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You're sitting in the chair, and you hear that familiar rip of Velcro, as your doctor's taking the blood pressure cuff off your arm. And your doctor looks at you and says, I'm afraid your blood pressure is still too high. And you sit there with that sinking feeling in your chest thinking.
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I just knew the medicine was gonna work this time, but it still wasn't enough. And you think to yourself, surely there must be something I can do.
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There must be some way, because these medications they either aren't working, or they're giving me side effects, or both.
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Well, today, we're gonna share with you, there is something that you can do. So stick around.
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You're listening to the smarter, healthy living podcast where we firmly believe that getting healthy should never feel like torture. We're your host, Jared and Anita Roussel were college sweethearts, and health professionals who help you redefine what getting healthy looks like using a whole food plant based lifestyle. It's time to hear from the experts and learn the best tips and tricks that helped others get beyond the overwhelm, to create a vibrant life they love. If you're sick and tired of being sick, and tired, you're in the right place. So pull up a virtual chair, grab your matcha latte. And let's get started.
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If you are listening to my voice right now, and I know that you are this scenario, you have either experienced or someone you know, either friend, co worker or family member,
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way too common has experienced that.
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So what we want to do today is talk a little bit about blood pressure, high blood pressure, what it is, why you have it? And importantly, what you can do about it?
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Absolutely. Because there is something you can do. And a lot of times you get in this situation where you just feel desperate and you feel like well, you know, I'm older, it's just happens? Well, yeah, I'm getting older, this just happens. It's a product to become an older and I've never had high blood pressure before.
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And now I'm getting it. Well, I'm just gonna have to try one last ditch effort to do something like, move more, or whatever it is for you that you think you're going to try. And then you end up having to go on, on average, people go on about three medications that somewhere between three and five medications. And those medications do come with side effects. Again, Jarrod not are not anti medication, but the time and place for them, right.
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But there's so overused when there are other things that we no scientific research shows that can be done. And so you do have power in your hands over your life, by your lifestyle over how things go for you.
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health wise, a lot of power, but you're not told that we're not shown what to do about and you
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just expected because maybe your parents or grandparents, they have high blood pressure, it's just the way that it is genetic genetics, or I'm getting older, so it just must happen. So true. Well, the whole idea of blood pressure, it's a simple one, it's the amount of pressure that your heart has to push to get blood to flow through vessels. I mean, it really it's just fluid dynamics. But under normal, healthy conditions, your blood pressure really should be about 110 over 17. Right now, the 110, the systolic number, for every top
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number, that's the top number, if
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you hear that term, that is the amount of pressure that your heart is pumping at maximum squeeze the diastolic number, which is the bottom number, or in the case of this, the 70 is the pressure that's just normally within your blood vessels. When your heart is at rest. Now you probably you're probably thinking, when is my heart at rest? I mean, it's always pumping. Well, it does is for a split second, but yes, it does. And so that's what those two numbers mean. Now, as we get older, especially here in the United States, or anybody else eating the same type of diet, the numbers tend to go up as we get older, right?
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And they keep going up and they keep
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going up. And that's not a good thing. Well, the reason being is that our heart is having to pump more pressure to get the blood to flow.
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Why is that though? Why is it having a blood pressure?
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And that's what we need to be asked. Excellent, excellent
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question. What happens is that there is damage to the blood vessels, the lining inside the blood vessels, there's damage, there's inflammation, the blood vessels normally do actually stretch a little bit each time your heart pumps, the blood vessels will stretch. And so it kind of absorbs some of that pressure.
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So they have a plasticity, you might hear your blood vessels are elastic, and the other term like a rubber band is kind of stretching.
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Right, exactly. And the other thing you might hear is the endothelial cells, those are the cells that line your vessels and that's really important because the health of those is at the key as well as at the base of all This is kind of the core of it, because you want to keep those healthy. So go ahead, and that's where it starts. So we're talking about that elastic.
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Well as your blood vessels stretch, it absorbs some of that pressure. But what it also does is that you have muscles in your arteries that will also squeeze. So what that does, it really helps to keep a more constant flow of the blood in your vessels.
