Aloha! Welcome to the Savvy Chick Show. Thanks so much for coming back. I've been away in Canada so for those of you who've been watching, thank you to everyone who I've interviewed while being away and for the viewers for continuing to watch. So today it's back in the studio. Very exciting here in Honolulu in Hawaii at the Think Tech Hawaii studio and I have a very special guest who well now I guess we're a bit of the Savvy Chick sort of radio show podcast because we're not able to get this guest on Skype but it's Lisa now she is a wellness coach a yoga instructor and she's also the founder of Illuminaire Yoga all the way from Sydney, Australia and she's very passionate about young women and teens and girls just as I am and we're very excited to do this episode on the Savvy Chick's Life Style School. Welcome Lisa! Aloha! Hello, hello, how are you over there? What's the weather like in Sydney? It is. Oh, you're in Melbourne. I'm so sorry. She's in Melbourne. The sun hasn't quite come up yet here. Oh yes, because it's not even 7 a.m. over in Melbourne. Yes, it is. The birds are just starting to chirp. Very, very good. Well what a great way to start the day. We're going to be talking about those life skills that they don't necessarily teach you in school and that's hence lifestyle and creating a lifestyle that inspires you so that it's not don't do this don't do this don't do this it's you can do this and if you do this you can do even more and that's why Lisa's actually come up with some great ideas of how to create a Savvy Lifestyle School and together we're working on that so I'd love you to start with a you know what what don't they teach you in school Lisa? I think one of the first things is finances you know they're taught basic maths or maths that generally can't be used once they finish school so it's about I guess them empowering themselves and going okay you know I want to go and get a loan I want to go and get a personal loan I want to go and get a mortgage I've got some savings how do I best get you know value out of putting my money into the bank and getting a really good return on interest rate also you know getting a car loan buying a house you know how much money do I need how much do I need to you know put down as a deposit to make sure that you know that I don't have to pay something like mortgage insurance so these are all things that I think I would really like to educate girls on and just so that when it when it does come to that point in life they don't necessarily need you know a man around to to help them make those decisions and what what age do you think is a good age to start looking into these types of things or to start sort of being mindful about about your finances yeah I definitely think you know girls these days they're starting jobs at like 15 almost 16 so you know what what do we do with a portion I mean my daughter just got her first paycheck you know $80 and I said okay well let's um let's look to see what we're what we're going to do with this maybe set up another bank account so that you can put maybe you know half the money into the bank account and then you've got you know you can you can actually spend and feel like yay I worked and I can you know I can go and buy something but maybe just pop a little bit of way and then we started talking about you know what what is she going to save for so I think definitely from the ages of 16 with our children and then obviously when they get a full-time job or when you know the money sort of starts coming in about definitely setting up a goal and a plan of of where they want to be and what they want to do I might be just putting the money away for traveling she has traveling traveling is a great one I think that that's something for for girls and young women to relate to because they sort of are inspired to travel and want to travel and that's something that we've spoken up about before traveling I mean I traveled when I finished high school I ended up that's when I went to Australia and went to England but a lot of girls don't even know you know how to do it or what to do it and I think that's another one of the important points that you were wanting to discuss what is it about travel Lisa that that you think that they should be teaching in schools or if they're not teaching in schools just so that girls have access to this sort of information yeah exactly um I I definitely think they need to learn just how to book a flight you know often we we send them off to a travel agent and you know get them to do it all for them but let's get them online let's get them looking at flights you know a website like Expedia that will give you you know if you want to go to London it will give you 10 different options with 10 different airlines that are going to London and different stopovers we definitely need to um they definitely need to be talking to their bank before they go so all that hard earned money that they that they popped in the bank they definitely need to be securing that and um making sure that their bank knows so that the bank doesn't start closing their account thinking you know someone in London is um is you know hacking hacking this account um also about using their f-post card so you don't necessarily have to carry a large amount of cash around with you um the other thing is um just knowing where you're going so doing a little bit of research and knowing you're connecting flights I mean many um as you probably know when you've travelled many cities have different airports so if you allow you know an hour for a connecting flight but you have to jump over to another airport it could be um you know it could be a matter of missing a plane so yeah um they're probably they're probably my main tip and things like you love traveling you probably had some experience with travel definitely I think even things as simple as and I'm actually having an experience with this my brother had when he was 18 which is a few years ago now he went to europe and didn't have travel insurance it ended up basically um diving and smashing the whole side of his face and didn't have travel insurance yes you know those are things that you also don't think about you know it's exciting you want to go on a ship or you want to do what you want to do but at the same time there's things like travel insurance and I mean it's not my expertise but these are things that I've had to learn and visas for countries and correct just so that there's no surprises when you get to the airport or disappointments and also just so you can feel more secure like in each country there's a line that you can call if you run into any issues and whatnot so and also some countries aren't that safe to travel in so these are you know they seem minor but they're actual yeah and that's where I definitely encourage them to do their research first um also I'm just having the right appropriate clothing I mean we all know that the middle east has never done and you know let's make sure that we're following and respecting what their religious beliefs are about you know not even in public and about covering up our shoulders I mean there's a lot of Asian countries and temples and churches and we just want to make sure that we're covered up almost we're respecting um you know respecting their um place of um of being yeah yeah we're where they are and I think that that what you and I both share in this is the fact that it is a great thing to travel I graduated high school you know I was 18 years old I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to study and I've said this before I went to the guidance counselors I was trying to explain advertising marketing and they they said my maths weren't good enough and so I decided to travel I knew I'd eventually study and that was the point that I made the decision to go to Australia and just to know that it's not a bad thing to take time to travel I mean parents might be watching this saying oh my gosh no make sure you know kids finish school go to university but I've turned out just fine and there's a lot of people that don't even go to university and are very successful so I think that's something if you're you know if you're a young woman watching this or your parent of a young woman watching this it's not necessarily a bad thing to take a year to explore and and have a look around such as long as you do it in a responsible way and you know make sure everyone's aware of where you are and whatnot and and I um traveled to Malaysia and one day I came in and there was a little bookmark on my pillow and the bookmarks quote sticks with me forever it says the best way to get a perspective of where you are is to get as far away as a far away from it as possible so I think sometimes we do have to step away to really know what we want definitely I couldn't agree more with that you know this show is is we could go on for days with with you know travel and with finance like we started off with but I just love to go through more of the points because there will be a savvy chicks lifestyle school coming soon enough Lisa and I are working on this and Lisa's a she's a good you know it's great to get together and and this is probably one of the points we'll discuss later in um you know with like-minded people who love what you love but also have their own skills so um what's another point from there Lisa um I think um we also need to talk about positive influences so we go through childhood you know idolizing you know different people and then once we sort of get to you know 18 who really resonates with us you know try and find that tribe try and find those those people um that group of people whether it's online or whether it's um you know in your community that you really resonate with and you feel like they're on a similar journey to you and whether it's um you know a speaker or an educator or um an author um I'd really encourage people to step out and um contact these people and say you know I've got a question for you I love this passage in your book and start making comments on their facebook page and um comment to them on twitter because every time I reach out to someone I 99% of the time will get a um will get a comment back um a private message you know authors and you know these people are just that they just want to help I mean just like you and I um they just want to they just want to help the next person to reach their dreams and um yeah just reach out and have some conversations with them I think that what you're saying there is basically it's also um the office authenticity of the connection because if you're reaching out to someone that you are very inspired by they'll feel that and I think that connection is what has them replying because if it was someone that you had told to reach out to but it wasn't a genuine connection they might not get back so I think the important thing here is to make sure if you're reaching out to someone it's someone that you really want to connect with not because you think it's going to get you to the next place someone that you genuinely I mean it will get you to the next place don't get me wrong but something you genuinely are inspired by because that can be felt and you can't fake a connection like that so I think that's a really important point and and as you said everyone you've reached out to yeah similar for me everyone I've ever reached out to even if they were as high as the sky has