# Dr. Michelle Weiner — Augmented Wellness

Recorded September 8, 2026. Educational conversation, not medical advice. Machine-assisted transcript; spoken opinions, recalled figures and predictions are attributed to the speakers, not independently verified by this transcript.

English transcript · final v12 timeline. Machine-assisted transcription with editorial name/terminology and splice checks; not certified verbatim.

[00:00] And I realized I wasn't really healing people. I
[00:02] I was just kind of like giving them band- aids to cover up the pain that
[00:05] they were experiencing.
[00:06] So I – and then I started to realize that pain is an experience and
[00:10] everyone experiences it differently. And
[00:11] And then the whole world started talking about these six sessions of
[00:14] ketamine to cure depression. And that's not how it works. That
[00:17] Actually, one of the coolest things is you have this amazing bed. Uh-huh.
[00:20] That vibrates. Yes. And plays the music. Yes.
[00:23] Right, they say music is the hidden therapist because music is supposed to
[00:27] bring up different emotions,
[00:29] And so what you do is you create a playlist and the bed vibrates
[00:33] to the music. So
[00:34] The point is it has to be comfortable. It has to feel safe. They have to
[00:37] feel like they could just kind of let go into that experience. And
[00:40] And that's really what we're doing now is less focus on the medicine and
[00:43] more on the everyday habits, right?
[00:48] Welcome to Augmented Wellness. Where we meet the people in pursuit of
[00:52] Better. Today, we speak with Doctor Michelle Weiner —
[00:56] pain physician and practitioner of whole- person care.
[01:02] Hi, welcome to another episode of Augmented Wellness.
[01:05] I'm very excited today to have Dr. Michelle
[01:09] Weiner here with me, longtime friend,
[01:12] a pioneer in some of the areas that we're going to be talking
[01:16] about. And obviously one of the most respected
[01:20] doctors down here doing amazing work in the
[01:24] areas of pain management, mental health
[01:28] and many other related areas. So welcome. Thank you for having me.
[01:32] It's nice to be in your presence. Ah, likewise. So,
[01:36] yeah, so obviously we're going to talk a lot about
[01:40] things that probably a lot of people have not
[01:42] have gone as deep as we have,
[01:46] literally, you know.
[01:50] But the idea, you know, of this podcast is to
[01:54] really get to know people that make the world better. Obviously,
[01:58] you know, in Betterness, that's what we do and we want to empower those
[02:02] that help others. In this particular area, obviously,
[02:05] you literally are everyday healing someone.
[02:10] So. But we'd like to start in the beginning. Tell
[02:14] us, you know, where did you grow up? And
[02:18] obviously, you know, what was the foundation for you to to follow,
[02:22] you know, your your calling? Sure. Yeah. So I grew up in New York. I
[02:26] actually have always been very athletic. So sports was a big part of
[02:30] my life and movement and nutrition from a very young age.
[02:34] And I thought I wanted to be either a physical therapist or a
[02:38] nutritionist. And then when I went to University of Florida from
[02:42] being from New York, I loved like being outside the warm weather, all that
[02:46] kind of stuff. And I I was at UF and I realized that
[02:50] I could potentially just go to med school and do a lot more and heal a lot
[02:54] more people. And I started to become premed and I
[02:58] went into something called physical medicine and rehabilitation, which is a
[03:02] specialty that really focuses on function and helping people who
[03:06] have debilitating neurological conditions like spinal cord injury,
[03:10] traumatic brain injury. And I saw a lot of suffering
[03:13] in my residency and a big part of it was pain.
[03:17] And so I decided to do a fellowship in pain management. I did
[03:21] interventional pain at University of Miami. And I was really trying to
[03:25] help people feel more love and have less pain, really.
[03:29] And I got into interventional pain, was doing
[03:32] epidural injections, joint injections, a lot of
[03:36] medication management. And I realized I wasn't really healing people. I was
[03:40] just kind of like giving them band-aids to cover up the pain that they were
[03:43] experiencing. And so I started to learn a lot more
[03:47] about pain. And I think that medical school does a horrible job
[03:51] teaching us about nutrition, movement and even pain management. And they're
[03:55] so focused on medication management, really. So
[03:59] I started to explore chronic pain. And I realized that
[04:03] we were using the same treatments for chronic pain
[04:07] as we do for acute pain, which is very different. You know, if, like, you
[04:10] injure your back or your knee, the way I would treat you is very different
[04:13] than if you've had this injury for five years, right? Exactly. So I – and
[04:17] then I started to realize that pain is an experience and everyone
[04:19] experiences it differently. And if their mood is depressed, they're not
[04:23] sleeping well, they're chronically stressed, the way that they perceive
[04:26] these pain signals are going to be amplified. So I really started to look
[04:29] at the whole person, not just pain. And with that comes
[04:33] a lot of mental health conditions as well. Yeah, so we're going to dig into
[04:37] all that. And obviously, as you know, my dad has
[04:41] been suffering for a while. And, I mean,
[04:45] it's hard to see him, you know, right now, how he's doing.
[04:48] He had back issues and then has led into this chronic.
[04:53] And, yeah, even people like us that have resources,
[04:56] it's still hard because there's no magic
[05:00] cure, right? But that's what a lot of times it is. It's actually your
[05:04] lifestyle habits. And it makes the foundation of your health.
[05:08] So how he's sleeping, if he's moving his body, if he believes that
[05:12] the surgery will cure him or if he believes that movement will make it
[05:15] worse, right? All of these things are his beliefs that affect his actual
[05:19] pain. So it's really, you know, integrated.
[05:23] Yeah, his ability to believe that he could
[05:27] do something about it. Right.
[05:28] Yeah. Yeah. we're going to go a little bit back on, on, you know, some of,
[05:32] some of the, you know, these areas that you discussed. But I
[05:36] want to, you know, go back into, you know, that, what you said
[05:40] functional, right? Like functional. know, I think many years ago,
[05:44] the concept functional medicine was not, you know, that
[05:48] common. Now a lot of people are talking about that. Can we talk a little
[05:51] bit about, about it? Because obviously your approach is, is, is holistic.
