 Hey everybody, Dr. O here. Welcome back to the channel, I guess we'll say. It's been one year, six months, and 28 days since I last published a video here on YouTube. So I kind of wanted to talk about why I've been gone and what I plan on doing with the channel moving forward. This is not going to become a vlog. I just want to kind of explain my absence. I've had lots of people asking why I haven't been making videos. So it started with, so it was late 2020 was the last time I made a video. And then I got COVID. I did eight days after I published the last video, and it took a few months to recover from that. And I realized that I needed to make some changes in my health. So I basically started, I mean for four months I was dealing with headaches and really, really tired, right? I could barely walk up a flight of stairs. So I got over COVID acutely pretty quickly, but then I just was struggling with those after effects and I started really just focusing on sleeping and walking. So I started taking multiple walks a day and I started getting plenty of sleep. Sleep has always been a big issue with me. I'm now sleeping seven or eight hours a night. I used to sleep more like five hours a night. So I made sleep a priority and I started walking. And I just continued to see improvements in my health and I continued to add things to that plan. So you know, and throughout this time I also did, I got an infection that led to me needing prednisone and some other drugs, which triggered atrial fibrillation. So I was, you know, in the emergency room and I'm very, very concerned about my health. So I knew COVID hit me hard. My lungs weren't recovering the way I wanted to. Now I have this kind of hard issue with think, which thank God, you know, the cardiologist gave me a clean bill of health and I'm over that. And as you'll see forward, moving forward, this story has a good ending. So I just realized I had to make my health a priority. You know, I was spending 10 to 20 hours a week making videos and doing extra work. If you want to call it that for my courses and I love teaching and I love what I do. I realized that I had to make myself a priority and that even meant, you know, spending less time with my family, you know, to get more sleep and these kind of things. So everyone was on board with the fact that something had to be done. So this year, why are we looking at this picture? It's my least favorite picture in the world, which is why I keep it in my wallet. This is a picture of a physical picture. That's why it looks so bad. But you know, this, this is the picture I keep in my wallet to remind me of where I was and the fact that I don't want to go back, right? And you know, fast forward to today and hopefully as you can see, I look like a new man. I feel like a new man. Life is really, really good. I want to show you. So here's a picture I took last week, right? I've lost 150 pounds. You know, I still plan on losing maybe 30 more. I've put on about 15 pounds of muscle. Now I am, I am strength training. So I moved on from just walking to working with resistance bands and doing some body weight exercises to now I have a whole home gym set up and I train, you know, eight, 10 hours a week or more. So my, you know, my life is just completely different. And as far as, you know, let me, one more picture. I just kind of before and after here, that's me with my father and then with my son, right? So just thinking about what's motivating me to be healthy, right? It's not vanity at all. It's not aesthetics. It is I want to be here for my kids. I want to be here for my wife. I want to be here for my family. I want to be here for my grandkids that don't exist yet, right? So, so fast forward now, you know, my blood pressure is actually bordering on low instead of being high. My cholesterol is perfectly normal instead of being 60 points elevated. My inflammatory markers are way down. The only medications I really need to rely on now are for my autoimmune conditions. So yeah, I just, I feel better. I sleep better. I eat better. I do all these things. So I'll talk, maybe I'll talk more about that in a few videos, but like I said, this is not about me personally. It's just more about where I've been. So I'm very proud of it though, but now I'm ready to get back to work and on doing some of these extra things. So where am I? I mean, basically all of my anatomy and physiology teaching videos and all of my microbiology teaching videos, but about a half a dozen or so are online, you know, free for you to use. And so I have a little bit of cleanup to do in those two areas. But moving forward, probably, you know, makes sense too. I'm going to focus, I'm rebuilding my nutrition course. So I'm finally ready to start making nutrition videos. One of the reasons that I waited on making nutrition videos is I never felt confident, you know, putting myself out there publicly talking about nutrition when, when I had so many underlying health problems, right? So I want, so I will cover the biochemistry of nutrition. I'll cover all the lecture content that I, that I use in my nutrition courses over the next year, but I'm also going to add a lot about consistency and sustainability and behavioral change, right? I'm going to, I'm going to look through the lens of what I needed to do to make myself healthier. And it wasn't a lack of knowledge. I've been teaching nutrition for years. I knew, I knew about, I knew what I should be doing. I just wasn't doing it. So I am now just such a firm believer that altering your environment and altering your behavior is really what, what it takes to succeed. And I'm also, I'm no longer a fan of trying to do things perfectly. I'm, I'm a fan of trying to do things as sustainably as possible. So, so that's where I'm at. Feel free to comment if you want, if you have any specific questions you want me to deal with in the videos, especially nutrition related, I plan on making a good 50 to 75 of them in the rest of this year. And then we'll see where we go from there. I might be doing some nutrition Q&A videos. I will be doing some videos that talk about my journey and the things that I did. And then I will be going back. And if you, if you have any questions about microbiology topics or anatomy and physiology topics, I plan on covering them at some point as well. So I am back. I feel like a new person, but I'm ready to, ready to roll. So leave a comment, you know, ask any questions you have and I'll add it to the list of videos that I plan on shooting out here in the next few months and potentially years. All right, you have a wonderful day. Be blessed.