Hi Amy. Welcome to What to Read next podcast.

Laura, thank you so much for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

So happy to have you here. So for this is a little bit different. This is a nonfiction author. We're talking about a book about the wellness industry. I do have recommendations if you wanted to listen to some more books or actually recent books about topical authority. This is Topical authority. This is our history. I call it that, my history. But there are books. It talks about it in fiction form, so just a little bit of everything, but to let's get to the interviews. So, Amy, talk to us about how to be well and a little bit pitch

Yeah. So I wrote this book after I was working as the fashion director at New York Magazine, where I worked for 20 years, which is really a long time. And I, really spent a long time thinking about how women are sold products, how women are sold things, and convinced that we need to own certain things to portray the version of ourselves we'd like to be, to the world to belong, to communicate with people, to communicate the. Ideas we have about ourselves to the outside world. I did a street style column, one of the first street style columns for a really long time. And in those days it really wasn't outside of fashion shows, it was just on the streets of the city. And it was like my deep and burning question was always like, what are you trying to say to us before you open your mouth? Like, what are you trying to tell us with what you wear, with how you present yourself to the city? And it was like all walks of life. So I was really interested in how that worked. I just started feeling like. All anyone is talking about is wellness, like fashion is becoming much more democratic. Everyone has access to fashion shows and that is making, pushing our desire for exclusivity elsewhere. Also, simultaneously, we are really struggling with ideas about. Equality and who deserves access to care in this country. And a lot of those conversations are coming to the surface and this is all coming together and it's all being called this thing called wellness. So it's just sort of taking over every aspect of our lives. You're hearing it in politics, you're hearing it in fashion, you're hearing it in beauty, it's just taking over. And I was like. I gotta get in here, I gotta like, so I just sort of dove in and I just started trying to like pull this thing apart and it's deep and there's sort of nothing, it's not affecting and, it made me think a lot about really everything. It made me think about feminism. It made me think about the political climate in our country. It made me think about how we as women are treated and how we present our bodies. It made me as a mother think a lot about how I want my daughters to feel about their bodies and about their self presentation. Yeah I can't really think of anything wellness does

Yeah.

affect in our day-to-day lives. And it was funny, when I was selling the book, I was going from publishing house, and they would say, okay, wellness. Like, is it either a guide or is it an expose? And I was like, how could you be one way the other like, it is so in our lives, what woman could say, oh. I'm all for, or I'm all against wellness. Like it's got its tentacles in all of us. So we're gonna have to just cope with the fact that like none of us are able to be like, I am giving up on wellness, or I'm all pro wellness. Like, no, we can't. We don't live in such a binary world. Like we're gonna just have to navigate it because we're all stuck. And what it is more is like. An attempt to kind of understand how we got here, why we're here, and what the hell we're gonna do about it, and how we're not just going to be sitting ducks.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I think I shared with you earlier, like over email. I lived in New York, 2006 to 2020. I had an untreated eating disorder that I found recovery in New York. New York is a great

not alone. I.

that, that fine recovery. It's not a, like, basically you, at that point, it's odd. It's like, what else can you expect? And I just got immersed in this world because

Yeah,

much, there was so

so normalized, right?

normalized. It was just like normal. Like you can do an acupuncture, you can have Rookie Master, you can go to Fit Boutique Fitness. You have the class pass. You had like, like the smoothie shop, the specific things like it was just

Fasting. Yeah.

and everyone wanted be a girl boss. Everyone wanted to be a life coach and they wanted to have these like topics of spirituality and changes. And I was immersed in that world. And then I detoxified, I

And you could

upon.

You could come up with like, as long as you didn't say, oh, I'm just gonna go practice my eating disorder. You could call it anything. And as long as you called it something else, you could practice your eating disorder in in public very easily. Right.

Look

Oh, I'm sorry. A fast I'm.

oh, and the detox, the blueprints. I, you mentioned the blueprints and I was like, oh, I remember that. The coolers,

A cooler blueprint cooler.

The colonics. I had a, I had an nutritionist who told me I needed to get a colonics

love that, right?

raw milk because that's what it was like, will heal me from the f treat to eating disorder.

Oh, I know. A great way to heal yourself from an eating disorder, like, like basically become a bulimic.

I was bu I was actually, and I.

Change the exit mechanism. Right.

Make it make sense.

