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Copyright: © Richard Jacobs
Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP, co-director of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy (sfbacct.com), delivers an informative overview of mental health issues and contributing factors that play a significant role in how we sleep and the quality of our sleep.
Dr. Tompkins is an experienced licensed psychologist, board certified in behavioral and cognitive psychology. He is an accomplished author and outspoken advocate for mental health. Dr. Tompkins has held, and currently holds, significant leadership roles with various, important mental health centers and educational institutions. He is co-director of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy, assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as Diplomate and Founding Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. Additionally, Dr. Tompkins works as a trainer and consultant for the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior.
Dr. Tompkins discusses his nearly 30-year career in mental health, treating primarily anxiety and mood disorders. He states that most people with these kinds of disorders do experience difficulty with sleep. He details CBTI (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia) and his work with teens who have anxiety and sleep disorders. Insomnia is defined as a difficulty going to sleep or staying asleep, which limits the amount of restorative sleep that we all need. He explains how sleep disrupters, such as stress or travel, impact the sleep cycle. Further, he states that those who struggle to get quality sleep often worry about it, which increases anxiety and exacerbates the problem, or they try to adjust their sleep schedule, which often does not work because regularity of a sleep schedule is critical for the body to get into a working pattern such that restorative sleep can flourish.
Dr. Tompkins' book, The Insomnia Workbook for Teens, lays out a step-by-step process for achieving better sleep, proven-effective strategies to help the sleep deprived get to sleep and stay asleep. The book explains the many and varied reasons we experience insomnia, and offers advice on how to target and deal with sleep disrupters such as caffeine and sugar. Teens especially need quality sleep as their lifestyles today are fast and furious, and it is difficult to rise to the challenges of each day when we're sleep deprived and left feeling exhausted, grouchy, and unprepared for daily tasks. Dr. Tompkins coauthored the book with his esteemed colleague, Dr. Monique Thompson, also a licensed clinical psychologist. Dr. Thompson holds a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from California School of Professional Psychology. She is a certified cognitive therapist and also a Diplomate of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. She treats a myriad of mental health issues such as depression, various anxiety disorders (social anxiety, phobias, and panic), and sleep disorders, as well as attention problems, life transitions, and more.
Dr. Tompkins provides an overview of one of their primary goals: focusing on sleep efficiency, which is entirely different than simply looking at quality or quantity of sleep. He discusses various stimulus control strategies and other methods that people can utilize to help get them back on track with their sleep. He states that nearly 80% of the individuals they help with primary insomnia can often benefit from sleep restriction, essentially getting them to stop trying to catch up on sleep, but to focus on having consistent go to bed, and get out of bed times. Additionally he discusses other effective techniques such as breathing exercises, mindful meditation, muscle relaxation, and more. Dr. Tompkins talks about wind down routines and relaxation in general, and the importance of getting one's body and mind to a state in which all systems are ready to fall asleep willingly.
The sleep specialist and mental health educator discusses the particular issues that teens face, as they are literally going through an organic change in brain development that causes them to want to begin sleep later in the evening and then sleep in later come morning. And with elevated stress in teens' lives, and the use of social media, all can keep teen minds activated, which leads to sleep disturbances or a general difficulty with falling asleep or staying asleep. He details the types of skills that they teach in CBTI to help teens with their various sleep issues.
Dr. Tompkins discusses melatonin and other supplements, but he stresses that chronic insomnia sufferers may not benefit from melatonin, etc. Ultimately, insomnia sufferers must find a way to focus on wind down time and a consistent schedule of sleep. Additionally he talks about genetic inheritances that may contribute to sleep problems, such as chronotype (when we feel like sleeping naturally) and mental arousability, which many insomniacs tend to be prone to.
Dr. Tompkins is the author of multiple scholarly articles, chapters on cognitive behavior therapy, and books covering related subjects. He treats adults, adolescents, and children with anxiety disorders, as well as obsessive compulsive disorder, health anxiety, stress, insomnia, repetitive behaviors, elimination disorders, Tourette's and tic disorders.
Mark Fischer-Colbrie, president and CEO of Labcyte (labcyte.com), provides an extensive overview and introduction into the groundbreaking developments in liquid handling and transfer for experimentation.
Fischer-Colbrie is a seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience in the development and launch of innovative products for diagnostics, medical devices, therapeutics, and specific technologies for advancing companies. And since 2008, Fischer-Colbrie has helmed Labcyte as its president and CEO. Other notable positions in his storied career are as follows: senior vice president of finance and administration and chief financial officer at Adeza Biomedical Corporation, a successful women's healthcare startup that sold for $450 million; and as vice-president, corporate controller, and advanced technology business manager at a disk drive manufacturer that grew from a small startup to a behemoth $1.2 billion in revenue. During his tenure at Adeza, Fischer-Colbrie was an inventor on 4 patents and 6 patent applications and headed the business development area of the company for three years. He holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and an MBA in marketing and finance from UC Berkeley.
