Different Brains, Better Care: Personalising Neurology for Everyone

In this episode of One Voice for Neurology, we explore how personalised and precision approaches in neurology can improve care for everyone by recognising individual differences in brain health, including gender, sleep, and hormonal factors. 

Our guests — Dr Antonella Santuccione Chadha, medical doctor, neuroscientist, and founder of the Women’s Brain Foundation, and Dr Thomas Penzel, President of the World Sleep Society — discuss the latest research on gender differences in neurological conditions, the role of sleep and hormonal influences in prevention, and how holistic, individualised care can enhance outcomes for patients, clinicians, and health systems worldwide. 

We also hear from Chéri Ballinger, a Women’s Brain Foundation ambassador and traumatic brain injury survivor, who shares a personal account of how a gender-informed, individualised approach transformed her care. 

Topics covered include: 

• How sex and gender impact neurological disease prevalence, symptoms, and treatment response
• The role of sleep and hormonal factors in supporting brain health and preventing disease
• Advances in technology and AI supporting personalised approaches to neurology
• The importance of investing in research, sharing data, and promoting female leadership to drive equitable, patient-centred neurological care
• Real-world implications of holistic and precision neurology for patients and healthcare systems

Whether you’re a clinician, researcher, patient, or advocate, this episode highlights how understanding differences in brain health can lead to better, more equitable care for everyone.
 
 

Transcript

Sam Pauly (00:05):

Welcome to the One Voice for Neurology podcast, a series of podcasts exploring making neurology a priority, how that can be achieved with a global and uniform approach, and what that could mean for the future of neurology and those living with a neurological disorder. I'm Sam Polly and you are listening to episode 19 Different Brains, better Care, personalizing Neurology for Everyone. Hello and welcome to One Voice for Neurology. In this episode we're exploring personalized neurology and how understanding differences in brain health, including gender and sleep and lifestyle factors can improve care for everyone. We'll hear from the Women's Brain Foundation and the World Sleep Society who'll be sharing insights into how research personalized approaches and holistic care can shape better outcomes. Joining us today are Dr. Antonella San Chatter, CEO of the Women's Brain Foundation, and from the World Sleep Society President, Dr. Thomas Penzel. We'll discuss the science behind gender differences in neurological conditions, the role of sleep and prevention in personalized care and what this means for patients, clinicians, and health systems around the world. So Antonella and Thomas, thank you both so much for being with us today. It's just a joy to have you with us. Same here. Thanks. 

Dr Thomas Penzel (01:27):

Thank you very much. 

Sam Pauly (01:29):

I wonder if to start, you could maybe both very briefly explain a little bit about the mission of both of your organizations and why that's important. Thomas, let me begin with you and then Antonella, I'll come to you. 

Dr Thomas Penzel (01:42):

Our society is devoted to the professionals working in sleep medicine and sleep research. So we primarily try to join all the professionals in sleep medicine and sleep research in order to educate them in order to find conferences and make conferences. Also, we run journals in order to promote sleep health and make more information about sleep disorders. 

Sam Pauly (02:16):

And why is sleep health and sleep medicine important? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (02:21):

Sleep is about a third of human life and if sleep goes wrong, then also daytime performance goes wrong. So we know about 66 different diagnosis of sleep disorders and there are also secondary sleep disorders. So sleep problems can be an early sign of other problems, other disorders coming on. 

Sam Pauly (02:52):

Antonella, maybe you could tell us a little bit more about the Women's Brain Foundation. What's your mission as an and why is it important? 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (03:02):

The focus of our work is aimed to understand how set and gender impact brain and mental conditions. We have been the pioneering organization worldwide that has been addressed in this topic. So we work with all different type of stakeholders, from policymakers to patients to patients, organization, researchers, scientists, communicators to transform the entire ecosystem and redesign medicine with women in mind that women have not been at the center of clinical research and preclinical research for too long. We hone women centuries of research and science and precise approaches to their condition. And I can say proudly that we succeed to a point that Bill Gates has decided to prioritize women's health. So if Bill Gates got the message, I think we can say that we have done what was meant to be and prioritize this unmet need on women's health and Women's Brain Act on the top agenda. 

