Hey everyone, this is Dr. Ruscio. Let's discuss some important updates regarding gluten sensitivity, or more technically known as non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Essentially, if you're trying to get healthy, you've likely heard something about gluten-free, and there's varying opinions on this at both ends. Some will have you believe that you should vehemently avoid gluten. Some would have you believe that gluten-free is an absolute fad. And as we discussed in the past, the truth on these controversial issues usually lies somewhere in the middle. It's helpful to try to determine where, you know, along that spectrum do we fall and what are some helpful guidelines. So let's discuss a recent study, and the title was an Italian prospective multi-center survey on patients suspected of having non-celiac gluten sensitivity. And this study looked to assess how common is gluten sensitivity or non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Are there any lab markers that can be helpful for determining this? What are the most common symptoms that may be associated with this? So if you're struggling with certain symptoms, are there certain symptoms that may indicate to you that gluten may be a culprit? And what does the reaction of gluten look like? And in terms of how long does it take for that reaction to occur in most people? And also, are there any other comorbidities or other diseases that accompany this? So let's jump in. So like I said a moment ago, the setup of this study was essentially looking at 34 Italian centers. And when all of these centers amassed their data, they had looked at 12,225 patients. So this is a fairly impressive size of a sample. Now the one thing that is not great about this study is that it was the method of diagnosing the non-celiac gluten sensitivity. There is currently no lab marker to diagnose non-celiac gluten sensitivity. However, there's a couple that are suggested that we'll get to in a minute. But the gold standard is an elimination, take gluten out of your diet, and then perform a placebo-controlled reintroduction. Meaning you don't know if you're taking a capsule of gluten or a placebo capsule and then have someone monitor that. It's very hard to do that. So what they did was a comprehensive, essentially a 60-point questionnaire that was administered by physicians who specialized in this area looking at all this data collectively. It was a very thoroughly thought out questionnaire administered by professionals in the field. Is that a perfect measure? No, but this is some of the best data that we have here. So let's look at these symptoms that were the most commonly associated with non-celiac gluten sensitivity. And I'll put a chart from the study up here on the screen. As you can clearly see, that first let me say just as a preface, we'll get into two different aspects here. There's digestive symptoms and non-digestive symptoms. That's important to understand because, and this is something I try to continually bring up. You can have something like fatigue or depression that's caused by your guts, yet you don't have any gut symptoms like bloating or constipation or diarrhea. So it's very important to mention because sometimes people, because they have no digestive symptoms, but only have things like fatigue and insomnia, as other examples, think that they don't have a problem in the gut. But in some cases, and in many cases I would argue that a problem in the gut is actually the culprit of those symptoms. So looking at digestive symptoms specifically, as you can see here from the chart, bloating abdominal pain and diarrhea were the three most common symptoms, but there was a number of these listed. That shouldn't really be surprising. If you're eating a food that is inflammatory to you or that your body doesn't respond well to you, having digestive symptoms shouldn't seem like a stretch, so nothing super surprising there. But let's move on to the extraintestinal or the non-digestive manifestations. And what we see here is that lack of well-being, generally not feeling well, fatigue and headache were the three most common. So this is very important to mention because, again, someone could have only lack of well-being, fatigue and headache, or some of these other extraintestinal symptoms and not have any digestive symptoms and actually have a problem in their gut, and in this case, gluten sensitivity being the culprit. So important to keep that in mind. Now here's what I think is a very important piece. The time to reaction, over 90% of subjects experienced a discernible reaction within 24 hours. This, in my opinion, is very helpful. Why? Because sometimes you get the recommendation that if you are non-celiac, and again, this applies for non-celiac. If you're non-celiac, gluten sensitive and you consume gluten, you might be up-regulating these inflammatory pathways or fueling an autoimmune process, and you may not know that you have a reaction of gluten for months or even years. And so people are essentially dogmatically indoctrinated into thinking that they should avoid gluten, even though there's no discernible reaction on gluten, which is an understandable positive if you're trying to help someone. I get it. However, this study, which is fairly impressive in the rigor of its documentation, showed that over 90% of subjects experienced a reaction within 24 hours. So what that means is, and this is something that I've been saying for a while now, it's important to find your own truth in terms of how your body reacts to gluten. And if you perform an elimination and then a reintroduction and you don't notice anything, there's an extremely high probability, if you don't notice anything within 24 hours, that you're not gluten sensitive and you don't have to worry about the rigor of eating gluten-free. Now, if for whatever reason you want to generally avoid gluten, okay, that's your prerogative, but at least you now know that the likelihood that you have a non-celiac gluten sensitivity issue is very minimal. Okay, so now it's important to contrast that with the fact that for celiac patients it may take weeks, maybe even a little bit longer for the symptoms to manifest. And so this is where getting the diagnosis of celiac disease can be helpful. Sometimes the argument is made, well, I am not going to eat gluten no matter what, so what's the point of having a celiac diagnosis? Okay, understandable. However, if you're someone that wants to be able to occasionally partake in gluten or even make gluten consumption something that's habitual, then having this diagnosis can be helpful, the diagnosis of celiac. Because for someone with celiac, the symptoms may not be apparent and they may take weeks to