Fischer-Colbrie discusses Labcyte's mission to advance scientific innovations with sound. Labcyte seeks to redefine liquid handling for drug discovery and development, genomics, personalized medicine, synthetic biology, and more. He states that because the novel process of transferring liquids is governed by sound waves, it allows for replication of every single transfer in the same way with such precise uniformity and consistency that it generates better scientific data and more significant results during experimentation for various industries. The accuracy has provided experimenters an opportunity to explore new avenues for experimentation that were not previously available with traditional techniques.
The scientific research innovator elaborates on the many problems and errors that arise when using standard pipettes in experimentation, such as liquids being in touch with surfaces, drops, cross contamination, sterility, etc. Labcyte's innovative technology eliminates all these problems and errors and provides researchers with a more precise way to conduct experimentation and research. And this new technique is enabling new drugs to be discovered that simply could not have been with the old, less accurate, potentially error-prone techniques.
Fischer-Colbrie explains how a wide variety of experiments can be engaged in now with the more accurate Labcyte process. He explains the minute details of how the system works, covering topics such as surface tension, viscosity, and targeting. He outlines how the advanced technology system has been adopted by pharmaceutical manufacturers across the globe for its unique ability to precisely experiment in ways that were not possible previously. He speaks about the tremendous precision of data that is now becoming available thanks to the process, that will impact uses for artificial intelligence.
Fischer-Colbrie highlights some specific examples of how Labcyte's acoustic technique benefits industry, from increased precision and accuracy, to cost savings due to the elimination of expensive chemistry and pipettes, and through a significant reduction of time needed to conduct experimentation and gather results. Additionally, he states that the advanced technique will decrease the need for animal testing as well.
Fischer-Colbrie is currently chairman of the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and also a board member of the Analytical, Life Science & Diagnostic Association. He was selected as National EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2013, the country's most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs.
Before becoming a full-time and successful writer, Som Bathla worked as a corporate lawyer for 17 years. Realizing it was time for a change, he set his sights on a new goal and began figuring out what it would take to get there. He did the same thing just a couple of years ago when he decided to do something about the fact that he was overweight: he began by making a decision to run 10 kilometers within 12 weeks, and then started figuring out how much preparation he would need to do, how he'd need to change his daily routine, and how he'd need to change his diet. Perhaps most importantly, he had to remain disciplined, and strike a balance between preparation and recuperation.
Bathla joins the podcast to discuss the main themes of his book, The Science of High Performance: Develop Mental Toughness, Boost Willpower, Master New Skills, and Achieve Your Goals Faster and offer the audience insight on his personal journey, the challenges he's faced, and how he's overcome the greatest obstacles. He also discusses the psychological concept of "flow" and the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value.
Tune in for some inspiration and check out his book on Amazon.
Everything is skewed—whether in the businesses we own, the places we're employed, the groups of friends we hang out with, or our daily routines, and achieving success can be as simple as locating those skews and learning how to capitalize on them. That's the idea behind the 80/20 principle and the subject of this mini-episode with Richard Jacobs.
He explains how he's applied the principle through an analysis of his business and various product offerings, which has resulted in higher profits, improved efficiency, simpler procedures, and perhaps most importantly, happier clients. Along the same lines of thought, he explains how to use this principle to guide you toward the experts of the experts—the "superhumans"—in any given profession.
Established just two and a half years ago, the Human Data Commons Foundation aims to address two primary questions: how do we make the best decisions around the best and most powerful sources of data available to us, and how do we put structures in place that encourage people to share their data in a way that protects their privacy and places them at the center of agency in how that data gets used?
"Companies realize that the more data they have, the better machine learning algorithms they can produce…and that brings with it enormous power…and enormous peril…there's a lot of systemic injustice that can be perpetuated through these…and our intention at the foundation is to bring more attention to that," says Scott Nelson, founder, and chair of the Human Data Commons Foundation.
One way in which they're doing this is by publishing annual "report cards" that review data usage, privacy policies, terms of service, and the amount of agency given to users by the top companies in wearable technology such as Fitbit. The ultimate goal is to democratize, make more transparent, and advance human consciousness and conscious evolution through the responsible and ethical use of data.
Nelson touches on a variety of topics, including the main challenges to the implementation of new structures and processes in established company cultures, the role of blockchain technology in personal data protection, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and how a couple of German projects could pave the way for the implementation of open-source, ethical data platforms in the U.S.
The average annual turnover rate for sales reps is about 36%, and 70% of companies need at least six months to bring a single sales rep on board and up to speed. What if these percentages could be significantly decreased by a third party company's ability to quickly obtain and analyze all of an old rep's customer contact information and accounts so that a new rep could hit the ground running—essentially picking up where the last left off?
This is just one use case of SigParser, a technology that employs machine learning algorithms to parse through business emails and extract the most pertinent information, including customers' first and last names, phone numbers, and addresses. Once obtained, the information is loaded into the company's customer relationship management system (CRM). Considering the fact that nearly 80% of contact information never makes it into a company's CRM system, SigParser is an invaluable tool for building customer relations and increasing sales.
