Ep. 42: How to Think About COVID’s Finish Line
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The Quarantine Backyard Ultra is a diabolically cruel running race that requires its contestants to run a little more than four miles every hour—for as long as they can. The winner is the last person standing. The fact that it’s an endurance contest with no clear finish line makes it a proxy for the coronavirus pandemic, argues running columnist Alex Hutchinson, who reviewed the science of races without finish lines to extract lessons that may help us all navigate the next few months.
LINKS AND HIGHLIGHTS:
Alex Hutchinson is on Twitter @sweatscience. He writes for the Globe and Mail and Outside magazine. Here’s his book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance.
Hutchinson’s Globe and Mail feature about the scientific discipline of teleoanticipation describes the argument discussed in this episode.
The diabolically cruel race at the centre of Hutchinson’s argument, a kind of proxy for the COVID-19 pandemic itself, is the Quarantine Backyard Ultra.
Hans-Volkhart Ulmer is the German physiologist who coined the term, teleoanticipation. Here’s the academic article that saw him first describing the results of his topic research.
How to Think About COVID’s Finish Line final web transcript
Christopher Shulgan
Christopher Shulgan here, executive producer of Eat Move Think. I want to start this episode with a story that happened the last time I ran the Toronto Marathon. Mile 20, the hardest mile of any marathon, and I came up on a guy who was talking to himself.
Christopher Shulgan
I got a little closer, and what I could make out what it was: "I’m so tired." He repeated those three words over and over again. I pulled up alongside him. I passed him, and as I pulled away from him, I could hear him keep going at it, those same three words.
Christopher Shulgan
I’ve thought a lot about that guy lately, because at various times most of us have felt like that. "I’m so tired." Yes, of the pandemic and it’s weirdness, the uncertainty, the risk. The whole situation is even worse than a marathon, however, because we don’t know exactly when to expect the finish line.
Christopher Shulgan
That makes our guest today super timely. Alex Hutchinson is a running columnist for Outside Magazine and the Globe and Mail. He’s also the author of a book called, Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. Recently, he analyzed the psychology of endurance contests and particularly, races without defined finish lines, to extract lessons that may help us all navigate the next several months. Here’s my conversation with Alex Hutchinson.
Christopher Shulgan
Alex Hutchinson is a columnist for The Globe & Mail newspaper, a columnist for Outside magazine, a physicist with a PhD from University of Cambridge. In addition what, you're a four-minute miler? A little out of four-minute mile, right?
Alex Hutchinson
Slower than four minutes and I would say I'm an ex-physicist.
Christopher Shulgan
Ex-physicist.
Alex Hutchinson
I don't think I could pass an even undergrad physics course.
Christopher Shulgan
Aren't you once a physicist always a physicist? No?
Alex Hutchinson
I think that's being an Olympian.
Christopher Shulgan: In addition, you're one of the few people in addition to my sister who still uses a Hotmail email account. So it's my sister and you left in the world. So, you know, that's, I think, not a bad thing.
Alex Hutchinson
Until my dying day or until they take it away from me, which they keep trying to.
Christopher Shulgan
Do you get emails about—oh yeah, really? Like, taking it away.
Alex Hutchinson
They're eager for me to switch over to Outlook. Me and your sister, presumably.
Christopher Shulgan
I loved your piece in the Globe and Mail. And it begins with the story of a fascinating race. Can you tell me the story of that race, and then let's get into how it actually went?
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah, this race was called the Quarantine Backyard Ultra. It was definitely a race that was appropriate on many levels for the midst of a pandemic. So it was a virtual race, just because this was a race that was held back in April. And otherwise it would have been in person. But the format is, you have to run one loop of just over six kilometres, just over four miles every hour. So that adds up to—if you do the math, they they work it out so it's exactly 100 miles every 24 hours. It doesn't matter how fast you run, the key is at the start of every hour, you have to start this loop, and you have to finish before the end of the next hour. And the race goes until there's only one person left. So that's the key feature of this. That's the key diabolical cruelty of this race is that there's no finish line. So you're going to be running until either you give up, or everyone else gives up.
Christopher Shulgan
Who are these people?