onset and you may have a very difficult time sussing out if it's a reaction of gluten or if it's because you're tired or stressed or what have you. So a couple of guidelines here. If you perform the HLA DQ2 and DQ8 gene testing and that comes back negative, that fairly definitively rules out celiac. So if you have that gene testing that's negative, that fairly definitively rules out celiac and you can proceed under the assumption that if you have a reaction of gluten you'd have that reaction within 24 hours and if you do have that reaction you can pseudo kind of diagnose yourself as non-celiac gluten sensitive and if you don't have that reaction you don't have to worry about the rigor of gluten avoidance. Now, if you're positive for that HLA DQ2 and DQ8, it is not diagnostic of celiac disease. However, it's suggestive that it's a possibility so you may want to have further evaluation to rule it out and yes, that does require people to consume some gluten. However, in my mind it depends on how you're approaching this. If you're someone who has no problem avoiding gluten and you're not planning on consuming gluten ever, then you don't need to worry about going through this diagnosis. If you're someone that wants to be able to eat gluten occasionally or even regularly, then consuming gluten for a few weeks, usually the recommendation is for about six weeks and then having the testing wouldn't be a bad idea to rule this out. Now, it also depends on the reaction. If you already know you have a fairly strong reaction of gluten, then you may not necessarily need to go through the rigor of firming up the diagnosis. If you're not sure, this can be helpful. Okay. I should also mention this as a quick aside. This information is taken from the February edition of our clinical newsletter, the Future of Functional Medicine Review clinical newsletter. It's a multi-publication that I put out that reviews very important and clinically impactful studies like this. So if this is information that you're finding helpful and you're a clinician, I'd invite you to subscribe and you can go over to DrRuscio.com slash review to learn more about that. We'll also put the link in the notes. If you're a person that's more advanced and you're understanding then, this is something that's very game for you also. Okay. So continuing on. Associated disorders including autoimmunity. IBS and food intolerances were the most commonly associated disorders with non-serial gluten sensitivity. So it doesn't really give us anything too surprising there. However, autoimmune disease was detected in 14% of cases and two-thirds of these cases were actually autoimmune thyroid. There were two previous studies that found the incidence of autoimmunity in non-serial gluten sensitive patients was actually fairly low. This finds a relatively higher correlation. And also, 18% of cases with non-serial gluten sensitivity had a relative who was celiac. And here I'll put up a chart essentially that is showing you the co-morbidities or accompanying disorders. IBS, food intolerances, allergy, autoimmune disorders. Two-thirds of that was autoimmune thyroid and then eating or behavioral disorders. Okay. So coming back to testing just for a moment, we mentioned the HLA, DQ, 2 and 8. Here's something else that was very interesting from the study. They found that anti-gliad and antibodies, the IgG fraction specifically was found in 25% of patients. So that could be very helpful. If you test negative for the gene test, the HLA, DQ, 2 and 8, it's available at most major labs. If you're negative for that, then that rules out celiac. And if you're positive for this anti-gliad and IgG antibody, then it's suggested that you could have non-serial gluten sensitivity. It's not definitive, but it's the best marker that we have to date. But also keep in mind that that IgG, anti-gliad and antibody is not diagnostic in and of itself because it can't indicate other disorders are present. They also found that intestinal biopsy was positive in about 30% of cases, having a March 1 classification meaning there's not enough inflammation that's visible in the intestines after biopsy to diagnose someone as celiac. However, there is enough to be noted as not being normal. And also they found that there was nothing terribly surprising here but low ferrets and low folic acid and low vitamin D were fairly commonly documented. Okay, so what about the prevalence? Because this is important. Because again, this comes out of the issue of is this a BS fad that happens in no one or is this something that affects an overwhelming majority of the population? Again, coming right to that spectrum and the extreme endpoints. So essentially what they found here, I'll put the chart up on the screen, they found that in patients with symptoms who are not well and reporting to a doctor's office, there was over a 3% prevalence in the population. And in non-ill patients or in the general population said another way, there was just over a 1% incidence in the population. So essentially making this slightly more common than celiac disease. So is it common? Yes. Is it highly common? According to this study, no. And again, if this is something that you, I won't say disagree with, but if you're finding a little bit of dissonance when you hear this, remember that this is based upon some of the best data that we have to date. Over 12,000 patients surveyed by doctors who are really looking for this and found this kind of prevalence. So it's just important to factor this in. It's not to say that if you're listening to this or watching this and you know that you have a negative reaction to the gluten, that that's not true for you. I want to keep this in mind in a more global perspective that it may not be the case for most people. Okay. So additionally, and this is kind of one of the points I'm alluding to, some double-blind studies have found that the prevalence of non-celiac gluten sensitivity can be anywhere from 0.1% to 10%. So there can be a tenfold variation or 1% to 10%. So there's, in some of these studies, there's a, I guess that would even be a hundredfold variation. So this study, what this study adds is the sample size being so large and the diagnostic survey being so comprehensive, that gives us what is probably a fairly accurate measure in terms of 1% general population, 3% in those who are ill. And this is also very interesting. 