[05:56] You know, as you said, your interest was always nutrition and,
[06:00] and, and, you know, exercise. One common theme of a lot of
[06:04] the guests that I have is almost all of them were athletes, you know,
[06:09] and they have that, you know, in their DNA and, and, and, you know, and,
[06:13] and, has helped them sort of, you know, excel what they
[06:18] did. Talk a little bit about that, you personally
[06:20] and, and also how you incorporate that
[06:25] into your practice. Sure. Yeah. I think the body and the brain
[06:28] are very interconnected. And so because of that, that's really how I look
[06:32] at functional medicine is that we're not just our tissues. We're not just
[06:36] our organs. We're not just our beliefs, but it's all of it wrapped up
[06:40] together. So when I treat someone, you have to use a holistic approach,
[06:44] which means we're looking at the whole person. So it's like, how did, why
[06:47] does this person have this disease as opposed to this disease
[06:51] has this person? So we really want to understand a little bit more of who
[06:55] they are and what their belief systems are and then where their
[06:59] limitations may lie. Maybe they believe that they are not lovable or not
[07:03] good enough. And this plays into their actual biology. Like imagine if your
[07:07] belief systems changes your biology and people don't understand how
[07:11] interconnected the brain and the body are. So the fact that we're in this
[07:14] chronically stressed state and our amygdala is on high alert
[07:18] all the time. And how does that change the way that we
[07:22] perform in our everyday life? For example, prefrontal cortex
[07:26] is a part of the brain that's supposed to tell us to get up and go and do
[07:29] different things. And if our brain is kind of telling us, you know, stay
[07:32] down, it's not safe out there, we're not going to be as productive. So
[07:36] understanding how our brain is working is very important, but then also how
[07:40] it affects the body. And that really has to do with how we regulate our
[07:43] emotions, our nervous system and our beliefs. So when I think when we start
[07:47] to really look at the brain and the body as one and not separate,
[07:51] and I think neuroscience has helped bridge this gap, then there's a lot
[07:55] more than just taking blood and looking at labs. You know, we have
[07:58] functional MRIs. We have a lot of more
[08:02] advanced technology to help us. And at the same time,
[08:05] what's most important is just our foundation of health. You know, how we
[08:09] sleep, move, eat, socialize with other people, what we think about
[08:13] ourselves. So I think, you know, functional integrative medicine is new
[08:17] in the sense that it's not taught in medical schools. And that's really
[08:21] very sad because then we're still not right because then we're
[08:25] just looking at very basic biomarkers to help understand how people are
[08:28] feeling. The same way where, you know, we can't really measure
[08:32] neurotransmitters. Yet people believe that depression is a serotonin
[08:36] deficiency. And that's really not true. And a lot of research has shown
[08:39] that it's much more complex. It could be metabolic. It could be
[08:43] hormonal. It could be due to poor habits or
[08:47] what's going on in the brain. So, you know, I think my life has
[08:50] changed a lot as I've learned a lot more about neuroscience. And
[08:54] really, we were looking at pain as if it was in the physical body. And now
[08:58] we understand that anything that's chronic is actually mediated by our
[09:02] central nervous system, which is our brain and our spine. And most of it is
[09:06] people feeling stuck over time. And why did they get stuck? And how
[09:10] can we shift them out? And what is a good catalyst to create change? I
[09:14] think that's what we're all looking for. Like, how can someone connect
[09:17] deeper with who they truly are and understand what's important to them when
[09:21] they're stuck in a state of fear or they don't even have meaning in their
[09:25] life?
[09:26] how do you, you know, when you see a patient,
[09:30] you know, and obviously you said there's a very big
[09:34] difference between chronic, you know, and acute pain.
[09:38] How do you approach it? I mean, you said, you you understand their
[09:42] belief system, right? Yeah. I mean, we all know right now, I mean,
[09:46] the criticism of the medical, you know, relationship
[09:50] is you go in and 15 minutes, you're in and out. You know, how do you
[09:54] have time to actually, you know, you know, dig deeper
[09:58] into the patient? I mean, what is your approach? That's a great question
[10:01] because you have to create a model that works for you and your
[10:06] practice, right? So initially when I was a pain doctor, was just evaluating
[10:10] patients, seeing their MRIs, doing injections. And that to me is not
[10:13] treating the whole person, right? Why did a person who has
[10:17] an acute issue turn into chronic pain? Or why did someone who had some
[10:22] type of trauma develop PTSD or generalized anxiety? So
[10:25] we call it a biopsychosocial approach. What you're doing is you're looking
[10:30] at their physical body, at their genetics, their medications that
[10:33] they're on, different pathways in the body, which break down enzymes
[10:38] so that we understand a little bit more of who they are and how things are
[10:41] running in the body. And then we look at psychologically their coping
[10:45] mechanisms, their belief systems, socially who's in their
[10:49] environment, what type of work they have, if they have financial
[10:53] constraints. So if we can evaluate someone from a
[10:56] biopsychosocial approach, really understand all of these aspects,
[11:00] then it also helps us understand what they believe is going on and where
[11:04] they became stuck. You know, sometimes people are moving on
[11:08] in their life and they're actually operating with old belief systems
[11:12] or they're not able to move forward because the trauma that they experience
[11:16] is still plaguing them in their current present moment. So
[11:19] I actually evaluate people by what we call the experience of
[11:23] the patient, meaning if I'm sitting with someone, how do they make me feel?
[11:27] Do they have more of like a depressed, flat affect? Do they feel a little
[11:30] bit more anxious and kind of hypervigilant? Are they moving around and
[11:34] uncomfortable because they're in physical pain? So one is the experience of
[11:38] the patient after we do a biopsychosocial approach. And then
[11:42] it's can they tune in? You know, can they tune into their body accurately?
[11:46] Are they sensing these signals from an amplified perspective?
[11:50] You know, are they seeing the world like everything is a threat or are
[11:54] they able to actually feel safe in their body and be present? And I think
[11:58] that's important is that people have had past experiences that
[12:02] really create how they're moving forward in their life. And
[12:06] we have to understand what has happened in their past and then how they're
[12:09] able to sense their their physical body. So it's getting them back in
[12:13] touch with their body, but also understanding that their past is still part
[12:17] of who they are today. Yeah, which which obviously is
[12:21] is is what, you in a way connected us when when,
[12:25] you we were a Nue Life, you know, which was a company that that
[12:29] that we started with the Juan Pablo, which, you know, well, our whole goal
[12:33] was to, you know, can we actually create, you a company
[12:37] that, you know, could could democratize the access to to the
[12:41] medicine, but then, you know, really understand the user
[12:45] or the patient, you know, in a more holistic way.