um has pretty much come back to me I think that that's you know knowing yeah what you want from them and what they have to bring and just connecting those dots I suppose yeah and you had a you had a beautiful connection with Liz Gilbert when we're in Sydney and that was just something that you know it wasn't that that was a message for you but she she gave a message to the audience so sometimes by asking out and asking a question we're not just getting the answer for ourselves we're getting the answer for a lot of other people that was such a special experience and I can't thank you and my friend Mel enough for getting out there for those of you who know Elizabeth Gilbert who eat pray love basically I decided that I was going to get up and ask a question which I don't normally and went to a microphone and there'd already been people full on the other microphones and she just pointed out and picked me and I said you know I have this too I'm caught in two worlds I want to inspire girls follow their dreams hence this as well as I love to help all people with wellness and just to create and lead healthy lifestyles and what she said to me yeah stop trying to help people and do what you love and yeah and well that's what we're doing right now this is I couldn't do anything more than I love than being in the studio chatting interviewing inspiring people meeting great people and just doing a wellness myself so that was great advice and what was even funnier is when you caught when you caught up with her and a while later and she remembered that exact question 12 months later I said to her do you remember asking my girlfriend asking her um use this question she said oh my goodness yes I thought about that when I went back to the hotel room so yeah she um she said you know I you know that was my first instinct to say and I said no you said exactly the right thing and she's she's a beautiful lady and one thing that she says is follow your curiosity um you know because you just don't know where it will take you and that's one um you know I love her books and I love what she does and um she really she actually says you know a lot of a lot of the time we say you know try and find your passion you know for you know follow your passion what's your passion and then she says you know sometimes people might not have you know they might not have that particular thing yet so maybe follow your curiosity um and and what interests you and what sort of um you know um dragging you towards you know like a magnet like towards something and then um and then see see what happens I think yeah let's follow following what likes you up and you did it yourself when you decided to go out and pursue yoga and you're passionate about teens and you have a daughter yourself and and that's just keeps unfolding and now you're in schools and I I mean you've got the great website there and you're opening up to more things and opportunities and even what we're connecting on and doing together it's pretty it's just that you following that thing that you loved and now it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger so that's very exciting yeah yeah and we just have to um empower teens and let them know that they don't always have to um follow the pack you know the pack is I mean if that's where you want to go go with them but there might be a different pack and it might be slightly smaller and you know um not as popular but that goes into personal branding which is obviously a big thing of yours um is you know personal branding yes personal brand I'm very excited to talk about that and then I know in a lot of segments I actually touch on it but in the next segments we're going to take a short break and then we'll start the next sure segment and talk about personal branding stay tuned we'll see you soon on The Savvy Chick Show hi my name is Kim Lau and I'm the host of Hawaii Rising you can watch me live every other Monday at 4 p.m. Aloha Aloha my name is Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A and I'm the other half of the duo John Newman we are the co-host of Keys to Success which is live on Think Tech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha Aloha Aloha everyone I'm Maria Mera and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual so Viva Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 3 p.m. we are here to talk about news issues and events local and around the world join me Aloha Aloha I'm Kirsten Baumgart Turner and I'm fortunate to be able to host Sustainable Hawaii at ThinkTechHawaii.com I hope you'll join in with us every Tuesday from 12 noon to 1 p.m. to see the interesting people we have to share with you their information Aloha. Aloha and welcome back to the Savvy Chicks show we're here live in the Honolulu studio interviewing a Skype guest Lisa Main all the way from Melbourne Australia and we're talking about savvy lifestyle school so it's for Savvy Chicks and Lisa knows all about Savvy Chicks she's got a teenage daughter herself she's very passionate about young women and girls and the first segment we covered a lot of the life skills that you don't learn in school which we're going to continue on and we're going to start with personal branding because it's a particular favorite of mine and Lisa knows how important this is as well so what are your thoughts on personal branding Lisa? Yeah I think I think with personal branding it's about stepping into your authentic self so giving giving what you authentically have to offer opposed to as we said just as you know we're going to the break just following everyone else what everyone else is doing you know how many people would think about moving to Hawaii and starting their own TV show? Not quite starting but I did get a bit of a leg up there with Think Tech Hawaii but what is true about that though is that I actually had the intention and I was pursuing a show without having a show to pursue so I think that that was yes it was one of those internal things that I actually pursued when I couldn't see anything and that's why I'm always a believer and believe it until you see it not see it and then believe it because I mean when I was in Sydney Australia all I wanted was a show but there was no way well not no way but it was becoming very challenging and then arriving here in hawaii and being able to have this opportunity is just but that's because I followed my own internal dialogue and to get here. Yeah definitely and that's something that we do in yoga we always set an intention before we before we start the class because if you don't know where you're going um you know what what's what's going but you just you don't know what the path is going to look like so that's you know that's even one of my rituals every morning is to visualize what I want my life to be and you've obviously done that with that with your TV show as well and the other thing I love about personal branding is we can make it into a business so you don't have to wait until your you know in your mid 20s and you know to have all this experience before you start your own your own business so I guess just a couple of tips is just to find out you know what are you passionate about you know do you love yoga do you love horses dogs do you love traveling do you love hiking and getting outdoors and how do we um how do we put this into a business so we could you know start an instagram account or we could start an e-book and get some followers from there and from there you can start getting as a people advertising on your page so I would definitely look at doing um you know YouTube tutorials um there's free ebooks out there and there is a lot of there's a lot of literature out there that is also very cheap as well so you don't necessarily have to go and spend thousands of dollars on a on a business course to um to start a business and definitely when you're 18 let's let's look at the options of network marketing I mean we've got um Richard Branson and Robert Kowalski and um Bill Gates all saying that they wish they had have um become part of a network company um you know in their 20s that's why even now I mean even now in in my 20s not quite have decided to do one as well because it's I mean the more revenue streams that you could have the the better I suppose so if you can start that young and even with the young girls with their businesses they can start as young as 10 there's Club Kid Panora in Sydney or in Australia all around Australia and they start doing businesses when they're young but even here um very soon we'll have a couple young girls who have their own businesses and they're creating everything from earrings to t-shirts and all different types of you know creative crafts and whatnot and to be able to sell those and create a brand and create a brand around them so that'll be part of Mission Savvy Chicks and and definitely will take you on the journey of what it is to personal personal brand and I believe that the your personal brand should just be an extension of who you are um and should be a reflection of who you are and that that's goes to your career path and everything because there's no sense in trying to be something way over there that you're not when you can just be yourself and then just have your career or your job or whatever it is be a reflection but not that's not to discredit if you were doing a part-time job but it doesn't seem like you I mean I worked at Burger King um Hungry Jacks in Australia it's called when I was 15 I mean that's not an exact extension of who I am but at the time it turned me a taught me a lot of life skills that uh were very relevant so that's also important and that sort of leaves yeah and that leads into something that um I think you and I have chatted a lot about before is about um you know I'm a parent and you're just about become a parent and how can we as parents set examples for our children um because you know we think oh you know we're going to be out late tonight and we're not going to see the kids because we have to go and have this meeting or do this well the kids are going to be a good example to your children they're going to remember that they're going to go well hang on mum you know she she took a little bit of a leaker face and you know she networked and she did this and she did that to succeed and and that's just a really good example um I also really encourage um you know keeping that connection with your team so you know just saying come on let's jump in the car we're going to go for a walk um down the beach or you know into nature um I took Haley to a music festival last year so um she also bought bought a um a friend with her and they just said it was one of the best days of their life they couldn't believe the beautiful community so it's about us introducing them to these options and saying you don't have to lead down the path of you know taking drugs and doing alcohol there's definitely other options out there that can bring you internal um joy um even to the point where taking kids to work with you I think we need to keep that connection you know look where we work look what we do this is where we come every day um imagine being your daughter and and um and coming into work with you that would be amazing show you in the studio next year but I I completely agree with you and I also want to add on to that for girls or young women watching today do you can do this for your mums as well you know