30% of cases had a unresolved issue in the gut that might be contributing to the symptoms that a person is attributing to gluten reactivity. And most specifically, they found that some of the underlying GI issues could be small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or other food intolerances and a low FODMAP diet may be a very helpful way of sussing out some of those other food intolerances and that has also been published. So again, remember, if you think you have non-celiac gluten sensitivity, you have a 30% chance to eliminate that reaction that you're experiencing by looking into something like SIBO and or trying a different diet like the low FODMAP diet, which can be very helpful and very empowering for some people. So the author's conclusions. This prospective survey shows that non-celiac gluten sensitivity has a strong correlation with female gender and adult age. Based on our results, the prevalence of non-celiac gluten sensitivity seems to be only slightly higher than that of celiac disease. So a lot there. Let me just give you a few of my takeaways and let me say one thing actually before I do that. Remember that they were making this diagnosis via a survey and a survey has a likely the highest potential of over-reporting. There is a potential that it could under-report, but the reason why this may over-report is because people may be eating other food stuffs. Most namely it could be when people ingest FODMAPs and in many wheat-containing products or gluten-containing products that are found in wheat products do also have high FODMAPs. So some of that reactivity that we're seeing when people say, yes, I reacted to gluten that maybe the FODMAPs are actually reacting to and not the gluten. So will they be the gluten? Yes. But for some of those people it could be FODMAPs. So what we may be seeing here is that the incidence of the non-celiac gluten sensitivity that was found in the study may be slightly over-reported. So it's just a caution there. So the summary points. Non-celiac gluten sensitivity may impact roughly 3% of at-risk populations and 1% of the general population. A reaction upon reintroduction will occur within 24 hours and over 90% of cases, very important. Non-celiac gluten sensitivity can manifest as both gastrointestinal and extra, meaning non-digestive symptoms like fatigue, headache, and not feeling well. HLA DQ2 and 8 testing does not appear diagnostic for gluten sensitivity. However, the anti-glad and IgG antibodies may be. And if someone does have the HLA DQ2-8 positive that is suggestive of celiac disease but not diagnostic of celiac disease and 30% of those with gluten sensitivity may have another underlying gut issue that when resolved would ameliorate their reaction to gluten most namely could be small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or potentially other food allergies or intolerances like FODMAP sensitivity. And placebo may be responsible for some of these cases of non-celiac gluten sensitivity and non-celiac gluten sensitivity may be associated with autoimmune conditions and about 14% of cases and namely that may be autoimmune thyroid disease. So there is a lot there. Hopefully, this information helps you navigate the landscape of gluten sensitivity because there are two things that we want to balance just to kind of bottom line it. We want to make sure that if you have a problem with gluten you identify that and you avoid gluten, important. We also want to make sure that if you don't have a problem with gluten you're not indoctrinated into thinking that you do and you essentially make your life more difficult because you're trying to avoid a food that you don't actually need to. So again, if you're a clinician then you can see this full write up with all the notes and supporting references in our monthly publication, The Future of Functional Medicine Review. You can go over to our website DrRuscio.com and if you go to the slash review you'll go right to the page with more information. And so hopefully this information helps you navigate this and truly helps you get healthy and get back to your life. Thanks.


Wednesday afternoon was best. It was the only day that week that one could reserve the Cordelia Royale Hotels Conference Room, another could to fly into and out of the country without missing work, and another didn't have chair practice. The afternoon was crisp, and the clouds repealed off the blue sky. The Hotels designed with a rigid performance of professional colors and sharp geometry. Violet Mesmer stood in the executive conference room. Gray crept up the roots of her hair, and age was beginning to crack through the layers of makeup. Dark brown eyes looked down to where a car pulled in. The agents beat the valets to the door and let two people out. A voice in their earpiece said, Michaels and Young have arrived. They were in the conference room soon. The wiry Young walked in first, blonde hair was suffocated into a bun, and nature accomplished a job of makeup. Sleepless nights provided the eye shadow, and exhausted them with already at work, sculpted in the face. She took her seat. Michaels followed, the soldier with a buzz cut. He wore a jacket in spring, and he folded his aviators up, slipping them into his pocket, as he took his seat besides Young. Another voice in the earpiece, Lee is here. Cam with a no-show. Sue Young Lee appeared to be already occupied with another meeting. As she entered, she came with a phone to her ear, arguing vehemently with someone in Korean. She was short, long haired, bespeckled, and growing more upset by the second as the argument continued. Another voice over the radio, more uncertain. Green has arrived. The girl who stood at the conference room's open door wore a pleated skirt, jacket, and tie-colored to match the colors of Dawes' preparatory school. She had red hair tied into a ponytail, and glistened in green eyes. She flashed a white smile to every uneasy gaze as she walked in, carrying with her a wispy, noxious look. Green, although the name tag Red Cassandra and Mesber's file had no less than five other names, took their seat and slid her backpack under the table. She set a water bottle on two pink tablets on the tabletop before sitting back and looking at the others. Greenen. Lee's phone call ended. Security locked the doors and took their positions, and Mesber took her seat at the head of the table. The recording device sat before her. She reached over and pressed record. This committee negotiations with groups of interest on Omega-K scenario solutions began long. Dr. Violet Mesber clears her throat and speaks. I appreciate you all coming to this meeting, you especially Dr. Young, as you've apparently been taking on a few fair projects involving Omega-K. Many thanks Dr. Mesber. Happy to be invited. Dr. Mesmer adjusts herself in her seat and brings out a briefcase. As she opens it, she contains to speak. For those of you who are unfamiliar with everyone at the table, my name is Dr. Violet Mesmer, and I am a member of the Essex Committee. Dr. Mesmer adjusts