Lyme or Mold? Why Patients Stay Stuck—and How to Break the Inflammatory Loop

Inflammation, Cell Danger Response, and Chronic Illness 0:00

Infections, toxins, lifestyle issues, structural integrity issues, diet, genetic tendencies, all of these things are creating inflammation. Even one of these things chronically is going to create significant inflammation in the body. You put all five of these together and then we get epigenetic expression due to significant inflammation. We want inflammation and we want oxidative stress at the right time. to contain the insults to protect our body, but the inflammation, oxidative stress, it needs to be transient, it needs to stop.

In these patients, their immune system does not know how to stop, and that's about being stuck in cell danger response one, the inflammatory part of the healing cycle. So now, They've got inflammation on repeat. Hi, and welcome to the Lime Bites podcast, where we shine a light on the misunderstood science of Lyme and other vector borne diseases, as well as the truths that many still miss. I'm Dr. Mariah Hinchy, naturopathic physician and fellow of the Medical Academy of Pediatric Special Needs. I specialize in treating chronic Lyme disease as well as other complex inflammatory conditions.

In this podcast, we break down what's working and what's not. We share the facts that most people miss, we challenge outdated thinking, and we give both patients and practitioners the tools to heal smarter.

Podcast Introduction and Guest Background 1:30

So let's get into it and change the way we heal Lyme. Hi, and welcome to another episode. I'm your host, Dr. Mariah Hinchy. And today we're going to be talking about Lyme and Mold and how to decipher if you have Lyme or Mold or both. Joining us in this discussion is expert Dr. Nafisa Parpea. And she is the Director of Naturopathic Medicine at Gordon Medical Associates, which is the premier Lyme disease tick-borne illness and environmentally acquired illnesses clinic on the West Coast. She is a leading expert on peptide therapy for complex chronic conditions.

Welcome Dr. Nafisa. Tell our audience a little bit about how you got involved in treating Lyme and other vector-borne illnesses. First of all, thank you Dr. Moriah for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. So I started a long time ago when I was, this was about 2012, I was in Dr. Dietrich Klinghart's clinic and I wanted to learn from him on how to treat complex chronic illness. I went to naturopathic school but knew I needed to learn a lot more because I wanted to do more than primary care.

And so I started there, and then I went to Dr. Isaac Elias's clinic in 2014 to 16, and he mentored me on detoxification therapies. I put the work of those two mentors together. It really created my own practice from 2014 onwards. And I'm sure more of this will come up as we talk. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing. And yes, having those two as mentors. Yeah, I'd love to sit down and pick your brain more someday. So why don't we start out with, you know, there's so many symptoms that overlap between Lyme and co-infections as well as mycotoxin illness.

So let's start with the basics. Tell us what you would consider to be the most common symptoms of Lyme as well as mycotoxin illness. And then tell us if there are any sort of hallmark signs or symptoms that you can use to try to decipher between the two. Absolutely. So when people have chronic Lyme, a lot of the times they don't even know that they have chronic Lyme. They just have these symptoms that seem to affect every system of their body. They might not have even been tested for Lyme, but they come in, they say things like, I have brain fog, I have nausea, I have pain that wanders from joint to joint, from muscle to muscle.

One day it's my left knee, another day it's my right shoulder. And I really don't know when it's going to be or what area it's going to be. I get numbness and tingling in my body, usually my hands or my feet. And I don't feel like being social anymore. I feel isolated. So these are typical symptoms of Lyme, but we'll talk more later about how it's so much more than that. But usually we've got multiple systems affected. We've got symptoms in these multiple systems of the body. There's no diagnosis that has been given to the patient.

The patient says, I've gone to doctor after doctor. They just tell me I have anxiety. I should just take an antidepressant. Or they tell me it's just that I have a sleep problem. So sure, people have anxiety and sleep problems as well, but that's not where it begins or where it ends when they have a diagnosis like chronic Lyme.

Lyme vs Mold Symptoms and Hallmark Signs 5:00

I would say one of the hallmarks of chronic Lyme disease would be the wandering pain in different parts of the body. And it's random, very random. The sleep issues as well, the brain fog. When it comes to mycotoxin illness, these two can mimic each other, that's for sure. They're both so neurotoxic, they're both so pro-inflammatory. But a lot of the times, people who have mold and mycotoxin issues, I see more issues in their sinuses. That's kind of a telltale sign. They're going to have the similar symptoms I just described.