Sam Pauly (04:10):

And when we talk about prioritizing women's brain health, is there also a wider benefit? 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (04:15):

You might have heard about the report that was launched at the World Economic Forum 2024 pointing to 1 trillion return of investment if we will have prioritized research on women. This was a work that was done in collaboration with the McKinsey Institute of Health. One fourth of that 1 trillion will derive if we will prioritize research on female brain. So to your point, where is the benefit? The first benefit, it's first of all saving life of women, which I think it is not that trivial. The second thing will be to have the right return of investment when we do our research where we are going to put our public and private fund, that's fundamental. And finally we will have also the return of the money invested. I think it's also about doing what we define precision medicine. We have had a shallow medicine approach for too long. Precision medicine is finally understanding how to use drugs for the right patients at the right time at the right moment. If we don't consider sex and gender as the baseline of this approach, then we're not going to have precision medicine. So it's about a benefit in terms of the precise approach, the way we understand diseases characterize disease progression, time to diagnose treatment response, safety profile. It's about everything and it's finally saving money, saving money and saving life. 

Sam Pauly (05:40):

And when we talk about personalized neurology and precision neurology and also more of a holistic approach, what do we exactly mean by that and why is that so important? You just touched upon it there antonella a little bit, but why is precision medicine so important and how well recognized is it 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (05:58):

Precision medicine in neurology and psychiatry? It is just at the beginning we have that oncology has been pioneering precise approaches to treatment and care with the brain has been certainly a different situation. We had a delay in how research is versus other disease area a precise approach. It is a must and imperative because we need to understand the underlying mechanism of diseases and provide treatment that can go at the source of the disease. At the moment we have majority of treatments that are dealing with symptoms. We have that most of the drugs we prescribe, they do address symptom but do not solve the underlying cause. Let's look for instance, at the treatments that are now being prescribed also in Europe. Finally for Alzheimer's disease, they are disease modifying treatment, unpacking basically one of the causes of this devastating condition. And we do that based on characterizing the patient population as whether they have a specific genty feature to access this drug. So this is an example of precision medicine finally entering in a neurological indication like me disease. 

Sam Pauly (07:22):

Thomas, would you like to add anything to that? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (07:25):

Within sleep medicine, personalized treatment is very important. So currently using modern technology like variables, nearables and artificial intelligence in order to analyze the signals which we record from the sleeping person in a sleep center, they are analyzed in order to come out with a better diagnosis which allows personalized treatment. 

Sam Pauly (07:56):

And let's just talk for a minute about gender and then we'll focus a little bit more on sleep and then we'll bring everything together at the end. Anton, could you maybe share some of the key findings from your research on how neurological conditions present differently in women and men? 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (08:14):

We have to first of all acknowledge that sex and gender differences impact the prevalence of majority of the brain and mental disorders. For instance, disease, 70% of the patient population is female. We have that 80% of patients with depression are women. 80% of patients with multiples sclerosis are women. 80% of the patients suffering of migraine are women. And unfortunately the list goes on and on. So we have to understand how sex and gender impact the prevalence of those conditions, but also how impact symptoms onset of disease, how the treatment response might differ between men and women. And our research has done exactly this since the last 10 years now we have been publishing more than 100 peer review publication on this topic. For instance, we have held a round table with patients suffering and living with Parkinson disease. There is an increasing number of younger women developing symptoms and sign of Parkinson disease and this round table was held to understand how sex and gender impact this condition. 

(09:34)
We learned that for instance, L-DOPA does not function as good as it will do in the male population in terms of managing the symptoms of Parkinson. Why? Because women were not really including in the trials underlying this disease, we have learned that the symptoms and treatment response differ based on the hormonal phase the woman is in. And this has a profound impact on quality of life on these women. That's the type of work we do. We put the patient at the center, we learn, we publish, we share with the scientific community. It's about the entire patient journey from the disease onset till treatment options, but also understanding the underlying causes, why men and women have a different, let's say, predisposition to develop those diseases. 