to Dr. Emily Young. This is Dr. Emily Young, a prominent doctor in the Omega-K scenario, with which I'm sure we're all intimately familiar. Thank you. I've worked extensively with Omega-K, including researching under the title SCP-3984, and want nothing more than to contribute to a long-lasting solution. Dr. Mesmer nods. She removes a few pieces of paper from the briefcase and continues to speak. Right. Yes. The man on the end with the cybernetic enhancements is Captain Eric Michaels, a decorated war veteran and one of the first two experienced Omega-K's effects, at least by our records. I'm not all that important, just here for secure. I like Greek letters as much as anyone, but could you please familiarize us outsiders with that fancy term you've been throwing at us? Dr. Mesmer cites to herself as she continues to remove the final few papers from the briefcase. She turns to green. Well, as you should have remembered from the societal census program surveys you got, Omega-K is what we call the scenario that we're all forced to live with. The immortality one? I'm sure you know what I mean. Dr. Mesmer turns to everyone else. The person who just interrupted everything is Gregory Green, though I'm sure they go by a different name now. They are the spokesperson for full-body transplants from Hermitius Labs. I haven't heard Green in years. Cassie Spine. New nickname I'm trying to break in. Green smiles and waits for a response. No one replies. Anyways, many of you are already on our customer list, so I'm sure you're all familiar with the service I oversee. Yes, I've… undergone the procedure. Dr. Mesmer doesn't let Green continue their comments as she continues her introductions. And finally, we have a representative from Marshall Carter and Dark, Miss Su Yun Li, though we were expecting Mr. Jusu Kim to arrive. Su Yun Li pulls out a note card and begins to read. Miss Su Yun Li is unable to make any binding agreements associated with the Product Hypnotchaline. She is unable to make any statements on Marshall Carter and Dark's behalf, and anything that has spoken of Miss Su Yun Li is to be considered an opinion. Su Yun puts away the note card. Mr. Jusu will not be coming as he does not speak English. Not surprised they send us the diplomatic equivalent of a middle finger. Aside to Su Yun, no offense. I don't think that's quite appropriate. No need to be crude, Captain. This is actually good. We can tear apart Marshall Carter and Dickey's newest product right here. Please. I was of the understanding that this was going to be a serious discussion. My bad was just hoping we'd actually make something come of this, not just complain to the underlings. Michael's is silenced by a glare from Dr. Mesmer. I'll drop it. Dr. Mesmer straightens the papers in her hand and begins to read the first page. The meeting here today is to actually address both Prometheus Labs and Marshall Carter and Dark's arguably immoral practices regarding their long-term solutions to involuntary immortality. Dr. Young and Captain Michael's are present to provide alternative solutions from both a professional and a civilian point of view. Arguably immoral, that… that thing is a human trafficker and butcher. Ms. Su Yun points towards Green. Please, apart from Mr. Michael's, we're all decent women here. Yes, he's wearing another person. Your people give people inescapable nightmares. We'd like to figure out a way to put an end to both of those things, and since our usual methods haven't exactly worked, we were hoping to make a deal. And I have to reiterate, I am no longer responsible for nor capable of affecting Hypnotchaline marketing and distribution. There was all due respect, Ms. Su Yun. Why are you here? Dr. Mesmer passed along a pair of pages to each of the members present, detailing the potential fallacies of Marshall Carter and Dark's business plan. I would like to show everyone some information regarding Hypnotchaline and its boot-led competitors. It's quite obvious that Marshall Carter and Dark benefits when their competitors fail. And while that might mean that more people have access to a safe alternative to eternal life and a closest equivalent of death, this does leave millions trapped in their bodies in some form of torture after having been exposed to faulty products. This not only leaves large portions of elderly and unhealthy population unable to recover in any form, but it also causes them to become a further burden than they were in, quote-unquote, life. Dr. Young briefly reviews the article. Oh, buck, I was not aware of this. Well, I am aware of this. I will also state that until Hypnotchaline would move to Mr. G. Su Kim's control, there were no manufacturer competitors. What's the prognosis for these people? Do they wake up? I cannot disclose that information. If you take a look at the files I just handed to each of you, they detail the various ways these competitors tortured their customers in the long term. Of course, the most famous defect is permanent sleep apnea. However, other issues include sleepwalking, which as you might guess is far more dangerous when you're unable to awaken and, of course, permanent vegetative states rather than comatose ones. While defects in medicine is something common enough in the pharmaceutical industry, the rate and extent of these defects is detrimental to both people who purchase and use these drugs, as well as society as a whole, for needing to simply adjust to their new burdens as their family becomes much more difficult to care for. This, this is awful. It's economics. Ms. Su Yun, you mentioned something about there being no competitors until ownership was transferred. Is that related at all? This is a recorded conversation. I cannot disclose marketing strategies while an active competitor who may have necessitated management changes is sitting at this table. I think we're a bit beyond that. If Pyongyang wants, I could put my fingers in my ears. See? Diplomatic middle finger. I can't tell which one is the finger. This isn't a soundbite or a pre-recorded message. Any actions that affect the marketability of Prometheus lab services will affect hypnotic lines. The product is extremely vulnerable to any and all external changes. Dr. Mesmer prepares another stable section of papers to pass out to the people at the table. Whatever the case may be, Ms. Su Yun, your company is still arguably has the more moral solution, despite the immoral actions that you may commit in the name of sales. Dr. Mesmer once again passes out copies of the documents describing the various processes that Prometheus labs entails regarding full-body transplants. I'd like to draw your attention to the kidnapping and preparing of subjects, the disposal of brains, and