Christian Yordanov
So if we were to create some kind of hierarchy of needs, in actual fact, food and water would be preceded by our breathing.
00:04:32
Christian Yordanov
That's how important it is. But the problem with a lot of things... like this is because we all do it we think we're doing it right you think just the body knows instinctively how to do it the problem is that that just isn't so um so yeah so at the moment this this week i've been i've been building out my um from my Live Longer Formula program, I have a whole section in the program that's all about breathing optimization to improve focus, reduce anxiety and stress, improve sleep.
00:05:07
Christian Yordanov
So i've I've kind of immersed myself into the stuff this week. um And I thought I'd record this just to give you ah deeper understanding of some of the mechanisms behind how not breathing correctly will actually contribute to diminished longevity, diminished health, and Basically, it will it will just work against you until you resolve it. And I'm going to give you some ideas on what to do, of course.
00:05:32
Christian Yordanov
Now, personally, all my life, basically, I was um kind of a not a mouth breather in normal circumstances, but anytime I exerted myself, so running, sports, soccer...
00:05:48
Christian Yordanov
things like that, I always would mouth-breath. Nobody, just nobody freaking told me I'm not supposed to do that. So I was really good. ah was fast. Like sprinting, I was i was pretty fast.
00:06:01
Christian Yordanov
I was always one of the fastest in my class. When it came to like 800 meter um running, I would start strong and then everybody would overtake me near the end.
00:06:14
Christian Yordanov
So... I was always like, why do I suck so much? Why can't have, don't have any cardio? I play soccer and gas out all the time. I was good. Like technically had a knack for soccer and just in general for sports, but my cardio always sucks. So I'm like, like what the hell?
00:06:31
Christian Yordanov
And then when I started doing Thai boxing later on in life in my twenties, um I'd still would gas out and will do more cardio to get fitter for the Thai boxing, which obviously, you know, nowadays I wouldn't do that because it's dumb. But when you're young, you just do a bunch of exertion without giving a damn about what what it's actually doing you and aging you and whatever.
00:06:55
Christian Yordanov
But... um I was like, why hell is my cardio so bad? Like, I mean, I can't be that freaking bad. And then, lo and behold, in 2018, I was listening to all kinds of biohacking podcasts, you know, Dave Asprey, Ben Greenfield, and I heard a dude called Patrick McKeown from Ireland.
00:07:14
Christian Yordanov
And at the time, ah was we were just about to move to Portugal from Ireland with my wife, so... i was like oh this irish lad how how's it going by let me hear what you have to say so i was absolutely enamored that one hour episode i listened to him absolutely he blew my mind this guy so that was 2018 in the summer i remember i was in portugal here and as soon as i finished that episode i ran to the pharmacy
00:07:50
Christian Yordanov
downstairs where we were living and I picked up some tape with which to tape my mouth at night and over the next couple of days wow I was like oh my god is this what it's like to wake up without your mouth being dry and you slept well and you're refreshed Jesus Christ so I was like ah bought his couple of his books immediately started reading on Kindle and basically then over the next couple of days I just was like I have to see what this guy's about I went to his website I saw he's doing training and in breathing and I went to Ireland and I spent eight days with him basically we a group of us at his house where the Buteyko clinic is in in Ireland near Galway so we spent eight days with this guy learning all these ins and outs of
00:08:46
Christian Yordanov
breathing so since then, i'm um since September 2018, I'm certified in his method of helping people correct their breathing and optimize their breathing and he's done a lot of amazing work. This guy, Patrick, he has i don't know how many books now, 12, 13 books.
00:09:03
Christian Yordanov
He has a whole other method for sports, Oxygen Advantage. that I'm also involved in at the moment, just about to get certified in that. just for It's the same principle, I just thought I might as well, because I have all the knowledge prerequisites, it's just a matter of doing a little bit of extra work to get that other certification.
00:09:22
Christian Yordanov
So that's more for like sports optimization and and stuff like that, and kind of more peak performance. But the Butteco stuff he teaches, it was for me a great a game changer. And for some of my clients, it's also been a game changer. you know And he's helped.
00:09:37
Christian Yordanov
like At this point, it's tens of thousands of people. ah And the reason I'm mentioning this now is because a lot of his basically all of his resources are out there for free. You can buy his books. You can buy his courses. You can become certified in his methods.