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But if they can stretch and give, that does also keep your blood pressure lower, correct, because it does death, and your Bloods and your hearts having to pump blood through a pump harder. Yeah, through a stiff vessel. Yeah, it has to pet parter Exactly.
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In addition to that, what can happen is that you can when the endothelial lining is damaged, then you can also get a buildup of cholesterol and plaques and things that further narrow your vessels. And so what does that do, that makes your heart have to work harder, makes your blood pressure go up,
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so the blood pressure is going at because there's damage to the lining of the blood vessels, the blood vessels have become stiff over time. And also there's clogging going on of the arteries, due to the damage of the blood vessel lining where things are now sticking and causing plaques and you're getting buildup. And then because you have this, think of a stiff straw, now that's narrowing. And so if you want to get liquid through that, you're going to have to get some kind of force behind it. And your heart's gonna have to push much harder to get that fluid, the blood in this case through the vessel. And that's why the blood pressure goes up. Yes, because it's working harder. And what does that do to your heart long term,
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eventually, it will cause heart disease, what makes
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your heart tired, it just gets tired, it works and overworked and it can cause your heart to get larger, it can actually enlarge your heart,
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it can make the heart itself get larger can make the walls of the heart get thicker, which means there's less room for the blood to actually to be in there to then push out. So there there are a number of different things that can happen.
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And so we know that high blood pressure leads to heart disease, stroke, right, it can cause stroke. Obviously, chest pain can be one of the things you start having problems with kidney problems, eye disease, anything that's affected by blood flow, think about where do you need blood to flow in your body, everywhere, everywhere. So when the blood can't get there, because it's too thick, or it's clogged or your vessels are stiff, and your hearts having to work over time, your blood pressure starts creeping up, well, you know, the nutrients aren't getting where they need to go, because your bloods delivering nutrients from all the good food you're eating right? Or not. But it's delivering something, right?
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It's supposedly delivering the good stuff, and it's to haul away the bad stuff. Well, not only can the good stuff not get in now where it needs to go, the bad stuffs not leaving. So now you've got buildup of waste in your body that can't get cleared out as well.
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And another critical element that is flowing through your blood is oxygen, right?
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Absolutely. And you can't get enough oxygen to that area, which is needed to create energy in your cells. And so then you what you feel fatigued,
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you're exhausted your time.
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Now we have this concept that high blood pressure is the disease, right? And what we want you to realize is that it's in large part a symptom of the disease process going on right?
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problems.
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Yeah, absolutely. And that's what we've just talked about, like,
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like with strokes and things of that nature. If you have unhealthy vessels, and there's a higher pressure in the system, then there's a potential for those vessels to break. And that can lead to hemorrhagic strokes.
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But what you need to realize is that your body is sending you a message, this is the big takeaway here. When you have high blood pressure, your body sending you a message, there's something going wrong here, and it needs to be addressed. It's not saying to you, hey, give me a medicine to get this number down. Because in the end, that's not addressing the root cause that's causing it. And so if you're taking blood pressure medications, just to hold your blood pressure down, it can correct things for a
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little while, or lessen the risk of certain things like the strokes. But again, like like you're saying, You're not addressing the root problem. So there is a disease process that's still going on,
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and progressing many times because you're not addressing it and you don't know how nobody's telling you how what do you do?
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So a good example would be like on a car if you've got like a car sample, yeah, another car example. Like oil pressure.
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So if the oil pressure says it's high, well, that's an indication that there's something going
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wrong, right? It's just it. Yeah, it's like warning.
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If I clip the wire going to the gauge and I don't see the gauge anymore, and it looks normal. Does that mean that there's no longer problem? No.
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It means I've just kind of control the symptom then. And again, this is not a perfect example. But the best I'm coming up with off the cuff here. But it's you've taken care of the symptom like, like you're saying, but you, you still have the damage going on, you still have the the vascular issues,
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right. And the problem is the thing that makes us so sad is people aren't being told, we aren't being told what we can do or that we have any power. It's just Hey, your blood pressure's going up, they might recommend a little exercise, maybe it may be more than they might say, try to eat a little better. What does that even mean? Like you don't even know what to do. And so that's what you leave with. If you even get that. I mean, maybe sometimes I just say, you got to start blood pressure medication, because it's time because your blood pressure is creeping up.