I know. I can't tell you how many women were like, I cured my eating disorder. I now just get colonics twice a week. And I was like, and these are smart, these are intelligent women. And you're like, okay.

so, yeah. So I appreciate your take on, because you were, you came from a place of compassion,

Yeah.

of like, actually like looking at like, we're

Oh, I'm in it too. Believe me. Like, I have suffered from all of these. I'm not above any of it. Like I have been in all of this, and I mean, that's what I mean is like, it's like I can't tell you that I'm in any sort of position to. Like write an expose, or Justine, anyone, like we are all in this together. Like we have gotta say like, if you are above this marketing, if you are above or immune to any of this, like, congratulations, I.

Yeah.

Hats off to you because like, it's hard. It's really hard. And we're conditioned from such a young age to think that one aspect of being a woman in America is to improve yourself, right? Like is to constantly be engaged in the process of becoming a better version of yourself and to do any less. To somehow sort of slack, right? Like you should be striving to be thinner, better, it's never, you never wanna stop, right? And

Yeah.

like, the woman who's immune to that, if you've met her, like, tell me I've never met her, right? Like, we're all on a cleanse, a detox, 30 days to this, I was. Catching up with a childhood friend and we were remembering some diet. We went on, I think we were in like sixth grade, seventh grade with like, and it was like, the eighties, right? So we ate, I think it was a hot dog and an ice cream,

Oh,

like it was disgusting and.

what?

In 17. Yeah, it was in 17 Magazine. We got it out of 17 Magazine. And

Yes.

So you're conditioned from a very young age to think that there's some better version of you and you should be trying to achieve it all the time. And if there's an American woman who doesn't believe that she should constantly be engaged in the process of trying to achieve that. I haven't met her.

Yeah, I think there's always, I used to tell this to my therapist, and this is something I'm working on, is that this goal oriented, this idea that you're always striving for something, you're always striving, and no matter what, you reach that level, you always have something else to

Yeah, totally.

Like it's just you never find satisfaction. Yes. It just changes. It's like the ever growing changes and you're just trying to figure out like how I'm gonna get there. And you just, and so the only way, at least the way I had to find out is like I had to stop doing that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like, I was like, no, it, I just not gonna do that. And it's nonlinear and is not linear. It is not perfect. It

you're not gonna, and you're gonna have days and you're gonna have, as I always say to my kids, like, it doesn't go like this, right? Like, it's not gonna be like this.

No, and it is just like the process. So I think a lot of the wellness is like, well, this fix me. Will this fix my problem? Will this fix? Like, and it's, and it can be, there are people who are well intentioned. About it and you share about this, but there's also the predatory, the people who are looking for the quick win, the million dollar, the income claims, the sense of like, I have the aspirational life. And I think social media has helped reach that. 'cause you see this idea of this wellness world, like, like I do this and I have this solution and this is the way it should go,

abs and these yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely.

So let's talk about like, let's talk about the layers of the wellness industry. What was surprising for you, knowing what you know now, but what you were knowing beforehand? Because we were all partake, like it was just, it was in our face. It was just part of our wellbeing. And especially in the communities that we out in that moment,

Yeah.

part of it. But what was surprising now, from what you know after doing all this research.

Things that really surprised me were one thing that I was really interested in. Was in looking back over the history of the wellness movement movements over time, I became very interested in what a repetition a lot of these themes are historically. So I became very interested in, I. This period of time around the industrial revolution in Germany when people were moving away from their agrarian lifestyles and moving to the cities to work in factories and away from farms, because the culture in Germany was industrializing. And that was when you had a lot of people. Getting involved in a very, like a wellness movement, right? Like you had a back to land movement that involved health food, giving up alcohol and a yearning for a more pure lifestyle because people were leaving these close-knit family communities and they were going to the city to seek work and. That work was dirty and that work was polluting, right? It was bad for the lungs and it was urban. And you weren't in the beautiful bucolic Bavarian countryside anymore. You were in the city. And so you saw a lot of things about health, food and hiking in the forest and purity. And there were publications and there were like, grainy loaves of bread and all these kind of things that you're like, oh, that looks a lot like a, sort of something you might get at. And what's interesting is that movement ended up splitting and you had some of the, it's called layman's reform, life reform, and you had some of the. Followers of the Labban reform movement come to the United States and start what became like the sort of hippie movement. They opened health natural food stores in California and became sort of precursors of American hippies. And then you had some who stayed in Germany and became Vish movement, which translated into Nazis. And if you look at the parallels for what's going on in the United States now. You have the technological revolution, right? So you have people moving away from a more communal life and moving onto their screens, and you have a lot of panic about what that's doing to people's health, right? People aren't up, people aren't walking around, people aren't socializing. People aren't in community in the same way. Throw Covid into the mix. People are more isolated than ever, and you have a lot of repetition of these themes that were coming up during the industrial Revolution. And then you have a lot of sort of wellness responses to a lot of these societal changes. And then when you look at how these wellness responses vary, some of them. Really move to the left, and some of them moved to the right, and especially right now, you can see with vaccine skepticism, a lot of the RFK Maha stuff, that reactions to the fear of society changing very quickly as it did in the Industrial Revolution as it's doing now and the technology revolution, you can see that both the right and the left, there are panicked responses that come from both the right and the left. It's really just a fear of change. It's a fear of change coming too quickly, and it's a fear of sort of very human things being taken away. A fear of, in this case, a. Losing our ability to socialize in person, losing our ability to be together in community in the technological revolution, it was our fear to work with our hands in the earth, right? We've given up on that, right? We're over that.

