Importance Of Strength & Socialization For Older Adults

Eric Levitan

The CEO of Vivo Fitness talks about how to maintain a high quality of life.

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Podcast Transcript

Published:
January 19, 2023
Please note: This transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. 

Eric Levitan:  I was an entrepreneur and got very fortunate in my career to have started a software company actually in the television industry, having nothing to do with what I'm doing now. But it really taught me a lot of the foundation of how to grow business and we were very lucky my co-founder and myself had a little bit of success we ended up selling the organization to a larger company and, and that was in 2013. And then say there for another five years till 2018. And as a part of that experience, I really learned a lot by starting a business, by selling a business. And what that transition looked like. And I realized that from my perspective, there were a couple of really big lessons learned one was that I really wanted and felt compelled to do something that would actually improve someone's life and as rewarding as it was to have started and sold a business,

Eric Levitan:  It wasn't as rewarding as I expected and and I think it had everything to do with the nature of what we were doing and the second piece of that really fit fit in there which was, you know, the having a successful business, I think a lot of entrepreneurs want to pet themselves in the back and and congratulate them for themselves for being the hardest working smartest entrepreneurs out there. And the reality, the situation is there's a lot of luck involved in having success in business. It is being in the right industry at the right time making that right? First higher getting that right, first client, all these things kind of stack up. And I felt like I was the recipient of good fortune and I really wanted to put that good fortune back in the universe and do something really positive with whatever my next endeavor was gonna be, and as I was pursuing what that was. There were a couple of very serendipitous things that happened that I really feel like the universe was kind of speaking to me. One was, I saw a presentation on a gentleman who really talked about the four cornerstones of healthy aging and that

Eric Levitan:  Was relatively intuitive for the most part but it was nutrition, exercise, sleep, and meditation and I wasn't as familiar with meditation at the time but he really dove into the specifics around exercise and specifically talked about something called Sarcopenia. Which I'd never heard that word before. And many people who I talked to today, have not heard that word before. But it's really the progressive loss of muscle mass and strength. As we age leading to lack of mobility and it's something that every human being on the planet experiences, we all lose muscle mass as we age and he also introduced the concept that

Eric Levitan:  It doesn't have to be that way. You can actually engage in strength training at any point in your life. Whether you're 25 or 95 and you can rebuild muscle mass and regain strength and function yet, there's not a lot of narrative out there around this and I kind of took that information in and said That's really interesting. And then what I what really started happening around 2018 was I witnessed the decline in quality of life of my own parents and I became somewhat of a remote caregiver and got really involved with my dad lives in Philadelphia, My mom lives in South Florida and my mom in particular had a series of falls and she went and saw her doctor who told her she needed to walk more and she was already walking every single day and there was something missing and I reflected back on this conversation around Sarcopenia and strength training. And I realized that what was missing was she was not challenging her muscles on a regular basis and was losing strength. And what happens when you lose strength is you lose balance and you become more susceptible to falls, you become more susceptible to

00:05:00

Eric Levitan:  To diabetes into osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease and all these other issues. And that really kind of was the the catalyst for saying. All right, there's a big problem out there, we know the solution. We know that you can engage in strength training and it will change the course of your aging life. But there's not a lot of accessible programs and education and awareness around this. So that really became kind of the driving force behind what I did.

Katie Wilkinson: Yeah that's awesome. I mean what a big transition to go from like corporate America to you know this entirely new endeavor and before we dive into a bit more about Vivo and you know the importance of exercise for older adults, maybe you can share just a little bit about like personally what that transition was like.