[12:48] And I don't know if you remember back then, but, you we did one
[12:52] of the largest peer reviewed papers that
[12:56] that demonstrate the efficacy of the at
[13:00] home ketamine. But the second paper that we never got to publish
[13:04] and that one had a 50 percent reduction of symptoms,
[13:07] I think, within four weeks, which was obviously, you know,
[13:12] you know, the statistics of people that were treatment resistant
[13:16] to have that type of effect. Right. But the one that
[13:20] we didn't get to publish was the one that measure when they
[13:23] actually engage in lifestyle changes. And
[13:27] they did the other part of the program that we had. As you remember, we
[13:31] had like, you know, we had health coaches and we give them nutrition
[13:35] advice and we give them breath work and all that.
[13:40] You know, the the impact, I think, was when all the way up to like 70 or 80
[13:44] percent reduction in symptoms. So.
[13:48] So with that, I want to sort of get into a little bit of
[13:52] that time where we connected. Right. So we connected.
[13:56] But yeah, I was right around COVID after COVID.
[13:59] There was, you know, there was always interesting the
[14:03] psychedelic space. Obviously, maybe we'll go
[14:07] back a little bit of history on that. And obviously, I let you
[14:11] tell us a little bit. I remember in my in my
[14:15] particular. Perspective
[14:19] was Michael Pollan. Right. 2018, I think he wrote the book and that sort
[14:23] of reinvigorated the space. So tell us a little bit how you saw it
[14:27] from because you were already looking at pain and
[14:31] and mental health and all that. How did you? So
[14:34] I was trained in 2012 to do ketamine infusions for
[14:39] chronic pain in my pain fellowship. So I've been doing it for, you know,
[14:43] 14 years now. Right. However, back then it was
[14:47] done in a very different way where they looked at ketamine as a
[14:50] dissociative anesthetic that was just supposed to give people a temporary
[14:53] relief from their pain. They didn't realize the amount of
[14:57] neuroplasticity that could be created and why you should have a
[15:01] coach or therapist there to steer or guide you in the right direction once
[15:04] the changes are happening within the nervous system. So I was using
[15:08] ketamine for chronic pain. And then I saw these therapists
[15:12] and psychiatrists start to use it for mental health. Which really made me
[15:15] curious. How are people using it for pain versus depression? Why is that
[15:18] different? Right. And then you have to understand why the same medicine
[15:22] could be used for multiple different conditions. And so if the goal is to
[15:26] create this neuroplasticity, then you can kind of get there
[15:30] with two different medicines. You can also do it without a medicine. Right.
[15:34] But ketamine is completely legal. It's a schedule three medication. It's
[15:38] been available since 1970. So over 50 years. Let's go into that because
[15:42] obviously, you know, we've been in this space. For a while. Yeah. You've
[15:45] been a lot longer than I have. There's all these misconceptions about
[15:49] ketamine. There's horse tranquilizer thing.
[15:53] As far as I've learned it and I remember it, I
[15:57] mean, one of the first instances where people understood
[16:01] that there was something that worked with ketamine was
[16:05] in Vietnam. Right. They called it the buddy drug. Yeah. Okay. So instead of
[16:09] giving someone morphine who was injured, you know, to relieve their pain,
[16:14] morphine also suppresses their respiration. So ketamine is very
[16:18] safe. It doesn't actually change any suppressions in terms of their
[16:22] respiration. So they're able to continue to breathe. And at the same time,
[16:26] they have pain relief because it's an anesthetic. But the bigger thing was
[16:29] that there was less of an emotional charge from the trauma that they were
[16:33] experiencing. So if you gave someone morphine, they're out of pain, but
[16:36] maybe you're going to give them too much and that's going to affect their
[16:39] vitals. Okay. So as opposed to giving them something like
[16:43] ketamine, they're able to not have pain, their vitals are stable, and
[16:47] they're also not experiencing the trauma at So realizing that people maybe
[16:51] had less PTSD or they had... Exactly. They were waking up with less PTSD
[16:55] because they were dissociating during the trauma. So they weren't
[16:58] experiencing all of these emotions and fear. And because of that, they were
[17:02] waking up in less pain, but also developed less PTSD. So Vietnam
[17:06] was the first time they started really using ketamine. Then people would
[17:09] use it in surgery and people would wake up and they would report feeling
[17:12] less depressed because it's such a rapid antidepressant. So then they
[17:16] started researching it. John Krystal researched it over 20
[17:20] years ago looking at ketamine for treatment-resistant depression. So
[17:24] people who've tried and failed all these different SSRIs and SNRIs, why
[17:28] would this work? It stimulates glutamate, which is an excitatory
[17:31] neurotransmitter, has a completely different mechanism. People who have
[17:35] already been on all these drugs and kind of frustrated and hopeless started
[17:39] to get ketamine and feel better. The problem was that he did a study, which
[17:43] was twice a week for three weeks, a total of six sessions. And then the
[17:46] whole world started talking about these six sessions of ketamine to cure
[17:49] depression. And that's not how it works. That study was done, and it's a
[17:53] great study, but it was really looking at short-term effects of ketamine.
[17:57] It's great for suicidal ideations. It helps someone very quickly. But with
[18:01] ketamine, sometimes you actually require maintenance. The other thing is
[18:05] that they made it into an FDA-approved drug called Spravato,
[18:08] which is S-ketamine because ketamine has two parts to
[18:12] it. And that's great because it's covered by insurance for people who need
[18:15] help and can't afford ketamine. But the problem is they didn't
[18:19] put therapy alongside of Spravato. So then people were just getting
[18:24] Spravato for a long time, you know, and they were feeling better.