Bye.

This one is about our humanity, right? Our ability to be together as people, and our fear of robots and fear of, So, yeah, so I think that was something that just absolutely fascinated me and I just like, couldn't think about anything else. When I started thinking about that, I just was like, oh my God, I can't think about anything else. Especially as like,

Especially now

yeah.

you look at

I mean, I've already done by the, with the book by this election, but I was like,

Yes

whoa.

the.

Well, especially now with like the measles outbreak in Texas. I'm just like,

Yes,

yeah. Especially now. Yeah. So, so that's pretty overwhelming. So I was really interested in that. That was something that really like, just got me thinking on a very deep level about what's going on and, I was just fascinated by it. I was also fascinated about working on this book during some of the social changes around like the Black Lives Matter movement and learning about the origins of the term self-care.

Yes. That was fascinating

Really fascinating. And how it came out of these Black Panther Care, these Black Panther clinic.

the need, the actual need for self care,

care. Yeah,

Where we commodify as a.

I know. And there's always this sandwich board, like in front of a spa, like on my street I'll be like, oh yeah. And I'm like, oh my God. Can you imagine that this was like this term that was like in front of these like women's clinics in the Black Panther in Oakland, right. In sixties. And you're like, and now like, so, but it's like, but it's also really interesting because I think it's like. In the way. I don't know. It's just so the evolution of this idea of self care and these like groups of people who have had to say very correctly, I live in a society that has absolutely does not care about my wellbeing, so therefore I have to like care for myself, right? Like that's the origin of this term and. Black women can say very honestly and very correctly, that like this country has not valued their health and at all. And so self care became and for women Yes. And for black women, yes. Like, these are, intersectional groups, but that like, women and specifically women of color. Have had their care neglected. And so self care has meant this like very specific thing. And of course it's like morphed and commodified and like become this whole thing. And it's like, then you've got like Ivanka Trump tweeting, like self care is not selfish. And you're like, oh yeah.

So what are we

Yeah, like, we're gonna maybe draw the line like somewhere, like I, I would maybe say we draw the line with you, but but yeah, so it's like, so things like just getting into some of the historical context and also like self-care on a medical thing with a kind of diagnostic tool that hospitals would use also for compromised patients to say like self-care. Like is this patient capable of self-care? If we were to discharge this patient, can this patient. Get herself to the bathroom. Can this patient, like what level of self-care? So like the words self-care and like what the words meant and then what they meant politically and like. So the whole evolution of the term self-care I found really fascinating when you think about like how quickly and easily it's used right now. So I was very interested in like, I, those were some of the topics that I really enjoyed going deep on.

Yeah, I really, I now think about it like, where I was in the 20 10th, like self care was a commodification.

Oh yeah.

of like,

And and again, like in sort of in the spirit of not judging, like it's okay, like I'm all for people taking care of themselves. I also like, I don't like if you're feeling bad and you need to like go and do.

Mother is coming. Go take an apartment. Go stay in a by yourself. It is okay.

I had to get, like, I'm, I'm gonna be 50 next year, and like, had to get my first colonic, or no I say colonic. Oh my God. I have to not say colon. I get a colonoscopy,

the.

colonic. You never have to get a colonic. Okay? You have to get a colon.

You don't need to do a coffee enema either. You do not

No, you do whoever have

off the,

to get a colonoscopy. And I was like, you know what? I don't wanna stay at home the night before the prep. Like I do not, like, I don't want my kids coming in and being like, I don't wanna get my math homework. Or like, I. What's for dinner or have you seen my cleats or whatever they were gonna ask for. I was like, I'm gonna a hotel and I'm gonna like take the prep in a hotel room across the street from the place. And I don't wanna be in an Uber like, like, I'm gonna do my prep in a hotel room and I'm gonna waddle across the street. Like that's how I'm gonna do it. And like,

yeah.

it was great. I was like, this is like one of those really expensive Swiss spas basically. Like, watch tv, take my nasty stuff. It like, I was like, okay, this is, no apologies for this.