Alex Hutchinson
It's pretty broad cross section. I mean, if you think about the start line of a big city marathon, you've got, like, Olympic champions and you've got the random dude from your office who took up running two months ago. I don't know if it was quite as broad a spectrum for the Quarantine Backyard Ultra, but since it was a virtual race, there was no logistical problems, there's no—you can just do it anywhere. And you had to stream it. So you had to have an internet connection. One person was streaming their laps. They were running round and round their living room sofa because they were under lockdown. So it could be anyone, anywhere. But it's everybody selected from the community of ultra running enthusiasts, which is a community of people who like to suffer.
Christopher Shulgan
And this is geographically, these are people from all over the world. They didn't just have to be from the United States or something.
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah, absolutely. It's a global race in a way that actually it couldn't or wouldn't have been without the pandemic.
Christopher Shulgan
I mean, the other thing that I think is interesting about that, is that it's not all that hard for a certain class of person. I mean, ultra marathoners, like, the really, really great ultra marathoners, how long will they run in in 24 hours if they could, if they could go as fast as they wanted to?
Alex Hutchinson
Most of the great hundred-mile races are held in, like, mountainous, rocky terrains. So the times tend to be 12 hours or something like that. But in theory on a road, I don't know exactly the the best time, but we'd be in the neighbourhood of 10 hours or something like that. So to do it in 24 hours, you're absolutely right, is on its surface, not a big challenge. And so instead it's the water drip torture as opposed to the immediate drowning.
Christopher Shulgan
Water drip torture, yeah. It's designed actually to be a test of almost mental endurance. I mean, physical endurance, too, but by design, this race was designed to go a long time. Like, a long, long time.
Alex Hutchinson
You know, you watch Eliud Kipchoge run a two-hour marathon and it's like, well, that's—you know, I can't even run that for 200 metres. But this race, anyone who runs could run a loop, for the most part could run that 6K in an hour. And they could probably do it again with a little bit of rest. The third time, okay, now people are getting—you know, 2,500 people started this race. And I guess a few probably dropped out, but I looked at the results and most people are able to make it to, you know, five or six hours and then it's starting to get hard. And then you're sort of winnowing it down to the people who have specific skills. But at the end of the day, it's not a test of speed. It's a test of endurance, but also just a willingness to keep going. Because there's never a point in this race where you're like, "My legs can't go that fast." The point you reach is, "I don't want to do this anymore."
Christopher Shulgan
I think it's an illustration of just how bored we all are that there were 2,500 people around the world who were willing to put themselves through this as an endeavour. But what was it about this race that struck you so interesting pertaining to where we are right now?
Alex Hutchinson
Let me back up and say as a runner, I use running as a metaphor for everything. You know, if you ask me how to scramble an egg, I'll be like, "Well, it's kind of like running a marathon, you know, blah, blah, blah." So I've been thinking of the pandemic in the terms of, like, running this long race, as have lots of other people. And we've all seen these metaphors that, you know, the pandemic is not a sprint, it's a marathon. But the reason this race caught my attention is precisely its open-endedness, the fact that we don't actually know when it's going to end. And to me, that is the defining feature of what's challenging about this pandemic. I mean, aside from the dying and the economic devastation and everything. Like obviously, the pandemic is very serious. But for those of us who are just trying to muddle through and haven't been necessarily directly affected, what's really challenging is less about, I can't go to the restaurant, I can't do this, I have to watch my kids, whatever. It's about, I don't know how long they have to do this for. And I think that is the core of the challenge in the Quarantine Backyard Ultra is that, again, it's not about the speed. It's about the—not just the duration, but about the unknowability of the duration, and having to be prepared to go not as far as you want to go, but as far as the circumstances demand that you're going to have to go.
Christopher Shulgan
Okay, so let's go back to the race. So we have 2,500 people. They start, and most of them continue. And can you tell us the story? You said people started dropping out approximately four hours in?
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah, let's say five or six hours in, people started dropping out. And I sort of plotted it as a graph: how many people are dropping out each hour? And once you get to that five or six hours, it's kind of a steady decrease because there's fewer and fewer people left, right? Like, so there's a tonne of people dropping out after six hours, a little bit fewer in the next hour, a little bit fewer. And it's a steady, steady decrease. Once you get to the, let's say, 13, 14, 15 hours, there's not many people left. And so there's not many people dropping out.