Eric Levitan: That was hard and it went from being, you know, an expert in the space that I was in. I'd run this company for 18 years and it was a software company, a technology company in the in the television industry. And I really got to know that that Industry, very, very well. And to jump into not only

Eric Levitan:  a solution for older adults that I didn't have a ton of experience with, but creating almost a consumer brand, right? It's a fitness brand and then the more I got into it. The more I realized this is more than just a digital fitness company. This is a digital health company and tackling healthcare. It was a real awareness for me that I needed help. And there's no way to know all everything about, you know, building a consumer brand focusing in order, adults, fitness healthcare. And, and how do I do this? How do I find the right people and on the right assistance? Because to tackle this, it's going to take a village. And so that was really the first thing I needed to do was to kind of raise my hand and say I need help doing this. And for, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs again, I think That's hard especially when you say You've done this before, Shouldn't I be able to do this again? And I had, I had the pretty quick realization that I wasn't gonna be able to do this myself and and I needed help. It's a big problem to

Eric Levitan:  All.

What is Vivo Fitness?

Katie Wilkinson: Yeah, well I know it's different but I know Vivo has it, you know, a large community component. So, obviously sort of this focus on surrounding yourself with the right. People is a theme for you. And could you tell us a bit about what Vivo is, what what the company is? What do you get? When you join Vivo?

Eric Levitan:  Sure. So Vivo is an online, but live and interactive fitness program for older adults with a real focus on building strength. And and the two things to really kind of explain the lean into a little bit as one we do have this focus on strength, knowing that we are losing muscle masses. We age, walking alone is not enough. We need to do more, we need to challenge ourselves on a regular basis to maintain strength to be able to do activities of daily living. Right? Standing up out of a chair and activity. We probably do 50 to 100 times a day gets harder, getting off of the floor, reaching up and grabbing something from from a high cabinet caring, a bag of groceries up a flight of stairs. These are things that we need to do to maintain our independence to maintain our quality of life. And if you don't intentionally work at it, you will lose that ability. And so we we recognize this. So we really focus on building strength. But it's not building strength, like going into a gym and a tank top and pumping iron. It is really mimicking. Those activities.

Eric Levitan:  Daily living to a level of challenge that actually allows you to make progress. So that's kind of our real core focus. But then on top of that, the way we deliver this, we think is unique Much of the digital fitness. Landscape is really filled with either video programs or one way live stream classes like the pelotones of the world where you might be one of a hundred or one of a thousand or one of ten thousand people who are participating in a class. Those programs work really well for people that are self-motivated have a high level of understanding of exercise and our relatively chronic condition free.

Managing worry or fear around exercise

Eric Levitan:  A lot of older adults don't really necessarily fit any of those three characteristics for a lot of older adults. There's a lot of trepidation, and worry, and fear around exercise, Are they going to get hurt? There's a lot of preexisting conditions, right? Whether it is Type. 2, diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, knee replacement hip replacement There's a lot of variability into your health and wellness and not having another human being who's a part of this solution, makes it really hard to be successful and to adopt this. So we really lean into this concept of what's called Small group personal training When you're a part of a small group, You are trainers. Have the ability. We actually cap our classes at eight people. It's small enough that our trainers can give individualized attention to everybody. We can correct your form, We can keep you safe, We can make sure that we can modify an exercise. If you're hearing feeling pain or discomfort or you've got a chronic issue, you're dealing with. And sometimes, you know, it's just that day, right? Your back hurts, your knee hurts. You slept wrong being able to

00:10:00

Eric Levitan:  Adjust what we're doing for an individual in. That moment is really, really important and Oh, by the way, so is making sure that people are challenged enough. What often happens with fitness programs is if you don't put in the effort, if you don't have that level of challenge, you actually don't get those outcomes. So that's a really kind of unspoken, but important part of what we're doing. But on the flip side, a small group is really, really, beneficial to create community. It's really easy to promote social engagement and kind of create those connections. And we have a lot of intentionality in our programming that we get people talking. We make the class fun, we make it engaging. And at the end of the day Vivo, because it's not a video, it's this live experience, it's an appointment in your calendar and something amazing happens. When you schedule appointments with people, they tend to show up and so people create schedules, they tend to see the same people you know every single class and it builds a little community and at the end of the day that's what we're doing and that's what's really been successful. For us is we've created

Eric Levitan:  That people feel comfortable with that. People are getting individuals attention but also feeling a part of the shared experience with other individuals that they're seeing consistently and it's building this this sense of belonging that look we all know exercise is good for you, but if you can consistently engage in something, that's challenging, you will make progress. You will get outcomes and that's what we're seeing.