There's also a stateless API version of the product for companies that want to be able to grab contacts but can't have a third party processing and storing the data for them. Interested in learning more or finding out how SigParser can help your company? Paul Mendoza, CEO of SigParser, joins the podcast to explain all the ins and outs, so tune in and visit sigparser.com.
As the medical director of Gramercy Pediatrics In New York City, Dr. Dyan Hes specializes in what's become an epidemic over the past several decades: pediatric obesity. According to the CDC, approximately 19 percent or 13.7 million children in the U.S. are obese, and while it's true that genetics can contribute to this in some families, as a whole the genetics of the human population has not changed enough to account for it. And it's not just the U.S.—it's a first-world problem that's quickly spread to third world countries. So, what's the deal?
Dr. Hes makes for an insightful and eye-opening conversation by sharing her expertise on the subject and the experiences she's had with her patients, who range from infants to young adults suffering from one or more conditions due to obesity, including pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, insulin resistance, irregular menstrual cycles, and joint pain. According to Dr. Hes, kids are being given too much of the wrong types of food and not enough of the right types, especially from school cafeterias.
On top of that, many school districts don't have enough funding to provide physical education beyond 45 minutes per week. Add to the mixture an overall increase in sedentary lifestyles and reliance on technology, and you have the ingredients for this current epidemic.
Tune in to hear the full conversation and learn how to take the steps to start turning this around. For resources, visit the Obesity Action Coalition and American Board of Obesity Medicine websites and seek out local wellness programs in your area. To learn more about Dr. Hes' work, visit gramercypediatrics.com.
According to David Moore, PhD and faculty member in the Psychological Field Group at Pitzer College, there's good reason to believe that "genes" as we've come to commonly understand them don't actually exist; they aren't segments of DNA which start and stop at discrete points, they don't fulfill just one role in one context, and their expression or lack thereof is not immune to environmental influences. In fact, most molecular biologists would say that there is no single agreed-upon definition of a gene.
Dr. Moore joins the podcast to explore the topic of epigenetics: the phenomenon by which our experiences and environmental factors influence our genes and contribute to our characteristics. These environmental stimuli include the food we eat, how we exercise, the drugs we consume, our experiences in childhood, the level at which we socially interact as adults, and socioeconomic status. For example, a 2004 study conducted by Michael Meaney and Moshe Szyf showed an association between the level of grooming a pup receives from its mother and reactivity to stress in adulthood: the more grooming a pup received, the less reactive it was to stress stimuli as an adult. This finding, labelled by the authors as "epigenetic programming," has been challenged by many, yet evidence that supports it continues to grow.
This is just a snippet of the fascinating conversation Dr. Moore offers, which touches on topics such as in utero epigenetics, whether epigenetic states can be changed or reversed once they've been established, how the most common antidepressants have been shown to produce epigenetic changes, and the controversial idea that epigenetic changes are inheritable. He also discusses his most recent research, which involves studying mental rotation in human infants—an ability considered the single biggest sex difference in cognition that's unrelated to reproduction.
Tune in for the details and visit http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~dmoore/ to learn more.
Alex Vincart, Ph.D., is the CTO of Enkidoo Technologies, a platform that's bringing small to medium-sized businesses and independent retailers access to the same AI and automation technologies harnessed by major corporations, benefiting them with better tools and better visibility for managing inventory. By connecting point of sale systems and aggregating large amounts of historical sales data, Enkidoo optimizes company supply chains and provides them with a reliable way to predict future sales.
With each product offered through Smart Assistance, Enkidoo provides a streamlined and seamless process for business owners who want to do what they set out to from the beginning: foster the business itself without feeling bogged down by the constant operational demands.
Tune in for a discussion about the ins and outs of Enkidoo services, what's rolling out in the next six months or so, and an interesting use case that combines IOT and AI.
Interested in learning more? Check out enkidoo.ai.
Caroline Klatt entered the world of ecommerce and retail when she was still in high school and quickly realized the primary objective: drive up sales by finding and encouraging consumers to make purchases. For decades now, companies have been trying to accomplish this by investing most of their funds in digital ads and then following up with potential customers via email. According to Klatt, however, this approach has not only become outdated, but ineffective; in a society where everyone is using messaging apps through their phones at almost all hours of the day, retailers must integrate themselves in consumers' lives in the same way—by messaging them directly.
As the CEO and co-founder of Headliner Labs, Platt is giving retailers the ability to do this in a scalable and fully-automated way using artificial intelligence, and the result so far has been a 96 percent open rate, meaning potential customers are opening messages from retailers, communicating with them, and ultimately making purchases. Beyond the first layer of AI, retailers have the option of directing potential buyers to a live agent in order to maintain that ever-so-important personal touch and one-on-one communication.
Press play to learn how you can benefit from the services offered by Headliner Labs and what to look forward to in the coming months. Visit headlinerlabs.com for more.
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