Alex Hutchinson
And what's interesting to me is you get close to 24 hours and now nobody's dropping out. Nobody who makes it to 22 hours is going to drop out before getting to that. They're setting a finish line. It's like, "I'm going to make it one full day. I'm going to have gone 24 hours. I'm going to cover 100 miles." So unless they get hit by a truck, nobody's dropping out at 22 or 23 hours. Literally, I think there was one person who dropped out or something in the 23rd hour. And I don't know, I hope they didn't get hit by a truck. But presumably, there was something serious. You look at 24 hours or in 25 hours, all of a sudden, half the remaining competitors dropped out, I think there were, like, 70-something and 38 of them dropped out in that hour or two after 24. Now if you're thinking that they all just magically hit their physiological limits at 25 hours, then, you know, you've got another thing coming. It wasn't that everyone was fine at 23 hours, and then all of a sudden they ran out of energy at 25 hours. You know that's psychological. It's because of their desperate need to have a finish line, they're creating one. They're saying, "Well, 24 hours is a pretty good goal." Now, if you'd ask them, their goal is to push themselves as hard as possible, and to push to the limits until they have to give up. But clearly, the creation of a finish line in their mind and then getting to it is creating the sensation that, "Oh, well, I'm finished because I got to this finish line," even though the race is still going.
Christopher Shulgan
So what you said was that, essentially, they created a false finish line, almost. That this 24 hours represents this false finish line. And in many ways, the situation where we're in today, where there have been these vaccine announcements, and there have been predictions about when—you know, really smart people are trying to figure out, okay, when is the vaccine actually going to make it to people in Country X? All over the world, we're creating these finish lines for ourselves. You know, in my head I have March, as when the vaccine actually makes it and starts affecting life in my area, in Toronto, but who knows whether it's actually March? This may represent a false finish line. So anyway, I find that interesting that we actually still don't know that, you know, is it actually going to be a couple of months?
Christopher Shulgan
So we're at the point where 70 people are still racing, it's hour 23. And then half of those people drop out because of the problem of the false finish line sort of around 25 hours in. Okay, so what happens next?
Alex Hutchinson
So now we're down to the—you know, the hardcore, nitty gritty, the people who are world-class ultra runners at this point. And it becomes just a classic race of attrition. And the hours tick by, and every once in a while someone drops out, but everyone now is pretty serious. And there's one guy in this race who I actually know who I used to train with him. I used to live in Washington, DC. So there's a guy named Michael Wardian, whose progress I followed with particular interest because I used to run with him 20 years ago. And around about the 43rd hour—he still lives in the DC suburbs, around about the 43rd hour, he's doing laps around his neighbourhood, he decides that he's done. He's starting his 44th lap. He takes a few strides, just feeling like crap. And he turns around and walks back to the start line where his wife is waiting for him. And she asks what's wrong and he says, "Yeah, I just—I don't want to be out here anymore. I'm done." And she says, "Well, that's not a very good excuse." I mean, she's been up for 44 hours too, you know, feeding him food. She's like, "You're gonna stop because you don't feel like it?" And he stops and thinks about it, and he realizes yeah, that's a good point. So he turns around and goes and does another lap. And in hindsight, we know this was a major turning point in the race. We did not know this at the time, but he goes and does another lap. That's his 44th. And he does another one, his 45th. He does another one, his 46th.
Christopher Shulgan
Okay, wait. Let me stop you there before, because I think we're getting to the end of the—but how many other people are in the race at that 43rd hour?
Alex Hutchinson
There were three people total in the race. There was a woman in Sweden who had actually had to clear a—you know, shovel a path through several feet of snow to make her own loop. And there was a guy in the Czech Republic who was on a treadmill doing his laps digitally, because he was under lockdown. So just three of them left, 44 hours into the race.
Christopher Shulgan
This guy in Czech Republic, this woman in Sweden and Michael Wardian in Washington, DC and So the techniques that these people are using to get them through it, actually, it's interesting because there is a body of scientific research about the techniques that will get people through situations that don't have a finish line. And you've done a pretty deep dive into that body of scientific research. Can you tell us about that, and what that's called? Hans-Volkhart Ulmer, I think is the guy's name, right?