[18:28] Let's go back because I remember obviously Spravato came around that time,
[18:31] right? It was 2020, I think it was. 2019. What has happened since? I
[18:35] mean, what have we learned, not learned? Right, so what we have learned is
[18:39] to pair ketamine or any psychedelic with coaching,
[18:42] preparation, and integration, which means that you have to prepare
[18:46] the person's mindset, have the right intention going into these sessions,
[18:50] and then also pay attention to the environment that they're in, and then
[18:54] have integration, which is make meaning out of whatever insight comes up
[18:57] during these sessions. So, for example, in the pain management world, I've
[19:01] learned we should keep people in a state where they're able to remember
[19:04] their sessions because they want to make meaning out of these sessions. The
[19:08] whole point is that you're missing an opportunity that if you're just
[19:11] anesthetizing someone, putting them to sleep during their ketamine session,
[19:15] then they wake up. Okay, maybe there's neuroplasticity, but there's
[19:18] actually no meaning that could be made. Which actually goes to what we're
[19:22] going to probably show later that we're talking about. Right, right, right,
[19:25] right. Music and how all that fits into that experience. Right, they
[19:29] say music is the hidden therapist because music is supposed to bring
[19:33] up different emotions, to allow people to go deeper and not to be stuck
[19:38] in their conscious thoughts because really their regular thoughts, their
[19:41] ordinary mind is kind of keeping them stuck. So we want to go a little bit
[19:45] deeper and see kind of can we blur that line where the subconscious kind of
[19:48] blends into their conscious thoughts. And so I think we've
[19:52] gone to more studies looking at how therapy can
[19:56] be used alongside of ketamine and not
[20:00] just one versus the other. And there's actual pain research showing how
[20:03] there's an 80% improvement when you do ketamine with therapy versus just
[20:07] ketamine or therapy alone in the pain management world, which is great. And
[20:11] then in terms of depression, we've been using ketamine for
[20:15] PTSD, OCD, all these things off-label for mental health,
[20:19] really because it's helping people shift out of these narratives
[20:23] or their maladaptive patterns that they've really
[20:27] become ingrained in. And so it's a great
[20:30] form of plasticity, I would say. It's just very different than
[20:34] psychedelics.
[20:35] And that's actually where I wanted to go now, do a leap into psychedelics
[20:39] because ketamine is not considered a classical
[20:43] psychedelic medicine, right? Right. So we talked
[20:46] a little bit. Ketamine works with different receptors,
[20:51] GABA, glutamate, Yeah, very good, yeah. Well, so it blocks the
[20:55] NMDA receptor, which upregulates glutamate, which is
[20:58] excitatory, but it actually blocks it on the GABA neurons, which are
[21:02] inhibitory. That's why you get this surge. So the surge of glutamate is
[21:06] supposed to help people transform their lives, just become motivated
[21:10] to stop having a narrow framework of how you're
[21:14] going through your life every day. And hopefully that motivation
[21:17] creates something that spirals into long term. But that's
[21:21] also why you have to do multiple sessions. Yeah, so it has that excitatory.
[21:26] So yeah, so let's go a little deep because obviously we love to geek out on
[21:29] this. So we do then the leap into
[21:33] traditional or classical psychedelic molecules.
[21:39] So you have the glutamate and that concept, but you
[21:43] also have obviously this association, right? So it
[21:47] makes you sort of feel lighter because
[21:50] there's a connection with the body, as you said, right? Yeah, it's like
[21:54] this disembodied type of feeling where you're present, but
[21:58] you're kind of observing what's happening. It does feel like floating.
[22:02] feels like the whole goal is to get people to let go and just surrender
[22:05] into that experience and not have them constricted in their fear. Or you're
[22:09] going into a session and there's uncertainty of what you're going to
[22:12] experience. So the goal is really to create safety so that they can let go.
[22:16] And then if your nervous system was to kind of let go for a little while,
[22:20] it would allow your brain to create a different perspective on what's going
[22:23] on. And what about the default mode network? I know that's the other big
[22:26] one. Yeah, the default mode network. So we have all these different
[22:29] networks within the brain. Like we have brain regions, but then we also
[22:32] have networks. And then like there's a default mode, the salience, the
[22:36] central executive, all these different networks. The goal of psychedelics
[22:39] is actually to increase functional connectivity amongst the network. So
[22:43] the default mode network is basically the self-representation of who you
[22:47] are. It's like what holds your story. So when you're daydreaming,
[22:51] mind wandering, it's very active. During psychedelics, it's very quiet.
[22:55] We deactivate the default mode. So you're not your story for a little
[22:58] while. So, you know, if you had a trauma or if you had pain, you're stuck
[23:02] in your story all the time. It's kind of guiding you or limiting you. So if
[23:06] you're not, if your default mode is not active during psychedelics, then
[23:10] other parts of the brain start to become active and start to connect. And
[23:14] that, you know, that's why you have all these different experiences and you
[23:17] have all of a sudden something that was so traumatic, seems so simple and
[23:21] easy to let go of or a belief that you had about yourself. You you
[23:25] question. It like the chatter, right? Like what people call like that
[23:28] little thing. the little voice in your head. So if the little voice in your
[23:31] head is quiet for an hour or two, it allows you to kind of wake up and
[23:35] think of things in a different way. Also, you feel different in your body
[23:39] because you're not really stuck in that belief system. So the default
[23:43] mode being deactivated during psychedelics helps people move past
[23:47] something, which is why preparation is so important to help, you know, get
[23:51] that intention there. Like I want to believe that I am lovable
[23:55] or that I'm good enough. You know, if you set someone's mindset up with
[23:58] that and then they go into the journey and their default mode is less
[24:01] active, then they're able to not be stuck in their story.
[24:05] when people obviously ask me about all this, I, you I try to
[24:08] get as specific as possible. So people understand how all these molecules
[24:12] work. Right. And and how, you know, how they
[24:16] affect you. Right. So default, it seems that all of them
[24:20] in a way. But let's go now into,
[24:24] you know, sort of serotonin. Yeah. You know, you know,
[24:28] with with obviously mushrooms and and
[24:32] and and and psilocybin and things like that. And then and then obviously
[24:35] MDMA. So walk us a little bit into sort of how they all differ
[24:39] from each other. So there's actually 16 serotonin receptors.
[24:44] And the 5-HT2A is one of the
[24:48] serotonin receptors that's known as a psychedelic receptor. So
[24:52] psilocybin, DMT, LSD activates the 5
[24:56] -HT2A receptors. And that's really important to understand that we have
[25:00] this one receptor that gives us these psychedelic experiences.
[25:04] And those are the classic psychedelics. What people say is, like, why is
[25:07] that receptor even there? Right. Right. Right. Well, I mean, that's it's
[25:11] kind of like there's like the body is so amazing in that
[25:15] sense, you know, like same way, like we have endocannabinoids, which are
[25:18] like these naturally produced cannabinoids in our body. we
[25:22] have cannabinoid receptors not just to smoke the cannabis plant. Right.
[25:26] Like it's because it actually balances us. Same thing like our opioid
[25:29] system. We make endorphins. That's our natural opioids helps us with
[25:33] pain. So we have these 5-HT2A receptors and they give us these
[25:37] psychedelic journeys. And it's like, how did the brain, you know,
[25:42] evolve to have all these different types of receptors and how much more is
[25:45] there for us to understand? So in, you know, the classic psychedelics, it's
[25:49] a it's a different journey. It's not it's going to stimulate serotonin.