If somebody's somebody with Lyme, usually they've got both, but the sinuses are or the lungs or the ears. That's a big sign to me that mold is involved. And so when you're talking about these areas, are we talking about, you know, feeling like you have a sinus infection or pressure in your sinuses or, you know, feeling like you're underwater, you know, that feeling where you feel like you're underwater with your ears or having like chronic chest congestion, cough? What in particular are you talking about or is it kind of like a combination of all of those things?

I'd say what you described is a combination of all of them. Some people, they have significant pain in their sinuses, and it's actually due to cavitations in their jaw. They've got dental issues. But on top of that, they've got mold. So if there's a lot of pain in there, I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to test for what kind of colonizations you have in your sciences, but let's also look at the teeth. Some people have a chronically runny nose. Some people, it's very hard for them to take a breath in through their nose.

Some people, they have issues in their lungs. They have a chronic cough. So it manifests differently in different people. Are you ready to revolutionize your approach to diagnosing and healing complex chronic inflammatory illnesses in both adults and children? The Lime Bites Symposium is your gateway to cutting-edge education, groundbreaking research, and innovative therapeutic solutions. Join us at Lime Bites Symposium. at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Pompano Beach Resort and Spa. Lion Bites is the premier functional medicine conference on complex, chronic, infection-driven inflammatory illnesses.

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That's L-Y-M-E-B-Y-T-E-S dot com. So what do you do when you have a patient that comes in and they're presenting with what could easily be either Lyme or mold? I'm going to test them for both. At this point, you know, well, before I test them, I'm going to ask them a multitude of questions. I'm going to ask them about their environmental history. When I'm thinking about mold, I am going to ask them, have you ever lived in a home where there's been water damage? People will say, no, no, I haven't lived in mold.

And I think it's really important for people to understand that your house can look clean. It can be pristine. It can be new. You could have it cleaned very regularly. It's not about how clean or dirty you are, but mold is prevalent in the cleanest of homes. There could have been water damage and you didn't know. So I'm asking about exposures. I'm asking, have you had a tick bite? Where did you grow up? A lot of people or they think they haven't had a tick bite, but then when we test them for tick-borne disease, we find out that sure enough, they did at some point, the tick bite could have been on their head or the back of their neck, a place that they wouldn't have noticed it.

So I'm taking a clear history first, and then based on that history and based on their symptoms, then I'm going to order testing. And so, you know, you talk about people not knowing that they were bit by a tick. And I think the statistic is like less than half of people who are diagnosed with Lyme and co-infections ever remember a tick bite or a rash or anything like that. But why do you think it is that some people get bit by a tick or you know, live in an environment or work or drive a car that has had water damage and has had mold, and they're fine and they never have symptoms, while others have such an extreme and devastating reaction to either mycotoxins or a vector-borne disease.

And so we see these patients in our practice, right? They come in and they were bit by a tick 10 years ago. All of a sudden they're in chronic Lyme. But the past 10 years, they were healthy. Or we then see patients who we see it on the labs, but they're healthy. There's no evidence in their walking normal life that they've had tick-borne disease. So some people react horribly to this and some people are fine. Or the other evidence is people's home. We have people who are members of the same family living in the same home.

One person just has a sniffly nose and the other person, the whole life is taken down because there was mold. So I think it's really important to think about chronic illness versus acute illness and in the acute model of care, A goes to B, goes to C. It's a predictive model. Most people's bodies are going to behave the same. Broken bones, heart attacks, an acute infection for the most part. Most of us are going to have similar symptoms and there's going to be one treatment that's going to be the same for everybody.

But when somebody has a complex chronic illness, I think of this, they're in this black box of healing.

Testing, Exposure History, and Why Some People React 11:30

The illness has become their own stick. It's because there are multiple things going on at the same time. It's not just lime. It's not just mold. In fact, I think that we should be able to live side by side with these bugs, with these microbes. And we did. We were able to do that up until 25, 30 years ago, which is when suddenly we start to see people with these mysterious illnesses. And I think there's a really good reason for that, which I'm about to get into. Yes, please do. Yeah. So I tell my patients, there's five reasons you can be sick.