Sam Pauly (10:26):

You mentioned a number of disorders there. You said the list goes on, you didn't cover them all, of course. Where they're so much more prevalent for women. Do we understand why that is? 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (10:37):

Here we go back to what we mean with sex and what we mean with gender. When we talk about sex, it's about the biology, the way our body, it is structured and coded from DNA onwards. When we speak about the gender component, it's about how the society sees a given individual and also how individual sees himself or herself in a given context. So those two elements have an impact on diseases that's clear. So our biology, it's predisposing apparently women to this type of conditions and it might be due to also hormonal changes that we have to face within our entire life because we have multiple transformation from poverty to menopause, including pregnancies, and then we go back to gender. We spoke about caregiving. We know for example, that caregiving predispose people to social isolation to depression. Those two aspects are elements of specific risk for dementia when we get old laser in life. So you see there are both components as women carry and heavy a burden of those conditions because both our biology but also the gender and how we are moving within the society predispose us to this conditions. 

Sam Pauly (12:06):

And what reception are you seeing to this work that you are doing in terms of this research? 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (12:12):

Where I wish a higher level of support, it is understanding that this type of research, independent research we do at our foundation has costs. So I of course would love to see more in terms of financial contribution to this type of research. But I have to say that things are moving forward and if a person like Bill Gates is now prioritizing women's health, I think that the landscape has changed profoundly. It's a great opportunity. We can literally rewrite medical books with female hands and I am delighted to see this across the board because it's about policymakers, patients, organization, pharmaceutical industry. We just heard an announcement of Microsoft prioritizing women's health. So it's everybody in the entire ecosystem that finally prioritized this unmet needs. So it's a great time to be. 

Sam Pauly (13:08):

And are we starting to see any improvements in outcomes and can you give me an example? 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (13:13):

Oh yes. We have good examples of things moving forward. First of all, great investments into startups and innovative solutions that are addressing unmet needs around women's cells such as for instance, endometriosis and endometriosis is also an impact on the way the brain is functioning but also understanding diseases. We start to see that the pharmaceutical industry, it's prioritizing sex gender analysis in their clinical development. We see that regulators are assigning a major role to reviewers that would also consider sex and gender aspect of submission of a file referring to a drug. For instance, Swiss medic, the Swiss agency just pointed to experts in the Grammy of experts that assess drugs that specifically will look at sex and gender. So yes, there are numerous example as why in 15 years from now things will look much better. 

Sam Pauly (14:15):

Now before we discuss in more detail the role that sleep plays, let's take a quick moment to hear a real life example of the personal difference that this gender approach can have on individuals as we hear from a survivor of traumatic brain injury and an ambassador for the Women's Brain Foundation. 

Chéri Ballinger (14:39):

Hi, I'm Chéri Ballinger and I'm originally from Southern California where I still live today and I'm so blessed to have a full life now as a film producer, entrepreneur, and international speaker and ambassador. But you know what? I'm also a TBI survivor. You see my life forever changed on February 11th, 2014 where I sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, I fell from about seven feet onto the back of my head on concrete and I had to learn how to do everything again, how to walk again, talk again. I lost my memory, you name it. My life completely stopped. But you know what? I had very female specific issues and doctors didn't know how to treat it or what to do. I was just given a pain pill here and there. I mean I was on anything and everything. No one really knew what to do about these very female specific issues I was dealing with, especially my hormones and everything every month. 

(15:45)
And it wasn't until years later when I was still down and out of the world that I saw a female naturopathic doctor who did for the first time on me a full on hormone panel and blood panel and she gave me progesterone. She gave me a certain protocol to go by and for me that was the game changer. I am so passionate about health and wellness and women's health because it matters. It matters. And seeing healthcare through the lens of gender is really what is going to really make headway and how we actually help people out there. I cannot say enough just how important this issue is and how important the Women's Brain Foundation is. I am so honored to know them and also so honored to be the US Ambassador for the Women's Brain Foundation. They are making a real difference in the way that we actually see health and it's true, it affects everyone and by their advocacy and research it's making a true difference. Imagine all the lives that can be saved, all the lives that are impacted. It's that important. 

Sam Pauly (17:07):

Thank you so much Shari for sharing your inspiring story there and highlighting the impact that an individualized approach can have. Let's talk a little bit now about sleep Thomas, and I'd like to bring you back in when we talk first of all about sleep disorders. I know that we talk about primary and secondary sleep disorders, so perhaps you could explain what the difference is between those for our listeners. 

