ALS Treatment Research: New Hope for Immune Therapy and Neurodegenerative Disease with Dr. Ronald H. Lane - Episode 271

ALS is one of the most devastating diagnoses a family can face. It changes everything: movement, communication, breathing, independence, caregiving, and hope 💔.

In this episode of Caregiver Relief, host Diane Carbo, RN speaks with Ronald H. Lane, PhD, founder and executive chairman of HOPE-Neuron Therapeutx and inventor of the SELane tx™ platform, about emerging ALS treatment research, immune dysfunction, neuroinflammation, and a new investigational approach designed to restore immune balance 🔬.

Dr. Lane's work is both scientific and deeply personal. His mission was shaped by his wife Sandy's journey with Alzheimer's, which led him to explore how immune reprogramming might one day help families facing ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases.

This conversation is not about false promises. It is about understanding the science, asking better questions, and helping families hold onto hope while staying grounded in evidence 🕊️.

🔥 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• 🔬 New Territory in ALS Research: How immune therapy and neuroinflammation are being explored.
• ⚖️ Immune Balance: The science behind immune dysfunction in ALS and why researchers are looking at immune reprogramming.
• ❤️ A Personal Mission: How Dr. Lane's wife Sandy's Alzheimer's journey shaped his work.
• 🧭 Research vs. Reality: The difference between emerging research, clinical trials, approved treatments, and investigational therapies.
• ❓ Smart Questions to Ask: What families should ask before considering any experimental treatment.
• 🧠 Beyond ALS: What this research could mean for Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

📋 Episode Outline

• 🎙️ Introduction: Diane introduces ALS and why families search so hard for hope.
• 👤 Meet Dr. Ronald H. Lane: Founder and executive chairman of HOPE-Neuron Therapeutx.
• 💔 A Personal Journey: Sandy's Alzheimer's and the mission behind the research.
• 🔬 ALS, Immune Dysfunction, and Neuroinflammation: What researchers are learning.
• ⚖️ Rebalancing the Immune System: The investigational approach explained.
• 🧭 Hope Without False Promises: Research, clinical trials, approved treatments, and investigational therapies.
• ❓ Questions for Families: What to ask before considering an experimental treatment.
• 🔭 What's Next: Future possibilities for ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases.

⚠️ This episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. The approaches discussed are investigational. Please talk with your healthcare team before making any treatment decisions.

🎧 Hold Onto Hope, Stay Grounded in Evidence

If you are caring for someone with ALS, or simply trying to understand where research may be heading, press play and share this episode with another family who needs it 💙.

Podcast Episode Transcript

Diane: Welcome to the Caregiver Relief Podcast. I'm Diane Carbo, RN, your host today. ALS is one of the most frightening diagnoses a family can face. It changes the future, the daily routine, and the emotional life of everyone involved. For caregivers, it can bring fear, exhaustion, and desperate search for hope.

Today we are going to talk about that hope carefully and honestly. My guest today is Ronald H. Lane, PhD, founder and executive chairman of Hope Neuron Therapeutics. Dr. Lane is a neurobiologist and inventor whose work focuses on an investigational platform called S-E-L-T-X it is.

And it's designed to explore immune rebalancing in ALS and related neuro- degenerative diseases. What makes this conversation especially meaningful is Dr. Lane's work began from a deeply personal space, his wife Sandy's journey with Alzheimer's.

That experience helped shape his mission to explore new possibilities for family facing devastating neurological diseases. In this episode, we'll talk about ALS treatment research, immune dysfunction, neuroinflammation, what immune reprogramming means, and how caregivers can hold onto hope without being misled.

Diane: Dr. Lane, thank you so much for, joining me today. We've had – I've been waiting to talk to you for, quite a while. I'd love for you to share your personal story about what led you from neuroscience into this mission with Hope Neuron Therapeutics.

Ronald: I have an educational background in neurosciences.

I have a PhD and a postdoc in the neurosciences going back to University of Wisconsin, oh mercy, a long time ago, in the early '70s. kind of the late '60s too, It overlapped that. But any case, I've always been in this. I took a couple of side paths for reasons I won't bore you with, had to do with my wife's health.