[25:53] It's not as much of glutamate. But there's all this. It's actually more
[25:57] so about the functional connectivity going on amongst the networks where
[26:00] now they start to become integrated as opposed to like a hyperactive
[26:04] default mode. Now the default mode is paying attention to the other
[26:08] networks more so. So it's this integrated connectivity
[26:12] of the brain. That's why, like, you see the, you know, the picture
[26:16] of all the different connections. Once you give someone psilocybin and a
[26:19] functional MRI, there's a lot more going on. But there's still a lot more
[26:23] that we don't understand. Right. And so that's why the importance of, you
[26:26] know, set and setting, obviously, for for safety. But also these have
[26:30] longer half life. So ketamine works quick, doesn't last as long
[26:34] versus the other classic psychedelics are going to have a longer half life
[26:37] where maybe you do one session every four weeks or every six
[26:41] weeks and you'll have a longer integration and more neuroplastic changes.
[26:46] They also stimulate BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor,
[26:50] which is also involved in neuroplasticity. so so the
[26:54] length of that half life changes as opposed to MDMA, which is an
[26:58] pathogen. It does stimulate the 5-H2A receptor, but
[27:02] also increases oxytocin. It has that amphetamine type of response.
[27:06] The way I usually explain it is, you know, psilocybin
[27:10] is serotonin is more about you looking out, you know,
[27:15] sort of, you know, your your way you interpret, you know, senses
[27:19] and signals. MDMA, which has also
[27:23] the dopamine and the endorphin or the pathogen
[27:26] aspect, you sort of have is a combination of
[27:30] serotonin and dopamine. Right. you sort of are
[27:34] looking in and out at the same time. Right. In a way. Yeah.
[27:38] And and and, you know, obviously, you have that sort of it's not
[27:42] you know, doesn't play some part in the senses, like obviously with
[27:45] psilocybin or LSD that you're sort of obviously you could go and see a lot
[27:49] of different things. You're feeling a lot more, but you could also
[27:52] sometimes see. Right. Yeah. I think
[27:56] psychedelics has just the classic like hallucinations. Right. Like you're
[28:00] seeing things that are not really there as opposed to with MDMA. It's a
[28:04] little more of that hard opening type of experience where you feel more
[28:07] love. You judge yourself less. You're in a different state. Like,
[28:11] you know, I think MDMA is great. I think it's a wonderful medicine for
[28:15] PTSD, for chronic pain. I think it has a lot of positives
[28:18] relationships. Yeah. I think it could be used in couples
[28:22] therapy. And that's the one that was is most likely to be
[28:26] approved for PTSD as opposed to psilocybin for treatment resistant
[28:30] depression.
[28:31] Where are we today? And, you know, because I again,
[28:35] I left that industry a couple couple of years ago.
[28:39] So unfortunately, there was all this,
[28:41] you know, we had all these expectations
[28:45] that MDMA was going to be approved and then it sort of fell
[28:49] through the cracks. Where are we today? And I know there's
[28:53] a lot of excitement, you know, because of the regulatory
[28:57] situation right now. And how do you see it? Yeah,
[29:02] I believe that some psychedelics may be available
[29:06] in 2027. So there's there's there's basically this
[29:10] movement forward to get these medications approved because there's so many
[29:13] people who are depressed, who are in chronic pain, who are suicidal. So
[29:17] they need other options. And actually, the research shows that we can't
[29:20] just keep using a medication to keep numbing people and think that they're
[29:24] going to have, you know, long term benefits. Right. So we see all these
[29:28] people on meds and still not feeling well. So I think that in
[29:32] 2027, we potentially could have MDMA available for PTSD
[29:36] and psilocybin available for treatment resistant depression.
[29:39] The problem is how that actually looks in the doctor's office. If you think
[29:44] about it, you can't have one patient being seen per day for a
[29:48] six to eight hour journey, you know. So there's some states that are
[29:51] actually looking at doing group psilocybin and trying to get people
[29:55] together to do that in a group, which I think is a great experience. Which
[29:59] in ketamine happens, right? When you do group ketamine. I think that the
[30:03] group is nice because people are vulnerable. They get to witness each
[30:06] other. They get to see people have similar experiences and similar
[30:09] challenges in their lives. They get to connect with others. And I think
[30:13] that's a big issue is that people doing medicines alone are feeling
[30:17] disconnected and then they are in this environment where they're by
[30:20] themselves. So it doesn't really help them heal as well, I would say.
[30:24] Which, by the way, this is nothing new. Right. I mean, we
[30:28] know we, you know, we have our ancestors that have been doing group therapy
[30:32] with ayahuasca and, you know, San
[30:36] Pedro and other medicines. So, you know,
[30:40] obviously we're rediscovering things that we,
[30:44] you know, we knew from a long time ago. How do you,
[30:48] yeah, and that's sort of the challenge. How do you bring, you know, that
[30:51] sort of social aspect into the healing?
[30:55] I think that's really important, honestly. I think a lot of people,
[30:59] they really are very much
[31:02] disconnected and don't have meaning. And when they are with other people,
[31:06] it forces them to understand who they are and then also to really
[31:10] let go and try to be in that environment with other people. There's also
[31:14] the spirit of the medicine, I think, that is what you're talking about. So
[31:17] it's not just like socially who else is there and who they can connect
[31:21] with, but also each medicine has its own spirit. You know, each medicine
[31:24] has its own feel to it and how that person experiences it. So sometimes,
[31:28] yes, this may be available for this condition, but maybe another medicine
[31:32] may work better for someone else. I think that would be the goal in the
[31:35] future is to have multiple tools in our toolbox that we can understand who
[31:39] is best. And I also think that's where precision medicine comes in and
[31:43] understanding the brain better and different biomarkers to help us
[31:47] understand which medicines may be best. But the hard thing is, you know,
[31:50] having a doctor talk about the spirit of medicine. Right.
