This is the billed OGM call for Tuesday, March 8th, 2022. And I was just reporting in on the conversation I had with Pete an hour ago, where we were talking about emerging about sense making sense making in general, and then also about project management, task management and all that. And all those conversations kind of blended together by the end of our conversation in a really interesting way. Partly I was I was beefing about strategy projects tasks, and why are those all separate tools and separate conversations why isn't there a way to sort of roll things up and see them at different levels of detail. Right. I had a similar thought Jerry based on the call we had last week, in terms of what information people would be looking for or trying to find. And the ease of finding it within the brain. You know, whether that means meta tagging things that we haven't been meta tagging so they could be searched in a couple different ways. In terms of, for instance, I'm just now working on some policy stuff with the American Chemical Society and that can go far and wide from diversity issues to environmental responsibility to chemical safety and so forth. But one of the things they're struggling with a little bit is the same notion and you've got policy statements in all of those areas, but unless you know where to go look for them you don't find them. Right. And they wouldn't be they aren't tagged in ACS as policy, for instance, as a tag. I was thinking in the conversation we had previously that just if we started to look at those major dimensions in the brain it would be a massive re tagging operation, but at least going forward we could tag in terms of the content, whether or not there's a social movement or a group of people working on it that would, you know, so if you wanted to contact others interested in that area how would you do it, those kinds of things. There's a thing I know nothing about except it's in my brain and I think is related is called faceted classification. And I think, you know, tagging meta tagging metadata, all these things are relevant here in particular as ways of rolling up the right view at the right time. So I want to see all things that are strategic and also related to Ukraine or whatever. And the time filter is sometimes useful. I mean I'm more interested in what's being said about the Ukraine within the last four days than what was said about the Ukraine 12 years ago. That's true, although I've recently been watching a couple of videos that are like, Hey, people, this is what's about to happen, you know, after the. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've been seeing some of those two. Yeah, so it's interesting how that all that all fits. So, on the one hand I was beefing about. Why does the task thing that moves from day to day and moment to moment, have to differ from the thing where we declare strategy, and then also how can, and then going over to emergent events sensemaking. Here's facts on the ground. Is it really is it a factor is it misinformation what does it relate to, what does it seem to be evidence of, and then above that are kind of conjectures or possible paths or outcomes, and above that are large scale explanations about what's happening, which might be very different from each other. There might be really different from each other and I think there's this game up and down the sense making stack because it's about sense making where you're trying to compare which one of these explanations makes the most sense given what how things are playing then in the middle of both of these things are a bunch of models thinking frameworks, and so on the OGM list. Mark Spaskowski mentioned Aristotle's for causes, and jack said I like the four causes I'm not very fond of the four causes, but I don't I'm no I'm definitely no Aristotle scholar or logician or philosopher. Yeah, they're quite interesting and I know a few people who are totally like stuck on them. But Scott mooring is a big fan of the cabrera research method which has its own S CBO or whatever it is model, I can sort of look it up in a second, and Glenda O Yang developed a model called CD E framework containers differences and exchanges and then the cabrera one is called DSRP distinction systems relationships perspectives. And there's there's others as well. But as Pete and I were talking about this, each of those becomes a way of looking at the data. And so we might say hey, we have these two competing ways of analyzing what's going on. Why doesn't somebody who's highly trained in DSRP, let's say Scott, you go away and assess the situation within that framework and then come back and tell us how that plays out. And then someone else go use CD E and analyze the situation and then let's see how these sets of ideas work next to each other. And then we might prefer okay this one seems to be really fruitful let's stay with this one and and not spend energy or time on the other one for a while, without throwing the other one away. And that that's how we make sense. And I think that when Rob posted his very nice inquiry to the OGM list like, we're not really making sense here we're just sharing tidbits about what happened. He's right. And a piece of this, this conversation is what we might be able to do. And then I was also saying that I use my brain at multiple levels. So I have evidence and facts of whatever's happening, you know, the interviews of Russian soldiers who've been captured in Ukraine calling their moms and also the bearded guys confession about, like, I might go to jail but we're stupid here we're in the wrong here and we're sorry and I don't know if you saw that one but I think that was yet that was yesterday it's it's really moving. So I kind of use the brain at multiple levels it's not a tool for just one level, which is I think one of the reasons I love it. Well, I think that's the richness of the brain cherry, but unless you're very skillful, you don't know necessarily how to find those I mean I've, I got fairly decent with a very simple device of sort of parent sibling child, you know, but going beyond that I then have to delve into one bucket to get at who else is working on this or is there a group in the US that's active or, you know, what's the most recent published information that's documented and good data or whatever I might be interested in. And I mean this is the complexity of data management. It's an explosion of content volume as well. Exactly. And the brain can't do set operators, they can't say show me all the thoughts that are connected to this thought and that thought over there. It doesn't know how to do an inner you know intersection of two things. It doesn't know how to do content operators really it's not baked in. There's another tool, funny enough called the brain, which was a bunch of grad students in Montreal I talked to them a couple years ago sort of sort of locked down. And that brain was really good at database lookups and logical operators that's sort of their specialty. And sometimes you need that and sometimes you don't. But also tools that are very, very databasey tend to not be good for random associations and just storytelling. And on Monday's call, the free jury spring call, we were talking a bunch. Bentley is trying to say okay so how do we make these extracts from the brain that are storytelling tools. And that we've been in that conversation a couple times. We're making a little progress I don't know how much progress but but to me the storytelling aspect is really important also. It is if we want more people to listen and learn. Yeah, what's interesting to me is, if I can tell a story where you can rewind to any part of the story and go, Oh, Jerry said this is happening and this is why he said that. And I can go pick apart the evidence and the materials and the, you know, whatever was found and whatever contrary opinions even right. That's, that's why I was asking about the dimensionality if you will, because it means that you have to take the brain into three or four D. to do it because it's a different zone of dimensionality than what it's currently mapping. Yeah. And this is where timelines and time matters a lot and other things like that a thing I wish I could do with my brain is see it view it temporarily as a timeline, including. Here's a you know here's Pope innocent the third. I mean everything that happened at the same time as Pope innocent the third that I've logged in my brain, like, cut a kind of time slice through my brain for that era, that lifetime. Right that would be super super super interesting but it's not not at all feasible. You know, we have presently works, but if we externalize my brain so another big hunk of the conversation with Pete was.  