The Tummy Whisperer

Ep. 7 - Switching Nutrition Gears: Janine's Gluten-Free Revolution

• Renee Barasch

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Have you ever stopped to think about how food affects your body? Or how small changes in your diet could potentially transform your health? Join us as we delve into a fascinating conversation with Janine, who shares her journey towards better health. Janine's story is nothing short of inspiring - from urgent care visits to discovering her body's reaction to gluten, she has made remarkable strides in her health. Come along as we unravel the link between diet and wellbeing, focusing on digestion, food chemistry, and the impact it has on our bodies.

In our chat with Janine, we also explore the profound changes she experienced when she chose an anti-inflammatory diet. This shift in lifestyle resulted not only in relief from her symptoms but also sparked a change in her cravings and her approach to exercise. Janine's tale is an eye-opener for anyone grappling with their health and diet. We also dive into an intriguing discussion on a 24-hour integrated urinalysis test, revealing Janine's digestion, nutrient deficiencies, and the importance of efficient food digestion. Get ready for an enlightening episode that will make you see food in an entirely new light!


Get to the root cause of your Gut Issues!  Watch the Gut Restoration Masterclass at https://learn.digestivehealthsolutions.com/

For a FREE Gut Health consultation, visit us at  https://thetummywhisperer.com/.


Contact Renee:
Email: Nhsolutions@sbcglobal.net
Website:  www.thetummywhisperer.com 



Renee:

Welcome everybody to the Tummy Whisper podcast. We're on episode number seven today's Tuesday, but this has been the fastest July, I feel, like ever. How hot are you in Florida?

Janine:

We have a heat advisory warning. Anywhere you go in Florida right now it is brutally warm.

Renee:

Yeah, yeah, keep the dogs inside. I keep everybody hydrated. But anyway, I'm so excited to be here today because we are coming in on the dovetail of Janine's journey. So last week we talked about your step into my process, about how I work, and we did this because, unfortunately, you weren't feeling well. You were unwell for people who are just tuning in.

Renee:

Janine was having some issues, some health issues. She landed her in urgent care. Who knew that food was at the root of it? But she is here to say it's five weeks removed from urgent care and she hasn't had really any kind of episode as to why she went to urgent care. So we went through, going through, started with the diet, looked at what she was eating. Her symptoms were severe dizziness, almost painting by herself. Her husband was out of town to turn the dogs, scared, and they're offering medications and running tests and blood work and not really seeing much of anything.

Renee:

The place to always start, when the doctors don't know, or even when they think they know, is with food. What's going into the mouth? How is it affecting your body on a chemical level? That's what I love doing. Obviously, there's so much more involved with health. Even though there's the emotional component. There's the physical component. You know how the body is aligned. If it's not aligned, what pressure it's causing on the nervous system, causing dysregulation on another level, and, of course, emotional stresses, which happen when you get physical stresses, because you feel like shit and you feel scared, and then there you are, stuck in this emotional feedback loop, not to mention the structural stresses.

Renee:

So my job as a digestive health specialist is to really help people untangle some of this food chemistry and see if some of these foods that they're eating are causing any one of their crazy ass symptoms. And I've heard it all. I'm in practice 20 years now, so I've heard everything from crazy neurological symptoms undiagnosed to massive diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, crazy constipation, skin and rashes, exhumous psoriasis, all kinds of hines, hormonal dysregulation, poor sleep, crazy cravings, acne, I don't know. The list just goes on. So those again all related to what goes in how your body digests with your eating.

Renee:

Can your body absorb the nutrients from what you're eating and get rid of the waste on a cellular level? That's it, guys. That's the key to good health. So, janine, I'm super excited to hear you started on your enzyme. So let me back up. We went to Janine's consultation, took out some gluten and some preservatives. She didn't know, so I felt let's start there, because she had her dizzy symptoms and the almost fainting symptoms are a sign of hypostomine and, if I can, drink Renee, an organic oat milk blueberry smoothie.

Janine:

Anyone can do it. That looks delicious.

Renee:

Tell everybody what's in there. I know you said oat milk, what else?

Janine:

So there's organic plant protein, blueberries and oat milk and a little bit of banana, and just I have embraced this new gluten free way of living. It's not a diet, it's really a way of living.