[31:54] I mean, you know, we're having a hard time now with nurse practitioner, you
[31:58] know, telling us, you know, how to, you know, I don't know,
[32:03] interpret your GLP-1. You know, now we're talking about. But I
[32:07] truly believe in it. You know, so I think that that's the difference is
[32:10] like when you actually have experiences that shift you in such a big way,
[32:14] you can't, you know, you can't deny it. Right. So so I do
[32:18] I think that there is there's a different there's basically it's a
[32:21] biopsychosocial spiritual approach now, because even culturally, we have to
[32:25] understand what people's beliefs are. Some people I I meet and they're like
[32:29] anti cannabis. No way, you know, and then God forbid someone in their
[32:33] family gets sick and they start to use it for chemo induced neuropathy
[32:37] or, you know, sleep or pain or whatever. it kind of changes them. So I
[32:41] think I think the point is to continue to stay flexible. And I think when
[32:45] we get in these rigid narratives, that's actually how we get sick. And so
[32:48] by even increasing cognitive flexibility allows us to see the world
[32:52] differently, opens us up to different ways of being and realizing
[32:56] that our nervous system is stuck in these different states and we have to
[32:59] shift it out into a more whole approach. Yeah.
[33:03] I don't know if you remember, but in Nue Life.
[33:06] You know, immediately when when we started the company.
[33:12] We, Juan Pablo, myself, were the two founders. You know, we had a long
[33:16] history with psychedelics. He actually
[33:19] in the traditional sense, I mean, his his his grandma
[33:23] was was a native American. And I don't know if you know this one. But he
[33:27] did his first San Pedro at eight years old. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
[33:32] So that was a long time ago. Oh, Juan Pablo, I'm not saying how old
[33:36] you are. I mean, it was a while back. That's a young age for anyone. Yeah.
[33:40] Yeah. Yeah. So it's an amazing. I discovered actually I was in
[33:44] a in a panel with Rick Doblin where
[33:48] I shared that I tried LSD at 13 and and he
[33:52] like interviewed me on stage. He wanted to know exactly what
[33:56] happened. And I even shared that his kids, he tells them, you know,
[34:00] whatever age, you know, they're ready. You know, he you know, he's OK with
[34:03] it. Obviously, Rick Doblin is is is is one of the
[34:07] fathers of modern psychedelic therapies.
[34:14] And where was I? Oh, I was was going to get back. So so so when when Juan
[34:17] Pablo said, hey, we want to start this company. And I actually looked at
[34:20] the first time I ever heard about ketamine, even though I grew up in Miami
[34:24] in the 90s. You know, I had never heard of ketamine.
[34:28] And and I the first pictures I saw was of,
[34:33] you know, like someone like in the medical
[34:36] room, like recliner. Yeah. recliner. I'm like, oh, that
[34:40] doesn't look like great. Right. So I started digging
[34:44] into it and I found Mindbloom, which was,
[34:48] you know, was the first one I saw at home. And I say, oh, it's very
[34:52] interesting. started researching how they did it. And immediately I said,
[34:55] no, but we have to do something with music. Right. So I don't know if you
[34:59] remember this, but we actually had we we had a
[35:02] broadcasting license to broadcast music. We
[35:06] actually were probably the only psychedelic company with a full
[35:11] broadcast license. And we built our own music service. Wow. And
[35:15] I actually hired the one of the first music curators for
[35:19] Pandora. And we developed our own music algorithms to to
[35:23] to to to program music. So music was always like a big
[35:27] part of what we did. And you called it the hidden therapist. And I remember
[35:31] Johns Hopkins had this whole like
[35:34] playlist analysis that they did and and
[35:38] research that they did. There's so much research on the music on on how
[35:42] long your journey is going to be and when the peaks are going to happen and
[35:45] different types of songs that bring up different emotions. So there's so
[35:49] much research actually going on now because people can have a therapist.
[35:53] So the music allows them to feel different ways. And then hopefully
[35:57] they're able to integrate that just, you know, with with
[36:01] other people that may be familiar with the medicines.
[36:03] One of the things is, you know, again, go a little bit deeper into the
[36:07] music part, because I think it's fun and people could find it interesting.
[36:11] And obviously, with what I'm going to show, people can actually experience
[36:14] this. And the so one of the
[36:18] aspects of I remember the music part was the music had to be new
[36:22] to you in order not to carry like any meaning. So that way,
[36:26] you know, you sort of will, you know, will interpret it in a way that was
[36:30] new. And back then we had, you know, again, we had
[36:34] our music service.
[36:36] So, yes, I wanted to talk a little bit about a little functionality
[36:40] that we're going to be releasing here with Betterness and hopefully this
[36:44] week or next. First an iPhone or Apple
[36:48] Watch
[36:51] functionality that actually allows you to track ketamine-assisted therapy.
[36:56] So the same way that you would track any activity on the Apple Watch, like
[36:59] tennis or whatever, you could actually now track a session.
[37:03] What is interesting and why this fits
[37:06] with some of my previous work is a
[37:10] couple of things. First of all is to show people your heart rate during the
[37:14] session. Right? So see how the heart rate evolution is.
[37:18] So you'll see, you you're not spiking. You're not going to be, you know,
[37:21] most people are not going to probably see a lot of,
[37:25] you know, a lot of changes in their heart rate during the
[37:29] session. But I think the most important part, and, you know, when I showed
[37:32] it to you earlier, you said, oh, I love that song. I always, you know, it's
[37:36] the Poranguí song,
[37:39] which is almost like a classic in a playlist.
[37:44] But here what I try to do is this actually uses
[37:48] Shazam to recognize songs. So if you're with a therapist
[37:51] or, you know, with a sitter at home and
[37:55] you're putting the music as you're doing the therapy, this will recognize
[37:59] the songs playing. Which, as you said, it
[38:02] creates a connection, right? So ideally, you're not going to be in
[38:06] a state where you're completely out of it. So you could actually
[38:11] come back. And then the last thing I added was, which
[38:15] actually I did have in Nue Life too, is this ability to do a voice
[38:19] note. This is just me like. I like
[38:22] this feeling. I like.
[38:26] So, but, you know, just to be funny,
[38:31] the voice note said I like this feeling. But it's actually interesting
[38:34] because if you think about it, when a person is getting ketamine and we
[38:38] go in the room to observe how they're doing, we have no idea what's
[38:42] happening. They have eye shades on. They're listening to music. So by
[38:45] tracking this with the song and even their notes,
[38:49] it allows us to understand what happened during the journey at different
[38:53] times and also helps us unpack it later on. Because they're
[38:57] leaving these little notes for us to maybe they forgot what happened during
[39:01] a time because a lot of things happen during a journey. And the song is
[39:04] very important. Like, you know, once a song ends, it goes to a whole
[39:07] different song and then they go to a different place. Exactly. So, like, by
[39:11] able to by, you being able to review what they were saying or how they were
[39:15] feeling or even for us to understand what was going on with their heart
[39:19] rate or respirations or blood pressure during that time of the song could
[39:22] help because then you can also create other playlists for them going
[39:26] forward. You know, that's actually
[39:28] that's actually towards their intention. You
[39:32] know, like if you want to be like very like dialed in on something, you can
[39:36] kind of create a playlist for that based on what they've already previously
[39:40] told us from their information. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[39:44] So obviously love to to figure out how we extend this.