sometimes your mums might be caught up in in their own thing and not even realize that they're not feeling inspired so by you initiating that walk with your mom or that festival with your mom or something like that you might actually even help her or you know bring her to a better place I mean sometimes you think oh mom's grouchy mom's this mom's that well sometimes if you actually bring that light you can you can change the whole way she's feeling and um yeah so feel free to initiate things with your moms even though it doesn't seem cool you'd be pretty surprised on how much it'll improve your relationship as well as allowing you to do more things you want because we all know that when there's a good relationship and connection you can kind of get more of what you want just saying it's life in general yeah I'm a people person yeah so um yeah you know it can go both ways and I guess what I'm saying there is it's a really important mother-daughter relationship and for those of you who might not have a relationship or connection with your mother feel free to reach out to someone else I mean I grew up without a father but then I found male mentors so um it just because you don't have one or perhaps your mom's not the best role model for you um don't don't be afraid to reach out to maybe one of your friend's parents perhaps if that's if that needs to be there just you can have a good influence in your life as a parent role model yeah I love that yeah I've actually sort of um unofficially adopted a few um girls in their 20s but it has become um you know sort of old assistives to Hailey and I love that she can contact you know keep that contact and that communication with them because sometimes you know mom isn't the one that you want to have that answer from um if they might give exactly the same answer but they just don't want it coming from their mom that's why when I do speaking at schools and I it came out just really naturally one time but now I actually say it in my speeches is basically I want to be your big you know a big sister to you and that's myself you know Chantel Seville the Savvy Chick to be a big sister although the young women and girls out there so that they feel that I'm not their mom and I'm not their teacher and I'm not anyone who's trying to boss them around I just really genuinely want what's best for them and that's always to be themselves and follow what's true to them and you know it's be yourself believe in yourself follow your dreams and I think when you're really focused on that that focus can be so strong that it'll pull you into so much inspiration that you're not even worried about the other things that you're told not to do because who wants to be told not what to do at the end of the day I mean sometimes when it comes to certain things like what shouldn't I do and then the rest is open but most of the time it's nice to know what you can do where your options are what you can aspire to and hence the whole reason for Savvy Chicks in the show so those are those are pretty important points what what other points do you have there at least um well one of my um I guess favorites is about wellness so um that's why you created your business pardon that's why you created your business yes you're so passionate about wellness and I and that sort of leveraged from my having my doing yoga when I was pregnant with my daughter so someone just invited me along and I went okay I'll come and do that um I was previously a dancer so I thought oh I can do this and I just found it so natural but also very calming as well so uh I love being able to take that to school and giving that to the children and I mean I was you know at a school the other day teaching you 12 and yoga's about checking in as well and so often with teens they don't check in with themselves they they're asking their friends how they're okay or whatever but they're not checking in and saying okay well how do I feel today and and then when you do something like a walk with your mum or your friend okay well how do I feel now okay well well you know I feel a little bit better I feel a little bit of a shift happening so it's knowing that you do have that time to be able to look in check in and then seeing if there is any type of shift and then saying okay well I have the option to do that you know when I'm down I have the option to do that away from the mat and that's what I love yoga it teaches so many things on the mat that we can take away and all these beautiful poses and everything that we do you know even a lovely simple pose like tree pose it away from the mat means about grounding and about grounding down because if we're sort of all you know up in the clouds we sort of don't have anywhere to base ourselves and when the wind comes along and when we talk about resilience the wind comes along into the to the leaves and the branches of the trees the trees is going to topple over so if we can really root down and ground down and and be in the moment be in the now when that storm does come along we're going to be able to get through it's going to be okay so that's that's that's a little bit about yoga I mean you've articulated that perfectly Lisa that's that's very well said I mean it's really getting that connection so you can ground yourself and I think that's an awesome point to really finish up on because in society I do believe that that's probably the the seed of a root of most challenges is people not connecting with themselves and grounding and re-centering if we can have young girls and women doing this from a young age and you and these schools to help it's just you know it creates a whole another world so I think we need to we need to get you and more schools doing what you're doing is really what I'm trying to say get you in Hawaii I mean there's a lot of people there's a lot of people out there but we just need I mean the schools are starting to become a lot more open which is which is fantastic and hopefully yeah with with life school we can just spread the message and just let them know that just try something I mean yoga is for all all shapes all sizes um all different levels so it's it's welcomed everyone and that's what we're and that's what and that's what we're gonna do because you know what we don't have any more time I I knew that this would be one of those conversations that could go forever but we will be back Lisa and myself will be back doing another show together I'll actually be in Australia soon so we might even sneak in for a show then but until then please do continue to watch us every Wednesday at 11 a.m on Think Tech Hawaii the Savvy Chick show as well as you can see all the rest of the episodes on the Think Tech Hawaii YouTube account as well as Savvychicks.tv thanks for tuning in and we look forward to seeing you soon thanks Lisa thank you namaste


Welcome to our discussion today on sleep disorders. With me today are Dr. Leonard Suraj, ENT surgeon, and Dr. Jacqueline Bird, pediatrician. Welcome to the Government Information Service. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Most welcome. So we start out today by looking at your diagnostic sleep center, which was established last year in November.  Well, the idea came in a few years prior to that, when I was getting so many complaints from people who are sleeping disorders and difficulty falling asleep, those who fall asleep and wake up quickly and can't sleep again, those who get into road traffic accidents because of sleep deprivation. And many of those who had the necessary contacts would have gone overseas to Miami to train that to look to do a test to find out how bad they sleep in disorder is and how it can be corrected. And having, and I subsequently, attended a course on sleep disorders. And of course, it dwell on me that really we should be offering a service like this in St. Lucia, because nobody else in the OECS was actually involved in that. So Dr. Suraj, you speak as a specialist in nose and throat surgeon. But Dr. Bird, apparently sleep disorders are also a problem for children. They're little people as well. So your perspective and your involvement in the center. And we have two pediatricians associated with the center, Dr. Martin Plummer and myself. And then two physicians, Dr. Leonard Suraj, who is a surgeon and Dr. Martin Didier, who is an internist. It's well recognized that sleep is one of your most important functions, perhaps as important as eating and drinking. And especially in children, we recognize when sleep deprivation affects children. There are many children who have sleep disorders for many problems, for many reasons. But the problems manifest a lot in their behavior. So we have children with disordered behavior in classroom settings, hyperactivity, poor attention, restlessness, somnolence. A lot of children fall asleep during a boring class. And that's when we recognize that this perhaps was a service that would not only help Dr. Suraj's patients with their airway obstructions and Dr. Didier's patients with their metabolic problems, but children as well. So in terms of the numbers of persons that you're seeing, and just to paint it in the local context, so the average, on average, how many persons, or what percentage of solutions, if you have any statistics on that, would you say, go out elsewhere to get further treatment of these sleep disorders? Well, what I can say is that about between 10 and 20 percent of the population, any given population, would have had some sleeping disorders. And sadly enough, of that 20 percent, only about 5 percent of that 20 would have actually gotten any redress to their problem, meaning that a vast majority remain undiagnosed. And even in more developed countries like the United States, and most of the figures are coming from there, we have not done any local figures because we are very early, we are fledglings in that profession. And so we have not developed data for that, but we know that as your society gets more affluent, and as people get more obese, have more weight issue and sleeping disorders, then the figure ranges from about as low as 4 percent to about 20 percent of people having problems. And before we had this sleep test, those who could afford would have gone overseas and get the treatment. And I don't want to lose track of that. When we, in the formation of that particular sleep diagnostic sleep center, we looked for expertise that would have been blending with the challenges we would have in sleep studies. And that is, pediatrics are very high proportion of children if, I don't know, a tonsill problem, end up having sleep apnea, falling asleep. I noticed with Dr. Didi as a cardiology editor in Thurdis as well with the heart and these other things. So the composition was well thought out to bring in two pediatrics, one internal medicine and a head and neck person. So in the last six months, what have you been doing? Oh, well before you launch that program, there's a tremendous amount of training from overseas because we have two technicians who have been trained to conduct, to actually do the mortages and do the tests itself. So these people have to be trained from overseas. And we had, for about almost a year, we had overseas experts come into St. Lucia to conduct the training. So we had been busy doing that kind of thing. Since November, we've been doing tests and seeing patients who have sleeping disorders. But let's us look at what