And I'm like, Yes, but I can't I can't do an obsidian the things I do easily all the time every day in the brain. The moment those couple gestures are feasible in obsidian. I can contemplate jumping over, and I can't contemplate cutting over any moment before that because, because I have this I have this rich expressive capacity with the brain, even though I'm locked into the proprietary tool. Well, we didn't talk about changing all the time too so I mean I'm feeling like my, my keep up capacity is regularly challenged. You know, in terms of the different ways that I'm getting even meeting notifications now in terms of, you know, I'm not primary on Google. I set up a whole filing system on mail that and sorted into the key categories of organizations I was supporting at the time. And so chemistry goes in one file, etc. And that's, that's worked. It's dated means I have three separate email accounts labeled accordingly. Oh, so you have a different email account for each of the different endeavor. I did at that time because oh my ability to do things. And so I had actually an ACS email account and an arcs foundation email account and my personal account. You know, you know that you can take something like Gmail, and you can have Gmail talk to all of those servers and pull all the mail into one minbox right. Yeah, I already have so much in my inbox right now I can't stand it. It's already too big. But I need to do something like that and I also need courage a bunch of stuff that doesn't need to exist anymore.  I also try to get myself off all mailing lists all automatic mailings all daily updates or whatever that aren't relevant. I will go hit unsubscribe unsubscribe unsubscribe because if they keep coming in even if you're deleting them it's still a mess. You want to just urge this. I don't want to hijack our call into that kind of manipulation of stuff it's just well if the if the big problems of our time. I mean information overload, and one of the things I say is that we're drowning in the info slide, and we don't have a place to create a common memory it's one of the birth stories of GM. Right. Good way to to me. What I would love would be a service that would say, Okay, on the topic of X here are four completely different points of view. And I want to read all four. And I sort of trick Google by, you know, linking to four different distinctly different points of view so they can set up an algorithm that says Judy wants this kind of stuff when she searches. But even that's time consuming. Oh, it's incredibly time consuming. Yeah, because then you have to fake to be interested in other sorts of things. Yeah.  I wasn't really doing for because that was too many but I could at least click through to the opposing viewpoint. And then that would screw up the algorithm for Google. Exactly. And, and Stacy and I were going to talk about leaving, except how do we, how do we leave it. Do you remember, I'm counting on your memory. And we were just talking about taking smaller clips, sending them out to be watched prior, and then coming back to them. Oh, yes, that's the detail of the weaving, I think. So, Judy, one of the things that I think one of the light bulbs that went on about weaving the world was that really don't need to create a lot of original episodes of a podcast I mean it's interesting that we would like to and we will try to do a lot of work. But there's a tremendous number of really, really great interviews out there with people we care about whose ideas we care about why don't we go weave those. Right. And then it was like, well, why don't we have watching parties to do the weaving and just turn some of our joint calls into okay everybody watch this 20 minute clip and that's what what Stacy just said is, if there's an hour and a half interview it's just too long to sit down and do a weaving party around that. Because you're going to want to hit pause like really often, and an hour and a half can turn into four hours worth of weaving no problem. Well then biological functions in it pose as well so you end up. As well as that. Checking out that. Yeah, as well as that exactly. So we were trying to figure out okay how do we pick a chunk of an interview and if anybody wants to go watch the entire thing and come back and say well I met I made it all the way through. But the intention would be only to pick like a 20 a third of something big, for example. That could work. And the other part of it was taking videos that did represent the different points of use. And that would be to choose from a really nice diverse variety of videos to go do that, and not just videos blog posts books, whatever I mean, it could be in some sense weaving could be like a book club on steroids. I mean, you know if the if the artifact we're going to discuss is somebody's book. That's what book clubs do and do it regularly. The only problem is that there's almost no artifacts that survived the book club conversations. The thing that has worked in professional societies is panel discussions with people of differing viewpoints deliberately selected, because they're going to come at it from a different perspective. And I think that's a good introduction to people who are not deep in the conversation already and have already chosen a over C for 80% of what they're listening to. I'm speaking of differing opinions. Daniel to Vissy just posted to the OGM list, a couple of links to this neo Nazi Ukrainian neo Nazi group, and one of its members on a video panel, saying hey, you all think that this is all poor Ukraine send us this javelins but we now have more javelins than anybody but England. We're, if we survive this we're going to be a power to be reckoned with, and people are going to be worried that we have so much armament. And I'm like, not so sure about this but but he's a neo Nazi with a point of view that's interesting to factor into the whole discussion. So how do you represent that in a shared memory. Right. Well and I've been picking up because a variety of things a lot of controversies about medical management. COVID in particular but that as a microcosm of overall medical management and how can individuals possibly make the correct choice for themselves, depending on the influence bodies that are influencing the public policies, etc. And most people in all lowercase merged word like the ecomings, you know, can't go back to primary articles and decide whether or not they believe what Professor X versus Professor y is saying. So it becomes really complicated. I mean, might there be, and I think this really mattered during lockdown and I don't think anybody handled it well. Might there have been a way to have these arguments about public safety and public health in a public way, where different people could interpret the technical garden, and bring it back toward the middle and say well, these five studies seem to support this and then where honesty was like honesty and transparency were paramount somehow so that that would lead to credibility, because when the when the US CDC said oh masks aren't important because they didn't want there to be a panic and everybody buying up all the masks, which was just stupid early on, they immediately lost credibility and they everybody's like well look what they were saying just a little while ago. And that's because they weren't honest or transparent or anything like that. Exactly. And that comes back to trust and a bunch of other things but I'm really interested in how might these conversations move forward, so that they make sense, but allow for differences of opinion, and then don't get stuck. So at some point you have to make decisions. There are models that exist in different scientific communities, because almost every professional society and they're all in the subdivisions of, you know, very little subsets of science because everyone's so specialized. But they have advisory boards and committees that take care of looking at those kinds of things and try to route out bias or incorrect interpretation. And often in those groups they use a panel approach I mean you never have one review or for an article you have three to five. Yeah. And it's the editor's job to pick the reviewers and most of the editors really want a complex review so they do a pretty good job of identifying the editors for, you know, the reviewers for a given subtopic within something broad like microbiology. So how, how permeable are peer reviewed academic journals and other things like that to outsider ideas that are actually pretty good but are way outside the mainstream because the sense I get is that very often that structure of having a lot of advisors, it's a little bit like, you're a grad student, you need an advisor, your ideas really cookie sounding, you're going to have an extremely hard time finding an