the distribution of false information to certain customers about the body source. I believe the rest of the document will speak for itself. It's not really kidnapping. A moment of silence passes as those present read. Michaels. I still can't believe Joyce is okay with this. With due respect, Captain Michaels, you're the only person at this table who has the enhancements necessary to avoid this stuff. I was born in 1989, and it's, what, 2130? Raise your hand if you've not undergone the surgery. Only Captain Michaels raises his hand. Not surprised, still disappointed. If FBT didn't exist most of us would be dead, well, not dead, but worse, asleep perhaps. I myself am ashamed of what I've had to do to continue my research, but I'm proud to say that I've only had the one transplant. Oh, what is this? Are we putting the bottled water industry on trial next? Dr. Mesmer turns to green, glaring. Are you comparing bottled water to human lives? No, I'm comparing bottled water to disposable lives. Look, what do you think happens to the people we use for the procedure? The answer is, nothing. Thousands of people are snapped up off the planet every month for organ harvesting, slavery, and so on. They're screwed from the get-go, and their future is screwed as well. Is it really fair then to just let them go to waste when those of us with the will to live get turned into rotting mummies? Sometimes it's not their choice. I know.  Look, what's your name? Young, is it? Let me pull up your file. I can tell you exactly where your current… outfit came from. Give me a moment. That's a bit rich coming from a grown man wearing the skin of an 18-year-old girl. Lavita Loka. At least I had a reason to change beyond getting bored of my current genitalia. Ah, here it is. Young, you were fessed off the streets of Lithuania. Your body grew up in the theater, and got its showers and bathroom stalls. You clicked your heels and danced for change in a hat and your parents were, oh, what a surprise. Gone. Now, that body is doing jolly good work for the illustrious foundation. It's healthy, vigorous, and blah, blah, blah. If we hadn't gotten it, it'd just be another maggot hive sooner or later. Living fertilizer scraped off the street and dumped into the mud. I don't know about you, but I like to view the industry as a recycling one. Dr. Young audibly gags. I've got your other files too if you're curious. Please, this is not what we came here to do. You're absolutely right. We should do something, and Prometheus Lath would like some money for it. What? Of course you would. You really don't expect us to hand resources over to you, unless you are able to find a way to humanely deal with the problem at large, the foundation will not contribute to your company. Dr. Mesbert turns to Ms. Su Yun, or yours for that matter, if you'd like to tell your higher upset. Fine. Ms. Su Yun takes out her phone and sends a text. I'll tell you if they get back to me. I mean, I couldn't help but notice that one of your issues against this service we all use is disposal. Sure, we could say launch all the spare brains into space that was on the table during inception, but that's expensive. And just to have living people floating around in space, what's the benefit of that? You realize that it's not like the problem is solved because you've hidden it a couple hundred thousand feet above sea level. Same goes for your landfills, they're still there, they're still suffering. Marshall Carter and Dark is willing to take actions against certain competitors in exchange for a subsidy. Is that what they texted you? Yes, I would be less vague otherwise.  Come on, the McDonald's people aren't going to dismantle every drug network in the world just because you lined their pockets. And as for the disposal, I didn't say launch the brains into the stratosphere to create a big jelly ring. I meant far, into the sun.  You're seriously proposing throwing people into the sun?  Did you hear a word I said about them still being alive? You know, once I got my credentials back, I checked on what Dr. Michaels did with 3984 after I… left. Dr. Mesmer slams a fist on the table, causing her briefcase to clatter closed. Is everyone here going to continue to argue about ridiculous ideas or will you allow me to present an actual idea? Sorry, Dr. Mesmer, I just want to drill into green how idiotic he… she is. Mesmer sighs and motions for young to continue. Dr. Michaels tried to incinerate the brain to see what would happen. Nothing. The brain breaks up, except all the cells are still alive, and we had no way of knowing if those animals were still conscious or not. The sun won't fix anything. Dr. Mesmer glares at everyone. She pinches the bridge of her nose.  Dr. Mesmer places her hand back down. Apologies, well, technically. No one cares, Green. You're not a kid. Dr. Young, I personally am aware of your findings and regards the incineration of the brain. In fact, a secondary reason that I have brought Captain Michaels along to this meeting is because he is the solution we are looking for. Dr. Mesmer gestures towards Eric Michaels. I actually have to show them, don't I? Dr. Mesmer nods. Eric takes off his shirt to reveal his cybernetic replacements. Captain Michael's cybernetic implants have been able to not only keep him healthy, but keep him healthy by pre-Omega K standards for the last century. With proper funding and research aid from both Prometheus Labs and Marshall Carter and Dark, this could be expanded to more complex organs or body parts, or even to android carapaces that can be used to house brains and can be shut off at will. A combination of both of your products, if you will. So Young gets up and makes a phone call in the corner of the room. Captain Michaels, what's the, uh, long-term outlook for your condition? And by long term I do mean, long term. I mean, parts degrade, but they can be replaced. Anymore than that, I don't know. I just do what the docs tell me. What sort of androids are we talking about? The sort that are just robots that think good or the fleshy ones indistinguishable from normal humans? Entirely depends on the funding. Ideally, the bare minimum is a carapace that does not require oxygen to operate. This would also greatly help the overpopulation process, as that would mean that humans could live in areas that were not previously habitable, such as the ocean. Do we even have enough metal in the plan to do that for everyone? We don't have enough food or water as it is. So Young Lee returns to the table and places her phone face up upon it. Mr. Jisoo is listening in. Please continue. Oh, I see you've finally worked your time. Pleasure, Mr. Jisoo. Glad you could join us. Continue with the speech foundation. I