exactly is a sleep disorder. I know it's somewhat associated with breathing and even manifests itself to most of us in hearing somebody snore. What exactly is a sleep disorder? Well, the slide shows us the spectrum of sleep disorders ranging from mild occasional snoring all the way up to what we call severe obstructive sleep apnea, which is really a death knell for persons who are not recognizing that they have a problem. So there's normal breathing and then there's the other end of the spectrum, severe obstructive sleep apnea. And in between, you have mild snoring, regular snoring, and the increasing upper airway obstructions. Now these manifest in patients in a wide variety of ways. Some people may not even recognize that they have this disorder, but they do recognize daytime sleepiness, falling asleep in unusual places. The children, restlessness and hyperactivity, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has been diagnosed in a lot of children, and often it points back to their inadequate sleep at night. So then I guess the person who has a sleep disorder, are they aware that they have it or is it that a relative or parent that gives them the heads up and then in terms of your interrogation with them, your interaction with them, that is when you discover how exactly do you get to know that somebody has a sleep disorder? Most times the patient or the person may complain of being tired in the morning. Despite a long sleep rest while sleeping at night, they still feel as though they are tired in the morning. Sometimes they feel that the throat is so dry, the more they drink water, the more dry it is throughout the day. Others may have headaches and others may know that they have snoring and some of them would recall waking up as if there is something choking them and they wake up and sleep again and breathe again and fall back asleep. So these are what they would account, but the real evidence comes from the spouse or whoever is watching them and would see a drama that you only have to see it on video to understand it. So there is snoring and then there is this complete disruption in sleep that is actually very scary to watch, especially in a young child. Some of the milder clues that children take of odd sleeping positions. So if you have a baby who will not sleep well unless the head is extended over the edge of the bed so that the neck is extended, that's a very good clue. If you have children that sit bolt upright after an hour of sleeping and look around as if frightened, children that have other displays of night terrors, children that have started wetting their bed again when they used to be dry at night. That's called secondary bed wetting. Those are some of the clues other than the daytime sleepiness and the failure to be easily roused when it's time to get up in children. That's right. And of course in adults there is a tremendous amount of accidents that have been documented by patients who fall asleep. And for example, why would a 20, 25, 30 year old person, male, sleeping all night, goes, drives from view for two castries and halfway falls asleep.  I'm big on statistics but in terms of the numbers of accidents reported or, you know, that get referred to you, get referred to the public hospitals, do you gather any statistics on it? No, the statistics maybe gotten mostly from the traffic department. And then of course if you really have to look at the information, they would ask you how the person been convicted of that. So it gets very hazy if you're looking purely at diagnosing whoever had sleep disorders. Now that we have the sleep lab, I think we're going to be able to shed some light on that. Now that we are beginning to diagnose people and their sleep problems. But you know, there's evidence for sleep disturbance as well in doctors' offices looking after adults, especially with metabolic problems, but we haven't yet begun to make that connection. Not sleeping properly adversely affects management of high blood pressure, diabetes, weight control. There is a definite link between disordered sleep and its associated lack of oxygen and your ability to control your weight gain in your efforts. So people need to start paying attention and recognizing that if you're diabetic and you can't really understand why it's becoming so difficult to control your diabetes or your hypertension or your heart disease, the link may be poor sleep. This is very serious because it sounds like it's more than just a new sense of somebody snoring. Absolutely. But there are some very serious secondary health consequences. And indicators as well. What causes this then? The sleeping disorders are caused by many, many things. For one thing, your size, your weight for height can be an issue. The size of your neck can be an issue because when you store fat, usually you store it all over your body. But the neck is particularly prone to cause problems because as the neck expands, it narrows the inside passage for breathing. And also, strange enough, experiments have shown that when you store weight, you store fat. You also store it in the tongue. So the tongue gets big and fat. And therefore, if you're lying on your back, the tongue falls back. Also, as you age, the muscle tone is reduced. And as a result, it causes the pharyngeal muscle, the upper throat muscle. That's relaxed to make the throat blocked and the tongue falls back. Also, you have people whose chin is shorter. And as a result, the tongue is further back and causes the obstruction. And of course, people may have nasal problems. As an ENT person, I remember that one first. The nasal issue, bent nose, swollen sinus issues. So that as soon as they fall asleep, the natural thing is that the air will pass through the path of least resistance.   But while on that, I want to say that snoring itself is not the culprit as much as it is the forerunner to other things. The flag, the red flag. So because if I am snoring, then it is somebody who is listening to me that I have the problem. But it's a spectrum of problems from snoring to mild obstruction, moderate obstruction, severe obstruction. And when the breathing cuts off completely, you get apnea. But smoking would contribute to that as well? Unless it's associated with some allergy, hardly smoking is an issue. Smoking has other health problems, but not tremendously related to sleep apnea. What about drinking? Drinking, yes. Because with drinking comes, apart from you being more sedated after drinking, your muscles are more relaxed and therefore you're more likely to have snoring. More importantly, because you sleep so heavy, you tend to sleep in one position for longer. Because your muscles are more relaxed and you are uptended. So as a result, you do not turn and switch position because sleep is very dynamic. You don't stay in one place like a log. You keep on turning all the time. And when you are alcoholically infused, then you do not change position and you tend to snore more. In the children, enlarged tonsils and adenoids are a fact of life, especially in very young children. Because the tonsils and adenoids are the tissues that respond to external allergies. So they are usually larger than average in many children. And those are frequently the cause of an obstructed airway and the cause of obstructive sleep apnea. And removing the tonsils and adenoids is often curative. While on the children's side, I just want to add one thing. Sleep is extremely important for children's growth. Because as we go further in the program, we may get into the stages of sleep. Stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four, in terms of depth of sleep. And the children must achieve a certain amount of depth of sleep. If they are missing that because of adenoids and tonsil enlargement and sleep apnea, you find that their growth is tunted. It is dramatic after you move the tonsils and adenoids. They just start growing like magic. Very interesting conversation with Dr. Jacqueline Byrd and Dr. Leonhard Suraj on sleep disorders. We'll be back in a moment to continue the conversation. When you're out at sea, there are no service stations along the way or supermarkets for a quick stop if you need something. It is essential that everything you would need while at sea is on the boat before you leave. That's why pre-sea checks are so important. Checks should be carried out by more than one person to ensure that all essentials are on board. Pre-sea checks should include food stores, extra water and fuel, navigational equipment, safety gear and communication equipment. Before heading out to sea, always ensure that all equipment is in working order. You are stocked up on food and also extra fuel. Call the lighthouse to inform them of your voyage plan and inform someone responsible of your departure time and estimate the time of arrival back on shore. For more information on obtaining a license to fish, contact the Department of Fisheries at 468-4143. Welcome back. Today we're discussing sleep disorders and in studio I have with me from the Diagnostic Sleep Center, Dr. Leonard Sarange and Dr. Jacqueline Byrd. We will discuss what are sleep disorders and some of the causes. Right now we will move into some of the effects of them. What would you say are some of the effects of those sleep disorders? Okay. For one thing, the lack of sleep causes initially hyperactivity. Especially children. Yeah, children. And it causes, in adults, it causes lack, apart from wanting to sleep at maybe critical times when you are operating a machinery, whether it is a vehicle or whether it is a power tool that you are operating. There is a chance that you may just fall asleep. Also, from a medical point of view, lack of sleep leads to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure. And people who are untreated sleep disorders give you a five, four times higher chance to have a stroke. And three times higher chance of having heart disease. And twice the normal person of getting high blood pressure. These are factual stuff. It's related, I think, just to put it simply for the lay person to understand, when your airway is obstructed, you therefore have less oxygen circulating to the areas that need it. And the most important area that needs oxygen is your brain. And certainly in the children, what happens with obstructive sleep apnea is actually a physical disruption, not only of the healing processes that sleep normally affords you, but to the actual content and structure of your brain, especially your frontal brain, your frontal cortex.  When we wonder why society and the world is full of such poorly executive functioning individuals, it may be related to their sleep. Executive functioning from the frontal cortex is responsible for decision-making, impulse control, shifting ideas, delaying, delayed gratification. A lot of things that we often blame youngsters and blame on youth that we can see in adults in our society. And a lot of it can come back to disordered sleeping and the poor restorative functioning of poor sleep. So you actually see that, Dr. Bullard, in your practice with children that you currently see, because I would expect that this would affect their learning. Oh, certainly. And as you alluded to, their behavior. Certainly. We are doing a lot of investigation of children that have poor academic functioning in school in St. Lucia. We have a multidisciplinary team that looks into that. And we're only now, with this new interest in sleep, beginning to recognize the impacts of poor sleep on some of what we have been dealing with.   