advisor, and without an advisor who's going to champion you you really probably won't make it through the academic, like, like maelstrom whatever, whatever that's called. How do you, how do you test for that how do you help the outsider ideas survive that how do you separate outsider ideas from cookie conspiracy ideas. Well, I'd be a lot richer than I am if I actually need the answer to that question. I know a lot of hunting for that one. But, but, but the sense that I have is the single fundamental thing is light of day. And it test to light of day. Does that make sense in light of ABCD and E which anybody could find if they just look for anti a similar to a etc. And that's kind of my process. When I'm reading something that as my old proff would say your left elbow just says it doesn't quite feel right. And, but, but that's, I mean I'm not a typical reader. Right. You know, I've, I've had a lot of training and experience and scientific discernment, not that it's without bias because certainly there were ideas of science that were dismissed at one point that are now true. I think the best piece of single wisdom that I know I've told you before Jerry but I might not have told you Stacy was when I was in grad school and our meetings with I met with several different groups because the group I was in was too narrow and slope that was sort of odd. So I was odd even back then. But someone was at the blackboard presenting an article from a journal, and the professor who's meeting it was said Pete. Do you believe that. He was totally flummoxed. I mean he'd read it in a published journey journal. He assumed it was the truth. And he just, he was so non plus that the professor sort of said, but I'm trying to make a point here. Everything you read in the journal is our best understanding today, but you need to question that constantly, because it may not be correct. That's why we require the methodology that's why we require other references. That's why they encourage you to point out that there's an opposing point of view to the one you're submitting. All of those features of publication are intended to help with that but ultimately the reader is the only one who can truth test it. And if people are provoked enough they actually go run the experiment that they should have been run to prove it wrong, and then you start a raging debate in the literature because I got a result that's at odds with what john said in this article.  It also reminds me of the global subprime crisis, because this is one article by Michael Lewis about a German retirement fund, a little tiny town in northern Germany and the retirement fund goes belly up because they invested in derivatives during that mess. And one of the one of the officers they did a lot of due diligence they were they really thought they were safe and he says, we were we were buying triple a rated securities and triple a means no risk, right. And that's what happened is that somebody figured out how to gain the system to stuff triple a securities to fake the label it's a little bit like bending what organic or natural means and then like letting ordinary sausage through the system and labeling it organic or whatever. And that's what happened in finance and was one of the contributing factors, but but believing that triple a meant no risk was one of their first big problems. Yeah, it's, it's a it's a current problem I mean I find myself back checking a fairly high percentage of the time in the things that I received just because it doesn't quite feel right. And, and that's hard for me to quantify but you know it's a that's the product of 65 years of living closer to 75 years of total but 65 learning. You know, what fits with what what makes sense how does it connect. And how would I find out if there's another contrarian point of view I figured out with Google just search the anti of X, and see what. And it was years later that I realized that was actually helping me get richer data from Google because they couldn't predict what bucket I was going to fall in. And there's a critical thinking crisis going on with a lot of people will point to. And I think a piece of this, the collaborative sense making thing is teaching and propagating critical thinking, and just the way you're saying. I think what Scott's doing is really interesting about that in terms of trying to make that accessible at lower and more common areas of level of learning. So Silverman who was on our Thursday calls for a while kind of dropped off, but he's he hit. He got sort of popular on Twitter and he if you follow his Twitter account he's basically trying to teach critical thinking. Very much for me here's critical thinking kind of form almost foremost approach but, but that's his thing. Oh, go ahead. I was just thinking that some a lot of times what I say, and my focus on the importance of asking questions. It's almost like modeling critical thinking. And I don't know if that's always understood because I just, I was just able to articulate that in my own brain.  It feels like you're trying to lead them into, you know, other ways of seeing the problem or other kinds of things that that, you know. And the only reason that I'm at all successful in doing that is because I'm willing to back off and say, Yeah, that does make sense like I'm able to pivot a little bit, because they didn't come to these conclusions for no reason. Yeah. That's a subtlety of human negotiation and sensitivity though that is not taught and frequently not learned automatically. I ended up adapting to this situation by never actually disagreeing initially, but by saying help me understand X. And another one that I had picked up from an engineer at three and that seemed uniquely able to disagree with the podium speaker and get away with it without an argument and so I, you know he introduced every question with I'm probably coming at this from a perspective because I'm an engineer but help me with this, you know, and the non confrontational tone was pretty important, but you had to be sincere because if you reverted to reiterating your argument in contrarianist then the contrarianist persisted so it's not a it's not a speedy technique. Can we build this into OGM Jerry. Yeah. So, I'm, that's why I'm so interested in Rob questions that list is like, yes, we are kind of sharing just bits and bobs of news with each other. Rob us separately individually and kind of on our own are busy trying to assemble a bigger puzzle of what what fits where and why, as I'm trying to do with the brain as Mark Karanza seems to be doing in Max and I don't know who else actually has a persistent artifact from these things. I think it always has always had as its goal like what how do we feed the persistent artifact that that's why I own the big fungus.org is that that big fungus is meant to be the persistent artifact that that will nourish us. Right and the idea that these conversations might be nourishing is fun, like, like, that's what life ought to be like as we make our way through news and learning and science and voting, like all of that together. If we if we sort this out and manage to bring forth some new shared platform that gives us a shared set of stories that we can bonk against each other that affects that that has like that backs into education science every journalism everything. That's why I like this quest so much. Well, and that role of analyzing the fungus and trying to understand it and moving through it is something that many sophisticated organizations have professionals dedicated to trying to do. They just say Joe go find out everything you can about X and it's up to Joe to try to find all those different channels and have a systematic approach which is probably not something I'm well geared to do. There's also 3035 years maybe more of money poured down knowledge management systems tubes with very little benefit like like I think a few probably have worked but more often than not. The systems don't end up being very functional. And yet, we can do a Google search and come up with a bunch of good stuff so there's this weird distributed system that's just evaluating what it finds and doing a pretty good job of it. And I'm continually impressed at how much better a search engine Google is then Yahoo or any of the others ever was. It's this much better. Crazy how good it is. So Stacy, how do we fold all of that into a series of calls that feel like fun. See, easy. You want an answer. I just asked the question innocently but if you'd like to answer it I'm all ears, as Ross pro famously said, I just know that discussions are the starting point like before this call I was watching one of the videos that Mark had put. And it was, again, I needed, I need to use my own brain to hear them and to know, Oh, I heard something like this, I'm going to go back and check it later, or I didn't think of that. So to me that's the initial, you know, just, just seeing the players hearing how people respond to each other, when they do have more information than I have, then I can go back and I can see what makes sense. So, I don't know. I know that I think what you said before about going and finding the content that's out there already, and maybe coming to, you know, maybe approaching it like a potluck like we each bring something. It's a mapping potluck. I mean it's a, it's a, I mean I was thinking about it as a mapping party. I think I told you the story of open street maps. Is there anybody on the ground, sort of contributed something like that. Yeah, so open street map starts years ago when Steve Beach and American and UK realizes that the UK has these beautiful maps of the country that they want to sell on the web and he's like, damn it. The ordinance ordinance survey maps.  