was told there was a language barrier that prevented you from arriving. Dr. Mesmer looks at Ms. Soo Young disdainfully. In any case, the proposition was simply combining the aspects of both Prometheus Labs and your own, creating androids capable of housing brains for the human population. The market isn't necessarily about the product, but about the upgrades and replacements that would need to be made as it decays, much like a phone, actually. I know you are very focused on market, and I figured this would be a good midpoint for both of our needs, and to address your concern, Dr. Young. Dr. Mesmer takes out her phone and begins tapping. I am sending you an email regarding potential resource usage should this plan go through. This is currently for Foundation Eyes only, until we receive further funding from other sources. Understood. I can't speak for our friends in Korea, but I can tell you that I am, honestly, not focused on the market. I am focused on quality of experience. If you can assure me full customization and accuracy with your little Android project, then I'll pitch it, but that's all. Accuracy being the key word, right, Cassie? Customization is of equal weight.  Simple things for simple minds. And I will add that we have far more repeat customers than first-timers, in case anyone thinks I'm an exception rather than the rule. Customization is currently higher on the projection table. Being able to look human is less important currently than being able to do certain actions, such as walk and eat and such. Most of those actions are unnecessary, obviously, but considering people still like eating despite their tongues rotting away and their stomach exploding, having those as an additional feature seems appropriate. Dr. Mesmer pauses, looking at green. She sighs before continuing. However, accuracy may be something we can commit to should we get substantial funding beyond initial projections. Even I have to admit that we do have to retain some humanity for this to be marketable. Some? I don't want to see terminators bonking. Thank you for that mental image, by the way, you weirdos. I'll pitch this. Hell, I'll even support it if you agree to put Prometheus' labs in charge of the aesthetic side of this endeavor. Define aesthetic side. What exactly does that entail? Skin, hair, eyes, tongues, fingernails, the works. So long as you don't get those fingernails from Eastern Europeans. Very funny. Is that the Lithuanian speaking or the humanitarian?  And no, they'd be synthetic, but lifelike, ideally. How much do you project that to cost? The majority of the funding we need is gathered in resources, testing and construction is minimal in comparison. Hang on, hang on. Before we do that, I'd like to hear what the thing with two heads but doesn't talk has to say. That's questions for you, not me. Do not want. Hangs up. He says yes. You do realize I just spoke some Korean to you, yes? Would that not make you immediately think that I could understand basic Korean phrases like I don't want this? Kim is only in charge of Hypnotroline because the project is so easily pushed to the ropes. I'm smarter, more qualified and far more stable than he is. I'll pitch your idea above his pay grade, just as he did to me. We will get back to you on this. Heh. Never thought I'd see the middle finger turn itself around. You're pointing right back at your boss. Well, that's definitely a pleasant surprise. You're sure you have the credentials to do this, Ms. Soo Young? I don't like Mr. G. Soo. I don't like what he's done to approximately 8 million people if that number is still holding. I'll be happy to make the sales pitch. I don't need credentials. I have a more stable product to offer, with hopefully decreased expenditures and excellent PowerPoint-making skills. Green slowly claps. Dr. Young, Captain Michaels, do you two have any opinions on the matter or are you in agreement? I'm willing to let the kid help with the science project, but she'd need some supervision. Our supervision. It's the only solution proposed so far that isn't completely abhorrent. Are we taking a boat? Unless anyone else happened to bring a solution they believe would appeal to us as well. So far as I can tell, it's robots or the sun. I've already stated that I don't much care either way. This life we all have is actually rather fun, so let's stick to ensuring that. It won't be for much longer. I hope no sudden revelations appear if we do this. If there are no more questions, shall we put it to a boat? I. I also vote I. Captain Michaels, Ms. Sue Young, Cassie? I. I can't act on behalf of Marshal Carter in dark. I'll send my I in the mail once I'm back at the wheel. It's a school night and I'm beat. I. Just remember who you'll be trusting the design choices to once you get your money. It's like you're trying to make me regret this. Perfect. This meeting ended sooner than expected, which I'm sure is convenient for those of us who had plans for the night. Shall we adjourn or does anyone else have any final words? Green, you're not actually going to school, right? Hey, Levita Loka. Let's just fix Levita for now. End log. All five exited the conference room in a calm quiet. Lee and Cassie took the first elevator to the lobby, both smiling to themselves. One was much more brazen and smug than the other, but then again, teenagers aren't exactly the subtle types. The other three took a second elevator. Eric and Emily bid farewell in the parking lot as they walked to their car. Back to the airport, I suppose? Eric asked as he slid into the driver's seat. Not yet.  Really? Why? Our flight back is in a few hours. I know. We have plenty of time. I promised I'd show your sister something. I mean, I might be breaking a few rules doing this, but the place has been abandoned for some time now. Wait, Joyce blew out here? Young, not as slowly. It's important enough for the airfare. Well, I guess we do have time. Great. Emily started punching in to your dress. Eric pulled out of the parking lot and made a left onto a one-way street. Where are we going anyways? To see your brother. Eric shot Emily a confused look as he pulled up to a stoplight. You know his grave is like two states over, right? I'm not talking about the grave, Eric. I'm talking about the body. Eric froze. He let the words sink in for a few moments. Then the questions came flooding in. Why is the body here? What's there to see? What happened to Tony? He decided that maybe you didn't want to know, but Young wasn't giving him a choice. You know, the light's green. Oh, right. Eric pressed the pedal to the floor, and the car raced towards site 2718.