These are children that have to be sent to anger management and impulse control management. And a lot of it, I believe, we're going to see now that we are exploring this new area, is related to poor sleep and the effects of not having proper oxygenation and the sleep cycle that Dr. Suraj was speaking about. It has been well recognized that when you have low oxygenation of the brain, it does affect your cognitive function, your intellectual function, your judgment. How do you place things in terms of your decision-making process? And it is well established that these things suffer when you have low oxygen, because every time you have a sleep apnea and by definition apnea means cessation of breathing, the breathing cuts off, no air is passing up and down. So whenever you have breathing, a sleep apnea, the oxygen that is normally present in your blood begins gradually to go down. So maybe if it starts at 99% oxygen, it goes 98, 97, 94, 93, 92.  Yes, and then about 80, it tells you wake up. And you wake up, you take a few gas, and then you fall asleep again. Sometimes you may remember, sometimes you may not. But this is the pattern, and more importantly, when the oxygen begins to go lower, it begins to cause all other problems, like the heart begins to behave funny. And it has been said that many people who die in their sleep may have done so because at low oxygen, the heart begins to get arrhythmia.  A very extreme sleep apnea. And depending on how dicey the heart is, when you have these apnexpels. Does it depend on age? Age-related is health-related as well. And the genetics are not very strong on that, but generally it has to do with your other comorbidities or other medical conditions that you may have. Like everything else. Let's take this moment to just have a look at a video with somebody in that state right now. It might be graphic to some of you, but it's something that we believe that we should have a look at to actually have an understanding of what the state is. We go to the video. Wow, so that's what somebody who is in sleep apnea looks like. So Dr. Suraj, can you just give us a little explanation of what exactly we were viewing just this moment? Yes, sure. What you saw there was a patient who went through a sleep study, an overnight sleep study. You may or may not have seen that there were leads on the forehead to monitor the brain activity. And a band around him? Yeah, before we get there they would run on the eyes to look at eye movement. There's a little piezoelectric sensor in the nose to monitor airflow. There is one just on the voice box to monitor snoring. There are some ECG leads for the heart testing rhythm. There are a few leads on the chest and abdomen, two bands that have sensors when they stretch to monitor how much effort you are actually making in order to try to breathe. And of course there are others in the legs, et cetera, which does not show on that one. But essentially what you saw there is somebody who was sleeping, and you can see that person has some weight. Yes, quite some weight. Who was sleeping and the breathing cuts off and a lot of abdominal movement, but very little airway because you know because there is no, you're not hearing the snoring. But of course the monitor will pick up the airflow. And when the oxygen, so as soon as this happens, the oxygen you normally have in your body, 98%, will gradually go down. And at a certain stage, say 80%, you will find that the brain triggers waking up and you wake up, take a few gas. Now when you wake up you may not be alert to show that you're woken up because you may not remember that. So really you cannot go by what the person actually remembers. They may not even recognize that their sleep has been disturbed 300 times through the night. In fact they might actually fall back into another sleep again. Yes, it's a cycle. And they measure, so this is a polysomnograph. Polysomnograph? Polysomnograph, poly means many, some don't mean sleeping and a graph is tracing. So polysomnograph is PSG, they call it. And that's what we offer you at the diagnostic center. Common spender night with us. It's a very comfortable night in an air conditioned, very seductive environment. You may get put off a little bit by the wiring, but it's not invasive. Oh yes, it's not invasive, it's not painful. The same wiring that it's done for an electrocardiogram when we do your heart testing and there's no pain at all involved. And then you're relaxed on a comfortable bed by yourself in a private room and you're invited to put yourself to sleep. So we encourage people to come along with their iPad or a good book and just settle down and sleep the way you think you sleep at home.  So we will save you from any disorders. There's a video element to it. As well as the electronic monitoring. The video one is to look at the position because sometimes if a lead falls off, we can see it on the video. Apart from the tracing. I'm also curious, what are your clients, a patient's reaction to seeing themselves? No, they never come to them. No, the patients relax. Not first, but are they surprised at how they behave in terms of in that state? Well, actually, we do not... The video is... It's not... Sure, it's not recorded. It just goes... It just goes ad hoc. So you just see the position, the movement but we do not use the video as a tracing. So we don't have a live video going on. We're not capturing you in your sleep. So what we use the video for is to check the positioning and whether a lead falls off or whether you change position, et cetera. But we are monitoring about 24 different gadgets, different leads in all different parts of your body. We are monitoring that and to see the tracing as to how you behave. More importantly, for example, with him, you are looking at the depth of sleep. As soon as you close your eyes, you put out the light, we monitor your wakefulness. At what point you fall asleep and the sleeping at three stages, stage one, stage two, stage three and how long you spend in itch and then rapid eye movement sleep which is when you dream and when you benefit maximally from the sleep.  So this is really the best way to test and diagnose sleep orders. You really kind of do it like with a blood test or other man. No, no, no. You really have to monitor the function of the brain, the depth of sleep and the movement of the muscles of sleep while you are sleeping. So I would expect that you would need to do some level of public awareness then because at least for me in terms of what I would look for you check your eyes, you check your blood pressure, you do your animal physical but to do a polysomnograph is definitely something that wouldn't come on my radar. What would you say to solutions in terms of really looking in this direction to possibly diagnose some behavioral issues, etc.? Well, that is why we're here actually and we just thank you for this opportunity because we're really just emerging now with our public awareness to get some solutions and the wider OECS Caribbean especially to recognize that this service is available and how important sleep is to the brain and the functions of all of your body's organs. The patients that we are seeing being referred initially are patients with severe disorders from physicians who have been aware that their patients have a problem but the service has not been available before but we want to open the door wider to the average Joe and Jane to recognize that you can do a lot for yourself by improving the efficiency of your sleep but you can't do that until you diagnose that you don't have efficient sleep and so we're inviting people to come in to help the sleep questionnaire have a tour of the diagnostic sleep center and just become more aware of the functions of sleep and what happens when you don't sleep well. Thank you very much. We'll discuss a little more on that questionnaire as well as preventative measures when we come back. Thank you. Stay tuned. My 14-year-old child, she's driving me crazy. I just don't know what to do. All our child needs is some good legs to wake up. Alice, ignore the counseling pension given. Government employees have free access to professional counseling services under the Employee Assistance Program known as EAP. EAP? EAP? What's that? Not me that telling people my business. Listen to me, Alice. I was struggling with my child. I made an appointment to see an EAP counselor and I was very satisfied with the service that I received. And you know what? Up to a day like today my information remains confidential. Cox, how come nobody in the office knew anything about your counseling? Ah, that's because EAP counselors they work under strict clauses of confidentiality. I know you know what confidential means. EAP providing professional counseling services? How much is it? Girl, the counseling is free. Free for you, free for your child. And you know what? Your information remains confidential. Call the EAP unit at the ministry of the public service. Telephone number 468-2269 for more information. EAP Works, let it work for you. Welcome back. We're still discussing sleep disorders with Dr. Jacqueline Bird and Dr. Leonard Siraj from the Diagnostic Sleep Center. So we've now recognized some of the symptoms, how dangerous it is with sleep disorders. Sleep apnea can even cause death in certain instances. How do I go about... I've decided now that I want to be treated. Deciding, can you walk us through the steps of how you go about counseling people and treating them? Before you get treated, you have to be treatable. How do I know if I'm treatable? That's what I'm getting into. There is a questionnaire that is put out by... and it is accepted by the American Academy for sleep studies. Okay, so there's a standard... There's a standard form. And it is called Apley's... sorry, app of skill of sleep disturbances. Basically, it asks you to grade yourself based on your level of sleepiness for different regular activities. Regular activities mean sitting there watching TV or just reading a book or sitting in the back of a car that is driving or stopping by the stop sign. And after lunch or after a meal, do you fall asleep? In a meeting, if you are conducting a meeting and you are passive or turned into the meeting, are you falling asleep? So it goes through a few and it grades it between zero and three. Three being really bad, zero means you're fine. It also asks you to take into consideration if you have other comorbid situations like high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity. And the next circumference is a very good index of whether you really will have sleep apnea. And in men, anything above 17 is considered... Inches? Yeah, seven inches. And in women, 16 inches. Wow. The question that Leonard is speaking about is administered when you come in for investing just to get information to the sleep center. So it was just about to ask, is it something I can go out online? You can get it online and you can get it at our sleep center. It's something that's available up with sleep scoring. And if you score, after you've scored yourself, that's to determine whether you are a candidate that may require a sleep study. And if you score at a certain level more than three, then the recommendation then is to proceed and do a sleep study. And