Renee:

It's not a diet, it's a way of living. When we went through Janine's consultation, we took out for those of you that are tuning in again, you guys heard last week or last time Janine and I talked she had a lot of gluten in her diet. She's Italian, she didn't know. So we switched to the gluten free swap outs. She wasn't hesitant at all, at least not till she got sick. We changed the cereals, the muffins, the sandwich, bread, the toast, all the stuff from severe symptoms to now gluten free. She dove in beautifully head first, wanting to do it, and everything she ate she liked because I was recommending the good stuff. Believe me, I've had the stuff that tastes like your dietier table. Okay, you don't want to eat that. All the good stuff is what I recommended. Has there been anything that I recommended that you're? I don't know, or has it seemed pretty?

Janine:

decent for the most part. Oh, that Canyon bread is probably my favorite. Canyon baked those gluten free blueberry zucchini muffins from Target are like my go-to for my favorite thing ever.

Renee:

Yeah, I gotta tell you I think Canyon bake house should give me some more LCs, because we're getting them on as a sponsor. Yeah, we're going to need to Canyon bake house, are you?

Janine:

guys here Canyon bake house, oh good, yeah.

Renee:

So going from you changing the diet, feeling better within just a few days, feeling much better within a week, and then we run your urinalysis test. So, guys, what I do is I run what's called a 24 hour integrated urinalysis test. It shows me many things. It shows me how you are digesting your food, namely fats, carbs and proteins. That's the first order of business. Are you digesting what you're putting in? Secondly, it's going to show me if you have any deficiencies like calcium, magnesium, vitamin C. That's not about putting more of those things in. Oh, your calcium deficient, put that in. Your magnesium deficient, put that in. Not necessarily, not so fast. It's about digesting your food better. So if you're calcium deficient or vitamin C deficient, you're going to be able to dig.

Renee:

It could be that you're not digesting your protein very well. Why aren't we digesting our protein very well? Many reasons. One, we may not be making enough stomach acid. Two, we may be eating inflammatory foods that are actually putting a wetsuit around ourselves and causing a malabsorption. Three, there's both at large, eating something that you're not breaking down, something inflammatory, puts more stress on the digestive system, and then the digestive system cannot fire on all cylinders. So from there we start to slowly creep down on what our digestive system can do and over time we start to develop our symptoms, and my mentor, dr Loomis, spells symptoms with a dollar sign for the S and a dollar sign for the S of the N, because those symptoms are what makes the medical industry pretty wealthy.

Renee:

Chasing symptoms, that's what Western Medicine does, and not again here to slam Western Medicine. They just we don't know what to do because their drugs and surgery aren't the nutritional fix, and I'm not saying nutrition is the fix for everybody when you need surgery and drugs. Thank God that Western Medicine does what they do. Hell yeah, right, there isn't no broccoli stalk on the world to get a fix of a broken leg. Perfect, that's going to happen. However, however, if you are susceptible to bone stuff, for instance hip fractures, it's not people think that they break their hip, point down the stairs, when the opposite is true. Actually your hip is weak and it does break and then you fall down the stairs. We're looking at again triant deficiencies. And how do we get nutrient deficiencies from poor digestion? How do we get poor digestion Eating inflammatory food? So we went through Janine's urinalysis test. We found some deficiencies where she wasn't digesting her carbs very well, a little bit of fat, a little bit of protein. This is amazing.

Janine:

I think we need to. I just want to explain to people that are watching this right now that I've never done anything like that. When you told me to pee in a jug and keep it in my refrigerator for 24 hours, I'm like there is no way. I'm like this is not happening.

Renee:

But I did it, but I did it.

Janine:

Well, and you have to count the number of what milliliters that you, because that in itself the volume of what you actually pee in a 24 hour basis is pretty interesting in itself too and you ship it to this specific laboratory. There's one in the entire United States that does two, two same company, though right, one in Springfield, one in North Carolina, and it's very unique, specific got the results back and it explains a lot.

Renee:

It explains a lot why I was feeling so terrible Again if we draw it back to just looking at how your body's digesting food. A simple, overlooked fact right Digestion is assumed. We assume that what we eat is going to make it for the mouth to the south without a hiccup. Not true. It relies on good digestive food Chewing just the act of chewing starts to liberate enzymes from under the tongue amylase, to start to break down those carbohydrates.