[39:49] We could figure out how we add constant heart rate monitoring to. Right. I
[39:53] mean, I'm sure there's devices that, you know, we could connect. Well, it's
[39:56] also just interesting to think about how we don't know what they're seeing
[40:00] or feeling, but this can help us track it.
[40:03] what type of music, you know, leads to a better clinical
[40:06] outcome for the person. Right. It's so important. People are like, oh, I
[40:09] don't like all these, you know, songs that sound like I'm in India or
[40:13] Japan. They want classical or they want birds or, you know,
[40:18] there's so many different types of music that they choose. And sometimes
[40:21] they don't like it, but sometimes it actually is good for them. Exactly.
[40:24] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They want to just feel happy and go into like all these
[40:28] like landscapes. But like really when it comes down to it, these the songs
[40:31] are supposed to make you have emotions. And if it makes you sad or if it
[40:35] makes you in fear, that could bring up another memory from the past that
[40:39] then helps you heal. Exactly. So the music is really important. And then
[40:42] tracking is great.
[40:43] So so let's go into now your
[40:47] particular way of of delivering this. Actually, one of the
[40:51] coolest things is you have this amazing bed. Uh-huh. That vibrates. Yes.
[40:55] And plays the music. Yes. So so tell us a little bit about your
[40:59] best practices. I mean, what do you recommend for people? I actually this
[41:02] weekend, one of my best friends, she just started doing
[41:06] ketamine therapy. And I was saying that, you she needs to go
[41:10] and see you and check out the bed. And she's like, I think it's too much.
[41:14] You know, she's you know, she's taking baby steps into
[41:18] this because for some some people, this is a lot. Right.
[41:22] How do you see it? How do you approach it? Yeah. Well, I think it's
[41:25] important how you approach it, because if if they are a little bit
[41:29] intimidated by even just the word ketamine, we have to understand that
[41:33] every medicine is based on the dose. You know, so you can give someone
[41:37] a medicine like ketamine, but you can give them a very low dose and they
[41:40] can have an experience where they're just able to experience themselves
[41:43] differently, create a little safety. It doesn't have to be like a huge
[41:46] session where we're sending someone to the moon, you know. So the bed
[41:50] actually is pretty cool. It's made by a guy in Colorado and
[41:54] he is very big into vibro acoustics. And so what you do is you
[41:58] create a playlist and the bed vibrates to the music.
[42:02] So it's like this all immersed, inclusive type of experience
[42:06] where your your whole body is feeling it. And
[42:10] so some people who've had a lot of trauma or they feel unsafe or they
[42:14] have a lot of pain, it may make their nervous system a little bit more
[42:18] sensitive and they're not a great candidate for it. You can always put on a
[42:20] lower amount. But it's a really cool experience because you feel like
[42:24] you're moving and you're listening and it's like the whole body is
[42:28] kind of shaking to all of like what's going on. So the bed is one
[42:32] option. Obviously, people sometimes like a bed. They like a recliner. The
[42:36] point is it has to be comfortable. It has to feel safe. They have to feel
[42:40] like they could just kind of let go into that experience. And then it all
[42:43] is based on the dose. So obviously we can do a low dose where they're able
[42:47] to remember the session. That's kind of like the sweet spot, that concept
[42:50] of dose discovery where we start low. We increase it over time, trying to
[42:54] get them to a place where they feel they could surrender, but they also can
[42:58] remember what's going on. We don't want to get them to a state where they
[43:00] couldn't remember it. And then it could be an oral
[43:04] lozenge, intramuscular injections, IV. What is the
[43:08] breakdown, would you say, that most people? mean, what
[43:12] is it? Yeah, so I'd say gold standard from research is IV.
[43:16] So when people want the best and they want to know this is definitely going
[43:19] to work and they don't want the route of administration to be a factor in
[43:22] why maybe ketamine is not working for depression or pain, they always use
[43:26] IV. And we would choose IV because it's a linear amount of medicine
[43:31] over a certain amount of time that's getting into their brain and body
[43:34] consistently. As opposed to intramuscular, we usually divide that dose into
[43:38] two, do a shot in the arm, divide it by 12 or 15 minutes. So the ride
[43:42] is very different because you get the medicine quickly, you get there,
[43:45] you're kind of there for a little bit, and then you get another dose. And
[43:48] so sometimes people like that ride where it's more of like the push out the
[43:51] window as opposed to just kind of like the lazy river type of feeling.
[43:57] Intranasal is a lower bioavailability similar
[44:01] to an oral lozenge. And we use the lozenges more in
[44:05] groups or if we're working with a therapist. And, you know, so it's all
[44:08] different ways of using it. But I think that's kind of the beauty and like
[44:11] the art of medicine is like figuring out the dose, route of administration,
[44:15] the setting that's best for that person. Sometimes even
[44:19] just like making the room smell nice and making the person feel very
[44:22] welcome will play a role into their mindset, which then affects
[44:26] their journey. And it's so interesting how their mindset affects their
[44:30] journey and then, you know, trying to leave everything at the door and not
[44:33] rushing to something stressful. And what you said before, which is
[44:37] important, which is doing something new or different afterwards. So how to
[44:41] get the person to not go back to their same patterns or how once the
[44:44] ketamine is in to use it like fertilizer. We got to push it in the right
[44:48] direction. We got to create a different habit. We got to do something
[44:51] different. Think about ourselves differently. I think that's also
[44:54] important. Let me let me explore something that just occurred to me.
[44:59] I mean, because obviously you're doing cannabis and you're doing ketamine
[45:01] and eventually there might be other.
[45:06] One of the most incredible experiences that I had, thanks to Juan Pablo
[45:10] and Cristina, went to Boston with this amazing
[45:13] couple that have amazing books
[45:17] all the way back to the 70s. And we did
[45:21] a whole weekend retreat.