So he, and you can't sort of add data to Google maps it's what it is just what it is right you can use it or not but you can't add easily layers of data to it. So he starts this project called open street map, and they start throwing mapping parties in different towns. And this isn't the days before everybody's carrying a smartphone that has a GPS on it so GPS is already is you know Garmin and other little devices back when. Everybody gets people who have these devices to show up teaches them how to go out and run a route nearby, then they meet an hour or two later back where they started, then they upload all their data into the common database, lather rinse repeat. Right. And they built, they built a map that's I think as detailed as Google maps is and has layers. There are apparently some villages in Germany where every bush and tree has latitude and longitude coordinates and maybe even species, you know tagged up in open street now. It's astonishing. And they did that by making it fun by having parties and just doing it over and over and over. And I guess precisely what I'm looking for. Right. I just want to step back for a minute because earlier today you mentioned somebody whose name I don't remember. And it was about content putting things in containers and I think Elena, maybe. You were comparing it to you were saying there's the cabrera approach and then there was a Glenda. Glenda. Oh yeah. Can you tell me more about that. Yes, street map I just want to link this here. Here, here. Sure screen. So here's Glenda, who is lovely and was a guest of mine on a couple different calls, apparently. Back when I met her in 2011 at a workshop in the joint information operations warfare center. She runs a company called Human Systems Dynamics Institute, which has lots and lots of deep thoughts about group dynamics and how these things work. And among them the adaptive action cycle but also this containers differences and exchanges framework, which I have not linked to any of their documents so in a better world I would now under this have, or I would have a link right here from HSDI explaining the CDE framework, right. Yeah, that would be worth finding out about. Yeah, exactly I mean we could do a little more search now and we probably know a couple people and I could ask Glenda. And DSRP is a similar that's why I made the little jump thought here. This is a thinking framework from Cabrera Research Lab which is Derek Cabrera and his wife Laura and DSRP says well one way to look at a system is distinctions systems relationships and perspectives. That's pretty interesting. And both of these approaches are saying that these are the kinds of raw information you need to understand the system. So when you said that I was, I mean just just on a gut feeling I was like these, you know I'd like to look at those two systems together, because it feels like together there might be something. So, when I said earlier, what if we ask Scott Mooring to go look at an issue and model it with DSRP because he's turning into a black belt on that. He's been through several Cabrera trainings and he's working with the Cabrera's on stuff, and then find somebody in our community who understands CDE, and ask them to do the same issue in CDE, and then compare and contrast, you know, discuss. That would be really cool. That would be extremely cool. It'd be really interesting. Okay. So that, that would make a lovely topic for a useful call. And then, for me. I'm really interested in what the shared memory is where we put the results of that sort of set of questions and conversations into so that everybody else doesn't have to repeat our work so that they can learn from what we learned and so forth. And then, as we apply, let's pretend DSRP sort of wins or we like it better. When we start doing DSRP analysis of anything we touch while weaving the world. All those analyses are together in, you know, they're tagged up so that they're easily findable again. And we can say, oh, we did a DSRP analysis of food insecurity across northern Africa and here's here's what that looks like. I guess my only question was would be why assume that one would win instead of that we would come up with some like hybrid or both. So, I could be totally wrong about this but I have a feeling that one or the other will feel more will have more explanatory power or more representational power to us generally. And we may we may split on that we may have like half and half. That's totally fine. But I don't think anybody has the energy to do both. I think, I think you wind up sort of committing to a framework and then working your way through the framework. And if somebody shows up with a different framework is this no no no this is a bet this explains it better, you will listen to them, and then you might switch horses, but very few entities have the wherewithal to pursue a bunch of different analytic framework simultaneously. There are many approaches that the sciences use. There are numerous journals that are review journals that pick a particular topic that's, you know, typically the review article is written by a prominent figure in that given field. But it doesn't have to be. It can be written by anyone. And for instance in chemistry there was a journal called accounts of chemical research. They attempted to take a certain column of information and summarize it as sort of a ground basis intro from which other people could go back to primary literature track down different references see if they came to different conclusions and so forth. And so there may be some learnings available in some of those fields in terms of the information management. And actually how the American Chemical Society makes most of its money because it created chemical abstract services, which pulls a bunch of information out of everything that's published in chemistry, and makes that searchable so that people can go find seven different ways to make a particular chemical or whatever they would be interested to do, and you subscribe library subscribe to the service individuals hardly ever do. But the processes there might help us. They need to be made with social science processes which are somewhat different. And, and the difference being that to simplify in science, everything is essentially retrospective you look at what's known and then you add to it incrementally. And in social sciences, they're not valid studies unless they're prospective because no one remembers properly. So you have to set things up to control a bunch of different variables and take it forward from that point, and then see what you find. And so it's a, it's kind of an interesting marriage of the two that we're trying to talk about perhaps. I just found in my brain a really interesting article systems thinking in seven images that might have some power for us. You post the chat when you post the recording right cherry. Yes, I did. Okay. So I, I, I want to reply to Rob on that Google on that OGM Google group thread, saying some of what we're talking about here and heading toward what Stacy and I are discussing about having weaving parties that look like this. How would you select, or how would you promote to people the leading parties who would you want in the room and what would they, the attributes of those people be because that's pretty important. Yeah, well, when Pete and I were talking we were talking about obsidian. And there's other people. There's a bunch of people who've got their own thinking frameworks who are making a living training other people and how to have a second brain or whatever. There's there's several of those that we know of. There's also like the cult of Rome, there's a bunch of people who love using room research. I think one of the things we do is we invite some of those people in, and we say hey, bring your tools, bring whatever join us for this conversation to come to take to annotate and then to share back what we figure out. So this speaks to what we were going to talk about, which was maybe come, you know, formulating a group of people that would work on these things. And that's good.  