Renee:

Predigestion nobody chews their food. That's one of my questions. On my questionnaire I asked people how do you think you are chewing their food? And they're like, yeah, I eat too fast, or I don't even think about it, or it's one of those things that if you're trying to digest hunks of food guess what? You're swallowing marbles. You think your body can digest marbles? No way. So there is a visual for everybody. So on your test we saw your inability to break down some of your foods, a little bit of deficiency and a little bit of overgrowth. Basically not a bad looking test. But again, my point is when you have an orchestra and you have one violin out of tune, eeks, that's going to make the whole things feel like nails on a chalkboard. The same goes for digestion. You've got one little thing that you can't break down. That's going to cause that ripple effect in the rest of your orchestra, in the rest of your body.

Janine:

Makes sense Makes total sense, and people don't realize that digestion starts in the mouth Like you're starting to break down food, so if you're not cognizant of what you're actually putting into your body, hence I was putting the wrong things in my system. You didn't know, right? I didn't know. Thank you for helping out on a further wonderful FDA, which everyone seems to think I didn't have my own acronym for them. What for the FDA?

Renee:

But here's the thing.

Janine:

I love it.

Renee:

You don't even know, people don't know. They don't really put two and two together and that's okay. It's not wrong not to know. It's great to be enlightened. And again, what my offering is not for everybody, but it's for people who maybe haven't tried it yet to see why their blood pressure is out of control, why they need blood pressure medication or anti-diarrheal medication or constipation medication or acid reflux medication or thyroid medication. We could just do a whole thing on thyroid.

Renee:

As it is, gluten is one of the biggest of unders for the thyroid. How does a thyroid get antibodies and attack itself? It doesn't attack itself. It's responding to food. Gluten and dairy and soy are the two to three biggest bitch laps to the thyroid. So when I see my clients who are on thyroid medication are still eating gluten, we have to help them. And let me backtrack. We got your test results back. I sent you out one bottle of digestive enzymes, very specific to what you needed. You started on them and you go ahead and just take it from here, cause I love getting text messages with the. I'm pooping. That perfect.

Janine:

Yeah, I'm all about poop, all about poop. You know what I when you and I'm down the rabbit hole. So I've read and I've researched what happens actually when you detox from gluten. On top of that, not only am I detoxing from gluten, but I'm putting back the enzymes that you're giving me to properly digest and absorb things that I was not getting. So I'm doing double duty at the same time and I will say I've noticed a lot of things. What? And I've, macgyver, noticed a little bit of like bad breath, and I noticed that when you detox from gluten, that's a symptom Correct. And I've noticed I'm sleeping better, definitely from the enzymes and from the, from no gluten, I'm definitely going moving the bowels more regularly. Well, I can literally, and I don't know why, but I am.

Renee:

Cause you're digesting your food better, and the back part of why you're sleeping better is cause remember, gluten is a high histamine, and histamine affects neurochemistry right, it affects the neurotransmitters and can affect sleep. So now that you're have the, now that's going to definitely affect the sleep in a better way. Plus, digestion is another thing that greatly affects the adrenals via sleep, right? So you're not, you're now digesting your food better, which is another second way to help your adrenal glands and help you with better sleep, which is why you're sleeping better. So you remove some of that crazy wiring of histamine and now you're back on, back on track.

Janine:

So this is an interesting for William. Check out the ingredients in Brexit.

Renee:

Oh, yeah, that I did respond to that and, yeah, that is likely. When I looked at it last week, it was like an enzyme probiotic and it's something that may be helpful. I'm always leery about people ordering supplements from Amazon If they're not sure what they need. I've had many of my clients come in and be like I've taken enzymes before and it hurt my stomach. Hey, if somebody has a digestive line, that's really compromised. You don't want to go and be putting in a lot of high level protease and hydrochloric acids and things like that's going to affect the digestive lining and that could definitely affect somebody making a deal horrible. Starting with starter enzymes or maybe enzymes you thought protease or, of course, just running through the urine test, because the points be right in the right direction of what you need Again, definitely not anything that people should navigate themselves. Without at least a conversation. You wouldn't give yourself your own medications, right? You need to know a little bit of background and what's okay.