00:09:51
Christian Yordanov
But the guy is so awesome that he just gives everything away for free basically. And, you know, that's really respectable. So I always want to kind of support
The Science of Over-Breathing
00:10:00
Christian Yordanov
him. And he actually, for my first book on autism, had a whole, chat a part of a chapter about breathing because a lot of kids mouth breathe and that causes, you know, special education needs and lowers IQ and messes with their development.
00:10:14
Christian Yordanov
So he actually read over that section of the book and gave me his input for that. So, been really He's been really generous with his time.
00:10:25
Christian Yordanov
um Now he's impossible to reach because he's just so so busy. But amazing guy. So go and check out his resources. And basically, so what...
00:10:36
Christian Yordanov
what um what What is it all about? what what is What is the problem with many people's breathing right now? So we're talking about breathing too much air.
00:10:48
Christian Yordanov
It's as simple as that. Right? It's as simple as that. we can call it chronic hyperventilation but when you when you say that people don't think they're chronically hyperventilating, right?
00:11:01
Christian Yordanov
It seems like that's a diagnosable condition but the thing is over breathing is so easy to do. Even if you sigh a couple of times an hour or you yawn once or twice here and there, that can actually be enough because a lot of people then take a deep breath after that, that can be enough to keep you in a state of minor, mild, chronic over-breathing or hyperventilation, right? So what's the problem with that? Well, here's the thing.
00:11:31
Christian Yordanov
This is the thing that kind of blew my mind back in the day in 2018 when I was listening to Patrick. So when you breathe too rapidly or too deeply,
00:11:43
Christian Yordanov
Carbon dioxide, you're expelling carbon dioxide when you breathe out, obviously. So what happens is you expel too much carbon dioxide or CO2 and the levels of CO2 in your blood drop.
00:11:56
Christian Yordanov
Now, the thing about carbon dioxide is the sort of mainstream narrative is just a waste byproduct of breathing and you know energy production and stuff like that.
00:12:09
Christian Yordanov
But here's the thing, and this this is where this is where like later on, some of this may blow your mind if you have some of the health challenges that um
00:12:20
Christian Yordanov
you know we'll discuss later. but So, carbon dioxide has a lot of beneficial roles in the body, right? But here's the thing. If your carbon dioxide level in the blood drops, then you your ability...
00:12:37
Christian Yordanov
sorry, or rather not your, but your, the ability of hemo of oxygen to be released from hemoglobin to the cells is reduced because a long time ago, they found out, a guy called Bohr found that you you basically need a certain concentration of carbon dioxide in order for oxygen to be released from hemoglobin. if So the point point simply here is that if you if you breathe more than you should, you have less carbon dioxide in the blood because you're expelling more every minute.
00:13:17
Christian Yordanov
And that paradoxically, even though you're breathing more, means your tissues and your cells are less well oxygenated. So hopefully that makes sense. Once it clicked for me, I was like hot diggity.
00:13:30
Christian Yordanov
So... so
00:13:34
Christian Yordanov
The thing is, in mild cases of over-breathing, it's difficult to sort of gauge this because the body is very good at keeping homeostasis and it will it will adapt. If you start, let's say, today from tomorrow, to breathe 10% more volume of air per minute, well, your body is going to adjust. you know At first, you might feel a ah bit lightheaded and...
00:13:58
Christian Yordanov
fatigued and your cognitive function might be reduced, but you will adapt, right? Because the body is able to adapt to these things, right? um But over time, it's going to cause you health problems, right? That's simple as simple as that.
00:14:12
Christian Yordanov
So let's talk about some of the health problems. that chronic over-breathing can cause. So, here's this this is the part that, you know, if you have a problem with, let's say, blood pressure or some kind of blood flow, stuff like that, or headaches or so dizziness, stuff like that, here's the thing. so Carbon dioxide.
00:14:40
Christian Yordanov
and Sorry, just before I get into that, you if you do the breathing thing where you kind of breathe out, you know, in and out very fast, like let's say Wim Hof breathing, which, by the way, terrible fucking idea.