No, I think there's like a matter of like, it's a lot of times we're trying to justify why we're taking care of ourself or justifying why we make the decisions that we

And yeah. And it's fine. Like I, I'm all in favor of like, all in favor of everyone, like, look like we all just got proof was trying to make it through and I'm. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I think, I really like, it's never my goal to shame anyone for anything they wanna do. Do it. But I do want us to, and I'm very I really mean when I say at the end of the book, when I say like, this is really like a love letter to my girls. Like, this is just about like, I just don't want us to, I want us to feel some more ownership over.

Yes.

Doing this, and I want us to do it because we want to, or I don't want us to feel so desperate. I don't want us to feel like we have to, or it's like just like a little bit more awareness. When we make these choices called wellness of what they are, when they are entertainment, when they are health, when they are like, what is what are these boundaries? Why are we making these choices?

Yeah. I think I'll just tell you, I find your book so validating and so empowering in a sense of like. It gave a voice of what I went through, what I go through, and like where I am right now, which is like, yes, I'm on a wellness journey, like I am on the GLP ones and I'm doing the exercise, I'm doing lifestyle changes. I learn how to eat, but I'm doing it in a way that my eating disorder iss not noisy. And I'll just read things. And I think your book actually allow me to see, like, to have discernment of like what is. What is, what my body needs, what's what I want? And then what is society telling me to do? And there's also empowering, like I'm in my forties and I don't give a fuck what people think. And there's a level of like, in your forties you're like, I don't, my friends are not talking about menopause, we're not talking about babies, we're not talking about like what society wants. And it's a very different space. And it was like, I felt really. I felt empower. I was able to share with my new friends, 'cause I have new friends. I upgraded some of them and some of my old friends, I was like, Hey, this is our history and like this is, and they were like, yes, this is like, because we don't talk about it. And we didn't think it was a big issue at the time. And now there's a lot. It was like, no, like it was an issue or maybe

Yeah.

that would happen. And it's validating to see like someone who had. Who had a sense of compassion, who was there, who understood what was going on and didn't understand, like, now looking back 2020, I'm like, okay, well this is, the blueprint detox maybe may, may not be the right thing to do,

No, I know. I remember my husband coming and being like, I think you need a sandwich. I was, oh, yeah.

Yeah. I do not know how to eat until I saw a real, like a registered dietician, like actually like, and basically it was like, oh, you eat not enough food. was like, what do you mean? And it was like, no, here's where you're gonna go. And I was like, oh. And that's what the shift happened. It was like, oh, I have to learn to trust science and learn to trust others

So much weird information all the time. Right? I think that's another thing where it's like, I think that in the gap, this is another thing I talk about in the book, is that like in the gap, right? Like all these people are sort of appointing themselves. Authorities even like, and I'm gonna be honest, I know this isn't very popular thing to say, but like, I kind of blame Oprah. Like

Yes.

I know we all love Oprah and like I was lucky enough to be like invited on her show. Although I think I think she meant to invite someone else, but she got me by accident. But whatever I was so. The shouting thing where she like said my name and was like, Amy Larocco. And I was like, oh my God, I love Oprah. I've never been seen before. And then I was like, halfway through the interview I was like, I think she wanted the other person from the New York Times. 'cause there were like two menopause pieces in the times and halfway through I was like, oh, they got the wrong one. But I don't care. I'm here. But like, I do kind of blame her because like, Dr. Oz is not responsible I don't think he's responsible medically, and I think he's endorsed a lot of shady practices. And he's endorsed a lot of shady practices and it's dangerous. And I think that I just think that we turn to people with very compromised. Ethics, like he's endorsed. I encourage you to like read up on the time he endorsed like a green tea extract. He endorse things that he stands that are not medically proven, that he stands to.

I think it's a lot of fake clients. But then again, we have RFK.

Right. And it's like, no. And it's like, we have like Oprah has a lot of authority and she has Jenny McCarthy talking about vaccines and autism on her show. And then you're gonna seed a whole world of, it's just.