Janine:

So that's fascinating. And if you, now I'm looking at labels more so than ever because, yes, at first I'm like when you first start looking at label me, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to speak for everyone. When I first started looking at labels, I was looking for carbs and fat Now I'm right and calories. Now I'm looking for. Can I pronounce it? What is it? It's a different mindset Again.

Renee:

I think that people really need to do the few steps they need in order to get what they need, so I'm super excited to hear how you're feeling, that your sleep is better, any difference? I asked you this earlier what about cravings? Do you feel like cravings have changed a bit for you on any level?

Janine:

Totally I don't want to put anything with gluten or dairy in my system and I just don't want to do it. It's not even. Oh, I'm kind of I just don't want to do it.

Renee:

Yeah, yeah. You were sick enough and you were scared enough, and now you're seeing how great you feel. Who wants to go back to that?

Janine:

I feel so, ray. I gotta tell you, I feel so much better. I'm less foggy, I'm more clear, I'm able, granted, I need to start exercising. So a friend of mine is actually here in the studio. We just recorded her trailer for her podcast and she teaches a yoga class in the mornings. So I'll be attending at 6.30 am, but it's important to get your body moving.

Renee:

And that's another thing to be aware of. I think and I mentioned this to you some people are exercise intolerant. They don't have enough energy to actually move because they're not digesting their food properly, so there's no resources for them to actually get up and go. If you're not, how do we get our energy? We get it from our food. That's the only way to get energy or drugs and headaches and head falls but we get our energy from our food and if we're not breaking down our food properly, we're not gonna have the energy. If we don't have energy, all you have is enough energy to get out of bed and maybe make it to the studio. You don't have time for exercise or the resources for exercise. It's like trying to build a house without bricks. You can't do it. But now that your body has resources right you have enough available protein on board, you have enough available carbohydrates, you're digesting it. Enough available fat your brain's I think I can use some of this energy now for moving. So you're actually right on time. Good job, girl.

Janine:

I'm blown away. Honestly, this has been such an eye-opening experience of anyone who's out there and they're struggling with so many things. You don't know why you don't feel well. You're experiencing so much. Yes, doctors are important, right? However, clearly, however, doctors are important but, honestly, I was at rock bottom. There's no doubt about it. I could not or meet up with fate and have a bout with vertigo. I'm like great. This happened when I got out of bed. What did this happen? When I was driving my car, which has happened before.

Renee:

Well, I don't think about stuff like that when I'm on the road and I make sure I have plenty of distance between me and the person in front of me and the person behind me and me and the person next to me. Now something else to think about, guys when you're driving, don't take your road rage and get rid of it. Just let the person in front of you, let him pass, let him go. Leave your house enough time to get to where you need to go and chill. In fact, my stepdaughter told me she wants to get her driver's license. So take her in the car at a huge parking lot before she leaves here for a visit and let her kind of get comfortable with that. But I'm going to give her some good download. Let assholes pass you. People will honk at you for making a right turn. You have to slow down to make a right turn. You can't take it at 90 miles an hour and people will honk. Let them honk, let them pass.

Janine:

And think of all the people that have seizures, that are driving or go faint and start, I had my old colleague of mine.

Renee:

His wife was hit by somebody who had a medical seizure and she ended up in the hospital. She's fine now. She's in a concussion and it was a slow, moving hit, but it was her neighbor and the old guy just creamed into her. So, yeah, you've got to really be careful and take your time out there and that's why that's important G-name. Part of your brain fog has to do with gluten. One of the things that gluten does is it causes brain fog because gluten stays on the brain for months. So getting rid of it is helping the brain fog. It's going to be that you're going to even be clear and clear as you clear more of it off, but the detox seems okay, reasonable for you.

Janine:

Little moody I'm not going to lie, a little moody. And it says on there like little moody, little bit of depression. My body again, my body is depleted from an enzyme or a protein, including, amongst other things, that I was eating with chemicals. So it's not just it's gluten, amongst other chemicals that I was consuming for my whole life and I've been really thinking about it. So I've read and I've been going down the rabbit hole with this too, because I want to know I'm very much into why am I feeling like this? What's going on with the body? What's the process?

Janine:

And a lot of studies that I've been reading have been saying gluten detox is real and when people go through it definitely real it's like not eating carbs and going through ketosis and having exactly similar like detox. Exactly when you go through that, a lot of times people won't make it and they'll go eat something with gluten and, of course, they're going to feel better when they eat gluten. But what's going to happen is if you experience headaches because you're withdrawing and you're detoxing from gluten, if you eat something with gluten, you might feel better but your headache might get worse because, exactly, you got to push through it.