Eric Levitan: Yeah, there's a couple of different kind of elements of what you just talked about. You know, getting started. There are a lot of objections and we hear a lot of them. I I don't have time. It's very common. One strength, training's not for me. I'm already walking. I've got arthritis and pain. I'm not gonna be able to do it. I'm gonna get hurt. I'd be embarrassed all of these things are valid objections and they all kind of boil down to one common theme, which is this concept of shame and shame prevents us from doing things that we think will embarrass us either in front of other people, or even to ourselves. And for a lot of older adults who used to be active and capable and strong and functional and have lost some of that ability. It's hard to really dive into that and accept that, this is where you are. And so, what we try very hard to do is this is not a competition, there's not a leaderboard, there's not, you know you're not competing with everybody else in this class. You're competing with yourself and so what we do

Eric Levitan:  As we actually baseline everybody who joins our program, we base on your strength and balance, and then we worked with you individually. We talk about your goals, what you want to be able to do, and we want to see your progress relative to where you are. We're not look comparing your progress to anybody else who's in the program or in your class. This is all about removing those kind of judgment zones and those those competitions because what we, what we see is It's never too late to start this but that hurdle to get over to start is, is significant. And so what we really want to do is make this as accessible as possible, it's online. So you don't have to drive anywhere, you don't have to worry about what you look like. You don't have to worry about traffic or whether or parking or being in a gym filled with 20 year olds, where you might feel less comfortable. This is in the comfort of your own home. We try to, we do a little bit of matchmaking When we onboard new customers, we put them in classes that we think are where they're going to be successful around other people. The sim or fitness and mobility level. So we

Importance of dual test exercises for older adults

Eric Levitan:  Have really, really fit individuals who are looking for challenging at home workouts and we have individuals who are completely do the entire class in a chair because they don't have good mobility and balance and everything in between. And so we really have adapted our program to work for both, you know, spectrums of this group and then in terms of sticking with it, that is probably the single most important element of any fitness program is. If you just do, you know, if you exercise once in a while, you'll never see the benefits of it. You know,some exercise is, certainly better than none. But consistency is really at that, centerpiece for how you get outcomes, how you make see progress in your life. And

Eric Levitan:  Not for everybody, but for most people behavioral change is all about community feeling a part of a community. So understanding that we try very hard to do that. How we do that, is we actually do something called dual test exercises. What a dual test exercise is is it's actually was created for for cognitive benefit and brain health. It is the simultaneous, cognitive recall and physical movement, so we will have everyone in the class doing a warm-up. For instance, maybe of chair stands or squats, whatever you can do, and we'll call on someone and say, Katie while you're doing your your chair stands. I want you to name for me, As many words, that begin with the letter B is possible, go.

00:15:00

Eric Levitan:  And it sounds silly. It sounds easy. It's actually not, it's quite challenging when your brain has to recall information. While controlling the movement, What we see is pretty consistent people's movement slows down, right? We have to remind them to keep moving. What's happening on a physiological level is, you're forming new neural pathways, you are improving executive function, the frontal lobe of the brain, It's really, really profound stuff. But the side effect of that is we're getting people talking, we're getting people laughing, We're getting people smiling, We're getting people to share information. And this is really creating some space for social engagement that ends up making an exercise program. Feel a lot more like, hanging out with friends, and we know that when you've got this level of accountability, because there's people who are expecting you to be there, that's gonna improve that, that adherence, and that's really what we're focused on.