But part of the request could be, hey, if you have any connections into these other communities, like spread the word and make broadcast the invitation into those communities. Right, so Robert Best runs metacogs they have ongoing conversations like ours. There's a bunch of other sorts of mappers and metacogs who are interesting who might be interested in this. So let's ping Robert and say hey, can you, you know, can you share this announcement and so forth. But I'm talking about even before that when we're just when we're deciding what the calls are actually going to be in the first place, before we go in into those groups and ask them to recommend somebody that, you know, we might want to have as part of the call. Yeah, so you're talking, I think about the parallel task of how do we pick what the next call is going to be on. Yes. Totally fine. And I think that that's an interesting question that would. We would wind up evolving some kind of process there. And at the beginning it would be like, here's, here's three interesting topics, which one do you want to go on first. Right. Yeah, and every now and then we'd be trumped by current events like Ukraine. Right, I just think if we had a group instead of it falling on one person to organize the call, we might make more headway because we have a number of calls that people have already expressed interest in, but just it hasn't. Well, part of part of my personal problem right now is I would like to put energy behind Grace's money project and she just bravely put her video out. I would like to put more energy behind a couple of different things like that that have already burbled up in OGM. And I don't know where to find the time to make a living and launch pictures brain and host a bunch of other calls. I also said hey I don't need to be the host other people can host which I totally agree with. But we need someone somehow to hold the container. So these calls know how they're working and how to share what they learn and all of that, which, and I guess I'm saying more than someone, maybe some free or a five. I think the content is so intense and rich that it quickly overwhelms one individual to attempt to digest it and sort it and reposition it and feed it to perhaps interested people who should see it but you know I'm having enough trouble digesting it I'm not going to risk throwing what I've digested to someone who may be looking for something quite different. Maybe that different topics attract different groups and that's fine. And we need to find a way to describe a call so that people can opt in or opt out. That's perfectly awesome. And I guess I'll just show up at some of these topics with just this insane repertory or reservoir of knowledge about the things it's like, we have we have a bunch of people in the community who are like, run really deep on a lot of things, which is really heavily shared out. And then, and this is one of my age old frustrations and other motivating factor for GM. I've been on so many private mailing lists, where people post brilliant things in an email message. And then the email message floats off into the big bucket. And when it was pulled out it wasn't posted on a blog where Google could find it and we could maybe archive it, you know, for later. It was just on a private mailing list and and some of the things that get posted are fantastic. In particular on high trust lists with a lot of super interesting people. Sometimes you get just these brilliant short posts or somebody's like angry and they like pound out six paragraphs that like to explain something really really really beautifully. Gone. So I'm trying to figure out how do we get those shared. That's a hard. Well then, and that's the whole quality of information and quantity of information question that's plaguing everyone these days. Yes. And it's my thesis that if we shared more and and curated together more, we would start to not drown so badly. Because otherwise, we're just all swimming upstream in the flood and the flood keeps getting bigger every year. And that's exhausting. People have the mental attitude where they can hold data and a point of view in their heads and deal with the torrent as little fixes to their mental image, and they're okay with that. For most of the rest of us mortals that standing in that stream and trying to do that is just overwhelming. So Stacy, who else do you think would like to be organizing. I know I keep going back to you. That's, that's intentional. I'll have you know. Who else do you think would be interested in holding and shaping that container and doing some of the programming or whatever you want to call it around that sequence of calls. I don't know if Wendy has the time. Yeah, yes. But I think she comes to mind. I mean, I even wonder if somebody, I mean, again, there are a lot of people that I don't know well. So I'm hesitant to say because I'd want to but there are there are a couple of people that I think would be interested in doing that. I think Ken would be interested in being part of something like that. Yeah, I think Ken might have a funny feeling Rob O'Keeffe would love to because he's that's who I was going to say. I don't know him. Rob has already put a whole bunch of energy into OGM into organizing efforts in a lot of ways, and we haven't really perked up and said yes let's do what you just said. So that's why I need to reply to his post on the mailing list right now. I have no idea why my nose has been itching like crazy this whole call but it's like driving me crazy. Rob is fabulous. No, I have a so while talking with Pete I wrote down zoom with Rob.  Well, I've been known to actually text people and saying there is a good zoom right now do you have time to join. Yeah, yeah. Actually, Rob. Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob. Rob. Okay. Actually, we have 10 minutes on this call because at the top of the hour, funny enough. and Wendy Elford are going to come into this room to talk about scaffolding and a bunch of other sorts of slightly abstract things but this call was scheduled for an hour and a half wasn't it. I think we were down to an hour for we switched at some point a while ago to make the the old early calls that are now later in the day just an hour. So, yeah, just so that we didn't like keep going and going. So what was I thinking I was going to ping Rob. Cool. At least that way he'll come back to you even if he's unavailable. Yeah, exactly. Exactly let's see where participants. Copy invite link just in case he says yes. Go back. He appears to be online but I don't know that he's seen it and hasn't answered yet. So I'll keep watching. But Rob would be like top of my list for for somebody to try to do that. Oh and you know who might actually also surprisingly Michael. It's all a matter of their schedules like I know if Wendy had time she definitely would want to do it. And I know Michael would because when we went to dinner I brought it up. Yeah, with with Ken and Wendy there so yeah if and if Rob is interested you know I'd like to, you know, meet and. Are you both on the West Coast. I'm in New York. Okay. How's the weather where you are doing you're still cold cold cold or not not super cold it's been in the 30s. You know what we still got residual snow. And the plowing system is very erratic in Minnesota so it's like they often get the driveway done the private contractors that do the driveways of our townhomes, get the driveways done, but not the walks. And then the city plows come through and plow back snow into the bottom of the driveway that you either have to go shovel or drive over to leave right to just get out of your house. Yeah, and see around my parts 30s is like damned cold. Yeah, it was in the 40s today and it felt so warm. This is great. It's actually 36 right now. And the high was 41, we're past that now, but it's nice that at least it's still daylight at 536 instead of 430. So the. In theory it's precipitating now but I'm not seeing any right now they say it's going to stop in 45 minutes but I'm not seeing anything other than a few flurry so I'm looking I'm looking forward to this Sunday, because on Saturday in Oregon. They stop the mask mandates indoors. And on Sunday is daylight savings time across the country so come Monday, it's going to be a whole new world. I often miss that. Maybe a whole new world. And this whole unmasking thing is just bizarre, you know, two years. It's really erratic. And the reason you know