And most of my patients have all of these going on concurrently. They have infections, not just Lyme and co-infections, but they've got multiple chronic infections, Lyme, co-infections, multiple viruses, could be Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegal virus. bacterial infections, funguses, parasites, and in different locations of the body. So colonizations in the sinuses, the lungs, the ears, on the skin, mold, for example, can be in all of these places, or there can be occult dental infections, microbiome imbalances.

Tick-borne disease love the connective tissue and nerves, so they've got these multiple chronic infections and multiple systems of the body, and nobody's diagnosed that until they come to someone like you or me. So they've got multiple infections. They have a high environmental toxin load, glyphosate, metals, solvents, pesticides, very, very common. They've got structural integrity issues. So a lot of them have tight fascia or old injury sites. So now they're not getting appropriate blood flow or oxygenation or lymphatic flow.

If you've got an injury here, think how close that is to the brain. We're not getting enough lymphatic flow or oxygenation here, right? This is an area I've seen patients with a lot of brain fog issues, cognitive issues on top of everything else we've just talked about, or a lot of them have lax ligaments, hypermobility syndromes, Now, the chemicals from mast cells can tenderize the ligaments. So if the ligament over here holding up the brain stem is more lax than normal because you've got a bunch of inflammatory chemicals tenderizing it, then they're going to have a tendency to cranial cervical instability.

So the structural piece is really, really important and I think forgotten. So they've got infections, toxins, structural integrity issues, issues in lifestyle that could mean that they have poor sleep. Most of them do have poor sleep. It could mean that they have had adverse childhood events. Most of these patients have had adverse childhood events, not that that has caused the Lyme or the tick-borne illness, but it's that people tend to be more open to these things due to immune dysregulation from those, or they have current stresses.

poor diet. Most of our patients have their diet dialed in by the time they've come to us, but over the years it's been a standard American diet. And then there's genetic susceptibilities. So they've got all of these issues going on at once. It's not just the line. It's not just the mold. It's creating stress in the system, immune dysregulation, constant inflammation. So the people who have had a tick bite and they're just fine, they're not going to end up in my office or your office. They don't have these other stressors going on.

They just have mostly the tick bite and they're fine. So I think that's important to understand. Are you suffering from Lyme disease or another complex chronic illness and aren't sure who to trust when it comes to herbal supplements? Hi, I'm Dr. Mariah Hinchey, founder of Lyme Core Botanicals. As a naturopathic physician specializing in complex chronic infection-driven illnesses like Lyme disease, I needed herbal medicine I could truly trust. That's why I formulated Lyme Core Botanicals. where our herbal tinctures are handcrafted in small batches right here in Connecticut.

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Learn more at Lyme Core Botanicals. That's L-Y-M-E-C-O-R-E dot com. Yeah, it's very, very important. And I mean, I would say, you know, even if you had three out of the five, you're not going to deal with the infection or the, you know, the mycotoxin-filled environment as well, as if you were like this pristine, healthy, you know, body just dealing with that infection. And I think that's so important. I think a lot of people, you know, they've been through the wringer. They've been to God only knows how many physicians and other medical practitioners who have told them, you know, that there's nothing wrong with them or they're a hypochondriac or it's all in their head or, you know, there's nothing wrong with you.

And I think that by the time people get the diagnosis of tick-borne disease, they're like, oh my God, like, thank you. Like there's the underlying cause. And I will often say to people, you know, like, yes, That is a underlying cause, but it's no longer the underlying cause because these infections alter the terrain of the body and actually get the body to generate inflammation and alter the immune system in a way that it actually damages other body systems and causes all of these other root causes.

And it's like, if we don't figure out what these other root causes are, which, you know, you named like five of the, or, you know, four of them for sure, plus others, it's like, you're never going to be able to get those infections out of the body, much less have a chance of healing anything in that person. So it's just so complex. It's so complex. Yes. So I think, you know, the next question I was going to ask you is why does not removing the trigger or why does removing the trigger not solve the issue?

And I think we've been dancing around the answer to that.