00:14:52
Christian Yordanov
ah If you're 40, trust me, just trust me on this one. don't Don't do it. Just you have no business doing this stuff. Trust me. It's doing you no good. All it does is it raises your adrenaline. and and But the point is, if you do that, if you've ever done the Wim Hof breathing, and no offense to anyone there that really loves it, you know, i used to also do it, whatever.
00:15:13
Christian Yordanov
um Another mainstream sort of fad that's probably... doing more damage than actual benefit, but whatever, whatever floats people's boat. Usually a lot of people, they're fit and young or some combination of those and they don't feeling the negative effects. But here's the thing.
00:15:31
Christian Yordanov
If you've ever done Wim Hof breathing or have hyperventilated, you know you can feel dizzy or sometimes headaches or, you know, various kind of weird ah vertical type symptoms. Okay.
00:15:45
Christian Yordanov
So why does that happen? Well, because... Everyone is brainwashed right now to think that you have to raise your nitric oxide because that's a vasodilator. But the thing is that carbon dioxide is a potent vasodilator.
00:16:01
Christian Yordanov
And if if the levels are lowered in the blood, you have vasoconstriction, which means the blood vessels basically tighten, if you can use that term.
00:16:14
Christian Yordanov
And that includes in the brain, right? So that's not a good thing. That's not a good thing. um Then you have other stuff, for example, let's see what else, what else I have a list here.
00:16:32
Christian Yordanov
so
00:16:35
Christian Yordanov
If you tend to over-breathe, like I said earlier, that can activate the stress response, right? So you have the autonomic nervous system and it is very sensitive to changes in blood gases.
00:16:49
Christian Yordanov
If you hyperventilate or breathe too much, that stimulates the fight or flight system, nervous system, the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, and that increases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.
00:17:02
Christian Yordanov
And they can do... other things like they can raise other stress hormones on top of that, right? They can cause other downregulation of metabolism, just lowering of testosterone. I mean, there's like so many.
00:17:15
Christian Yordanov
And again, these might be minor increases in the stress hormones, but imagine over two, three decades, more adrenaline, more cortisol than than you need. What's that going to cause? I mean... If, as we know, cortisol increases lower testosterone, well, there, there that's one thing.
00:17:33
Christian Yordanov
Cortisol can, you know, ah promote estrogen um ah synthesis through, you know, upregulating or activating the aromatase enzyme.
00:17:45
Christian Yordanov
There's a ton of Both of these hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, can increase insulin resistance. They down-regulate the immune system, right? So the Wim Hof people that did the Wim Hof breathing in that study, and then they were injected with bacterial toxins, they didn't have any...
00:18:05
Christian Yordanov
symptoms of illness not because they were bulletproof and superhuman because of the Wim Hof breathing but because the adrenaline spike from the Wim Hof breathing actually suppresses the immune system because again like I said earlier if you're in a fight-or-flight nervous system state you don't need to digest right now you don't need to have a very active immune system right now okay um
00:18:35
Christian Yordanov
What else? Yeah, so we have so this so this now, if you're triggering the fight or flight nervous system, I mean, we as you know, that can increase anxiety and stress.
00:18:47
Christian Yordanov
That can diminish sleep quality. Even 5-10% even a five ten percent or 20% worsening in any of these anxiety, stress, sleep quality.
00:19:00
Christian Yordanov
um the Just imagine, oh and then we're not talking about one week of doing this. We're talking about people, if they do chronically hyperventilate, they're like this all their life.
00:19:13
Christian Yordanov
you know I was like this until the age of 32. And some people... and some people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, they've been living like this all their life.
00:19:26
Christian Yordanov
It's because we seem to have forgotten or maybe the the stresses of the modern world are, you know, predisposing us to, true you know, because when you're stressed, you're going to breathe faster. So maybe if you're chronically stressed, it's the the sort of one feeding into the other and then you you breathe too much and that feeds back into the stress. So it's really, when you actually sit down,
00:19:50
Christian Yordanov
and do some of these exercises that slow down your breathing. ah If you start yawning and and sighing and want to take a nap, don't be surprised because you're you were activating your parasympathetic nervous system and that...
00:20:06
Christian Yordanov
um basically, you know, can stimulate digestion. it you know, can can be ah beneficial for the immune system. It will relax you.