Katie Wilkinson: I love the idea of about exercise. I can think about being in a class and doing something hard. And what you've just said, is, when you start to slow down, you start to lose your focus or your movement slows down, but I also think it can make the time go by faster. If anybody yoga class, you're holding a pose and you're like, Is it ever gonna end? So I I think that's a fun idea might just start doing that for myself. I think, you know, Vivo is a really interesting partner for givers because we are supporting caregivers who are often older adults already, who are caring for their, you know, even older adult parents. And so there's this Crossover. I think this can be beneficial to both our caregivers and the people they care for. I know that, you know, a little bit about your story and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about a large population of our caregivers take

Eric Levitan: You.

Research supporting physical activity for dementia or cognitive impairment

Katie Wilkinson: People with dementia or cognitive impairment of some sort and wondering if you can talk about the research behind exercise and physical activity for diseases like that.

Eric Levitan:  And that is actually, it's a wonderful question and it's specifically why we built in this concept of dual test. Exercises was specifically knowing the science and the research that exists that demonstrates look Exercise. In general, is one of the single most important elements of of a preventing and be slowing the progression of cognitive diseases, and, and Alzheimer's, and Alzheimer's related diseases. And there's very few lifestyle changes nutrition being the other one that that really have a direct impact but exercise is so important and the research and specifically around dual tests exercises is is pretty compelling. And so we we bake that into every single class that is a part of what we are doing. We have a gentleman, who is in the Department of Neurology at the Emory School of Medicine, who's on our team of scientific advisors who helped us build this into the program. And so every single class we have this focus, the other element that we really see and you you hit it spot.

Eric Levitan: There's kind of multiple levels of benefit. As this relates to caregivers one is certainly the caregiver themselves so often what we see. And and having personally experienced this, when you're caring for someone else, you kind of lose your sense of self, right? You are constantly thinking about the other individual, it's very easy to to lose that self-care and focusing on your emotional mental. Health is critical but so is your physical health? And so continuing to engage continuing to engage in something that you is easily accessible, right? Again, you're on to drive somewhere is is a wonderful benefit, but then the other kind of piece of this is doing this together with the individual that you're caring for ends up being this really interesting thing to watch and I can speak specifically about doing this with my own parents. And when I first built this program, this

Doing activities with the person you care for

Eric Levitan:  If this happened, kind of organically, I talked to my dad about this, my dad who lives in Philadelphia, he's 80 years old at the time and I said, Dad I'm, you know, building this program, we're delivering it remotely. I would love for you to be an early beta customer and he said, Oh, Eric, I'm so proud of you. But this isn't really for me. And I said, What do you mean? It's not for you and proceeded to give me those objections that we talked about earlier and I got, you know, I kept kind of debating him on each of those objections. And eventually just got frustrated and said, Well Dad, what if I just do this with you and without hesitation? He said, Yes. And so we started doing this together and then something very interesting happened.

Eric Levitan:  Not only did my dad get healthier and more functional and and start really improving his quality of life and his fitness. But our relationships started getting closer and it was, it was really interesting. And I hadn't expected that to happen. And I did a lot of kind of reflection. And and thinking through why that was and I really zeroed in on two things. One is I was I was proud of him, right? I got to watch him, you know, really working hard as as he, as he went through this process and the other was we were having a shared experience together and it wasn't a shared experience where, no, my talk on the phone every day and those conversations, like What do you do that? I don't know. What did you do today, right? It was something where someone else was facilitating, it. We both got to engage and participate, and one of the nice benefits of exercise. Is it releases endorphins? It's the, the brain's way of rewarding us for doing something that's good for us? Well, when you have a shared experience with someone that releas,

00:20:00

Eric Levitan:  Endorphins and leaves you both feeling good after this, you tend to have increased sentiment about those people and that sort of happening with my dad and I will look forward to these, I didn't want to miss this session because it was an opportunity, I knew how important it was to my dad and it started becoming just as important to me to have this shared experience together fast forward, two years that has been a profound, cornerstone of how our relationship has developed and what we see more and more is when there is a caregiver and someone they're caring for when they participate in Vivo together, it builds this bond between them that they're both focusing on their wellness. But they're also enhancing their relationship, which I think is a really important kind of element of what we're doing.