Five Root Causes of Chronic Inflammation 18:30

Absolutely. So we'll cut straight to the chase, but actually it is a road of discussion before we get there. So people have these multiple root causes, right? Infections, toxins, lifestyle issues, structural integrity issues, diet, genetic tendencies. All of these things are creating inflammation. Even one of these things chronically is going to create significant inflammation in the body. You put all five of these together and then we get epigenetic expression due to significant inflammation. I'm talking about the cell danger response, cell danger response part one, right, CDR1.

We want inflammation and we want oxidative stress at the right time to contain the insults to protect our body. But the inflammation, oxidative stress, it needs to be transient. It needs to stop in these patients. their immune system does not know how to stop. And that's about being stuck in cell danger response one, the inflammatory part of the healing cycle. So now they've got inflammation on repeat. That inflammation creates more immune dysregulation. So now when I'm talking about immune dysregulation, I'm saying Our patients have simultaneously a hyperactive immune system and a weak immune system.

So on one hand, it's hyperactive. They've got autoimmune conditions. They've got mast cell activation syndrome. They've got hypersensitivities to many, many things. That's a hyperactive immune system. On the other hand, the immune system is weaker. They can't mount the appropriate immune response to take care of the multiple infections they've got. They've got Hashimoto's and rheumatoid arthritis, Mass Cell Activation Syndrome, hyperactivity. On the other hand, they've got cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, mycoplasma, mold issues, Lyme and co-infections, the weak immune system all at the same time.

So, it is absolute chaos in the immune system. There are multiple signals that are going off, immune signals that are going off inappropriately in the immune system. Now, what happens from there, we get these secondary illnesses, which are now illnesses in their own right. Diagnoses like long COVID, chronic Lyme, mold illness. chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia. These are illnesses on their own that they've been created due to the cell danger response being stuck, the inflammation being stuck.

The cell danger response, I'm not going to say stuck. Stuck in loops is what I'm trying to say. Multiple loops of inflammation going off in multiple different systems of the body now. So I want to tie that back into, the root causes, right? The root causes are over here, right, on this side. Over here is the inflammation that they have caused, the cell danger response being stuck in loops of inflammation, oxidative stress, creating immune dysregulation. Over there are the secondary diseases. So now so often we're like, okay, I'm going to remove these root causes, Say, just for simplicity, a person has lime mold and metals, usually it's much more than this if there are patients, but they've got these three things.

We've removed the trigger, but the patient is still stuck over here with the diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and their body is acting like they still have Lyme disease. Those symptoms that we first talked about at the beginning of this interview, right, the wandering pain throughout the body, the brain fog, the fatigue, the nausea, these symptoms, they're still going on, even though the Lyme is gone. We see it in the labs. We know it's been treated. So one thing I think that's really important to understand is the body has this neurotic tendency, these neurotic tendencies, right?

Once the body learns a pattern, it's easy to go back there. I tell my patients, it's like you had your first primary triggers, lime, mold, and metals, for example. They lit up Christmas lights along the pathway. of your immuno, your immune, along the symptomatic, sorry, the symptomatic pathways of your, of your neuroimmunological system. Those are your symptoms, right? We remove the triggers. The Christmas lights start to dim. They turn off. But in comes the next trigger, could be COVID, could be a huge emotional stress, a divorce, whatever it is that's going to create immune dysregulation.

It has access to that switch. Again, it can turn that pathway on again. So it appears that you have lime mold and metals again, but this time it's something else. Now it's about the person and their pathways that have been turned on. And Dr. Navio talks. about this, he talks about how once the ATP from inside the mitochondria gets sent outside as the first step of the cell danger response to send a warning signal to the rest of the body, hey, we've got a problem here, there's inflammation here, this now happens more easily, the signal to send ATP externally.

becomes more accessible. It's kind of like blowing up a balloon. I tell my patients the first time you blow up a balloon, your cheeks are going to hurt, you're blowing it, it hurts. By the time you've blown that same balloon up four times, it's easy. So it's the same way with the body. The inflammation is stuck even though the root causes are gone. Yeah, that's a really good analogy. So how do you approach this?