She got, bone cancer, and so I took an exit from the academy and, moved to Phoenix with her family, where her family lived. But she survived that and survived it well. We went skiing after that. She actually ended up losing one leg, but that... She was never a victim and, you know,

If there was a challenge there, by golly, that, that's part of life, and she took it on. And she was a very.

Diane: God bless her

Ronald: courageous woman and a very loving woman, by the way. Beautiful on the outside, but even more so on the inside. She had a big heart. In this world where we're surrounded by takers, she was a real giver.

So that was my history, all right? Then Sandy did develop, Alzheimer's and she knew what it was because, frankly, her mother passed from that. And she was a very courageous person. She was never a victim, and we had honest conversations about it.

And she was, said, "Okay, Ron, you know, this is what we're dealt with, and we'll love each other till my last breath." And that's exactly what happened. I'll tell you, there's a bed to my right here because we're in a facility. it's not a facility. it's a guest house of my daughter's.

My daughter's a nurse and said, "Dad, you can't do this alone," when Sandy wasmy wife, when Sandy was failing. And she said, "We're gonna build a guest house like you and mom to move in there. Would you do that?" And it took me, oh, eight, nine, 10 nanoseconds to say, "Okay." So we moved out. We were actually living in, Mississippi at the time.

Sandy was an artist, and she had a studio there and a gallery there. Everybody loved her. She was trained in Scottsdale. And, she, but she was practicing in Natchez, Mississippi, and she was by far the best artist. Everybody loved her, and her stuff would sell before they, the oil would dry. but when she was, really, beginning to fail, and she knew it, we all knew it, we moved to Phoenix where my daughter lived.

And, I'm in that guest house right now, and there were, there's a king bed to my right. and they wanted to put in one of those, I'm gonna say funky beds. They go up and down and so forth,

Diane: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

Ronald: Well, I said-

Diane: Husband like bed.

Ronald: Yeah. I said, "No, no, no, no. we've been in this bed for 50 years.

We're staying there." So she was there until her last breath. And,her last breath was I'm gonna choke up here, but it's not sad. It's not. I mean, look, life comes and goes. That's... if we're alive, the trade-off and the deal is that we will pass.

I mean, that everything organic has got a lifespan. Yeah. So, she was in that bed, and she began to, And I'll try to rush this along 'cause I could take forever. But she was, of failing, and it got to a point where she would sit on this little couch right behind me, and, after she had breakfast or lunch, whatever it was.

And, she was wheelchair bound. she actually, because of that bone cancer problem, she lost her leg. And and she couldn't navigate the artificial limb, at that point in her life.

So she was in a wheelchair, all right? And I always insisted we bring the wheelchair over, the caregiver would, and I insisted that she had to get herself up.

She had to reach out, stand up on that other leg.

And that was important, biologically for the immune system to be activated, and she did it and never complained, understood, and did it, et cetera. Got to the point where she couldn't do that. And so the caregiver would have to reach over and grab her and pick her up and put her there.

Diane: Yeah.

Ronald: And the caregiver was the appropriate size to be able to do that with no problem. And, and so they she would go in the, into the wheelchair, and then they would take her into wherever, you know, to the table for food or back to bed or to the washroom, what wherever they needed to go.

Well, she got to the point where she couldn't stand up anymore, and, she was carried. But beyond that, she actually developed and began to fail and wouldn't eat. Yeah. And, I called my daughter, the nurse, and I said her name is Tiffany. I said, "Tiffany, we've got to get an IV for your mom because she's not eating."

And she said, "No, Dad."

This is the end.

Diane: Yes. And your daughter's right and I'm also a nurse who's done hospice, and I've worked at a cancer center, and I know how hard that is. But, it, going through the, the end-of-life process, the dehydration and everything is a part of the end-of-life process, and, it doesn't bring pain or discomfort to them.

But it's hard for us as family members, especially in different cultures like, the Italians. everything's mangia, mangia, eat, eat, and when you don't eat the world is, it's catastrophic event in the household. So I totally understand that. But your daughter was gracious enough to tell, to explain it to you, which

Ronald: Well, she did, and I understood straight away.

I, she didn't have to

Diane: Oh, I know. But you know what? When you hear that stuff and it's someone you live, love so much, you could be the best scientist and have the most amazing knowledge but it would, when it pertains to your family member, it all goes away.