Looks good. Check, check. This thing's on. Beautiful. Good afternoon, I guess. It's almost noon. My name is Jason Harley. I run engineering for breakwater, and I'm here to talk to you about the breakwater private cloud appliance, what we're doing with OpenStack, and what we are bringing to the market, that we feel is a little bit different. So you may well be asking, who are you? Which is a pretty fair question at this point. We are a Canadian company. We're based out of Toronto. And we have been sort of silently participating and watching in the OpenStack community for the last two years. So first and foremost, breakwater is a hyper-converged turnkey private cloud appliance, which wins me all the buzzword bingo points I generally can get. I do well at the pub with the boys, but we have a 2U solution that has four nodes, fully HA control plane, has compute and storage, that instead of just dropping a controller on your floor, we're literally talking about installing a full HA OpenStack cloud with the initial resources to get a private cloud up and running. With that said, we're focused on delivering private cloud to enterprises. We're focused on delivering to sort of small to medium-sized dead shops, QA, or sophisticated enterprises that are ready to take that jump to fully automated infrastructure or what the industry is now referring to as IT as a service. That idea of actually delivering to your customers and not being the guy who runs IT, who has to answer my least favorite question, how come I can do it easier at home? If you run IT departments and you've been asked that question, you know how terrible it is to say because I said so. As I mentioned, we're recently at a stealth, which is sort of why this slide's entitled, Who Are You?, and we're new members of the OpenStack Foundation and Community. We're very much looking forward to participating, contributing and sharing our experiences when talking with customers about their challenges using OpenStack in a private cloud enterprise context. So why breakwater? Why are we here? Why do we think that we've got something worth talking about? We've got these five value icons. People love value icons today. And these are sort of our cornerstones or our pillars of our focus and what we're promising the market and our customers. So first of all, we like to talk about simplicity, not just simplicity in deployment, but simplicity in consumption. At Breakwater, we believe that private cloud projects are measured on consumption, not necessarily availability. If you build an amazing private cloud for your company and no one uses it, it doesn't matter how stable it is. So with that, we've built a very consumable interface. Horizon is an excellent tool. I think it's a very technical tool. I talk a lot about cockpit computing. I've been the guy with three monitors and all the screens in my evil genius layer, which was a cubicle in a building. But I think that we all use technical enough tools these days and really when we're talking about infrastructure as a service, we want to get in, get out, and get on with whatever it is that's driving the requirement for that infrastructure with our job. Breakwater is integrated. Like I said, it is a hyper-converged appliance. So we have tight integration between our software and the hardware that we run on. We also talk about integration in the context of the enterprise or the business. So we have support for talking to LDAP and Active Directory with Keystone. We also, in addition to being a hyper-conversion appliance, we will talk to Enterprise Storage. We have a scale-out object store, which I'll talk about in that next point there in the middle. But the kind of integration we're talking about here is for capacity and performance. So if you have a virtual machine that is running, say, a highly transactional LLTP workload, a scale-out object store, not the best for that. So we have some storage partners that we support and will help you get high-performance storage into your VMs. So we're scale-out. Hyper-convergence is generally about scale-out. But architecture specifically makes linear scalability of your computing storage easy. We have a fully automated way that you can just drop in a new 2U unit. It's got your four nodes in it. It's got your storage. It comes online without disrupting your current workloads.  Time to value. This is where the analysts give OpenStack a hard time. It's referred to as incredibly complex, the permutations and combinations of the amount of different ways you can deploy it. I think approach is about 10,000. It's been a long time since I've done discrete math. We've taken a very opinionated or curated approach to OpenStack. We've done the hard work. We've watched it break. We've worked through all the problems, and we've basically decided this is how an OpenStack cloud should be built for your business. My last deployment of this cloud took 55 minutes. We went in, we racked, and the customer was launching VMs in 55 minutes. That is real time to value. No 16-week project timelines and Gantt charts. We were in and out, and they were in a position to start consuming a private cloud. Resiliency is the other big thing that the analysts give OpenStack a hard time for, rightly or wrongly.  The box will come up on its own. It will automatically cluster, bring resources online. This is the sort of thing that businesses expect. In addition to control plane resiliency, we've solved instance resiliency. Whether you boot from volume or boot from an ephemeral instance, if you lose a node, we'll bring those VMs back for you. We are welcoming the businesses pets and cattle. That is the legacy applications that take all that care and feeding, and they name Scooby, as well as the applications that most businesses are telling us that they want to build for the future. These scale out so-called Web 2.0 or Web 3.0. I'm not sure what that last one actually means, application. In addition to all of that great stuff, we're in good company. We just launched, publicly, our partnership with two other organizations who we believe have been born into the cloud. These are companies who have gone away and they've looked at the problem with infrastructure, and they've architected their solutions to do it. We are offering what we believe is the first of its kind. It's a turnkey integrated system that delivers the best-of-breed solutions of solid fire and arista networking along with the breakwater appliance. Like I said, if you need to scale out, if you want intense IOPS, I don't think there's anybody better than Solid Fire for what they can do. The switching and resiliency of Arista's data center network control plane I think is second to none. So in an effort to make Mark Shuttleworth proud, we are going to do a live demo. I've tethered to my phone, and I'm hoping