Dr Thomas Penzel (17:32):

Well, as a World Sleep Society, we are an umbrella society of many national societies. We really care about sleep disorders. Sleep disorders are now becoming part of the ICD 11, so a separate chapter. They are not brain disorders, they are a separate entity. Within the sleep disorders we have different categories, six categories like insomnia, sleep related breathing disorders, movement disorders and others. There's not an official classification of primary and secondary sleep problems. We are talking about sleep disorders, which are primary sleep disorders coming out of problems of sleep. So something goes wrong with sleep. What I mentioned is secondary sleep disorders are those who in our classification are put in an appendix. So if someone has pain then the person may also experience sleep problems. If a person has Alzheimer, the person may experience sleep problems or we were talking about other disorders like dementia and depression. People with those diagnosis also have sleep problems, so we also help those patients. But for those, the primary problem is another medical disorder. When we are talking about sleep problems itself, then we are talking about insomnia, we are talking about sleep apnea, we are talking about parasomnias, we are talking about shift work problems which impact sleep and narcolepsy. Those are what I call primary sleep disorders 

Sam Pauly (19:34):

And how important is sleep and what impact can sleep disorders have on brain health. And also conversely, can we use sometimes sleep disorders to diagnose neurological conditions? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (19:47):

Sleep is a third of the human life like that. Sleep is very important for daytime performance. If sleep is impaired, first things are that we get tired that we get sleepy during the day and we have bad mood and cannot perform that well during the day. Of course, sleep problems may be also an early sign of other disorders or other problems, things going wrong. So many mental disorders and neurological disorders have early signs in sleep. One good and prominent example is Parkinson. We know one sleep disorder, which is called rem sleep behavior disorder. So acting out dreams during sleep and this is now a recognized precursor for Parkinson's disease 

Sam Pauly (20:49):

And how well acknowledged by healthcare professionals and policymakers is the importance of sleep and managing disorders. Is it well recognized? Is it well enough recognized? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (21:00):

Well, from my point of view, it's not enough recognized. So if people come to a gp, the GP typically asks, do you have problems with the stomach? Do you have problems with pain? And then the GP may ask, do you have problems with sleep? And the person says, well, everybody has some sleep problems. I have some back pain and sleep problems. I just part of my suffering. Then the doctor says, okay, is it that bad that I should prescribe a sleeping pill? And they said, no, I don't like sleeping pills. Then they simply go to the next topic. They don't ask more What's going wrong with sleep? Is it that you are sleeping too long that you are not finding in your sleep? So like insomnia problems or is it that you are tired all daytime? So is it like hypersomnia? So actually we wish that the physicians ask more about the details of sleep, what's going wrong? Are there movement problems, are there problems of not falling asleep or are there problems of falling asleep when driving That can be caused by some sleep problems. 

Sam Pauly (22:15):

We've been talking about gender differences with antonella. Do we see specific differences between sleep disorders? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (22:23):

There are two disorders which have clear gender differences. One is insomnia. We see a much higher prevalence of insomnia in females than men. I would say 70% of patients with insomnia are female and we see a much higher prevalence of sleep apnea in male subjects. Actually sleep apnea in male subjects is very dominant until after the menopause. After the menopause also female get much higher prevalence of sleep apnea almost same as in men. 

Sam Pauly (23:06):

Did you want to add something to that? 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (23:08):

Yes, if I may. One of the symptoms that can be defined as Hurley symptoms of perimenopause leading down to menopause, it is sleeping problems, sleeping disturbances. Typically women describe that they wake up around four or 5:00 AM in the morning and they can't find sleep. Again, this is a sign that actually menopause impacts the brain actually starts in the brain because versus odd flashes, we know that odd flashes arise much later in the trajectory of the changes that the female body has to face within this timeframe. So we know that women also have this poor quality of sleep that in my opinion, this is just my personal opinion, could explain also why certain diseases such as Alzheimer are more prevalent in the female population. It's living. It's tremendously important to also remove toxic prones from our brain. So it's not just about reenergizing and recovering, it's also like purifying the brain from what gets accumulated during the day. 

(24:24)
And we know that women have poor quality of sleep during pregnancy when they have toddlers breastfeeding, when they have teenagers because you're waiting for your kids coming back home. We also know that the level of sleep, let's say deepness, it is lower in women during the entire life of a woman from early phases until the menopause A woman, it is confronted with poor quality of sleep versus the male population. And this might be one underlying cause of why we developed and conditions such as Alzheimer, dementia, depression. So what do we need to change? How can we optimize also our societal structure to make it that women can sleep Good. 

