[laughs]

Um, but I do just wanna expand on what you're talking about, because we have some research coming out about this in terms of lipedema, in terms of how it impacts people in relation to others and within relation to themselves.

So they're-- they've been looking into how does this impact their relationship with doctors.

It's horrible, because I have spoken to people who have said that they went to the doctor because of the pain component.

So big aspect of lipedema is that it's a painful fat disorder, and they know that there's something wrong, and they don't know what's going on.

And this person went into their doctor, and they said, like, "My legs are painful.

They're heavy." They feel like they're gonna explode all the time.

So it's exciting that we can, we can put our minds together and start doing these things.

So if you talk to

many surgeons at this point, there are quite a few surgeons who emphasize actually the best results that they have in people who do find surgery, who do seek out surgery is if they do conservative care beforehand, because like if you go into surgery there has to be a recovery period and the best shot you're going to have at a really successful healthy easier recovery period is if you're in better health already if that inflammation has already had a chance to come down if you're really well nutritioned going in and the aftercare for surgery is often conservative care like going in already you're gonna have to wear compression after the surgery you're probably hopefully going to be recommended to eat in a really healthy way after surgery there's um manual lymphatic drainage and lymphatic therapies that you're probably going to want to do after surgery during the recovery period so it's making your life easier if you do ultimately choose surgery which i think is appropriate for some people like even if after you've done this conservative care your pain hopefully has come down your mobility has hopefully improved all of those things but if you have like excess tissue that's throwing off your balance that's impacting your gait that's putting pressure on your joints i can understand seeking surgery in that case i've known people who've gone through it did all the conservative care beforehand got in a really good spot did surgery and they're happy that they did that But I do also know other people who went straight to surgery, did not do all that prep work, and found that it came back afterwards.

So it's a tool.

And it's not... a cure-all is the issue so it is a tool with a very specific purpose and some people do find that there is pain relief after surgery that is worth highlighting in the long-term data that we have like there is the potential for regrowth so we still have to focus on what are we going to do long term that's going to put us in the best position possible to have this effect last as long as possible And what's really interesting is that some surgeons, they do focus on conservative care, not just as a checkbox to get insurance to cover it, but really focusing on it, getting their patients in the best place possible.

Some patients ultimately say, don't need surgery actually like the things that i was worried about the pain and mobility and like the tenderness all the stuff it's actually really well covered by conservative care so i'm actually going to pass on that because with surgery often it's not cosmetic for lipedema it is functional so if you can restore that function through other means without the cost without the risk for complications from it i mean people want that i think a lot of people don't realize that it can happen and i think the other aspect is they're in such a place of desperation that they want relief immediately they know what the problem is they know this is a potential solution and they just cannot stand it anymore and they need help right away but I would emphasize it's probably not gonna be right away, even if it's surgery anyway, because with insurance coverage, it often requires six months of conservative care to show that you still need the surgery at the other end.

And like you have to pick out your surgeon, you have to go interview them, you have to ask questions, you have to figure out like what method is going to be good for you maybe it's traveling overseas you might need to save up money for it if it's not covered by insurance or even if it is there's probably going to be some amount left on you for the travel and all this other stuff it's probably not going to be a snap your fingers and get it right away so even then the question is like well while you're waiting why don't we focus on this conservative care component while you're going through the steps of that because there's a lot of documentation and other things that go into it and with conservative care at least with ketogenic diets the research shows like the pain relief aspect can happen even within like a couple weeks um so that i mean a couple of days yeah some people it's a couple of days so that is another option for if you want relief as soon as possible nutrition is an awesome way to do that and like compression too the heaviness and pain can sometimes be helped with that um i would say the lymphatic therapies it's more of like something that builds up over time but you still can get some relief within a couple sessions so even for like the very very quick i am desperate and i need something there's conservative options for that too And you're going to need to do it afterwards.

Like there's so many reasons why we can't just rely on surgery.

or low carb, that we can also match some expectations that are all about the scale and putting all the value of this worked or didn't work by what happens on the scale is for people to really lean into how is my mood? How is my sleep? How is my pain? Has my plantar fasciitis gone away? Has my arthritis decreased? You know, like all these things that they don't necessarily associate with the lipoedema and are also wins

Was this something that happened by accident for you in terms of coming to understand this?

Yeah.

And I would say my story starts a little while before that.

It starts in 2016.

And I didn't actually learn about Lipidema until 2020.

So there's a little bit of a gap there.

But what had happened is...

How would you sort of describe where we're at in the research right now?

Do you want to jump into the research now?

Yeah, let's do that because it's funny.

I was talking to someone about obesity and ketogenic diets and how controversial it is and all this stuff.

And I brought up Lipidema and they were like, well, if they've ruled out that calorie restriction doesn't seem to do anything, I bet keto is way more accepted.

And it actually is.

We have a lot of research on keto for Lipidema at this point by different teams across the world.

So this is, It's not quite replication, but it's pretty dang close to it because we have so many different groups trying a similar intervention and getting the same results over and over and over again.

access to the fat because I don't have