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And if we don't get this down, you're going to have other problems,
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you kind of quote unquote, tried a dietary change, but it didn't work. So now let's go to medications.
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Right? And the research is there. I mean, it's been there for years and years of what to do. But we're that's why
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we're passionate about this is because the research does back this up.
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Absolutely.
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And that's the good news. That's what we want you to really pick up on today is that there is something that you can do. And it's not hard
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and it can be simple, enjoyable and delicious.
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Yes. What the studies show is that the more plants that you eat, all the way up even to adopting just an entire whole food plant based lifestyle, that the more of that that you eat, the better the results, the better gets that your blood pressure does come down.
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Right. And so this study show, like if you just ate exactly what Jarrod saying. So if you just ate more of the fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds each day, the more you eat, the more drop you're going to get people that went on whole food plant based and really dive right in and did as much as they could just over the first week got significant reductions in their blood pressure. And it was amazing. So say to yourself, you know, hey, if I want this change, what do I have to lose?
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Let me try just seven days, try seven days and monitor your blood pressure at home or at Walmart and the blood pressure cuff, if they even have those now with COVID. I'm not sure I'm not sure if they have those.
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But if you have a way to monitor it, definitely monitor it, try it for a week. If it works for a weekend, you get us a slight reduction, do it for two weeks, because the longer you go, the more reduction you're going to get.
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Now in the studies we were talking about earlier, they had looked at populations in Kenya, they also looked at populations in China, rural China, in rural China. And what they found now they had very different diets, because of the different plants that grow in those two areas. But they were all they were all plant based.
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They we eat meat on very rare occasions that it was more like celebrations, I think weddings, funerals
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a couple of times a year
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exactly what we did a few times a year. What stuck out with what stuck out to me and one of the studies was in Kenya, over a course of two years, they looked at 1800 hospitalizations.
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And not a single person was hospitalized for high blood pressure. Right? Not a single person was hospitalized for heart disease in that two year period 1800 people
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because they didn't have it, it wasn't an issue there,
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it was not an issue. And what they found is that in their 20s, they would be about 120s over 70 with their blood pressure. But as they got into their 70s, that was a shocking part, that would be about 105 over 65 was the average. So here in America, we start off in the 120s over 7080. But then as we hit around 60 years old, one in every two people half of the adult population has, we consider here a high blood pressure 140 over 90,
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but really that that's quite high. I mean, that's quite high, you really want like you're saying 110 over 70. Above that you're starting to creep up and it's getting high. And what
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they found is that 110 over 70. And below, below that you didn't see an additional benefit. So what that means is if you had a blood pressure of 130, over 85, if you could get it down to 120 over 80, you saw additional benefit, you saw a risk reduction for some of these things that we've talked about.
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And
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then if you got it to 110 over 70, you saw an additional benefit, but anything
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below that it's the same so that that's why in the studies, they looked at 110 over 70 as being kind of optimal.
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So what you're saying is that in America, what we find is as we get older blood pressure goes up and up and up based on age and what they found in studies is that in these other populations that we're talking about what Which one was it specifically that they followed and
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both Kenya and China
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and and what happened in both of those populations is that their blood pressure went down and down and down as they aged, it went down. It's not just that they didn't get high blood pressure, are you hearing this? It's that it actually kept going down. So there definitely is something you can do about this. I mean, you have the power in your hands to take action, you just have to decide, why do you Why would you want to do that? What is your big reason?
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Because once you can discover your reason why, like, it's like losing weight, why would you want to lose weight? Do you want to lose weight just to be skinny? Or do you want to lose weight, because you want to chase your children and your grandchildren around, you want to travel to all these amazing places,
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you want to go climb the stairs in Machu Picchu,
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right? You want to build your business to a level that, you know is possible, if you felt better, you know, those kinds of things. There's all these amazing opportunities waiting for you. And I just think about how my life changed when I wrap my head around this.