Sam Pauly (25:18):

Thomas, let me pick up on that point with you as well. How important is sleep in prevention of neurological disorders as part of lifestyle and environmental factors and how does that fit into a personalized approach to neurology? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (25:35):

Sleep is very important in preventive medicine. So we try to educate about sleep health. We call this topic sleep hygiene. So one can care about having good sleep. There are currently a lot of sleep coaches, they're not belong to our profession. So there's a lot of things going on we are not happy with because they are not educated and sometimes do not know much about sleep physiology. So there is a lot of care which can be done quite well in preventing bad sleep. So like educating light is important, food is important, stress and coping with stress is very important, movement is important. All these are modifiers which help us to find good and restorative sleep. 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (26:39):

For example, Thomas, for me at least, I can share secret to have a good sleep whenever I go for a very long walk at night, one hour late evening walks are just making me sleeping very well. 

Dr Thomas Penzel (26:55):

Perfect. We say as physicians we say that each person should find out what's best to promote sleep. Other people just like to read a book or like to drink some milk with honey or other rituals. We call that rituals. You need to find out your individual optimal ritual to find good sleep. 

Sam Pauly (27:19):

It's all very much linked to lifestyle factors 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (27:23):

On rituals, if I may, are also the secret to succeed for athletes. So I think we do not speak enough about the benefit of establishing certain type of rituals and how they can help us coping through the day and our life. Now we don't have to be successful as athletes, but it's a good learning. I didn't know, and I was fascinating to discover this, 

Dr Thomas Penzel (27:48):

We know very much about athletes and sports people. We know that sleep enhances learning and this also is true for the athletes. If they exercise certain movements and strength, we know that NEP after training session will improve their learning and make them better performing. So steep really improves and enhances performing in all different kinds of things. 

Sam Pauly (28:20):

Can I just talk a little bit about technology as well, and in terms of care around sleep, what sort of changes and improvements have we seen over the last decade, for instance, Thomas, and how important is technology within that? And also what does that mean on a broader sense in terms of the possibilities of the way we can be using technology 

Dr Thomas Penzel (28:44):

Today? We see many people using consumer health trackers and many of the consumer health trackers, like all kinds of smart watches, they track sleep. This is somewhat a debatable thing. If a person who has sleep problems like insomnia, so not falling asleep well and getting up too early uses the sleep tracker and the sleep tracker makes the person more anxious and more afraid about finding enough sleep, then it's not helpful at all. If a person uses the sleep tracker just like counting steps and saying, okay, I should take care of my sleep in a more general way, then it may be helpful and it's just kind of another metric. But we see many people coming to as a sleep center and saying, look, my smartwatch tells me I don't have any dream sleep. Am I sick? No, because individuals are different and of course this person will have a sleep and a dreaming sleep even if the watch doesn't say that. So the accuracy is quite limited and we need to know that and to understand that the primary problem is if a person suffers, if there are some really impairments if the person cannot perform as before and then it's worthwhile asking and questioning sleep, but not based on a watch result. Only 

Sam Pauly (30:29):

If we stay with technology for a minute. We're talking a lot at the moment about AI in terms of data. What impact can that have in both of your fields? And then I'll come back to you. Thomas 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (30:44):

Women's Brain Foundation is working to generate a data lake of any possible data points around, first of all Alzheimer's disease, but then also hormones and whatever we don't have in terms of data available because of course we don't have many data concerning how diseases have been impacted by oron patients within a woman life. We are trying to sensitize those. So we're generating a data lake powered by generative ai. And then we will develop a tool that will support researcher patients and clinicians to have educated information and sex and gender based decision approaches as whether you have to design a clinical trial, as whether you have to establish a treatment or if you want to know about your symptoms and why you need the data lake. Because human power, it's not enough. By generating knowledge graph, we will be able to make connections and correlation among things that our minds as human, in our eyes as human, are not capable involved doing. 