00:20:18
Christian Yordanov
That's why with some folks, you know, doing this before bed, especially, you know, if you're living a stress stressful life It can be an absolute life-changing thing. okay What other things can over-breathing cause? So there's ah an issue called respiratory alkalosis.
00:20:40
Christian Yordanov
ah This is where the pH of the blood rises excessively. And that's due to sustained over-breathing. Now, the thing is,
00:20:51
Christian Yordanov
um If you do the Wim Hof breathing, and again, i i really think Wim Hof is a very nice guy, but just they took his thing and they turned it into this other thing and it's grown into a monster that is just... it it's ah just i don't I don't even want to get into it. i I'll probably do another episode on that oh separately.
00:21:11
Christian Yordanov
But... he was I remember in in the app he has or something, YouTube, back in 2018, before we got into this stuff, before we got into the Buteyko and the Oxygen Advantage stuff, we were you know months before that, we were into the Wim Hof, all the biohacking stuff, all the stuff that's big now. you know That was seven years ago, what we were doing. And... um I remember he he after the breathing round, you know you take those kind of ah big escalations and whatever.
00:21:42
Christian Yordanov
um He was like, I feel that, that your blood becoming more alkaline. As if like this whole alkaline acidity thing, that's an absolute joke.
00:21:53
Christian Yordanov
know ah You don't want your blood being excessively alkaline, it's just not doing you any favors, right? So in severe cases of respiratory alkalosis, there can be um symptoms of muscle cramps, tingling in the extremities, yeah?
00:22:12
Christian Yordanov
I've had clients report that. um Involuntary muscle contractions. And this basically, because you have you know various enzymes and things like that that need a specific pH to work in, that can interfere with normal cellular metabolism when the pH of the blood is... And think again, think about this. Let's pretend that we're not doing the Wim Hof breathing.
00:22:35
Christian Yordanov
Let's pretend we're smart like that. And we've avoided that. Yeah.
00:22:41
Christian Yordanov
just a long-term minor thing, the 1%, 2% suboptimal change over three decades, 30 years, 40 years. Think about how much.
00:22:55
Christian Yordanov
It's like, you can think about it you have a leak in a bucket or you have a compounding interest in one direction, it can be beneficial, even of 1%. But if it's minus 1%,
00:23:06
Christian Yordanov
if it's a minus one percent let's say some kind of debt that you have to pay down, that accumulates, over decades, that's going to compound into a lot of debt, you know?
00:23:19
Christian Yordanov
So it's like that in the body. If you if you do a few things here and there, that each on their own improve things by half a percent, 1%, 2%. Like imagine, and you sustain those things for decades, that's gonna do you lot of good. But imagine you have a few leaks and holes in the bucket, so the breathing, and then some kind of gut function, eating a food that you're sensitive to every day, 5% here, 1% here, 2% there.
00:23:45
Christian Yordanov
Imagine that compounding against you. So this is the kind of stuff we need to address as quickly as possible Because also, the end of this sort of period of addressing it, which could be two months, three months, whatever, that's all it takes for habit to become ingrained. At that point, it's no more real work that has to be done.
00:24:07
Christian Yordanov
So... I see it as a really amazing like opportunity to leverage this type of thing. You know you spend a couple of months, change a habit, go through the initial hump.
00:24:19
Christian Yordanov
And then at that point, it's just as easy to do the new thing as the old thing. it's really this is where This is the kind of stuff that, talking about longevity, if we can identify as many of these things in a person, which is what we do with my clients,
00:24:32
Christian Yordanov
um we can really steer the ship a few degrees that would change the entire trajectory of the person's life and health okay um other things i mean just it's honestly this is huge like i mean that's why patrick just this um narrow topic has created a 20 25 year career and business empire out of educating people about this is because it's simple but there's so many so many sort of
00:25:05
Christian Yordanov
nuances to it in the body when a simple thing as just breathing a little bit too much air with every inhalation and exhalation, exhaling too much carbon dioxide, that's how leveraged this can be, you know, in in in both the good and the bad directions.
00:25:25
Christian Yordanov
So you have ionized calcium and potassium shifts. So changes in blood pH can affect the ionization of minerals like calcium and potassium. And this can, this so the reduced ionized calcium can lead to increased neuromuscular excitability, which can cause that tingling and cramping, whilst the disturbed potassium balance can actually impact her impact heart rhythm and muscle function.