Renee:

The only way to the end of the fire is through it. You can't go around and you can't go over it. You have to go through it. And some people I would say, for what you're experiencing, that's really the most severe. Most of my clients that come off it don't get much. So you're definitely are having something more severe, but it's manageable. A little headache, a little moody, a little, as Judy said, a little moody, a little sassy. That short-lived, it's little weak tops. Keep yourself hydrated, keep the joy in what you're eating, love what you're eating, knowing that you're.

Janine:

That's the key. I look forward to eating these gluten-free things. I'm buying vegetable plates and eating that instead of Eating a bag of chips. There's things that you can do that, once you start eating well, you actually start feeling better and when I hit rock bottom, I'm the heaviest I've ever been and I felt the worst I've ever been and yeah.

Janine:

I'm like years old. This is not normal and I saw myself going down a path, like both my parents did, which is just a path of Really unhealthy living and just not a great quality of life.

Renee:

And do you? Would you say that you're? Would you say overall, generally, you're just feeling, you're feeling better generally, but like energy, wise sleep, wise cravings, wise things are going back online. Would you say 100%?

Janine:

100%. I feel so much better it can. It's hard to explain until you go through it, but the people that Mindlessly eat things and you're not paying attention to what's in it, you wouldn't notice it until you stop doing it.

Renee:

I mean, how many times I'm working with a client and it goes one of two ways. They either go like you, they pull the trigger and they're like this is great, I'm feeling better, or it's two, three appointment sins. You're like, yeah, it's like a mindset. They're afraid to do it, they don't want to do it, they don't think they have a gluten issue, and then I don't. We don't know how they're gonna feel until they actually make the effort. I'm thinking about a client yesterday who said he was gonna take the gluten out and then said I just I'm afraid if I take the gluten out, I know with the rice bread that you recommended and now there's a lot of carbs and rice I hear all the excuses all the time. I'm like you're doing damage to your body by eating the gluten. Probably you're not Damaging your body as much the rice bread and you're gonna have the enzyme to break the carbohydrate down, so I have to break it down.

Janine:

That is hilarious, renee. People are that dumb, and I'm not saying that your clients dumb, and I'm just saying no in general people in general are dumb.

Janine:

And I remember when I worked for Addicted and it's total addiction this lady I'll never forget, when I was in the weight loss industry and I was Super, super fit back then but I was still eating like crap. I was just younger so I we could tolerate a back. Yeah, totally. So that was the only difference. But I remember getting in an argument with this lady because she was telling me that she was a nurse and she was telling me that ketosis Was not healthy and I was like he's right, it cannot be healthy.

Janine:

It cannot be healthy. But she was confusing ketosis and keto acidosis and she was confusing the two and I'm like listen, yeah, they're different. They're different ketosis. Obviously you shouldn't stay ketosis forever, that's. It's a state of the body. It's not meant to be correct. But she was arguing with me and when I was asking her what her eating habits were, she eats the Snickers and a Diet Coke every day. And I'm like wait a second, you're. Yet you're telling me that you don't want to eat fruits, vegetables and protein, but you're gonna consume diet coke which can like clear battery acid off your car and like that's probably. Where's the thought process behind it? There is none.

Renee:

There is none. When you're addicted like that or you have to make stuff up to Handle the truth like a Jack Nicholson moment, you can handle the truth.

Renee:

Then true people don't wanna hear it, but people that do great and the people that need a little coaching and love. I'm here for ya. I'm not here to judge, I'm here to help. And if you're having weirdo symptoms or even just digestive dramas and all kinds of stuff, things that go bump in the night that you don't want to deal with or just know, once your body has a check engine light on, guys, it's already once a symptom is showing you there's a problem. You're showing with a symptom. It's already like time to do something.

Renee:

When the body shows you something's out of balance, right, you have to get the body back in the balance. The key is the balance. How do we do that again? Digest an anti-inflammatory diet, absorb the nutrients, get rid of the waste, take care of your emotional health and whatever will you do it? Even just the act of doing something good for yourself or doing something good for others every day. Hug a dog, rescue an animal.