there are two sets of sleep studies you can do. Either a less intricate one where you take the gadget home and then you can do it at home. But you can do it at home. There is one you can do at home. And there is another one where you have to come to the lab because the things they are monitoring would have been more critical that you cannot be monitoring it on your own at home. When you say you can do it at home, what exactly is the equipment like or the process like? It's like a headband. It's a headband that has a few leads on it. And it measures your forehead blood flow. It measures, and there's a little thing that goes on your finger. Oxygenation. It measures the oxygen. So it does some basic... It's a screen. It's essentially a screen that highlights and flags you as a candidate for the proper overnight sleep study. And if it is a limited number of things you're looking for, then you can get by with that home sleep study. In this day and age, I'm wondering if there's an app for that. Nowadays, you have various smart watches that can trace everything while you exercise, maybe even while you sleep. Yeah, this is actually like that. Yeah, this was designed like that, as an app for that kind of thing. And the person puts it just before they go to sleep? Yeah, we would... You come in the lab, we would tell you how to put it on. It's a disposable one, so after we use it, you can use it for a second person. Okay, so would coming out of that home test, there be indication to do a deeper test there? Yeah, if it is showing that there are parameters that have been measured that is of concern to us, whereby we want to monitor you in a much more elaborate setup and observe you while you are sleeping, then we would need to recommend the sleep. But most people would prefer just to do the sleep test, the in-hospital sleep one, because you know you can get all the information you require. Okay, in terms of preventative measures, as we always talk about, what can you do to the best of your ability unless you are just susceptible to that, either through family history or other causes? But what can you do to minimize your risk of sleep apnea, sleep disorders? There are some things that you are born with. If you're born with a partition of your nose that is bent, you've got to straighten that out. If you have large tonsils and adenotes, you've got to straighten that out. If you have any other medical conditions, you'd better straighten that out. Or surgical things. And the real challenge sometimes is when you have people who are short chin, a lot of work has been done on that to find the best answer for that. It still remains a challenge. However, these conditions I mentioned so far are things that are beyond your control, you just have to be that way. There are things that are under your control and their lifestyle changes that directly impact sleep for the better. Weight loss, healthy diet, reduction in your amount of alcohol and smoking, and of course exercise. Nothing improves sleep like efficient exercise. And we recommend that a lot for children to improve their sleep patterns as well. Get your children outdoors and moving.  Get your children on a healthy diet. Okay. Let's again look at some of the problems associated with those sleep orders. Some of them in terms of hypertension, obesity. Everything that can go wrong with you medically can be worsened by poor sleep. So we're talking about all the metabolic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, stroke, cardiac disease. It is worsened by poor sleep through the mechanism of the cardiac arrhythmias. Mental function, intellectual function, cognitive functioning in children, academic performance in schools, attention. All of these things are negatively impacted by poor sleep. So the answer to it is you must sleep well to live well. Okay. When do you see the sleep sensor go in from here now? Very good question. Not because I don't answer, but it is still a good question. Of course it is with the sleep technology comes a lot of other things that can happen. And that is investigation for other neurological conditions like epilepsy, like dizziness, like brain tumors. All these can be because the guy who did the conduct of trading with us told us that our setup is good enough for us to expand tremendously on it. And he thinks that we should do that as a matter of urgency. When you say expansion, do you also see clients from around the region, the sub-region? Yes. We see who is here. Yes, we're the only sleep center in the OECS. Trinidad is our nearest neighbor that has an established sleep center. Both Trinidad and Barbados have sleep centers, but they are like standalone. What a guy was telling us from the state, he said that our unit attached to a hospital with the affiliation of specialists that we have, we have a tremendous, we have a far better arrangement than most places because most of the other places are standalone. One person decided to do a sleep study, but we attached to a hospital with all the importance of that. One of the most positive spin-offs that we see for the future is the ability to trap people with seizures, to investigate persons with epilepsy and other forms of abnormal movement disorders. Because the recording during the overnight sleep study also picks up abnormal brainwave activity or seizures. We don't have that service available in St. Lucia at the moment to diagnose epilepsy, and our sleep study will be able to assist patients in this regard, even if they don't have a sleep disorder. How do I find you? How do we find you? How do you find treatment? We're easy to find. We're a tapion hospital. It's not within the hospital itself. It's an adjacent building in the car park. So if people have a negative feeling about being admitted to hospital, you're not being admitted to hospital. The sleep center is a standalone center, and it's very calming and very attractive. You can call 459-2216 or 459-2034 and just ask for information, ask for a tour, and speak to one of the specialists. And we also have, we are affiliated with ISDSleepcenter.com, sleeptest.com. And this website actually has the question that you can download from there, and the website will direct those who are coming from St. Lucia to us. So we can get feedback from that. Well, thank you very much Dr. Burd and Dr. Suraj on joining us to discuss sleep disorders, sleep apnea, and ways of getting treatment. Definitely it's heartening to hear that we at least have a way to address this. And hopefully as you compile your statistics and your findings, you will come back to share it with us. We wish you all the best in your endeavor. Thank you very much. Thank you for this opportunity. Thanks GIS for allowing us to share our experiences with them and so forth. You're most welcome. Thank you very much for joining us in this discussion again. And we ask that you stay tuned with us as we bring you more information for your insight and edification. Thank you and until next time, I'm Richmond Felix, saying goodbye.


Okay, I will switch to English and I'm going to tell you a little bit of a more focused experience and, you know, try to try to tell you many, you know, many facts that happened when we start our company, my company and the lessons out of this so and essentially what we are going to What I'm going to talk today is about a discovery of a non-coding RNA that help us to start a biotech that essentially help us to address diseases by upregulation of endogenous proteins. So, one of the very important points that will come out in the in the discussion is that it is essential to do basic science fundamental science for innovation. And we were involved in exploring the transcriptome. So essentially we were looking at the genome and what the genome is encoding. And in this exercise where we were trying to make a catalog of all the protein coding genes. Accidentally, we identify a group of non-protein coding RNAs or non-coding RNA or non-coding RNAs. And this includes also antisense RNAs. So essentially RNA that are transcribed from the opposite strand and they will form some hybrid with sense RNAs. Another key word that is a serendipity also because those basic science project very often give you some discovery. And those discoveries, which you didn't plan at all are coming out from the, you know, from the basic science and it's up to you to identify new possible application and that your experiments are trying to tell you. And it is very important also that to think that the basic science is needed for innovation and a good having a very open eyes to the discovery is extremely important to have the idea to apply them for the discovery. Our project was mentioned to discover what the genome is transcribed and we have been over the years, this is a very long term project that we can to identify the protein coding genes and in this exercise we found that more than half of the genes are non-coding. Little by little, after a lot of skepticism, address and our group found that they are involved in the regulation of various activity of the genome. And particularly, I will talk about the regulation at this level, regulation at a translational level. And actually, out of the non-coding RNAs we estimate there are about 30,000, there is still something like 95% of them for which we don't know the function. We don't know that if all of them will be functional, but if you focus on the functional of those non-coding RNA and you identify new functions, it's likely that you may identify additional more discoveries that are different than what we have been. I'm going to talk now, but there are many chances to explore the non-coding path of the genome. The discovery came out in collaboration, so we have been organizing a phantom consortium where the RIKEN has been producing, RIKEN is one of the main Japanese research organizations, has been producing a very large database of full length CDNAs, so essentially a copy of transcribed genes. And in this analysis, my collaborator, Professor Stefano Gustińczis at IIT, the time he was at CSAN in Trieste, was interested in the UCHL1 because UCHL1 is a gene involved in Parkinson's and we identified this antisense represented here in red, before splicing, after splicing, essentially this overlaps this region of the UCHL1. And because the antisense was potentially interested, they started to over-expressed and to see if there is any regulation. But RNA level was very disappointing, so there is no regulation of RNA level. And just before throwing away the whole project, a Claudia Carieri, the first author, decided to see what happens to the protein in western blot. And actually in the presence of the antisense, the sense produces much more protein, so it's between five-fold to ten-fold in that experiment. We have one antisense that does not cause changes at RNA level, but it causes a dramatic increase of proteins. We start to look at what is important, and we identify in this region here, it's not shown here for, not to expand my presentation too much, but there is a sign element here. And after many experiments, in particular changing this antisense region to artificial, putting artificial antisense against any target RNA, and trying the effect of the sign element, which is represented here, we identify a new class of antisense RNA that we call sign-ups, because there are antisense that have a sign element that upregulate the protein