Ronald: Well, you know, that's true, but we knew it was coming.

She knew it was coming. And we got to the point, though, she went, she became comatose.

Diane: Yeah.

Ronald: And it wasn't that she couldn't eat anymore. Now she's just non-responsive.

And so we knew then that was, the end. All right?

And we have a lot of friends and family in the area, and they came over on a Tuesday morning, whatever it was, and there must have been 35, 40 of them.

All right? And they came in, and Sandy was in bed, with one of those, 45-degree wedges behind her. Those foam rubber things holding her up, but she was, just, you know, comatose. there was no response there at all. And so the fam- every, all the friends came in, and we're all gathered around, and we've known each other for decades.

And so we're hugging and talking and caring. We knew what the deal was, and it was an affirmation of all of us for each other and our affection for each other. Sandy's sitting there, all right? So I go over and I sit down next to her. She hadn't moved in two days at all. Hadn't moved at all. And so I went over and sat down in front of her on the edge of the bed and took her hands in my hands, and I started whispering to her and talking to her.

All of a sudden, her eyes opened. She hadn't moved in days. She, her eyes opened. She's looking out the window. There's nothing there, 'cause that's where her head happened to be pointed. And so then she brings her head around and sees me, and lights up like a Christmas tree. Most gleeful look you've ever seen.

Just beautiful smile. And I said, "Hey, girl, where you been? We missed you." And she's just smiling right at me. And then I said, "You're saying goodbye, aren't you?" And she smiled, put her head down, she was gone. Most precious moment of my life. All right? you know, we had kids, and that, they were precious, et cetera.

This was the most precious moment of my life. So I'm gonna stop there and say that's where I come from And my passion for caring for folks who have family members that are in a degenerative process. And in Sandy's case it was, Alzheimer's obviously. But we selected for reasons I won't bore you with to go with Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS, because it's an enormously egregious disease.

It happens very quickly, and the effect of your treatment can become obvious. we have a treatment that in the, what they call transgenic mice, but mice that have been given the human genes for ALS, and they die from that. They die from that quickly.

And so you can test your therapeutic. And so we decided to go with that, and, we have it.

We treat the mice, and they live and run. They get on the, they call it tread bars, like a treadmill, and they run, run, run, run, run. We don't treat them, they fall off and they die. If we treat them, they keep going, going, going, going. We haven't done it enough to tell you how long they would go.

But I can tell you that we were well over a week, in that, study that we were doing. And, the mice were up there still running, run, run, run, run, run, run. All right? So that says to me, and I'm a mechanic, I'm not a clinician. I don't treat people. You don't want me to.

But I know the mechanisms. That's what a mechanic means. of what's... And then my attitude is real simple. If you have the mechanisms, go with it. If you don't have the mechanism, don't waste your time or money, 'cause it, it's not gonna work. Well, we have to do clinicals. you can do clinicals, but it's not gonna work.

But if you got it, then let's go. And so we've got it. We know that, and we're teed up to do a human trial here quickly. And so at that point I'll slow this or pause this and say, where we are right now is that we are in the process of doing a public company to raise the funds to demonstrate this in the Lou Gehrig's, or in the,Fulton Clinic, Gregory Devy Full Clinic.

There we are. and it's the number three clinic in the world behind, Mass General and Hopkins. And we're all teed up to do that trial there. We're raising the money for it. We are highly confident that we'll succeed. The real purpose of that is to demonstrate it for the naysayers, but more importantly, is to get dosing and to know how many times.

With the mice, we have to repeat the treatment every two weeks. it's simple math, is times 40 for humans. Well, I don't know that actually it'll be times 40. I'm a scientist and I need data, so we'll get the data. But that's the purpose is to get this translated into humans. And, and then to be able to say, 'cause we'll be, I believe we'll be able to accelerate this and get FDA approval for our treatment for ALS, to get it, commercially approved, and that means that we can then go to the market with it and around the whole country and to begin to treat people.

Diane: Dr. Ron, for people out there who not, may not be familiar with ALS or Lou Gehrig's, can you explain a little bit about what happens in the body when someone develops ALS?

Ronald: Well, yeah, yeah. It's an attack on the central nervous system, But it's also attack on the peripheral nervous system.