Katie Wilkinson: Yeah, that's awesome. And thanks for sharing about, you know, your personal experience with, with your dad, and my dad, and I experienced something similar. He had started hiking on his own and we that's a hobby that I enjoy. Also, you know, we've done it more together and it's yeah, something that's outside of just sitting down for a meal that's or sort of in passing texting or something. We actually have this like, these memories. And I wanted to ask about for, for care recipients that this might be Vivo or might be outside of it for care. Recipients, that may not have the physical ability to be really active. Is there a space for them in Vivo? Or do you have recommendations for how a caregiver and a career?

How to adapt exercise for physical or cognitive limitations

Eric Levitan: Sure. There's there's always options right, whether whether it is You've got mobility issues, whether you've got cognitive decline, there are always limitations on what we can do and that shouldn't prevent really anybody from engaging. So what we do within Vivo is we actually have a level system and we try to meet people where they are, knowing that the breath of mobility and and function is, is quite wide. And we again we have some individuals who are chair bound in some individuals who are really, really fit and we want to satisfy both ends of the spectrum and everything in between and and this is true for for all of fitness and I'll give a very simple example, a push-up one of my favorite things to do when I'm presenting to a roomful, especially of older adults. It's a raise your hand. If you can do a push-up and you can watch, you know, a smattering of hands, go up. And and the answer is actually probably everybody in this room.

Eric Levitan:  A push-up you just don't do the same version of what that pushup looks like. And so most people have the connotation of a push-up as you get down on the floor, on your toes and your hands extended and lower your body to the floor. Well, that is a very aggressive version of a push-up. Also, a version of push-up is maybe you lean against the counter or the back of a chair. And your body is just at an angle and that is does not require getting down to the floor and getting off of the floor requires less strength and maybe you can't do that. But you can probably stand next to a wall and maybe back your foot up a step and and push against the wall. That's also a form of a push-up. And so working with someone who understands how to adapt and it's really referred to in the fitness industry as progressing and regressing and exercise. For the the level of that individual is really important, that's really mostly around strength and mobility and balance from a cognitive perspective, having someone else involved who can actually guide that individuals imperative. And obviously,

Eric Levitan:  There's degrees of decline, whether you've got mild cognitive impairment, the ability to continue to follow directions is, you know, potentially there and you're able to to be in a class like Vivo on your own whereas a really rapidly depressed. You know, progressed Alzheimer's disease, that's not possible. But having depending on where you are in that spectrum, there are programs for you. It may require a caregiver to be a part of it and to help along with this process and then depending on that again, that that mobility and that physical function, there are ways to regress or progress, any exercise to make it something that you can do. The important thing is consistency,

00:25:00

Eric Levitan:  Is a level of challenge. Again that level of challenge is really important part of this, because that's what creates outcomes. That's what elicits these results that improve your life and we also want some variability, we want to mix it up, we want to be doing different things because the human body has a really strong. It's it's in its nature to adapt. And so we want to do is continue to change it up so that our body, we create some confusion, it creates better results.

Katie Wilkinson: Yeah, that's that's super helpful and I think breaking down, you know, where you might fit on on this spectrum or ability level. It's helpful for for someone who might think, you know, if a barrier to entry is like I might be embarrassed or I don't think I can do this. You know. You mentioned there's sort of an assessment at the beginning of your time with a Vivo. Can you share a little bit about what, like, the assessment or an intro call might be like, just what to expect before I even start working out with Vivo.