00:25:49
Christian Yordanov
Over time, these imbalances can stress the cardiovascular system and when severe, can actually predispose to arrhythmias and other cardiac issues. Then you have other things like, let's see, inflammation and impact on inflammation and oxidative stress.
00:26:07
Christian Yordanov
So inadequate oxygen delivery combined with chronic sympathetic activation. So if you have too little carbon dioxide in the blood or a suboptimal amount,
00:26:18
Christian Yordanov
That means like the not enough oxygen is being delivered to the cells. And if you combine that with chronically activating the fight or flight nervous system that contributes to systemic inflammation and oxidative stress.
00:26:33
Christian Yordanov
And we know that both of these are known to accelerate aging.
Mastering Breathing Fundamentals and Resources
00:26:40
Christian Yordanov
In my book, How to Actually Live Longer Volume 1, the three primary drivers of aging and dysfunction, as i I've sort of defined them for you there, are stress, inflammation, and oxidative stress.
00:26:52
Christian Yordanov
And... This is what suboptimal breathing contributes to. And again, it might not be a huge amount of stress, but even 5% increase, again, multiply that, compound that over decades, and you're in trouble, you know? So we have to really take this stuff seriously. I know it's not the sexiest thing.
00:27:12
Christian Yordanov
It's not as sexy as taking supplements and running cool lab tests and, you know, poop tests and whatever else. But um the this is where it's at. the these are the fun It's like I sometimes say, you just have to really dialed in the fundamentals and just stay on top of the fundamentals before we even talk about more you know fancy stuff like Methylene Blue or whatever other anti-aging therapies and ozone and whatever else.
00:27:46
Christian Yordanov
but You have to dial in the basics, the fundamentals. And what's more fundamental than breathing, right? so we know yeah So we know that inflammation, oxidative stress can contribute to cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, diabetes, right?
00:28:01
Christian Yordanov
So when you actually think about it, over-breathing increases your disease risk over time, right?
00:28:11
Christian Yordanov
It puts a stress on your kidneys.
00:28:14
Christian Yordanov
it can increase your blood pressure, it can cause vascular constriction, can stress the heart
00:28:21
Christian Yordanov
like we already covered, it can increase anxiety, it can contribute to panic disorders, it can contribute to depression
00:28:31
Christian Yordanov
And then, of course, it can have other impacts on, like we said, like sleep, mental performance.
00:28:41
Christian Yordanov
can cause electrolyte imbalances. It can cause exercise intolerance. Like for me, I had straight up all my life, I had exercise intolerance because I didn't know how to breathe. And then when I did the Thai boxing, not one of my freaking coaches ever said, dude, shut your mouth.
00:29:01
Christian Yordanov
Shut your mouth. Talk too much. Also, you breathe too much. they somebody should have said it nobody said it um and that would have really helped me a lot ah so but anyway it's never too late this is the most important thing it's never too late to begin course correcting steering the ship in a slightly different direction and hopefully this gives you ah little bit of ah an idea how important this this is like I said the resources are out there for free I have this as part of my program it's a small part of the program but I'm going to be now that I know that it's almost ready ah we're just having some of the the videos still being edited as we speak but once that's deployed I'm going to definitely be be um onboarding my clients into the process of
00:29:56
Christian Yordanov
beginning the and The beautiful thing is that these are exercises are so simple, so easy. They're free. And you can do some of them when you're out for a walk or before bed, while you're in bed, or when you're sitting at your desk.
00:30:08
Christian Yordanov
So it's it's not like, oh, I have to now carve out 30 minutes every day to do this thing. That's the beautiful thing for in terms of implementing ah breathing optimization and breathing re-education into our daily life.
00:30:23
Christian Yordanov
It's so easy. It's so simple. And it's free. But the benefits for what we invest are just staggering, staggering in terms of the time and the effort investment here.
00:30:36
Christian Yordanov
So, yeah, hopefully this gives you a good idea of what chronic mild over-breathing can cause or contribute to in terms of health.
00:30:47
Christian Yordanov
And hopefully this, ah you found this useful. And thanks for listening. listening And I'll see you on the next episode.