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Wisdom Wednesdays: This is what burnout looks like in the brain - and what you can do about it · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

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  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today
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  Speaker 1: we're going to dive into the neuroscience of burnout, and
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  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty topical because recent research shows that
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  Speaker 1: around half of all people in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore
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  Speaker 1: and countries like that are experiencing some feelings of burnout.
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  Speaker 1: And so we're going to explain what it does to
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  Speaker 1: your brain, why it's more than just feeling tired, and
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  Speaker 1: most importantly, what we can do about it. So I
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  Speaker 1: actually did a pretty deep dive into burnout in my PhD.
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  Speaker 1: And it's known as a psychological syndrome that emerges in
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  Speaker 1: response to chronic job stress. And it's actually recognized as
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  Speaker 1: an occupational hazard in a wide range of workplace settings
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  Speaker 1: including first responders, police, military, and also corporations as well.
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  Speaker 1: And it's associated with mood disturbances, and it's associated with
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  Speaker 1: mood disturbances and also significant deficits in cognitive function including
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  Speaker 1: memory and attention, which ends up in impowered work performance
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  Speaker 1: and obviously sustainability in terms of work and has a
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  Speaker 1: significant impact on individuals. And it's actually recognized now by
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  Speaker 1: the World Health Organization as a syndrome, and researchers talk
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  Speaker 1: about both clinical and non clinical burnout. So non clinical
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  Speaker 1: burnout tends to be measured by things like the mas
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  Speaker 1: LAC Burnout Inventory, which looks at three different elements. It
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  Speaker 1: looks at the first one it looks at is emotional exhaustion,
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  Speaker 1: then it's professional efficacy. So if you're high on exhaustion,
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  Speaker 1: low on efficacy, and high on the third one, which
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  Speaker 1: is cynicism, you're said to have burnout. But also there
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  Speaker 1: are other researchers who look at what's called clinical burnout,
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  Speaker 1: and this is where they can actually measure things in
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  Speaker 1: the brain and measure brain changes. And I have read
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  Speaker 1: a number of research papers that show that people with
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  Speaker 1: clinical burnout have significant functional and structural changes in their brain.
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  Speaker 1: And today I want to talk about a new research
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  Speaker 1: paper that has just been released that was published in
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  Speaker 1: the Frontiers and Human Neuroscience, and it looked at EG
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  Speaker 1: resting states. So just when you're still EG so EG
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  Speaker 1: for those who don't know, they put little electrodes on
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  Speaker 1: your head and they're able to measure the electrical signals
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  Speaker 1: created by your neurons and they can tell what parts
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  Speaker 1: of the brain they're coming from so we get a
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  Speaker 1: lot of information about the function of the brain from EEG.
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  Speaker 1: And what they did was they comper data from forty
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  Speaker 1: nine people with burnout compared to forty nine control healthy controls.
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  Speaker 1: They were matched in age, gender, and occupation. And what
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  Speaker 1: these guys find is that Bernard doesn't just impact how
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  Speaker 1: we feel, it also alters how our brain communicates with itself.
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  Speaker 1: And specifically, what they found was that the Bernard group
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  Speaker 1: showed decreased functional connectivity in the frontal and midline areas
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  Speaker 1: of the brain, and particularly in what was called the
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  Speaker 1: Alpha three band, which is strongly linked to attention, emotion
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  Speaker 1: regulation and also cognitive control. And this drop in connectivity
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  Speaker 1: was most prominent in the right frontal region, the right
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  Speaker 1: frontal lobes, when subjects were in an eyes open, resting state,
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  Speaker 1: basically they're just sitting there quietly, not even doing a task,
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  Speaker 1: and their brain signature was different to people who didn't
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  Speaker 1: have Bernard. Now why is this important, Well, the frontal lobes,
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  Speaker 1: especially area called this it's just described where it is,
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  Speaker 1: the dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, and also an area called
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  Speaker 1: the anterior singular cortex. They're really your executive control centers.
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  Speaker 1: They're really important for managing your emotions, making decisions, forecasting
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  Speaker 1: into the future, exercising judgment, and also staying focused. So
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  Speaker 1: the really important in attention as well. And when the
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  Speaker 1: connections in these areas weaken, as they do from this paper,
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  Speaker 1: in burnout, your ability to self regulate drops, your emotional
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  Speaker 1: resilience takes a hammering, and your risk for depression increases.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, what they find were that these neural signatures
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  Speaker 1: look a lot like what we see in depression. And
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  Speaker 1: now I finally we're actually starting to look in the
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  Speaker 1: brains of people with depression and seeing as they're a
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  Speaker 1: biological signature. And this is one of the things I've
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  Speaker 1: been critical about about a lot of mood disorders. A
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  Speaker 1: lot of them don't have a clear, consistent biological signature.
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  Speaker 1: But we're starting to see this in depression. And it's
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  Speaker 1: not surprising given that there is a significant overlap between
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  Speaker 1: burnout and depressive symptoms in the research. But here's the clincher.