translation for the RNA that they target through this binding domain, which is essentially a complementary sequence, and it can be synthesized with a lot of flexibility, and actually it works for the majority of RNA that we have been testing so far at some different level. So essentially, you're all familiar with SI RNA and inhibition of protein translation or gene activity, this is enhancing, those are antisense-enhancing protein activity, and that can be customized and work on endogenous RNA. So what we decided to do is, of course, we started many validation. This is one collaboration with the Telethon Institute in in in in in net poles, and actually we wanted to see if the sign-up design against this gene, sign-up against the COX-7B, which is a gene involved in microtermia with a linear skin lesion, when there is only one copy of this gene. So here's the human phenotype, and this is the Medaka fish COX-7B. The model consists in inhibiting splicing, so reducing to about 30% the fully spliced COX-7B, so 70% does not contain the X2, which is important for the function. And then to try to rescue to this phenotype by adding one antisense, essentially antisense with our sign element connected to see if it works to rescue the phenotype. And actually it works in about 50% of the cases, the size of the head that the development goes back to normal if compared to our control, and those are all the data, all the details, everything is in the paper. So essentially we have demonstrated that that could work to rescue a phenotype. We have been thinking a lot, and the idea is that to use sign-ups as a tool and therapeutics tool, but also tool for various other applications. There are at least 300 healthy sufficiency, so what are healthy sufficiency, healthy sufficiency are diseases where one copy of the gene is mutated, and so it's not functional. And the decreased dosage, you see the number of protein is normal protein, so half the amount of the protein is sufficient to cause a disease. And the idea is to use the sign-up to rescue the translated to use the functional copy of the only gene that is working, but to make it more protein, and to rescue the level of protein so essentially to have a therapeutics sign-up. And we had various ideas about the application, so using the sign-up against any other RNA, so of course to increase the translation of protein without changing the level of RNA. So this could be used for biotechnology in the lab, for bioproduction, to produce, for instance, more antibody for therapeutics, of course, as a whole sufficient is one of them where we're going to expand later about the possible application. And the first part, I mean, one very important part is to think very well about intellectual property. And intellectual property is fundamental, and as a scientist you need to understand the importance of intellectual property, what is the meaning, and how you will use it to be able to use and to be able to protect the areas where your biotech is involved. So you cannot get funding if you don't have a protection for a given area. And in our case, we were very happy to find that there was no such finding, and so basically the likelihood to get intellectual property was very high. And in fact, we filed the first pattern that was in collaboration with Enrique and the CISA, that was the host institute of Stefan Augustincic. This was granted a few years later in the USA is a very broad umbrella pattern that covers antisense RNA, and with the non-overlapping part containing a sign element that has the function to to enhance protein translation, sign element and also sequence similar to sign element. So it is actually very broad and fundamental. But also what we continue to do, we continue to look at ways to protect, to further protect, and we have additional filing about structures and other ways. So it's very important this strategy to really have strategies, a serious strategy to create multiple barriers to further protect your area of interest. This interest for the pattern came was not only at this time, but I know I was involved in filing patterns many years earlier when we were developing genomics and methodologies to capture genes. So I was fairly exposed and also with some experience in consulting for some of the spin-off of the Rican Institute. And so we were ready to go and we learned how to start a company. And the first we really want to be sure about the technology we tested in different lab. We have a plan and business and the business plan, but as always, you know, you make a plan is important to make a plan and very often you go in a different direction. So what we wanted to do, we wanted to develop a platform to make a synapse as a strong technology for broad application, we were thinking about antibody production at first, and without thinking that the therapy is maybe too complicated, and then we change our mind in the middle and you will see where. Actually, it's very important part that you need to plan beyond what is just a paper or a patent. The patent is just enabling, but you need to prove and have a lot of experiment of proving that is useful. So we started to do this. We have various experiment and then we went to for the company and we created the TransSign Technologies as a what was called Rican Venture. Rican was the institute in Japan and it has this system to create a venture so could provide support. The support that Rican was very good. Actually, here is the details of the company. I started from myself and Stefano and here are a few more things about us. Essentially, we want to say we are basic scientists that very, very much interested in publishing our research, that move suddenly moved, split our attention also to start some company. And, you know, you have your plan and then it worked very well until we started the company but then we wanted to get to get funding and the company was based in Japan. So we were required to provide more proof of concept. The idea is not only to work in with the medaka fish but also work with the mammalian, go with the mouse with the idea that we will raise some. And here many problems start to happen because we were often told by a fairly conservative investing environment that is too early and we must provide plenty of evidence before they would like to invest. So we were left with the lab there and making many experiments in the lab but also with this struggle to really, you know, really think how to make that kind of evidence before we could get. And time was moving anyway so we needed to accelerate to do something. So, and here I would like to really break, you know, to really comment why it was so difficult to get any funding because we were based in Japan where the attitude is fairly risk adverse. So it is not possible without evidence and there are many people involved without experience as venture capital. There is a very little support and no risk of takers and if you failed you have no future chances. And if you go to the big pharma, there is not enough time to really develop the technology before the big pharma usually stops because they need return of investment in much shorter time. And if you go to US they say it is interesting so let's invest to produce the evidence and and even if you fail, that's fine because investing in many spin-offs. Some of them would be excellent and be a Moderna or that size and even if other five company will fail and one become Moderna, there's still a huge return. And the failure is just one way to really understand what works and what does not work. And so essentially we've been looking at this and actually this was not only by me but Kubota-san at the Peppi Dream that is a very successful biotech company in Japan at this meeting was fairly inspiring. And anyway we decided to know we've been thinking a lot what do we have to change to really get the company successful so we have to produce the POC and we were working to make the POC as a virtual company, so essentially working in the lab under proper agreement with our institution and through collaboration with other academic institutions. So really working like in a garage for a while to produce to to get evidence and getting the documents. We're also making some cash because there was some request to synthesize the synapses so the company was selling artificial we could design them we were selling some of those. We could survive and paying for the patent fee and all the other costs without without having funding. It is fairly unusual because usually you have some funding we didn't have any except sometimes going to our own bank and help ourselves with that. The environment has been fairly hostile so we had the review for the reconvent your system and this virtual model was not recognized so we were told so I told them we are developing new IP and going to the POC. The reviewer said oh you don't have the employees this is not a company so please quit the quit this system so it was a rejection. We are not doing well and it's losing the reconvention status we could not use any more our labs we all the collaboration agreement failed so but the company had already accumulated quite a quite a big amount amount of data with proper agreement and everything was was clear and and as a company. Founder the mission is to keep the company alive and the ideas alive. Now the important point is that they were not only Stefan and Piero here, but there were other members. We've been working as a team and so Hatsuki have been developing many aspects of the technology this is RNA biologist that we can Michael Johnson he's a. field was generated but then he's been in business and Sylvia and Claudia was involved, unfortunately Sylvia passed away. Three years ago in this day she has been really really very important for the for the for the early stages. Importantly for the business Mike was was was been in Japan for many years he moved back to UK and he's he has a company at the. Bebra from campus and during lunch he met. VC from the. Robbie Woodman from the toolkit adventures and they started to talk about our company and then the discussion started so and the discussion is why don't you bring this company to UK and then we can we can find we can find this. This company so essentially so we have been moving from a company from trying to technology is a Japanese company. Essentially working in order to already have a commission or research and development of transferring know how to try and sign therapeutics in Cambridge with injection of venture capital so essentially we shut down here and start the new company, made all the documentation that is needed because always you need to have all the contracts or the documentation to transfer the intellectual property in the proper way so has been quite a bit of work and but we got to 5 million pounds of seed investments from insurance and which is a funny thing because the kid is a Japanese company and we started a company in Japan, and they both take the venture as you know, in us with the with the with the sub company in the UK. This Japanese company invest in UK from technology that are also coming from Japan showing that how much hostile and conservative environment really is negative for for for for investment and when you bring this in a different environment, it may actually work. And at the moment, of course, I don't know how it is Italy, but I know that there are various VCs in Milano