But then we have, it's also like she, she was a seat, she was a feeding ground for like life coaches manifestation

Yeah, a lot of stuff and

culture. A lot of D patty, like Dia.

a lot of diet culture, right? Like so it's dangerous. It's dangerous to have for anyone to have that much influence. Right? And a lot of people. Who are just so desperate for answers, I think is part of it. So it's like you also have to blame the medical community, right? 'cause it's like, doctors are not given, have not traditionally until this point in time, been given training in medical school on nutrition. They haven't been given training on menopause. They haven't been given, they've been given a very specific type of medical training where as someone wants. A sort of common expression is if you get hit by a bus, you better hope you're in a big Western medical hospital. 'cause there's nowhere in the history of the world that will put you back together like a big western hospital. Like medicine is amazing. But when it comes to like dealing with. A system that gives the doctor enough time to spend one-on-one with a patient looking into educating a patient about prevention, lifestyle care, things like that. This system is not set up to support a patient in that way, particularly if that patient is poor, particularly if that patient is female, particularly if that patient isn't white. Like we're just not set up to support those patients. And so what that means is that people go looking and then obviously that gap gets filled with people who may or may not have the right information.

Yeah. I think that's where, and then we have the, like social media exploding and having an opportunity to have, not just see your local community, but see like the world and try to share the findings and share the specifics and how I fix my stuff. And the aspirational in the sense of like, I have the solution. Here's the problem, it's bird

So it's like,

the problem. Here's a solution and

right,

and you can pay a nine $99

that's right. And it's like, and it's like if we're not getting the answers from like the authorities.

Yeah.

Then this space exists for people to come in and say like, people then you're just asking people to go hunting, and so what you really want, like what, you know what I think when it gets to the more medical aspects of the wellness world is what you really want is really want the medical community to step up and say, we too are very interested in prevention. We too are very interested in how lifestyle changes are going to, because the truth is. The wealthier people in this country have access to better lifestyle. I think something we learned during Covid is that like we learned that comorbidity in America is just basically A code word for poor, right? All of the conditions that were making people very susceptible to severe illness and death during Covid were really conditions of poverty.

Yeah.

And wealthy white people weren't really dying

Yeah.

and disadvantaged people of color were.

Yeah.

And so I think when you look at what wellness is, it's sort of like icing on the cake for the rich, right?

Yeah. Yes. This late stage capitalism, patriarchy work, it's the sense of like who the haves and the have nots and the feel like you

Yeah.

if you have the right health insurance or you have to be success like, and

You have access to good groceries if you have.

Through groceries, you access to grocery stores, access to medical centers, access to doctors,

It's like

healthcare, like access transportation. As someone who would live without transportation in a non walkable city. It is dire

it's dire. That's right.

so you have to, and it's expensive and we live in a expensive

I think when you get to the more medical aspects of wellness, like when, 'cause the term is so broad, right? So it's like you, there's so many things. So when you're talking about the more medical aspects of what this movement is, it's something that can be something that's filling in the gaps for the underserved. For some underserved populations, right? So, and the underserved populations are very broad. So it could be women because medical testing has historically been done on men conditions that disproportionately affect, women have been researched far less than conditions that affect men. Menopause being the greatest example, it's gonna happen to 50% of people.

now we're in the, it's a rush of menopause. I dunno, maybe because I'm aware of it now, but like it's.

I know it's like, it's funny because it's like there's all this money to be made and usually in America, if there's money to made, be made, people will like just be like, oh yeah, great money.

went through Meno. I saw quite a few of the ones that I went to. Like I, my old fitness instructors in the 2010s who are like, having babies and stuff like that. Now they reinvent themselves as menopause experts. And I'm like, per no perimenopause expert. And it's like, I'm like, just because you went to perimenopause doesn't mean you make an expert.

Maybe it would be better if they taught it in medical school, like as like a philanthropic, like I would personally love to get, I mean, and I'm lucky I live in New York City and I have really good health insurance, so I was able to like find a great doctor, but I would much rather. Not have like this guru or that guru, I would just like to have my doctor now. I would just love to have it be part of the curriculum.

yes.

So I think that's when you say like, oh, it's alternative this, or it's alternative that, or I need this former actress to come out with a supplement line. I think that's where wellness is like it becomes this like, and it's like, well, actually, I would say in a perfect world, we don't need an actress to come out with a supplement. We need medical schools

Yeah,

and medical funding if such things can exist in this country

I.

to treat these things legitimately. And then you're sort of changing the economy of wellness to be something that can go back to fun and entertainment and like take it or leave it, right? Like you can take the necessity aspect out of it because. If there's no menopause, if you go to your gynecologist and you're in perimenopause and your gynecologist really doesn't know that much, you're gonna be out there looking for alternatives. And they might may or may not come from an expert. So I think like one of the ways that you could deal with that is maybe to like include these previously marginalized, and it's so weird that half the population is marginalized, but in that case. The

Yeah.

population is marginalized, but like if you could sort of address some of these gaps in the more mainstream culture, some of these things that have fallen under the sort of shady wellness umbrella could move out of wellness and just into the culture.