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And I started implementing these things and started eating a whole food, plant based lifestyle, and all the other things that we teach our clients in our program, you know, you start to see this potential just blow wide open. And it's amazing what all you can do in your life. But you have to first decide why it's not just because I want my blood pressure to be low, because I don't want to take blood pressure pills,
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because it's really just a number on a piece of paper.
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Right, and it's just, it's just a sign, it's a sign of where you're heading, it's a sign of where you are right now.
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But where you're headed, because we know, on the same path, you're going to get more of the same thing. And it's going to build up over time. Just like we're talking about the standard American diet, people who eat that their blood pressure goes up and up and up. But people in Kenya in Asia, like we've talked about before, there's goes down and down and down, it gets lower as they get older. Very interesting. And so then maybe you're thinking, well, maybe it's something that's just genetic with them. You know, it's because they're from Asia, it's because they're from Kenya is genetics, a completely
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different population.
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Right. But then they have the Loma Linda studies where they've looked at people in California, and watch those who eat more of a whole food plant based diet, and they compare those diet, you know, I don't like that we,
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we difference here. We know what you mean?
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Well, we defined before.
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I mean, obviously, it's not a diet, we don't count calories, count points, count macros, all the stuff, we just mean the way you eat. So in California, the people that ate whole plant foods, did they have high blood pressure?
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No, they didn't.
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They didn't have high blood pressure.
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But in that same region, that same population of people that should share similar genes, they compared it to the people that ate meat, there were others that maybe they just had milk and eggs, they didn't eat meat.
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But all of those individuals did have higher blood pressures than the than a than those that ate just plants.
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So the findings were, the less animal products you eat.
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And the more whole plant food you eat, the better you are. So it's not an all or nothing thing. But of course, we want you to be your absolute best. So we recommend going as much in as you can have in your mindset and just deciding what you want out of life. You get to decide that's the beauty of it all. If you want for reversal, if you want your blood pressure to go down and down and down, then what do you do, you start getting rid of the animal products as much as you can.
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That's not just meat, it's meat, it's dairy, it's eggs, all those things. And the extra oils make a huge difference to those also affect your paleo lining. So drop off the oils to I don't know how to do that. I don't even know where to start. We get it because we've been there. And we've created a membership called power plant society where we help our members to get results so that they know what to do step by step we take them by the hand, answer their questions as they go and help them together to get to the place they want to be so that they can see those doors of possibility blow wide open. If we're not the people for you.
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That's okay, find your people.
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We want to see you get healthy, we're excited for you and all the wonderful possibilities that lie ahead. But definitely just get your mindset right first and figure out why you want this you don't want low blood pressure just to have low blood pressure.
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And if you are listening to this and you are on blood pressure medications, by all means if you make these changes, make sure that your provider is following you because as your blood vessels get healthier, your blood pressure will naturally come down, but the medications may over medicate you and make your blood pressure go too low.
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So another
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project a bit lightheaded could even pass out.
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So you want to be sure you do this smart and make sure your provider is following you.
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So be sure to be followed by your health care provider. If you're on medications because it can make your blood pressure go too long. If you're eating the right step, and you're on medications at the same time, they'll need to work with you to adjust those. And hopefully to get you off of them, because that happens quite often. I'm so excited to share this.
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Oh, yeah. I mean, it's really, it's mind boggling once you can wrap your mind around it. Like why haven't we heard this before? I didn't know this was possible. I thought this was just how life was. And it's not, or doesn't have to be No,
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no, do not ever get into your mind. This is how it has to be. If you feel that way right now, start changing your mindset. It doesn't have to be this way. For me. There's something I can do about it. Now what am I going to do? Because once you get to that point, you just have to decide what are you willing to do? What do you want your life to look like? Two years, five years, 10 years down the road, you get to decide.
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That's the beauty of it all.
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We're thankful that you've joined us today. We cannot wait to hear your amazing testimonials to get to know you better. Come on over and join the waitlist for power plant society again, it'll be opening up very soon we would love to meet you inside there and help you on your journey to whole food plant based freedom. The link to that is in the description to come on over and get on the waitlist. Be sure to leave a review before you leave and we'll see you next time on smarter healthy living.