It's attack... Let me put it this way. It's attack on the nerves, all right? And so the nerves in the body that control the action, control my fingers right now, all right? that's all a neural, mechanism. And in diseases that, there's a very complicated scenario of signaling that goes on.

It's called... And it can get out of balance. When it gets out of balance, you have disease.

And what we do in our, treatment is we rebalance that. And we know that because we've tested it in the mice. We've tested it in the cells. It's called in vitro, all right? In vivo is the in life, and that's with the mice.

In vitro is in the cells, which we did first, confirmed it, then took it to the mice and confirmed it again. Now the next step is to take it to the humans, all right?

Diane: Now, your company focuses on immune balance and immune reprogramming.

Ronald: Yes.

Diane: Can you tell us in simple language what that means?

Ronald: Well, you didn't ask a simple question, so how do you want me to what

Diane: dumb it down for me, please.

Ronald: Yeah, no, we all know what it means. Okay. I will try to simplify it a lot. Thank you. there are two actors, chemical actors in our body, and it's all in the, mitochondria, it's thing called in the cells, all right? And there, there are two actors. And, one kills and one heals.

Diane: Okay.

Ronald: Now, actually, it's the same cell that does that. Depending on the environment of the signals that it gets, it's called context, it will know that it's time to kill Or it's time to heal. And the same cell does both. It's right out of the old Ecclesiastes. Time for killing, time for healing.

All right? Yeah. And so the, the, the... in a normal human, in a normal physiology, that happens. And when you have to kill, you kill. And then when the killing's over, it comes down and the healing is there. And it's, in ratio. you want them both because of the time you have to kill.

All right? Yeah. that you're killing the pathogens, the viruses, and the bacteria, and so forth. All right? But if it locks in high and you kill, kill, kill, kill, you have disease. And so what we do is we bring it down and create a balance, and that's what we're talking about.

Diane: Thank you. I understood that.

Ronald: Well, good. Good.

Diane: So thank you very much for that. Now, you

Ronald: Yeah. and this is all proprietary, by the way. I mean, we have patents. Okay. we're filing more patents, et cetera.

Diane: Okay.

Ronald: But, yeah, because investors, they might have a big heart and they wanna help.

But if you tell them they can make some money too that's not a bad thing. All right? And so

Diane: No. Oh, absolutely not. No. It's capitalism.

Ronald: Yeah. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

Diane: It's a beautiful thing,

Ronald: Yes. Yes. You got that right.

Diane: Now, you have a treatment, Is it Celltex? Is that what it is?

Ronald: Well, okay.

It's SEL.

Sandra Elizabeth Lane. SEL.

Diane: Ah. Oh, how beautiful. Okay? Yeah.

Ronald: SEL-TX. TX means treatment.

Diane: Yes, yes All right? SEL, okay.

Ronald: Sandra Elizabeth Lane treatment.

Diane: SEL. Oh, that just touched my heart. How is it different from a drug or even stem cell therapy?

Ronald: Well, first of all, it's not a drug, so that's the first difference.

All right?

Diane: Yeah.

Ronald: And let me pause there and say that the problem with treating these diseases, and big pharma, who does drugs, all right? That's what they do, and I'm not against drugs. They do drugs. They tried for two decades and spent a couple billion dollars trying to solve the problem.

Well, you know, I mentioned that we were in Natchez, Mississippi down south, and they have a saying down there that they got good hunting dogs, and they're gonna chase those coons up the tree, and then they get the coon treed, they're gonna shoot it and have dinner. if there's no coon in that tree and your dogs are barking up it, you're not gonna get a, not gonna have dinner.

Diane: Right.

Ronald: Well, that's the problem with the drug companies. They're barking up the wrong tree, because the drug will not solve the problem. It's a cell problem, cellular problem. It's not a pharmaceutical problem, all right? So then that

Diane: I absolutely believe that

Ronald: gets you to the stem cells, all right?

Diane: Yep.

Ronald: Stem cells, I won't get into it, but I can get very deep into it, but I'm not gonna burden you with this. Except to say that the whole purpose and the use of stem cells is that they're programmable. And so you can program it to attack the disease. The problem is they're programmable.

So you put them in a, you program them to be healing, and then you give it to the patient. Well, they'll heal. But when they get next to the disease, they're fickle. They change over, and they become diseased. All right? And that's what stem cells do, and there's a problem with it. We don't do that.