Alex Hutchinson
This guy Ulmer created a sort of subfield of sports science at the intersection of physiology and psychology, which he called—and I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right, but he called it teleoanticipation, from the Greek word telos, which is an endpoint. And his point was that you can't talk about the limits of endurance, or the limits of performance, if you don't also implicitly know the finish line. If I head out to run a marathon, versus if I head out to run a 10K, right from the very start, I'm behaving differently because it depends on my knowledge of how far I have to go. There's a quote I really like from a guy named David Epstein, a science journalist. He said, "You know, just because you're a bird doesn't mean you're an ornithologist." People can do amazing things. They don't always know why they're doing them.
Alex Hutchinson
So I'm very interested to hear what people like Michael Wardian say about how they run ultra races. But ultimately, if you really want to understand what's going on, I find it very interesting to say, well, let's do some studies, let's test what happens if we tell people they have to run a certain distance, and then we change the distance without telling them. Or we move the finish line, you know, where they get to the end and tell them they have to keep going. And well, let's measure their physiology, let's measure their responses, their subjective responses, their perception of effort. And so some of the results are not surprising. People are pissed off if you move the finish line on them. Like, people do not feel good about it. But what's interesting is it becomes much harder than if you were asked to do exactly the same thing knowing where the finish line was. And your body responds in funny ways too. Once you know where the finish line is, you sort of shift into a gear where you're okay with using up all your energy. And so if you don't know where the finish line is conversely, you tend to operate more efficiently. Your heart rate goes down, or is lower relative to if you know where the finish line is. And your brain shifts from the sort of high-energy executive function mode to the default network, which is more associated with daydreaming, and your perception of effort goes down.
Christopher Shulgan
What does that say about our situation today as it pertains to COVID? What are the takeaways that we can take from this German-led body of research around teleoanticipation?
Alex Hutchinson
There's kind of two conflicting findings from the teleoanticipation research. One is that, if you know where the finish line is, you'll go faster, you'll push yourself harder. And so if you want to perform your best, of course you want to know where the finish line is. But if you don't know where the finish line is, if you don't have control over that, then if you keep fixating on imaginary finish lines, it's just going to make it feel harder, it's going to make you work harder, and it's going to make it more unpleasant. So if you don't have control over where the finish line is, it's in your interest to stop obsessing about it and stop pretending that you know when the finish line is if you don't, really.
Alex Hutchinson
And that was really what got me thinking about the Backyard Ultra was in April and I was like, yeah, this is exactly what we're experiencing: a race where the finish line keeps getting moved. And so with the latest vaccine results, look, I'm because I'm as excited as everybody. I think it's great news, because there was no guarantee that any vaccine would work. So I think we're on the right track. And I think we now are in the position, just like in the Quarantine Backyard Ultra, we know there will be a finish line. We're relatively confident that this is not something that's going to endure forever. So that's good news. But if we start setting or start counting on goals that are really—we're really just picking out of thin air, if we say, "Yeah, by March, things are gonna start turning around." I mean, I hope so, but who knows? Like, there are a lot of chains of events that have to come together for any reasonable volume of vaccine distribution and implementation to be happening here in Canada in March. I hope it'll be happening, believe me. But I think what we risk is that situation, that sort of worst-case scenario in the teleoanticipation studies is like, I know I only have to go this long, I only have to go this long. And you get to that point and it's like, oh, actually, it's another 10 minutes on the treadmill, or in our case, it's another six months without wide-scale vaccination. So my takeaway from this is, as optimistic as I want to be, that I shouldn't be focusing on how great life's going to be in March or April or May, I should be focusing on what I can do to make life sustainable in December, and not thinking about the finish line.