Yes, or however relations about supplements, could be

Well, supplements, I mean I, one of the things I found can like continually very confusing and I don't really, I mean I have theories, but. I just endlessly found very, like in researching this book was people would endlessly talk about the desire, fears of the unnatural, right? BPAs, plastics, microplastics all the world of the kind of unknowable and the unknown.

Yeah, the dies, the food dies. 'cause they were.

Foods wanting to get off of prescription medications, all of these things. But then they would very happily take very unregulated

Yeah.

unlabeled

Yeah.

supplements, and I have still not been able to. Equalize these things like this is one of the wellness mysteries that I will never be able to settle, is that you have people who are expert in the gradations of organic certifications. You have people who will tell you this kale, not that kale, this soil. For growing things. Not that soil, the hybridization of the wheat versus the, you can go to this bakery, but not that bakery, and then they will take dusts supplements, protein powders, bovine, colostrum, whatever it is.

The green, it's the greens. You gotta talk about the bloom and the ag one. So it's green. You just like, you get your a powder.

In powder form,

Yeah.

containers

But it's process. It's not process.

made in factories, God knows where.

Yes.

unregulated, entirely untested.

Yes. It doesn't make sense as a cognitive dissonance. Like they're just like,

One of those wellness things, and they will say, I can't believe you eat dairy.

Yes,

I can't believe you eat bread. I can't believe you eat pasta.

Yes.

And I can't tell you how many times I've sat at dinner tables, at like lunches at events with wellness people who look at me like I'm crazy because I eat bread, butter, dairy. Meat, like all these foods, and they look at me like I'm just like, suicidal and they just consume these things. And so that is like consider, there are so many, and it's again, back to packaging and branding.

Yeah.

The Q Anon products and the moon juice have a lot of the same ingredients.

Yeah.

Them. So that is a wellness thing that I just, I've never gotten over. So I don't take supplements. Sometimes I will, except that like this is also the thing about me in wellness. Like I don't take supplements except when I do, except when I've just read something and I'm like, oh, but this supplement is gonna change everything and.

I am the same way My doctor told me to take a supplement. I was like, yeah, I don't know. I don't

I mean, I'll say if doctor

I vitamin

back at my physical.

I'm like deficient,

If I get my blood work back at a physical and like in the middle of the winter in New York City, my doctor, your vitamin D is low, I will take a vitamin D supplement. Or,

but not like this like long list of

but like

20.

like this is gonna cure everything and pay your taxes and like do your dishes like. I sometimes I will admit, I'll be like, okay, maybe this one, and then I'll do it for like two weeks, and then I'll be like, what the hell's the matter with me? And then I'll just be like, oh, it's annoying me on my counter and throw it out.

Yeah. So Amy, this is. Amy just was light. Well, so first of all, tell us where we can find you online and tell us where to buy the book. Like

Oh yeah, for sure. Okay, so where to find me online? I'm I'm not a usually online person, but I'm working on that now that I have a book out. So I have an Instagram. It currently has two posts, but I did my first story. And so if you look at Amy, aka author, I promise to update it more. And I am working on, I have a very nice young person who's working on a website for me that should be up and running any day now. I think it's. I think it's amy aka.com. I think it's just amy aka.com. And and that'll have like all the news about the book. And I'm going on a little bit of a tour and everything, so I'll be around and yeah, and you can get the book really anywhere. So any platform you're like into or comfortable shopping from should have it. Independent bookstores, big bookstores, like they've all got it.

And you narrat read the audiobook. So for audiobook listeners, you

I read the audio book myself, which was, sorry.

Yes.

Sorry. In advance everyone.

this is like the book. This is like, this is my history. This is your history, this is our history.

Yes.

this is like the book for you to get, it's a comprehensive look at the wellness industry from like meditation, supplements, functional health, everything, like whatever you think the wellness is. It's talked about.

Although last night I was out somewhere and someone was like telling me about this mattress, and I was like, oh no. So yeah, I was like, there's more, but they'll always more.

Awesome. Thank you, Amy, for being

Thank you so much, Laura. It was great to meet you. Bye.