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  Speaker 1: Burnout in this study showed unique connectivity patterns, meaning that
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  Speaker 1: it's not just a mild form of depression, it's actually
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  Speaker 1: a distinct syndrome with its own brand based markers that
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  Speaker 1: some of them happen to overlap with depression. So what
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  Speaker 1: do we do with this? Well, this is where we
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  Speaker 1: need to get practical. I have actually delivered as part
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  Speaker 1: of my PhD to what's called multimodal intervensions. I did
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  Speaker 1: one in a bunch of military aviators and another in
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  Speaker 1: a couple of corporate environments. And these multimodal interventions were
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  Speaker 1: designed specifically to counteract the effects of chronic stress and
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  Speaker 1: burnout and help people with performs under pressure in a
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  Speaker 1: sustainable manner. And it's part of my PhD supervisor Eugeneedman's
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  Speaker 1: Overall Wider Cognitive Fitness Project, and this is really about
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  Speaker 1: how do we help people perform under pressure in a
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  Speaker 1: sustainable manner so that they don't burn themselves out. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the interventions that we did were multi modal in nature,
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  Speaker 1: so this just wasn't a couple of breathing exercises, are a
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  Speaker 1: bit of meditation or a power point on well being.
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  Speaker 1: There were pretty deep structured programs that targeted physical, cognitive,
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  Speaker 1: and emotional resilience and hardiness. And the first study that
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  Speaker 1: involved serving military aviators, we did a four week combined
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  Speaker 1: cognitive and physical training program, So it was all about
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  Speaker 1: doing lots of physical exercise, getting good sleep hygiene, and
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  Speaker 1: we did psycho education around dealing with stress and their emotions.
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  Speaker 1: Also talked about neutral as well. And there was also
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  Speaker 1: that paper that they had all across the board statistical
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  Speaker 1: significant improvements in resilience, They had improvements in mood, and
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  Speaker 1: they improved in all of the three core markers of
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  Speaker 1: burnout that referred to earlier, the emotional exhaustion, the job cynicism,
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  Speaker 1: and the professional efficacy. And then we took that same
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  Speaker 1: approach and actually adapted it for high pressure corporate workplaces.
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  Speaker 1: Did a randomized control trial this time, and it was
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  Speaker 1: a longer intervention, it was eight weeks. Not only do
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  Speaker 1: we look at mood and resilience, but we really zeroed
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  Speaker 1: in on hardiness. And you've heard me talk about that before.
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  Speaker 1: That's the three things of commitment orientation, control orientation, and
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  Speaker 1: challenge orientation. So these are a group of psychological orientations
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  Speaker 1: that help people to thrive under pressure and to grow
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  Speaker 1: from stress. And what we find again with this multi
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  Speaker 1: mode intervention was that people's resilience improved, their mood improved,
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  Speaker 1: to their perceptions of stress in their life improved, their
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  Speaker 1: gratitude improved, all three components of hardiness improved, and we
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  Speaker 1: also improved what was called cognitive control. We improved and
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  Speaker 1: their ability to sustain attention and the inhibition. And this
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  Speaker 1: is one of the important things for cognitive control, which
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  Speaker 1: was an area that in the people with burnout in
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  Speaker 1: that study that I mentioned that that was starting to
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  Speaker 1: drop off with them. And it's probably a good time
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  Speaker 1: to do a shameless plug for my book The Hardiness Effect,
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  Speaker 1: because it really goes in deep detail into the multimodal
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  Speaker 1: interventions that we were doing with these corporates and these
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  Speaker 1: naval aviators, so to kind of summarizing and connect the dots,
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  Speaker 1: and burnout is clearly associated now with weakened connectivity in
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  Speaker 1: the very brillin regions that are responsible for regulating stress,
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  Speaker 1: regulating our emotions, and performing executive functions. And our intervention
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  Speaker 1: is the multi modal ones combining all of the physical
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  Speaker 1: lifestyle stuff that we talk about with psycho education and
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  Speaker 1: particularly focused around hardiness and psychological flexibility. They appear to
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  Speaker 1: reverse or at least buffer some of these in facts
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  Speaker 1: by proving cognitive fitness, resilience, and hardiness which are qualities
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  Speaker 1: that depend heavily on those same frontal systems. And although
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  Speaker 1: we didn't directly measure that connectivity, there is such an
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  Speaker 1: overlap in the stuff that we did and with the
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  Speaker 1: burnout surveys that I think we could draw reasonable conclusions
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  Speaker 1: around that. And the main thing here, I think the
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  Speaker 1: big TAKEO for people like working long hours should not
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  Speaker 1: be a badge of honor. Burnard is not a badge
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  Speaker 1: of honor. Being highly stressed is not a badge of honor.
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  Speaker 1: It is a sad that your brain's communication systems are faltering,
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  Speaker 1: and if you don't do something about it, you can
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  Speaker 1: end up with significant structural and functional changes in the
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  Speaker 1: brain that seem to be longer lasting with people with
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  Speaker 1: this clinical burnout that I talked about at the start.
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  Speaker 1: But the good news is there are tools and training
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  Speaker 1: programs that you can do about it. And it really
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  Speaker 1: is this cognitive fitness framework where there's a multimodal intervention
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  Speaker 1: of all the good physical stuff that we know that
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  Speaker 1: we need to do plus training in heartiness. For me,
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  Speaker 1: that is the perfect combination. That's it for this week's folks.
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  Speaker 1: Catch you next time.