Eric Levitan: Sure, so we understand we've been running this program now for our two and a half years, we run 65 classes, a week currently. So we're doing quite a bit of volume. We understand that the first step to trying Vivo can be intimidating and for a lot of older adults, they think this program's, not for them. So what we have created is three times a week. We have free intro classes, just to get people exposure to what we're doing. If you don't want to move at all, you can just watch and listen, we do a lot of explaining about. We have five elements of what we do in every single class in Vivo. We do a warm-up, we do balance work, we do this dual test exercise, we do strength work, and we do a cool down. And what we do is we talk through that. We show people, the kinds of things that we're doing. We really try to strip it down so it's not intimidating. It'll again, we're really focused on meeting people where they are. We explain this concept of the

Eric Levitan:  System to ensure that people know, you know, again on both ends of the spectrum. If this is what you're looking for, this is how you would do this. If you're looking for something different, this is how you could do this and we try to create that comfort level. So we give these free classes every single week that are really just introductions and then once you do decide to commit and and join as a member, you meet one-on-one with a specialist who really understands a, How to deliver these different assessments to measure strength and balance. Which we'll talk about in a second. And be talking about health history, Talking about goals talking about what's appropriate. You know, one of the questions that I often get is how many times a week should I do this? Our classes are 45 minutes long. The science of strength training says Three times a week is optimal. Twice a week is good. Once a week is more about maintenance, We explain that to people. If you're happy with where you are, if you just want to test it out, maybe once a week is a good place to start but understand that probably

Eric Levitan:  Need to do it twice a week to really start to build and and progress from there. And so we have a team of scientists that meet with individuals on a one-on-one basis. Also over zoom, We go through this information again, I think it really establishes a little bit of a deep deeper touchpoint and a little bit of a stronger sense of of trust and confidence and what we're doing. And then all that information goes to the trainer who sees that individual. And so, when you join your first class with your trainer in your small group, we know a lot of information about you already, right? And and we can we can really curate these experience specifically for you and that's why we keep the classes small because it's really important to give people that individualized, you know, attention

Katie Wilkinson: yeah, I mean all of the sounds awesome you've really created like a small group training or what it feels almost like personal training and but you've made it really like easy and communicate based which you know, makes it Probably makes me feel more inclined to join and…

Eric Levitan: If?

How to realistically fit self-care into your caregiving routine

Katie Wilkinson: I have two more questions for you and one is that caption we know the more hours that a caregiver spends caring or the more things that a caregiver needs to do the greater their risk for, you know, negative health behaviors like drinking and smoking or poor sleep, poor nutrition, this sort of thing. And so often people say Oh caregivers need to do self-care and it's you know it's like that's frustrating advice and I think we think about self-care is like bubble baths and getting a manicure which caregivers don't have time for. So I guess I'm just wondering if you can share a little bit about your own experience with self-care and how you know, Vivo fits into a self-care routine and a realistic way.

Eric Levitan: So it's a, It's a real problem that there is no easy answer for because everyone's situation is, is unique and distinct and especially in the beginning when you get into a caregiving routine, it can be really, really challenging and you can really quickly lose yourself and feel the weight of the world on your shoulders and to take time away from that for yourself feels inappropriate almost as probably the best word I can think of. And so, there's no easy answer about how to take that step around self-care for a lot of people. I think it happens after there's already some perceived decline that that is a painful, reminder of the importance of self-care. All I can do is remind people that if you don't take care of yourself, you're not gonna be able to take care of anybody else. And it's that, you know, that that anecdote from when you're on an airplane, and they're teaching about the oxygen mass, you have to put on your own oxygen.