Renee:

I didn't mean to straight up our alley, but doing something to give yourself joy and give yourself some motivation that there is help and hope out there. You can't just be drowning in your misery and you can't be just scared of doing a little bit of work because your body's relying on it, right, your body's relying on you to make good decisions and to find the joy in your everyday life I have everywhere people come to me from. I don't cook to I my husband's a great cook, or whatever it is and we find a way to roll out what you can eat, whether you're on the road, whether in your kitchen, whether you're traveling, whether you're going to camping for a week or whatever. We find a way to roll out what you need to eat so that you can have safe food, plenty of options that taste great and are to-go foods if you don't want to cook. In fact, I just started a meal service about a month and a half ago and I'm loving it.

Renee:

It's called what's it called? Modify Health M-O-D-I-F-Y-H-E-A-L-T-H. My husband and I call them space meals. They come like back in packed, but they're delicious and they have about eight.

Janine:

I haven't heard of that one.

Renee:

It's 18 to 20 gluten-free meals. Chicken tonight is going to be makled legs, chicken with roasted rosemary potatoes and green beans.

Janine:

Like perfect, so good in their freezer pack, so they come right through your door.

Renee:

Yeah, they're cooked and then flash frozen and then they get delivered at refrigerator and above temperature so they're ready to go. You can re-freeze them. But the foods are great. Their prices are great. You can get a dish from $8.95 to a salmon dish for $12.95. For a salmon dish, that's pretty good. So again, there's ways to roll it out. If you're not a cook, I am not a cook guy. So Modify Health. I definitely. You know if I can get something. Or open the refrigerator and like what's for dinner? Oh, like you'll say it, like salmon or chicken or whatever.

Janine:

It can't be made in the crock pot, the air fryer or the rice cooker. I don't really. I use my oven as storage.

Renee:

I've tried to too, but the funniest thing is at least you're using those three things I have like for me. I can scramble an egg and boil some woodbury pasta. How much woodbury pasta can you eat? And we rarely eat that. Maybe once a month with that.

Janine:

I'm going to make that tonight and MacGyver's not going to like it, but I don't really care, because he's going to eat it.

Renee:

He needs to get a spanking.

Janine:

Exactly.

Renee:

Tell him he's on my list for a spankle.

Janine:

He's going to have to, because if he wants me to cook, then that's what's going to happen.

Renee:

I'm just super proud of you are the A plus clients. Again, I'm sorry that you had to go through the healthcare that you did in order to come out on the other side. But look at you shine. You're feeling great. I didn't know that changing the diet was going to be the answer for you.

Renee:

I had an idea I've been doing this long enough that I have seen the results of what gluten can do for the wrong person. And this is not to say that everybody has a sensitivity to gluten. This is to say that the people that are having symptoms look at that first and see if there's a way to lighten the load. And if you guys need help, you can find me again at the tummywhisperercom and download these podcasts. There's a lot of great information in here for you. I know we're putting these podcasts on my website as well, at the tummywhisperercom, and I'm happy to answer questions about anything and, if I can help you, happy to have you guys go through my process. And if you have a really severe case, I know it's looking at needs a more skilled set of eyes. I have a lot of wonderful colleagues who work very specifically with detoxification pathway blockages that are causing digestive issues, so I'll be able to know in our conversation if you need to start there or be circled into those the crew over there. So I want to wish everybody a wonderful day here.

Renee:

Janine, again A-class. I'm super proud of you. I'm just glad that you're feeling good. You look great. You've got your skin looks good. You've got your circle. Dark circles are going away.

Janine:

They're starting to go away.

Renee:

And that's nothing we've reprimanded. On the urine test we saw that kidney function and if you guys have dark circles, you're kidneys having a hard time cleaning and filtering the blood from undigested food particles. It's just the kidneys just have to have a lot of blood and not filter and concentrate the urine, and that's how we get dark circles. So Janine's going to throw out her clinic Concealers suited up. But you're looking great, mama. I'm super proud of you, I'm super happy for you and can't wait to talk more about this with anyone who wants to listen. So you guys stay healthy, chew your food, drink your water in between meals and we'll see you guys in a couple of weeks. And don't forget to download and share and wherever you guys are watching and downloading your podcast from Apple Spotify. All right, guys, take care.