Christopher Shulgan
If we're looking at staying in the moment as a recommendation on how to make it through the situation of the pandemic, I think that maybe we have all been focused on the vaccine. So the vaccine now represents an ending. Three months ago, we didn't actually know whether the vaccine represents an ending or not. We hoped it would, but we didn't know. So now we know that the high efficacy rates of the various vaccines that we are highly likely to hit a point where the vaccine works and we're past this situation, past the pandemic. And so now the danger, and I say this as I'm a low-level runner. I'm, like, a runner who, you know, I've run some marathons, but I know that the hardest situation on a run, especially if I go out, and I just sometimes I'll just go out and explore, especially if I'm in a new town, what will happen, I'll go out for a run. And often if I have lots of time, I'll go quite far, and I'll be tired, and then I'll think that okay, maybe I'm 10 minutes away from my hotel, or whatever. And the worst thing that happens is when I figure out, oh actually, I'm 45 minutes away from my hotel. And that pertains to teleoanticipation too, right? Because we don't want to focus on this is when the vaccine is going to come, rather what we have to say is we know the vaccine is going to come eventually, we don't know exactly when that is, but we can get through the next moment and the next moment and the next moment. Am I understanding your advice from the Backyard Quarantine Ultra and the other—the body of research about teleoanticipation as well?
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I mean, I think one thing I would say is, so I started working on this piece before any vaccine announcements were made. And so the first vaccine announcement, I think, was Pfizer came out. And I was sort of talking to my editor, I was like, does this make this whole idea of worrying about, you know, a race with no finish line obsolete? And he said, "No, I think it's the opposite. I think now is when people are going to be most tempted to start fantasizing about a finish line that is still, you know, far from nailed down." So I think there's some truth to that. And I think that's in some ways, what you were saying. There's a difference between a race with no finish line and a race whose finish line, whose location we don't know. And we've now moved from Situation A to Situation B, and that's a really good thing. But in a sense, maybe it makes it harder to obey that advice of stay in the moment, which might have been seemed like a platitude when there was no finish line anyway that we were aware of.
Alex Hutchinson
Like you said, there's a finish line. And so the temptation is really just to start thinking about and start planning for it, and start getting ready for it. My feeling is we really don't want to get to that situation where you're like, oh, I am 45 minutes from my hotel, and my legs are absolutely trashed. Yeah, that's really the message I take from it is that the downsides of misjudging where the finish line are, are way worse than the upsides of whatever joy we get now from imagining that needle going into our arm or whatever the case may be. The vaccine's going to come, and there are people whose job it is to make sure that it's going to come. But there's an undetermined amount of time left before it, and it only makes it harder if you're skipping over the present, the here and now which, you know, still at best-case scenario, several months of potentially some pretty challenging situations. We need to focus on that and figure out how to make that as positive as possible and as tolerable as possible.
Christopher Shulgan
Okay, so now let's go back to the Backyard Quarantine Ultra. And we have the Czech Republic guy on the treadmill, we have this Swedish woman going on her snowplowed lap, her snowplowed route, and we have Michael Wardian in DC supported by his wife. What happens next?
Alex Hutchinson
At some point after 50-some hours, the Swedish woman drops out. And it's down to Michael Wardian and the Czech guy. And the ending is actually—I didn't get into this in the article, but the ending is actually somewhat tragic. What happens at the start of the 63rd hour, you have to show up at the start line on time to be ready to start. That's the grounds for whether you stay in or not. Are you there ready to start at the top of the hour? The Czech guy, I can't remember the exact details, but he was streaming via Zoom and Facebook or something, and he turned off his headphones so he wasn't hearing the Zoom feed. And there was a one-minute lag in the Facebook feed. And so the start time came for hour 63, and he was just chilling out of the picture. He showed up a minute late and they're like, "Sorry, dude, you have to be there in an hour." And so it was a very emotional thing to the point that the race commentator was in tears. You know, the organizers were like, "Sorry. I mean, the rules are the rules. That's the whole point of the rules is you have to be there at the start line. I understand that you've got a one-minute lag in your Facebook feed, but you had—you should have been looking at the other feed, you should have had your headphones on, or whatever the case may be." And so he was DQed. He felt he could keep going, but he was DQed. And that's a whole different conversation we can have about the tragedy of humanity, and the cruelty of sport. But this guy's out. And so Michael Wardian's the last guy. If he can complete the next lap, he wins the race.
Christopher Shulgan
And so what happens?