area and and I'm sure that Italy probably is more is more is less conservative than this situation. Anyway, what was important is that the original, you know the that the funding was made on the data that we had already so actually actually working in the lab under collaboration agreement has been a good strategy for us. I don't recommend everyone to do this because it was very, very tough to do this. And now there is a transcendent therapeutics in and then I'm going to talk about the company in the next three slides so from that time, we are already three years later after this transition, and just I'm going to show you a little bit how the business has been developing in in this company and also from from the slide here I have received a modified from transcendent therapeutics, but essentially the company is focused on on developing synapse to take serious diseases that can be addresses by physiological production of endogenous protein. So, as I mentioned, it was started by, you know, by ourself that went to, you know, that brought the company in, in, in, in the UK. And do we do the talk at a ventures but also with we had the additional additional funds from the DTF, the measure discovery fund and the epidemics so essentially, we have the three three companies with the total investment of seed funding is about 13.5 million pounds so essentially this give us several, a few years to really move and started to really develop those RNA therapeutics. And the technology is there is the synapse so essentially, and also having the platform to modify and enhance translation of RNAs that are expressed in cells. As we said before, we want to increase the expression or any protein. And given that we will not touch the amount of RNA. And we think, and that this fine tuning of translation is, is a kind of more safe. So we don't have wrong. We don't have an expression in the wrong side because we targeted the RNA that is already in the cells. And, and also we modified translation we tune up to translation but it's not at the level that might be suddenly toxic because there is a hundred for the more protein, but we are, we are going to, you know, to 1.5 1.8 to two for the 2.5 which is quite often what you need to address some for me for some therapeutic application and we are also working on the delivery so can be a V vectors or we are also working to to make it short as a synthetic only going to die so we need to put a piece of the sign element and in the part of the 90 cents and within a 60 or 70 base base we have our artificial we call mini sign up or nano sign up. And also we are thinking about multi targeting as a, as a, as a product. So we started in a garage and or on a desk at home. And we have essential at the moment we have 20 people that are employed at the, at the TTX and there was a lot of RNA biologists visit them recently and get a talk and there was really a lot of science so I did not expect us so so many interesting biological question after that. And what actually very happy that the company can also speak that they can also also speak science. And essentially, the companies that is developing pipeline that are the potential to treat intractable diseases and ideas to go for the preclinical POC in 2023, mostly in of technology and in neuroscience and neuroscience come from Stefan or expertise because he has been focusing on on on on neuro the generation for many years and additional targets are on regulation, and the companies doing multiple partnering, but you have the picture of those two people here do you think that we are doing all of this, of course, no because we could hire a very, very strong team. And this is actually, you know, is a difficult thing if you're not in the right environment and you don't have the right connection and that will give you the credibility. This is a very important thing so you need to, you need to work on your connection to be able to hire these people like Ian who was, you know, he has been CEO of startups, but before he has been in various in various in in in in in pharma GSK and quite, quite a bit of experience but also, as you can see he's a scientist is a chemist in chemistry. The same is for Andrew, who is he's a has also a PhD and he has also big experience in in in from the basic science to GSK to AstraZeneca to various other social science, Anuj who has been, you know, again, he's been a CEO to various startup and meddling with again, a lot of, a lot of expertise and you need to construct those team and it has been quite, you know, it has been extremely important to to really hire them. So first, we were protecting the company by yourself and then once we find that the right team, we've been transferring and let them run as much as possible so here, a few more point to why we believe that we have advantages so for instance, gene replacement so you add a gene with gene therapy or a lot of RNA like Moderna, the potential issues that you cannot control how much you give, and so it's going to be difficult so you may have a lot of toxicity for over expression as well with the with the fine tuning of translation we may have some final regulation of, of, of, and so be much more physiological as a, as a response. There are other approaches usually give a down regulation, but we are probably quite unique, quite specific I would say to give up regulation. Modulation of up regulation is a key part of our of our of our of our strategy. Because functional genomics is moving very quickly, we believe that we can identify new targets, particularly thinking that targeting transcription networks targeting hubs that control expression on many genes and also with the, with the multi synapse. And here is the, you know, much more professional way to explain the technology so but you know I'm going to go through this just to remind you what we do. There is in the side DNA that produce RNA and and we and RNA is exported to the cytoplasm we want to target with the anti sense that the RNA on on the way to ribosomes to really produce more and to do this we again produce overlapping RNA that are connected to a sign element, this is as short as possible with the genes of interest and and and so of course there is quite a lot of research because there are many different sign elements that can work. Many different type of overlap that that are potentially working so that and we don't know yet if there are many that are tissue specific or self specific or work better in different system. There is a plant from the mouse that is the original one the sun element from the human human human element but we also have identified from Arabidopsis from the plant from the from the fishes and and that's what there is a cold water here that still awaits for that for additional and a very very specific applications. I have just a few more, you know, arguments why those why the technology is effective because it's a versatile against any protein. We can have viral viral delivery we can also multi targeted is accurate because the anti sense is for the sign up for the design up is very is very specific. And does not change the RNA level and all the protein as forms are up regulated and can and is also controlled. And as we said before, and actually what what I wanted to say is that of course once you have a professional team. You started to work also on the definition to attract other farmer other collaborator other other investment and again it's. It's important to stress that a good part of the preliminary data were made in collaboration with the with the with the with the funders lab. So the demonstration that we can improve Parkinson's disease in a mouse models by enhancing the translation of this gene so the Glya said rather than neurotrophic factors GDNF by using a sign up. So more protein and also in the street item and the affecting a phenotype is essentially a lower level here is the level of spontaneous movements, which essentially is addressing is essential seems to be important this most modern as a sign up to affect the to affect the phenotype of. Again this collaboration with from the lab of the start of the scientist the start of the company has been quite important. And I will just, you know, we will, as a company we we work, we work on targets like for a taxi in a free the free the taxi we need to bring this up GDNF and at the end also to produce more antibodies so here is a is a little bit of summary 20 people in the company 13 million funding is a platform the pipeline and so this is quite a quite a good to to see a company starting is a is a is a big pleasure. And actually, as if you're familiar with this, you will see that this is still quite early, and we are in the lead of optimization, but we are quite good shape to bring this into more close to any clinical trial, particularly having some diseases that that are not treatable and as a company we always think it, go from seed to serious a and serious be so here I will not know that those are predictions and as a company of course we are still, still, you know, still exposed to many risks, a little bit less than the in the early stages and there is a lot of work to do. As I said already and I would like to make the final consideration that, you know, this is the story of one company but different company will have their own, their own stories. And if you are involved in this you need to be very creative to, you know, from the creation of your network to to to all the steps that that will follow there is not no specific path for for success you need to you need to try. You have to, I would suggest that you start a company when you are very confident about the technology if you're not sure about who owns the technology you are not ready to to to start a company. You need to protect your your IP and you need to think in terms of intellectual property and the potential value of intellectual property, and how broad is the field that you can protect them. My story is a story for company that is not yet successful but there are important processes that we can already learn some lessons from this. Basic science is extremely important. You don't, I think that you cannot innovate if you don't go for the for basic science. People that started the company as a researcher have a very important role, and they should be allowed to participate so institutional rules and must be made that the scientists must must participate so there's always the possibility to have a conflict of interest that this is a part of the game. So if you want to play safe and avoid any conflict of interest you will have no innovations or just to be ready to have the scientists that will play in both sides. And starting your lab is important, but then move, but then once things get bigger you have to spin it out to keep your lab healthy continue to do the basic science and have the company to grow. So at a certain point you need to, to separate. You need to hire proper leadership that is essential for the next steps. And also to do this you need to have the connections and the connection is not only with your colleague in science but you need to really look for anyone that is involved in, in, in business and in, in, in, and having a very broad level of connection. So be careful, I would like to, I would like to stop here and happy to get any, any question from any question from you, and I, and I hope that the quality of the video and everything was fine.