it's, it almost has to be local decisions because only the locals know what percentage of the population is still unvaccinated, which is I think the most recent guidance from CDC and had like these criteria and if you meet these criteria then you can release the mask mandates or something like that. But there's there's no really good central repository of the data to know that the data is even right. I mean some places places here are requiring you to bring proof of vaccination if you're coming to in person events. Right. I went to meet a friend for dinner recently and realized two minutes from walking to my destination 10 minutes from home that I've forgotten to bring my backs card. And then it's like, Oh, I've got the Kaiser app on my phone. So I opened the Kaiser app looked up my medical record and found that certificate on there and showed that at the door and she's like, yep, check. I actually have my backs card, but I have done that same thing by going into CVS, which is where I got. Well, I didn't get the first shots there but I got the booster I figure if I've had the booster they know that the others as well. Okay, so what can we do productively toward build a GM with what we've got on the table. I think I think Rob and said can you chat he hasn't replied I'm going to ping him back and say hey, the offer is rescinded because I have another call now but I'd love to just talk with him sometime really soon. And then I can report back. We can also talk to Michael Wendy and Ken and see if any of them would like to join in Stacy. Is there any chance you'd like to sort of be ring master for some of that. I would love that. That would be terrific. So, and, and I'm thinking of this as sort of weaving the world sequence that this is that this is sort of constructing a series of mapping parties or whatever we wind up calling them for weaving the world. And that that I like that a lot. And I'm happy to show up as host or just weaver. Um, yeah, yeah, yes. And I'll talk with with Rob about that and a bunch of other stuff because he Rob tried really hard to curate the discourse forum before Pete deprecated it like a year but way back when he tried also to get us over into matter most and I've tried that too and nobody seems to want to budge from the GM list. I had a question about that's probably more of a question for Pete but off. Is there any way to like do something so that after like two responses on the email, you automatically have to click on a link to go to matter most. No, because the emails are on Google groups and we have no control over Google groups. And as moderators, we could be mean, and we could say hey the moment there's two replies on any thread we're going to copy the contents, move them over to matter most and then block. I, you know, this is an unmoderated list I don't I don't see any messages to GM before they just go to the list. I would have to change that so that I would be blocking you know any further attempts to converse nicely. I would actually make this a not only a moderated list, but he would change it so that only three or four people could post to it, and it would be only for announcements like there's a call tomorrow at, you know, 8am. Please join this link. I'm slightly sympathetic to Pete just from the standpoint of the quality of the information is there. And yet, it's not OGM, capital O, if it's if it's gated, you know, and we had, we had separate segments for a while on matter most that were loosely gated or not gated at all. And that's another dimension that's probably worthy of discussion in terms of the process. Yeah. No, I'm just thinking about, because when Rob started off this last post, you know, a couple of hours ago, he said let's continue this on matter most. So how do you act I mean, yeah, I don't know. I think right now the way matter most is set up for for much of it anyone can start a channel. And add themselves to a channel just by clicking into the channel and that I'm not a, I'm not an expert in matter most that would be Pete from my perspective. Yeah, for sure. Well, there were some, I mean, even to take the, like even to take the video that he posted and be able to put it in the Ukraine channel. I don't even I don't have to do that. Or I would. Oh, I think you can just copy it and put it in a link in your message in that particular column. I've done that. You know, I have to have it open on in Safari or Google, and I click on that and copy the link to the video or the paper. And I include that HTTPS in my response to somebody in a column in a channel, you mean, in that channel. Yeah. So just copy the Stacy and I'm happy to talk to the screen share through this with you if you want to know how to do that but you know he's that's like he put that content there so I would think if he wanted to put it there. He would add it. I mean I'm not going to go follow everybody along and take their stuff. And throw it in. Right. No, we want we want we want to motivate people to go post over. Right. But then it also becomes really important to be able to somehow screen and filter or it becomes just like doing a Google search. Yeah, what's good about matter most and this is something Pete pointed out is that at least with names on the channels you can always say hey this is actually not what that channel is about why don't you take what you just posted over to this channel and that works pretty nicely so it tends to sort. And then people can ignore the stuff that they don't want to watch. The problem is that there's a few people who just not comfortable or haven't installed matter most or don't remember to open it up and check it. And in that case you lose them from the conversation so yeah I when I when I dropped out for a while because of balance and health issues and stuff and kind of regrouping. I was paying attention for several months and then I had to recently go back and catch up in multiple channels just to see what I'd missed. Yep, yep, exactly. So I'm expecting. Oh wait, actually, I might have to move. Let me just check and see whether it's my zoom or someone else is where my next call is, then we will let you go. It's actually in Pete's zoom. Okay. So I should go over there. Hello. Thanks for the hour. This has been great. Thank you. Bye bye.


Uh-uh-uh. Okay. Now watch this. This is how you block an air level three. What happened? How's it going everybody? DatoDoi here back with another round of Dragon Ball Fighter's rank matches. And this time we are just playing the standard team that I always use, but I have an excuse. I just wanted to play some Android 17. And if you want to do anything with 17, you either need a good range or neutral assist, like a beam, or a pressure assist, like a Yamcha. And I got both of those. So yeah, it really sucks that Android 17 needs all that. But man, I don't know why I just really enjoy them. I think they did a great job with this character stylistically.  The reflex or down heavies. It's always such a big risk doing anything with 17. Ooh, we are free. All right, but you know we can't just guard cancel forever. We kind of have to be careful when we spend that coin. Okay, go back out into Goku. I would have gone out into 17, but he wasn't available. Okay. This is the part of the game where we plant some people. All right. Time to become some fertilizer. Okay, so we're off to a decent start here. We do have a Bardock to worry about. Let's say Bardocklair. He was, but I just wasn't ready. Oh, the normal 17. Ah, yeah, that we didn't land quick enough there. That was my bad. Ooh, nice side switch. Keeping it optimal, huh? That was pretty good too. I could have pressured that. No tech. Oh, I should have stopped crouching. Darn it, we get caught there. Yeah, 17 is dead. Damn, he even threw out the beam assist in case we were living in a world where 17 lived that. Just in case this guy made a wish where 17 survives anything. All right, sliding with Yamcha. What's the pressure looking like? Dragon rush. Yup, gotcha. Who needs block pressure when you got dragon rush? We probably could have made it. Wow. This is a man that's played against the Yamcha one time or twice. He's seen a couple of Yamchas in his day. God, look at that Bardock there. Oh my goodness. With the air medium and then it went into a light. He could probably kill here two level ones at a level three. Nice calculations. Ooh, that's killing. Is it? Is it going to be close? Wow, this man's a mathematician. Okay, I can appreciate it. Operation get back out Bardock is a go though. Okay, it's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.  