00:30:00

Eric Levitan:  Ask first before you help your child and that's kind of the same thing with with caregiving, right. Is if you do not take care of yourself you can't take care of anybody else and it's constantly reminding ourselves of that and each other as a support network.And so what I really love about how Vivo plays into that is we provide the ability to kind of do both at the same time, which is you get this element of self-care by participating in this program. But you can also do it with the individual that you're caring for and maybe they are doing. They're almost certainly going to be doing a different version of exercises that you're doing. Maybe you're you're not quite working as hard as you could. But engaging in these kinds of activities is really, really important. And here's the interesting thing about strength training in particular, and this is one of the reasons that Vivo exists in the way that it does. Strength training is not just about lifting heavy objects, strength training, helps in all of these.

Eric Levitan:  Really, really amazing intangible ways. This is what we see when customers come into our program, and, and start Vivo, it improves their sleep. They lose weight, they have improved their mood lessons, anxiety, and depression that lowers blood pressure at lowers cholesterol. It has all these really amazing side effects that go far beyond what you would traditionally think around a strength training program and what that would mean. And so generally a first step into something like This will have a domino effect with other things that are beneficial from your health sleep being. Really one of the most important we know there are so many health benefits tied to get, you know, that six to eight hours of sleep that we all need every night and can be so challenging when we're actually caring for someone who's needs us 24/7.

Eric’s top two tips for caregivers

Katie Wilkinson: Totally. I was just talking to a caregiver yesterday who cares for a parent but also for for a bunch of their kids, they have many kids and they were like I slept for three. I sleep for three hours a night, that's all I get. And it seems you know just exhausting to be running on on fumes like that and we like to ask everyone this question to close.If you have just one one tip or one piece of advice for caregivers out there, what would you leave them with?

Eric Levitan: I'm actually going to leave you with two or…

Katie Wilkinson:  Yes.

Eric Levitan: two to mind, and I think they both relate to things themes that I've talked about today. Already one is look for shared experiences. Share an experiences are. So often we're doing for another, we're not doing with another.

Eric Levitan: Really.

Eric Levitan: To both of you and and can and can feel like a little bit of a break from caregiving because you are, it is allowing you to focus on on yourself and self-care without feeling selfish because you're doing it together. So one would be Look at whether you do the Vivo or not, there are lots of opportunities for shared experiences. Look look for ways to do that

Look for shared experiences. So often we're doing for another,  not doing with another. Doing an activity together can feel like a break from caregiving—you can focus on yourself without feeling selfish because you're still together. There are lots of opportunities for shared experiences if you look for that.

Eric Levitan:  And the second is ask for help. We all need help. And and by the way, you know, caregiving is, is such a common issue, these days that more and more, we're all understanding how difficult it is, how challenging it is and, and providing support networks to each other. And even if it's something like someone coming in and helping you, while you get some sleep or you go out and get some food, or you run some errands, or you do your Vivo class and not being afraid to ask for. Help is a really important thing to remember that. I think far too often. We get caught up in. We get, we feel the sense of obligation, because maybe it's our parent that we feel like, we need to be the one who's providing all the support. And so, I would just say Look for shared experiences and don't be afraid to ask for help.

Katie Wilkinson: Yeah, I think that's awesome. And thank you for sharing too. If people want to find out more about Vivo, where can they find you online? And on social?

Eric Levitan: So, our website is Teamvivo.com team like team, You're a part of a team, we really believe. When you join Vivo you are part of this team and that's that's really got that center piece of community around it. So team devo.com, you'll see on the website, a call to action for a free free intro class. If this is something that you're interested and want to experience and there's also ways to buy, this is a gift. This is a wonderful gift idea with the holidays and as you want to buy something, maybe if you're as an adult child for your aging, parents, or for other older adults, it's a wonderful gift idea for the holidays.

00:35:00

Katie Wilkinson: Yeah, I love that. And and Vivo is a marketplace partner of Givers so we'll be sure to link link you all over the places on all of the channels. And Eric, thank you so much for sharing about your personal story and about Vivo and just so much information and knowledge in between and we really appreciate your time. Yeah. All…

Eric Levitan: Oh, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

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Givers helps people taking care of loved ones save thousands.

No savings, no cost to you. Period.