Alex Hutchinson
He does the next lap and he feels fine. And this is the guy who remember 20 hours ago, is like, "I'm done. I'm out. I can't do this anymore." And his wife's like, "Oh, that's a lame excuse. Get out. Get back out there." And he kept going. So 20 hours later he's like—he does the extra lap, does the 63rd lap, wins the race. Asks the organizers, "Can I keep going?" Because he senses that there's a few milestones coming up. Like, there's 300 miles, I think there was. And there's the world record for this. Because this is not a one-off event, these Backyard Ultras it's a thing that was invented about eight—seven or eight years ago by a guy named Lazarus Lake. And so there's a world record. He's only a few hours short of the world record. But the rules say the race ends when there's only one person left. So the organizer's like, "No, you won. The race is over. I'm sorry." So you can't set a world record unless the guy who you're competing against is just as good. So the race ends, but Michael Wardian felt he could have kept going. At this point, he had gotten into the zone where he wasn't—he was no longer thinking of a finish line. He was just thinking, "I feel okay, I could keep going. It's been two and a half days without sleep. Two and a half days where I'm running for, like, 50-something minutes and then hitting the toilet and getting some food and then running again." But he thought he could keep going.
Christopher Shulgan
So 43 hours in, he feels like, "I can't do it." His wife gives him a little pep talk. He goes through and he makes it for another 20-some hours to win.
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah, 19 or 20 hours.
Christopher Shulgan
Yeah, 19 or 20 hours to win. That's fantastic. So maybe the lesson from there, if we're gonna map this onto our coronavirus experience, maybe the lesson there is that, you know, those times when you do feel like it all becomes too much. you can endure, you can make it through.
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah. And going back to these sort of studies of runners and finish lines and things. The interesting lesson to me is that we're actually very poor judges of when we're at our limits, or very close to our limits. There's a real connection between seeing the finish line or crossing the finish line and saying to yourself, "Well, I got everything out of myself." Of course, you pace yourself to try and get everything out of yourself by the time you get to the finish line, but somehow seeing the finish line is what gives you that signal that I guess I'm as tired as I can be. And so if you take away the finish line, what you find is that it's really hard to judge, "Am I completely exhausted, or am I just pretty tired?" And so that's where Michael Wardian was at hour 43. He felt really, really tired. And so he thought, "I must be pretty much done. You know, I'm going to stop." And once he got out of that headspace, it turned out he still had at least 20 more hours in him, maybe more. And so I think that's again, to draw the big analogy is I think this situation is really hard for a lot of us, and it's obviously it's way harder for some than for others. And in some cases it's terminally hard. But in terms of just the mental challenge of dealing with the pandemic, it's hard, but I think we should bear in mind that for the most part, we can keep going for longer than we think. And as long as we don't start fixating on a finish line which will make us think, "I will be done when that date happens," then I think most of us will find that we can keep going for longer than we expect.
Christopher Shulgan
What does Michael Wardian win?
Alex Hutchinson
It was a golden roll of toilet paper.
Christopher Shulgan
That is ... [laughs]
Alex Hutchinson
At the time, toilet paper was a very valuable commodity back in—you may recall in April, you know, going down to one sheet or two sheets, one square. Yeah, he got an embossed roll of toilet paper.
Christopher Shulgan
That's amazing. And then the fact that he wins as a result of basically Zoom not working, technical problems with Zoom, which is maybe the storyline of the entire coronavirus is amazing.
Alex Hutchinson
The script writing room designed this race to be, you know, a metaphor for everything we've experienced in the last eight months or whatever.
Christopher Shulgan
Will Ferrell. Michael Wardian played by Will Ferrell. This is coming to a Cineplex soon. If Cineplexes ever come back. Alex Hutchinson, thank you so much for this. This has been amazing, and I'm going to think about this interview for a long time to come. And I hope that we've given people some motivation to get through, but to not have the finish line as we're doing it. So thank you. Really appreciate your time.
Alex Hutchinson
Thanks, Chris. I had fun and appreciate the interest.
Christopher Shulgan
That’s it for this episode of Eat Move Think. Find Alex Hutchinson on Twitter @sweatscience, and check out his fascinating book, Endure, wherever great non-fiction is sold.
Christopher Shulgan
We post episode highlights and full episode transcripts at eatmovethinkpodcast.com.
Christopher Shulgan
Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Social media support from Emily Mannella. Editorial direction from Chantel Guertin. Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow host Shaun Francis on Twitter and Instagram @shauncfrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with a new episode examining the latest in health and wellness.