No way. The auto combo turnaround. The automatic turnaround got me in the corner. That was a bit risky from him. We see a kill. No bar spent. That's what you like to see. Now we're going up against Goku Black though, so there's going to be plenty of beams here. Or dive kicks. I didn't think he'd go for that. That was a risky option. Nice dragon rush. God, that one may be jumping my seat. That would have to be scared. Not a level three.  Why are you going to force me into these uncomfortable situations? Do we wake up level three ourselves? Oh, double overhead. Drop it. Oh, big lag. Ooh, that was... Well, we deserved it. We probably should. We were dead anyway, so we have to look past this game. We have to just look past it. Oh, that was kind of nice. I thought I could get Bardock if I acted quick enough. Okay, we're going to get 21 back in nice and easy. Man, 17 is angry about how we went out last game. Oh, what are you doing? I might have short limbs, but I'm nothing to sneeze at. Oh, no kill. That's the shame, dude. Okay, come on. Let me silence my phone. Oh, God, my phone. That is very expensive. Oh, what are you doing? Okay, we're out. We're out. 17. 17 is like a trend. No, no. Oh, no. Oh, okay, we got to go out. Sometimes you have to switch out just to get that sliding knockdown.  You tested me there?  You're testing my authority and everything, level one. That's me. That's not me. That's not me. I thought it was me, but it wasn't. All right, hang on, boys. Hang on. We're going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine. I thought we had more time. I'm so sorry, Amcha.  You deserve better than this. Let's go. Huh?  What was that? I think he thought I was going behind him. Maybe? I don't know why he would do that, but... I'm looking out for that dive kick. That was awkward. Yeah. Yeah, he was watching for that because he knows I want the Amcha assist, I think. Back dash on that. No problems. There you go. What are you doing? Mess that up there, but that's fine. He's not going to... He did reflect. Oh, wow. He just clicked buttons, but I backed dashed last time. I thought he'd be...  Oh, no. Oh, no. Wow, he actually caught me and Super Saiyan Goku. That was a brutal beatdown. He went through Goku into 17. Is the dive kick even a good option? This doesn't seem very good, but who knows? Maybe I can get a killer read. The only universe this read was killer is if I die here. This read sucked. No, Amcha.  Ah, don't crack. Don't crack me. You can't crack in games like this.  Mission accomplished.  I got mixed up in two seconds. I got mixed up in 0.2 seconds. Wow, did you see those light jabs? Dragon Rush actually works. Wow, when I clicked that, I was not. Hello. Really, I can't believe she tests.  That is such a good hit. That's like a Street Fighter hitbox. That kind of hitbox is very rare in fighters. Okay, maybe it was a little obvious, huh, Sherlock?  You got me all wrapped up now. Oh my God, it never works. It doesn't work like advertised, dude. It does not work like advertised. See, that's where you test them, boys. He's just, he's not deflecting anymore. Try testing him. I tried testing him. It's true. It's true. I thought he'd go for something. A little bit of delay. This dude's crazy. Switch. Oh my God, we're both crazy. Everybody in this damn game has lost their minds. Everybody here has lost their minds. Is that going to kill? No, three bars. Wow. Everybody's lost their minds. Not just me, not just him. Okay, that was pretty sick. We should have went with a level three. I kind of thought he was going to do a level three, but that was a lot of bar for him to spend. So I kind of doubted it, but he was feeling the level one.  I can only get hit by one thing so many times. See, he did it. He only does it in this corner. Well, the corners, I should say. I couldn't run up and block quick enough. Down tech. Didn't block both. I got a bad habit on pad of going down back too quickly. That was interesting. Ooh, feeling it. Come on, baby. Maybe I could have killed if I did level one and the level three, but that's not me. Not in these time of needs. There you go. Try doing a frame one input. Online? You wild for that. Come on, Yamcha. We can get this comeback. There we go. Play the patient game. Nobody has to do anything on the back. No, she actually guarded it, dude. How? No way. She wasn't committing. I thought she was. Here. Maybe I should have 2-1. 2-1. My opponent has the game lead here, but I am not going to be put away. I forgot I had 17 on my team. There we go. Now we're cooking with gas, 17. Let's go. Let's cook them. There we go. We will not be red in the corner you got to have it. I'm here to punish it. Let's go. Ultra instinct. Does it make sense? Kind of. It was alluded to once or twice, but here we are. I get the key blast button. Oh, level 3. No, no, no. Why did I bring myself back to this corner? I don't think any 17 player actually uses that move except for me. And it's because I'm not a 17 player. Okay. Now watch this. This is how you block a level 3. What happened? He showed that he was a big fan of air level supers. Now all of a sudden he ain't feeling it no more. Come on 17, grow your arms out a little bro.  You got a family. I tried jumping again. Darn it, darn it, darn it, darn it. Do we spark now to get the momentum back? I'm feeling yes, right? Well, that was sad. There we go. We got Bardock super early. Good, good, good. Force Goku black to use sparking super quick.  There we go, we in. Now get Yamcha out of here. I'm trying to bait that. There you go. Hard knockdown. He's going to try to do another input, but remember, we're testing his ability for frame ones. You want to do something frame one? You got to go through me. Oh. No, how did that happen dude? Not to us. We're good people. Level 3? What are you saving the bar for? Again, with my bad habit of defense on the pad. Come on. All right. We get him to spend a bar at least. Okay. He still has so much bar for defensive guard cancels and level 3s. Darn it. Come on. This is a power beyond Super Saiyan. Let's go. Okay. That's going to be it. That's going to be it. Tutu, we evened it up. God, I am rusty. I am so rusty. But it's not over yet. Android 17 came through. But now, now it's time for him to really show what he's got.  No fly zone. Oh. Oh, did you? Did anybody see that? Did anybody see what I'm working with? No. Oh, wow. Nah, we can't get switched out now. There we go. That's what I'm talking about. If you ain't blocking on wake up, then we ain't respect that. Boom. Nice. We are just going to be hitting buttons out here. Okay. Is he a Bardock player for real life though? It's not working. These must be the frame one Bardock inputs I've been hearing so much about. Oh, crouching 2L with Yamcha. I guess that, wait, there's no other 2L. But damn it, Yamcha. Damn it. Okay, this is going to be Yamcha's death here, which kind of sucks. Oh, why do I click vanish? You know they could just vanish after you. It's always because I think, man, maybe they don't have the, uh, maybe I'll live it. That's always the question, right? And that's a, that's a punish. Hmm. This ain't good. This ain't good at all. What? I can't believe it. Catching me while falling? I've never had that happen to me before. We'll heal it up though. All right, please hit. Okay, that's good. Please kill. No way. Nice. Okay, we finally, we get the vanish kill. Oh my God, we have a lot, we have a lot of work to do though. There we go. We know you like to do that. Who doesn't like to do that from time to time? No guard cancel. He didn't want to be in the corner. He was comfortable with defense. God, that was a bad read. Double overhead couldn't be prepared for it. Well, I could have been, but I was just wasn't bad defense on my part. We get a lucky break though. Down heavy doesn't come out. That's going to be the end of 17 and the end of a lot of Goku's life. Drop it for those of you at home wondering why I did that. I don't know. I thought he tried a super dash. It'd be cool looking man. Beam game. We got that. Beam game. We got that. No. No. No. No. No, no, no, no. Not by that. Not by a random level three. No. It wasn't random, I guess, but no. No.  This can't end like that. This can't end like that. Oh, he wants a rematch. Thank you. Thank you. He wants a rematch. He won. Okay, three, two, whatever. Big, big whoop. No, why every time do I get caught by that? No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. My sanity. Can't take that. Oh God, what? I'm just scrubbing out. Early spark. Early spark. Nice. Okay. That was super scrubby.  