Why Symptoms Persist After Triggers Are Removed 24:30

This is, you know, it's different for each person. I think the first thing we need to do is to approach that person with our own clarity. You said maybe 10 minutes ago, something to the effect of these patients have been told there's nothing wrong with you, right? They've been gaslit for years. There's nothing wrong with you. Look, your CBC and your CMP look normal. I think that one of the most important things is that the patient feels safe, and it starts with us. They feel safe in the presence of us, their doctor.

So I think it's important that we do our own internal work to keep ourselves clear and non-judgmental, and offer a loving, safe space to our patients. That's step number one. Once the patient feels witnessed, heard, seen, safe, they can breathe much more easy. There's a level of anxiety that goes away. There's trust. That's important. then some people want to dive right into working on the nervous system and working on emotions and working on a spiritual path. Some people don't want to do that for a while, and I think that that comes in whenever it's right for the patient.

So that could be one of the first things I'm doing. One of the first things I am usually doing is having them work on structural integrity. So we have some amazing We have an amazing body worker and healer who works with us at our clinic and his hands on therapies are incredible. And just being able to feel where it is in the structure that the problems are and releasing them. really helps a great deal. Starting there, another place I'm starting is on the immune system over here, this pathway where inflammation is on repeat.

It's nonstop. So if I start here with removing triggers, which means killing bugs or detoxification, Doing that creates inflammation. Doing that is going to create a release of biotoxins and mycotoxins and neurotoxins, and they'll be byproducts of dying cells and dying bugs. The patient is already highly inflamed. So if I start to kill the infections right away, I'm further agitating a system that's already inflamed. So I'm using a lot of peptide therapies to calm the inflammation down. At first, it absolutely is band-aid therapy, those peptides.

When you've got a bunch of triggers are fantastic band-aids. But then when we remove the triggers, the peptides begin to retrain the immune system, that is for sure. But then I start to detoxify the patient and then I start to treat the infections and it's all layered on top of each other. It's very much a dance. It's different for each person, but that's generally how I'm going to work with people. Yeah, I love that. And I want to point out for everyone listening, the last thing that you said was focusing on if there's still an infection, killing the pathogens.

Because if you don't go through all the steps and prepare the body to be able to handle the endotoxins or biotoxins that they're going to release, they're going to become more inflamed, more immune dysregulation, and you're actually making the patient more hospitable to the infections and allowing the infections to really get deeper and actually thrive. So just pointing that out to everybody, you have to prepare the body and get through the steps before and make sure that that person is detoxing before you start trying to kill things and mobilize toxins out of the body.

Right? How often is it that you have a patient who's come in to you, right? And they've said, I have somebody just use a lot of antibiotic therapies on me, didn't do any detox, didn't do any immune modulation, and now I'm in a mess. People say that, or so many times, or I have people come in, they're like, just do it. Just kill the bugs right away. I'm like, then you come to the wrong person. I can't do that for you right when you're not you're going you are going to go running away from me if I do that right you're not going to like this process you're not going to be able to tolerate it no and you know the crazy thing is is you know for for a long you know so I've been doing this for like 17 years and for a period.

If a patient just wanted to hunker down and push through a HERX, I'd say okay. And I'm not the type of doctor that stops treatment during a HERX.

Treatment Approach: Safety, Structure, Detox, and Immune Support 29:30

I'm the type of doctor that's going to really, really push alkalinization, anti-inflammatory, and detox when somebody is HERXing. But Going back to what I was saying, it's funny because the patients that just want to push through, it's like, but realize that it's not about being tough. It's not about will. It's not about pushing through. It's like, if you're herxing, you are actually driving these pro-inflammatory cytokine levels through the roof, causing cell damage. causing damage to your body, causing oxidative stress, causing all of these things that is completely working against you.

And you're actually going to be worse off on the other side of it. So I think it's so important to understand the physiology of a HERX and what you really need to do from all of these different angles to be able to resolve it so that we're not causing further damage. Right? I think that when we allow someone to keep herxing, to keep pushing through without having the detox and the immune stabilization that's needed during that herx, we're just going to cause those infections to fester even more because you're then creating the conditions for that even more.