We're not a stem cell. So we're an anomaly. I mean, entirely unique, that we're not a drug, and we're not a stem cell. We are a cell-based therapy. It's the cells that we use. And my, theory was real simple. we have a million years of humanoid evolution, and frankly, we have a 300 million years of, well, excuse me, 300 million years of mammalian evolution, and 100 years of humanoid evolution, but that's gotten us to the place.

And my thinking was not real complicated in concept. That you and I and everyone else listening is, are here today because we have effective immune systems, and if we didn't, we wouldn't have made it. All right?

And those effective immune systems are all based on cells. So Ron, let's go figure out the cells and let's learn how to whisper to the cells to get them to do good things.

And that's what we do. We refer to myself not as a scientist, but as a cell whisperer. All right?

Diane: Oh, I like that.

Ronald: We talk to cells and get them to do the right thing

Diane: Now, I've talked to many, families. In fact, I have a woman that has written, three a series of books on ALS and how it's impacted her family.

And, they're all so desperate for hope. How do you talk about promising research without creating unrealistic expectations?

Ronald: Well, first of all, I'm a scientist, and science is driven by data. We're set up to do the human trial, and until I get the human trial, I won't have definitive proof.

But we're set up to do that, and I believe, as I said a minute ago, because of the mechanisms involved and our understanding of it and our testing of it, that we will succeed. But we haven't done it yet. So that's the reason that we're raising the money here, and then we'll be able to demonstrate that in humans that it works.

And we'll also be able to, come back with, "Okay, it works. How many times do we have to treat them?" And we believe that, we're gonna have to treat, we will treat three to four times a year. All right? So I'm saying three times a year for a variety of reasons, because the return to the investor if we go four times gets much larger, but it's still large.

And if you look at our site, our website, and that's hopeneuron.com, you pull it up and you look at it, what's visible in that site is the calculation on dollars from the treatment. and so I'll get the term is pecuniary. I'll get pecuniary. I'll talk about money, okay?

And what happens is that, the treatments, if we treat one-third of the population, and we take three years to get there we don't believe it's gonna take that long. We believe that the need and the want is so great, because it's not just there's a failing of the nervous system, but there's dementia that sets in as well.

And that makes it so hard for the family. The patient is wheelchair-bound. They can't bathe themselves. They can't eat by themselves. it's a very, very difficult, situation, okay? Well I'm sorry, go ahead.

Diane: Oh, no. Go ahead. I was just gonna say, so you're talking about a potential treatment that goes beyond, well beyond ALS, but including maybe Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, maybe some selected cancers?

Ronald: Yes.

Diane: What's the common thread that connects those connect, conditions from the immune system perspective?

Ronald: Well, it's the same mechanism. I mentioned a little bit ago

Diane: Yep

Ronald: That there's a mechanism, and it is tensional, meaning that there are two compounds produced by the body.

And there's a tension between the two of them, and if you have normal health, the killer comes down and lines up with the healer.

All right? Yes. But if it, you don't line it up, you got the problem. That same phenomenon is true in Alzheimer's, and it's true in cancer.

Diane: Oh.

Ronald: So put it another way. If you look just at Alzheimer's, and we say we're gonna treat it three times a year, that equates and we get only one third of the market, and it takes us three years to get there, and we're gonna hire a major firm to do the marketing for us.

We're not gonna do that. All right? 'Cause it's required, but somebody like McKesson or somebody that's got the reach for that sort of thing. All right?

Diane: Yeah.

Ronald: Yeah, yeah. But we do that, and we only get one-third of the market. And it takes us three years to get there. That's a billion five in revenue.

Diane: Wow.

Ronald: ALS. There's 34,000 patients with ALS. One-third of that's 11,900 that we would treat. All right?

There's eight million people with Alzheimer's.

Diane: Yes.

Ronald: So think about it. If you got 34,000 and that's a billion and a half- 34,000. Now, how much is eight million? It's a big number.

Diane: Well, you know what I see from my perspective is the family caregiver is taking on responsibilities that were once passed, expected of the healthcare professionals.

They provide $1.1 trillion in unpaid care.

Ronald: Absolutely.