Why did you click buttons there? That was my turn. Okay, hard knockdown. Not like 17 has the resets, but... Okay, that was so bad. That sucks that we couldn't get the kill, but whatever, we'll have to take it with another level one. Oh man, oh man, oh man. This has just been the worst. Oh, yamcha. That was just poor. Why did I click buttons there? I thought he tried. Oh, if you were to try something that would have felt so smart. Oh, Zamasu, the first time. I actually do like Zamasu as an option in the corner. Ah, too late. Tried to do a forward dash into a light, but it was too late on the light. Probably should have gotten yamcha out a long time ago. Through the beam, that's the range he's been hoping for all game, and he found it. Tech that. That was obvious. That one was a little obvious. You could just kind of feel it in the air there. Okay, who needs the corner in situations like these? We need Damage. Okay, that wasn't bad manors. That was actually a strat. I got hit by that in the beta for this game. In the beta. Someone key charged. I got pissed. I was like, okay, then I'll just spark. And then they hit me with a beam. And I was extra pissed. So that was not bad manors. That was a strat.  But I promise you that's a strat. Not bad manors. But if you guys enjoyed this video, let me know down.  But it was a genuine strat though. Oh, but I feel like such a dickhead. Other than that, while you're down there, if you like these ranked videos and you want to see more of them, make sure to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel so that you never miss out on a video. I have a tons of other videos like this where I do a little better. Even some with 17, where I do a little better. Those videos should be up on your screen right now. But other than that, I'm Dr. Dwaya. I'll see you in the next video.


Hi, this is Dr. Ruscio, and let's discuss a audience question about urticaria or hives. Let me read this question here from Maria. Hi, doctor. There's one topic that I've never heard any functional doctors talk about, and that is chronic urticaria. There is a very little known about what causes this condition and how to treat it effectively. Thanks. Sure. So, urticaria, also known as hives, there are different types of urticaria. There are different causes of urticaria. I would like to provide you with a few broad strokes in terms of simple and foundational things that I have found to be helpful. So, again, urticaria, hives, and some people will experience hives randomly. Some will experience hives from activity, from stress, from hot or cold exposure, from eating certain foods, and these all have different labels of heat induced, cold induced urticaria, contact urticaria, what have you. When we boil it all down, let's talk about what may be one of the predominant fundamental causes of urticaria and then what you can do about it. Now, again, there are many theories as to the cause of urticaria, but I think the one that holds the most promise and the most potential is the autoimmune component, meaning that urticaria might be autoimmune or it might be associated with the immune system and or other autoimmune conditions. So this is why we may see an increase of urticaria potentially in patients that have hypothyroidism. Luckily, though, speculation aside, what's nice about the autoimmune theory is that it gives us a lot to potentially work with or to modulate. And so there's two different angles that we can come at this through. One would be conventional medicine, one would be more integrative medicine. From an integrative perspective, there is definitely some promise in gut directed therapies because and probably no surprise that the gut has a fairly sizable impact on the immune system. Now this is likely why at least one study that I know of has found a higher prevalence of certain, using the term loosely infections in the intestines associated with urticaria and more importantly, treatment of those infections was shown to reduce the severity and duration of urticaria outbreaks. So this study in particular looked at various types of infections and again I use that term loosely because not all these things are technically infections but blastocystis hominins was the one found to be the most prevalent. Now blastocystis hominins is not considered an infection or a strict pathogen. Some circles consider it benign, some circles consider it pathogenic and I think the most reasonable approach is if you find blastocystis hominins in someone with symptoms to treat that. So we have some at least preliminary evidence showing the association and the causal link by treatment that blastocystis hominins and potentially other gut and balances may be involved with urticaria and may allow alleviation of urticaria. So that is very good news. Now there are other things that you can do which would be dietary changes. Dietary changes that help to improve gut health would also stand to reason to be able to benefit. There's a decent amount of animal evidence to support this. So something like a paleo diet or a standard elimination diet where you cut out foods that are oftentimes problematic for people seems to be a reasonable recommendation to make. There also may be aid garnered through the low-fob-mamp diet and the low-fob-mamp diet kind of transition us or transitions us into the topic of how more conventional medicine comes at this which is with histamine blocking agents H1 or H2, histamine 1, histamine 2, antagonists to try to block histamine which is part of the immune response and more so part of the allergy response using that term loosely. And remember that allergy and autoimmunity share this fundamental underpinning of the immune system status either either being a well-calibrated immune system or potentially an overzealous or mal-calibrated immune system. So conventional medicine typically administers various types of H1, H2, histamine, antagonists, histamine blockers and those can be effective. However, the low-fob-mamp diet has been shown to cause an eight-fold reduction in histamine according to one study. So a low-fob-mamp diet may do the same thing as these drugs and given they're over-the-counter drugs and fairly benign but it may achieve this from a dietary perspective. Now there's also the low-histamine diet specifically which could also be helpful which reduces dietary histamine. The low-fob-mamp diet deprives foods that feed bacteria that likely produce histamine and a low-histamine diet reduces the amount of actual histamine in food. So someone could even go as far as to go on a low-fob-mamp and low-histamine diet they really wanted to go at this aggressively. Now also treating any other gut infections could be helpful. Some of these histamine blockers could be helpful but all that together if you improve your diet either an elimination diet like a paleo diet or a low-fob-mamp or a low-histamine diet in addition to addressing any imbalances in the gut and this may be achieved by taking a probiotic. I don't know of any evidence showing that probiotics help with urticaria. It may be out there and just not aware of it but it would certainly stand the reason that if treatment of imbalances in the gut can improve urticaria and if probiotics help to improve the health of the gut then a probiotic may help with urticaria but it's speculative. But in any case by going through all these steps to optimize your diet optimize your gut health I think you have a fairly good probability of coming out with a good response to the urticaria. Now I'll also share in the post here one of our patients who had good results with urticaria and then also if you wanted to get really deep into this immune histamine angle a interview with Dr. Lawrence Affron who is a researcher essentially in histamine intolerance or as it's also termed mass activation syndrome. So there's definitely some very good options for urticaria and to Maria's point yes it's not something that you hear a lot about but for someone who's suffering with hives it can certainly be frustrating and maybe at times a little bit embarrassing and while there are some simple options of over-the-counter antihistamines there are also some more natural and fundamental treatments that may help you feel better. Now as a quick example if someone was to drive benefit for the urticaria from a low FODMAP diet there's a very good chance that they'll also see other improvements potentially they'll be less bloated they'll have better formed stools potentially less brain fog better energy or less irritability all these things can be achieved from rectifying the levels of histamine in your body one way of which you can do that is through a low FODMAP diet so again urticaria or hives is something that can be problematic but again Maria yes you're right there this is a condition that's not often talked about but fortunately there are some very helpful therapies that come back to this philosophy of starting with your gut and if you do that I think you have a good probability of coming on top so this is Dr. Ruscio and hopefully this information helps you get healthy and get back to your life thanks.