[45:25] And we, you know, their concept was called layering, you know,
[45:29] and there was, you know, a number of layers into the
[45:33] experience. So as I think about it, you know, do you
[45:37] see a future where you could do ketamine
[45:41] and there will be cannabis and, you know, and, you know, you know,
[45:46] and all that happening in a clinical setting? Yeah, well, I
[45:50] think people who are familiar with cannabis like to use cannabis after
[45:54] a ketamine experience to get in their body. Because sometimes
[45:58] when they have a dissociative experience and they're kind of observing
[46:01] and they're not in their body for a little while and they're used to
[46:05] cannabis, it helps ground them to put them back in their body. And it could
[46:08] almost prolong the neuroplastic effects of ketamine. So I wouldn't use
[46:12] cannabis before a ketamine session. I think that could actually disturb
[46:16] what's about to happen, but sometimes cannabis afterwards. But the layering
[46:20] is interesting, you know, and I think the layering is interesting also
[46:23] based on the onset and total duration
[46:27] of the medicine. You know, you can inhale DMT and have a very quick
[46:31] experience and then you can layer that with cannabis
[46:35] or you can have a second inhalation. As opposed to a
[46:40] psilocybin journey, it's going to be six hours or so. Imagine nurses
[46:44] doing rapé. You know? Yeah. You know? Yeah.
[46:48] I mean, it's really about knowing the person, you know? So if you already
[46:52] have an experience with a medicine, you feel comfortable with that, maybe
[46:55] you can layer that in. If you are new to all are not rapé. rapé is, you
[46:58] know, it's basically a tobacco that people blow into your
[47:03] nose when you do ayahuasca or some of these
[47:07] medicines. But it's tobacco, right? So it's even like illegal. Stimulant
[47:10] almost. It's a stimulant. Yeah. But it's also just using the right medicine
[47:14] to get you where you want to be quick or if you want to stay there longer.
[47:18] So it's like it's nice to have these tools once they're available.
[47:22] But I think what's important now is safety and training providers so that
[47:26] they know what they're doing so that we're not just giving these medicines
[47:29] to people who shouldn't get them. Because there are people who shouldn't,
[47:33] people who are psychotic, schizophrenic, manic, you know. Yeah. Or the
[47:36] Matthew Perry, unfortunately, situation that, you know, then creates,
[47:40] I mean, the saddest part of all that is it creates all
[47:44] this negativity that then, you know, affects the people that really need
[47:48] it. Right. But it also, like, slows the movement down because sometimes
[47:52] people think, oh, these medicines are great. People are healing from them.
[47:55] Then they do it in the wrong environment or they don't really prepare
[47:58] themselves and they have a bad outcome. Yeah. So I think it's having
[48:02] the information to then properly train providers so that we are
[48:05] providing safe and long-lasting medicines. This isn't just like, you know,
[48:10] for the weekend you do something and you feel better and then your old
[48:13] beliefs come back, right? It's really a No, if you don't put the work up,
[48:17] probably, you know, you're not going to get much out of it. Right. And
[48:20] that's really what we're doing now is less focus on the medicine and more
[48:24] on the everyday habits, right? Like your daily habits,
[48:28] right? So it's how can we pair those things together? How can the medicine
[48:32] just kind of be that catalyst to create the desire to take
[48:36] care of yourself better or to create better health? Yeah. So
[48:39] just to wrap up here on boring,
[48:43] you know, business stuff, this whole
[48:48] Atai, Atai was, you know, one of the companies that was
[48:52] doing, you know, all this research on new type of
[48:56] psychedelic therapies. It got acquired by Lilly,
[48:59] which obviously is a big deal. But their whole
[49:03] point is that they're trying to do medicine that doesn't, I
[49:07] think, right? They don't have the sort of psychedelic side or the
[49:11] experience side. Do you know sort of what the science
[49:15] behind that is? Yeah. And what do you think about it? Well, there's certain
[49:19] companies that are trying to take the psychedelic out of the
[49:23] psychedelic, right? The psychedelic journey out of it. So and they're
[49:27] probably doing that by stimulating the 5-HT2A receptor less because
[49:30] other psychedelics also affect other serotonin receptors. So they're
[49:34] basically trying to take out one component. Imagine if you have the same
[49:38] neuroplastic effects but without the meaning. Are you still going to get
[49:42] better? So we don't really know that information yet. don't really have
[49:45] that. From your experience, what do you think? You know, that's kind of
[49:48] like sleeping through your journey. You know, are you going to get better?
[49:51] Sometimes, maybe, but maybe not long enough because I really believe like
[49:55] pain is this epidemic of fear or lack of meaning. And
[49:59] so if you're not really having purpose in your everyday life, then I don't
[50:03] really think that's going to create, you know, long-term happiness or get
[50:07] rid of your pain or depression. So I think the psychedelic experience
[50:11] can be very valuable, but I think some people are too in
[50:15] fear or uncomfortable to go there. And therefore, there's other ways of
[50:18] kind of using these medicines. You could just do a low dose, first of all,
[50:22] you know, or you can add other things to it like the vibrations
[50:26] or like the music or breath work, you know,
[50:30] like trying to just use the lowest dose you can of a medicine. That doesn't
[50:34] have to be such a psychedelic, like, you know, mind-blowing type of
[50:37] experience, but it creates that neuroplastic effects. And then you have
[50:41] accountability to follow it up. Yeah. Well, it was
[50:44] fun, you know, so I, it was love to, you know,
[50:49] it was amazing to recognize. And on all these, all these things that
[50:53] obviously connected us in the first place.
[50:57] And, and yeah, anything else just to add for listeners? Any?
[51:02] Well, I think the, I think the future is bright because there's a lot of
[51:05] research going on. And I think that we are starting to look at the
[51:09] body brain connection in more details. And people are starting to really
[51:13] understand that, that has, that you need to treat the body and the brain.
[51:17] You can't just, you know, use a medicine to treat the brain or change your
[51:21] movement and think that that's going to affect long-term change. So I
[51:24] think, I think it's not like this mind- body connection is woo-woo type of
[51:27] thing. It's, it's real, you know, and everything has to be interconnected
[51:31] in order for someone to have a whole life. Perfect. Well, Michelle,
[51:35] thank you so much. And hope, you know, hopefully we
[51:39] see each other, you know, in your, in your therapy because I'm a, I'm
[51:43] a very, I could have
[51:47] test for, for, for the therapy. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay.
[51:52] So this does it for another episode. This was fun. And
[51:56] see you next week on the next one. Thank you.