You can't get rid of the infections when that's going on. Exactly. Exactly. And there's obviously no healing occurring. Right. So, I want to talk about Gordon Medical Associates and all that you do there, all of the different modalities that you offer. But first, before we get there, if there was just sort of one thing in summary that you would say to our listeners struggling with, whether it's Lyme and vector-borne disease or mycotoxin illness or really any complex chronic illness, what would it be?

What would your advice be? The first piece of advice would be for you to know internally, deep from within, know that there is hope. There are doctors like Dr. Mariah, myself, the doctors at my clinic who have been working with people just like you for a long, long time. To us, this is not out of the ordinary. It is our ordinary. It's what we see every day and we walk people through this. The other thing is, is that it's a journey. I think it's really important to understand when you're working with us, you are literally in for a healing journey.

We're working on the physical pieces, we're working on the biochemical, the genetic, all of this, but something in you? I say that in a good way, right? Something shifts beautifully. It's very rare that I've seen a patient, I think probably never, where they've come out on the other side, they're healed, and they're stronger on the inside. They're more in tune with themselves, more in tune with the world. They can manifest things for their life much easier. So there's something on the other side.

You don't know what that is yet, but there's something magical in this healing process, and I think it's important. The people understand that. I don't know if this is going to come out right, but like what's coming to mind is that like there's almost like, I think like we all feel like entitled to our lives, you know what I mean? And it's like after you've been through something like this, like there is just like immense gratitude that like you're alive and you're not in pain and you're not suffering anymore.

And I think it changes your whole mindset. you know, and kind of it just puts everything in perspective and somehow like that is very, very healing. I agree with you there. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. So tell us, what do you guys do there at Gordon Medical Associates? What modalities do you have to offer? I mean, in addition to everything that we just talked about, but tell us what your center is all about. Yeah. So we have people come from all over the country, other parts of the world. They come and they stay with us and they get, there are lots of hands-on treatments over there.

We do have IV therapies, which I won't go into detail about today. That's a whole long conversation, but we do have that and there's apheresis and there's a healer that we work with who is amazing. I already spoke about him, but tying that in with the other therapies is actually quite magical. So that's what we do. Wonderful. But you guys also provide a ton of education, right? Like you have educational platforms and you have seminars. And I know you have a summit series coming out next month in May.

So I'm just going to, I want to plug that first, and then I'm going to let you tell me about your other educational platforms. But you're doing this summit series on Lyme, Mold, and Environmental Toxins.

Hope, Gordon Medical Services, and Educational Resources 34:30

And in May, you're actually going to, in honor of Lyme Awareness Month, you're going to be doing kind of like a mini summit, right, on vector-borne diseases. We sure will be, and you are going to be on it, so I'm very excited about that. So am I. Yeah. And so, yes, we put together a lot of educational platforms for people so that people who might not be able to come to us for various reasons, they have some more information at their fingertips to give to their naturopathic or functional medicine doctors.

We want people to be able to use their own holistic doctors first to see what actually can work for them. If that doesn't work, then they can come over to us. So we have done many summits. We hosted the Mycotoxin and Chronic Illness Summit 1.0 and 2.0. We hosted the Long Haul Summit. We hosted the Cracking the Chronic Illness Code Summit. And now we're going to be doing these mini series, this forum. We also have the Gordon Medical Forum. That's our podcast. So, there's a lot of information for potential patients and the general public to access.

We want this information to be out there for people because it's really lacking in the medical community. And all of that can be found on our website, gordonmedical.com. Okay. So if you go to GordonMedical.com, everything that we've discussed can be found like through that funnel. So whether it's the summit or the various educational series or the podcast, or if someone even wants to set up an appointment with you, all of that can be done through GordonMedical.com. Yeah, and it's really easy to access All of that there.

We also have ebooks on various topics as well that you can access. There are lots of information. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Is there any last words that you'd like to say to our listeners before we end? I just want to reiterate the hope, the feeling of hope, and that this is a healing journey. You're healing your body, but your life is going to be healed as well. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here with us. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. And to all of you at home, I hope that this was very, very helpful to you and it furthers you along your journey healing from Lyme. Take care. Have a good night. If this episode gave you an answer, brought you new insight, or made you think differently, subscribe to the Lime Bites podcast and share with someone who's ready to take control of their healing journey. And if you can, please leave a review. It helps others to find the show. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.