that the demo gods will be good to us. So this is breakwater. Log in. We're talking to Keystone. This is OpenStack. And we now landed on the dashboard. As you can see, this is quite simple. I'm not being asked for the 50 things I might want to do. I'm not getting bombarded with dials. This is very clean. I'm in a project that has nothing. This is my sandbox. My name is Jason. It's called Jason. You can see that I have a quota assigned to me. Cool. So I want to VM. I'm going to launch an instance. I need a Windows machine for this project I'm working on, and Windows 2012 R2. I know that the theme of demos at this conference seems to be to launch a Cirrus instance, but Windows is a little cuter. And I'm going to call this NetTest. I'm going to work on the new .NET framework. One of the other things we hear a lot about business is fighting VM sprawl. I have managed virtualization environments where we were at 95% usability and we were positive that 90% of those machines weren't good for anything. So in an effort to keep business honest, we have this idea of resource leasing, if you will. You can turn it off. But let's say I need this VM for about 60 days for the project I'm working on. I can extend it easily. So I click Go. In the background now, we've done a zero cost clone from the Glantz image library. Jam that into a cinder volume, attached it to a nova instance, and knocked it up, and it's online. So that's great. The beauty of this is that your guy in Junior QA who just wants to test something and doesn't need to know anything about what a nova cinder or Glantz is and are able to take advantage of what OpenStack can offer. So my instance is coming online. I can see some details about it. I've got a small plan. It's got a network address. If I needed to attach another volume, for example, I could attach a data volume that's maybe 100 gigs, which should probably be sufficient for the work I'm going to do right now. We'll see if it's come online yet. Windows, for those of you who aren't familiar with it in the OpenStack context, it has to reboot twice. First time it comes up, talks to the metadata service, and then gets the information it needs to actually run the sysprep job, which causes another reboot. So Linux instances come online in about 25 seconds, 30 seconds. Windows 2012 R2 takes two and a half, three minutes, which I'm told is pretty good. Unfortunately, that's going to take a few minutes. So maybe to keep me honest, we're going to show an interface that people are a little bit more familiar with maybe. So this is Horizon. As I said, it's a technical dashboard, but we are OpenStack. We haven't changed OpenStack. We're committed to the Power BI program and the work that they're doing with Defcore and Refcore. So if I go into the JSON project, which is where we were just hanging out, you'll see that my net test instance has just spun up here. I can go look at it and see what's going on, and we'll see exactly the sort of things that you would expect Horizon to tell you about your instance and get a log. I think we can even get that console again. Well, look at that. So what we got going on there is back over here. Well, that instance is booting because goodness has taken a bit. One of the other things that we have done with Breakwater that a lot of sort of more sophisticated IT organizations like is resource-based billing. So what the industry calls showback or chargeback. So this project I just switched into, which is creatively called accounting, is on a monthly budget. So it's got $2,000 allocated to it. My resource pricing has been set by my cloud administrator. You can see I have four machines here and they're all doing their thing. Truth in advertising, I spun these up yesterday evening, so I've only consumed about $2.39. But if we sat here on the dashboard, these things would continue to count up. Reports are available for administrators that they can then send off to appropriate lines of business. The other thing that's a bit different when you are in a project that's in budget mode is that all of a sudden we're showing dollars back to your IT department. This can start to cause some very interesting conversations. All of a sudden internally, when someone is asking you for something that before you've just had to roll your eyes and say is unreasonable, you can actually show them the real dollars and cents that that costs your business. Again, we're very focused on private cloud meaning that a lot of more sophisticated organizations are looking to do for some projects. Worth mentioning, if you have a project that's in quota mode, let's say you don't want to show your Tiger team of developers how much money they're actually costing the business, your administrators can still generate reports that will bring back dollars and cents into your accounting system. Finally, our Windows instance has come online. And as you can see, this is about as real as it gets. I'm an admin. If I could type, I would be dangerous. Okay, so our Windows instance on our demo environment are secured by default. To practice, we recommend to customers so we don't have default passwords.  So this is Windows 2012 R2. For those of you who haven't seen it, it virtualizes very well on OpenStack. One last thing before we break for some questions. I think I'm pretty much at time. We have an administration section that sort of gets into talking about the hardware. We also have the obligatory pretty graphs that people like to show in the boardroom. My CEO is laughing at me over there. This is what we feel is the easiest way to let administrators get into using an OpenStack private cloud. We have talked to people who are interested in breakwater as a stepping stone to a major OpenStack deployment that they want to build themselves. This is exactly the kind of private cloud that they want to consume. So with that, does anybody have any questions, concerns, comments, tomatoes? Yes. What's our core innovation in the company to repeat the question from the gentleman? I think as a team we're very proud of the way that we have done that shared nothing control plane. It is painless. There's no make sure you turn on the one in the bottom left hand corner first. We are also very proud of the way that we are trying to make OpenStack consumable. One of the core beliefs is that private cloud projects are measured on consumption. So if you build it and no one uses it, you've failed. That's a big word. No one likes to use that very much anymore. But I think that answers your question. Any other questions from the audience? If you're shy and want to talk to me afterwards, that's fine. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Again, I'm Jason. I run engineering for breakwater.