Diane: And they, and that 63% of them become seriously ill or die from the stress of providing care for somebody at home. So I see this as saving tons of money, keeping people in their jobs instead of having to quit work to take care of their loved ones.

There's so many things. Now, what is the process for a clinical trial? How do you get into one, and, what is the process to get a FDA-approved?

Ronald: We have a unique situation with ALS. All right? The approval for that is a lot faster than normal, and the reason is there's nothing normal about this, but the, the reason is that there's a lot of pressure on the FDA from Congress to get a solution to, ALS, so much so they actually, they meaning the FDA, actually approved a drug, a drug for the treatment of ALS without any data showing that it worked, but they approved it. And they in an instant got up to $400 million in their level of sales, and then guess what? They did a trial, and it didn't work, and their stock was at $32, and it went to 32 cents in an eye blink. All right?

That's not the point. The point is the FDA eels so much pressure to do this to get it approved. Yeah. we think that we can, we will be able to get this approved very quickly, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna bring the FDA in as a partner in this and get their counsel on this, 'cause they know a lot more about this program than we do that's their business.

Diane: Yes.

Ronald: Yeah. So we wanna bring them in and have them sit at our side, prove the protocols, see the data, get input constantly. And we think by making them a partner that's gonna only add to the robustness of our trial and the probable success of our trial.

Diane: Ah.

So tell me how can families follow legitimate research updates while protecting themselves from misinformation or over-hyped claims?

Ronald: Well, that's a tough one, all right? Yeah, it is. Because, the science is complicated.

And, Look, this is my business, and I could look at it real, things quickly, and I can latch onto them and go with them or I can dismiss it. And that's because I understand mechanisms, all right?

Diane: Yes.

Ronald: But what I'm doing, nobody else is doing, so there aren't a lot of folks behind me doing the same thing.

There are some.

There are some. But there aren't a lot of them. And so that, that's a really tough one. I'm gonna give you the answer. Probably the best solution is pray.

Diane: Yeah.

Ronald: And I'm not being facetious, all right?

Diane: I get that.

Ronald: But there is a lot of disinformation out there.

There are folks who will exploit, take advantage of. there are rascals everywhere.

Diane: Yeah.

Ronald: And they're very vulnerable.

Diane: Yeah.

Ronald: And all my heart goes out to them, 'cause I understand that. I understand that.

Diane: How can people find you and, sign up for a clinical trial?

What do we need to do next?

Ronald: Well, We're not gonna do the trial, all right?

Diane: Okay.

Ronald: Remember, I'm not a clinician, all right? But we will find a way of getting that. I mean, you can get to us at hopeneuron.com.

Diane: Okay.

Ronald: All right? That's our website, and I think there's some links there.

Mark's on this call, and he handles that. so he knows a lot more about that piece of it. and he deals with it, and there's a lot there. I mean, he's constantly, coming back and saying, "Look what, look here, look there," and so forth, all right? And Mark's doing a marvelous job.

And we're a small staff. We're five people, you know? And we have... We're taking on the world with five people. We don't have billions of dollars and legions of scientists behind us. The day will come when we're gonna need more people, and that won't be very, very far in advance, but right now it is.

Diane: Yeah.

Ronald: So there's one but the answer is go to our website. Go to 'cause there are, if there are announcements

Diane: Yes

Ronald: we will probably post them there.

Diane: Okay. So if there's one thing you want caregivers to understand about the future of ALS treatment research, what would it be?

Ronald: There's hope.

Diane: That's hope. That's beautiful. That's beautiful.

Ronald: That's Hope Neuron. That's our company.

Diane: Yep, yep. That's the whole point.

Diane: Hope Neuron. I love the name. I love the name. Okay. I really like that. Dr. Ron, I'm gonna ask you to, once again, to tell people how they can find you and reach out to you.

Ronald: Hopeneuron.com.

Diane: Hopeneuron.com. Thank you so much, sir, for sharing such amazing information. there, there's one, one,

Ronald: one dot. Hopeneuron.com.

Diane: Hopeneuron.com.

Ronald: Yeah. There you go.

Diane: Thank you so much.

Ronald: Yeah.

Diane: To my family caregivers out there, you are the most important part of the caregiving equation. Without you, it all falls apart.

So please learn to be gentle with yourself, practice self-care every day, because you are worth it.