Sam Pauly (31:53):

Thomas 

Dr Thomas Penzel (31:54):

Antonella was talking about Alzheimer's disease. She was talking about neurogenerative diseases. We know that sleep plays an important role as Antonella said. So current technology tries to improve sleep, to enhance deep sleep in order to prevent Alzheimer neurodegenerative problems. So there are some devices which try acoustically or electrically to stimulate sleep, to have deeper sleep. But this is still research. We have to say that none of those studies which are fascinating and come to publications in nature and science, they had not been proved and validated in large populations. So the hope with intensifying sleep preventing neurodegeneration is still on the horizon zone. It's plausible, but we don't have the method, the technology to do that at the moment. 

Sam Pauly (33:01):

As we start to come to the close of today's episode, we're talking so much about different impacts, different factors, gender, sleep, and of course there are other lifestyle factors and other factors that play a role in terms of diagnosis, treatment, care and management. Are we collaborating enough to give this holistic approach and to really be able to offer personalized medicine, precision medicine, antonella 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (33:32):

Collaborations are keys. Whether we are collaborating enough, I think there is always space for improvement above all. When we speak about data and access to data, there are several organization worldwide that sit on precious human data actually belonging to those who decided to donate those data for research outcomes that could be absolutely used to learn about so many things from sleep to sex and gender to ethnicity to safety, profile of drugs, treatment response. And we could model even using this data questions that we are not capable of answering yet. The what if we would've had more of this patient population, what if we would've given this higher dosage? What if I would've sleep three hours more in my entire life? Because we can thanks to as we said, generative ai. And so with this in mind, I think that I have a call to those who sits on those data to make them available to scientists, to communities, to patients organization, to anyone who can make sense of this data because it's a missed opportunity and it is something we own to humanity. 

Sam Pauly (34:48):

Thomas, I see you agreeing. Did you want to add anything around collaboration? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (34:52):

I agree that collaboration is very important. Sleep is a problem which already touches many disciplines like neurology, pology, cardiology. So working interdisciplinary and with different disciplines is very important. Sharing data is key. I totally agree on that. 

Sam Pauly (35:15):

And we talk quite often on this podcast about the W'S Intersectoral global action plan on epilepsy and neurological disorders. In the context of global initiatives like that, Antonella, are we seeing progress and what role is gender playing in that 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (35:34):

We can do much more? And I go back to investments. I think that neurological disorders and psychiatric disorders do not have enough funding versus other disease area. We have to fuel much more assets and prioritize research in this disease area. If we want to have an healthier society, we know that there are too many people that at some point in their life they will develop a psychiatry or a neurological condition. And we don't have cures, we don't have proper treatments. I repeat, we just treat most of the time symptoms. We don't even know the underlying causes. We don't even know how many type of dimensions we have. So there is a lot of work to be done in terms of biomarkers, understanding the conditions, and this costs money. Without the funds, we don't proceed. And I know that investors want to have a quick win on how they get their ROI fully understood, but here we need to have maybe a more of a female leadership in moving forward investments for two reasons. 

(36:33)
First of all, because majority of the people that should be talking about brunette should be women as we are the majority of the patients impacted and majority of the caregivers. Second, we should have that female investors become more, we don't have enough of those. And then I'm pretty sure that they will start to have this type of mindset in investing towards a societal return and have a long-term strategic type of investment return. I'm not a finance expert myself, but what I can say is that that's also where sex and gender differences resides in behavior. Certainly women have a way of thinking about solutions and impact on a longer term rather than a shorter term. And that's what we need if we want to have an LT planet, in my opinion. So more women leading the discussion. 

Sam Pauly (37:23):

Thomas, let me come to you on a similar question around the eye gap in terms of sleep and its impact the better sleep can have. Are we seeing progress? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (37:33):

We signed a contract with WHO to promote global sleep health. WHO even gave us some funds to promote global sleep health and they ask us how can we monitor sleep health pretty easily also in countries having not that much resources. So we need to monitor sleep in order to detect impaired sleep and then take preventive actions on a personalized way. So where is it just misbehavior and where is it secondary to other problems? And where are primary sleep problems behind the impaired function? 

Sam Pauly (38:22):

Let me just ask you to finish today's episode. If you were to give us one hope for the future, maybe if we were to come back and talk about this in 10 years time, where would you like us to be? What would that hope for the future be? Antonella will come with you and then Thomas, we'll leave you the final word. 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (38:42):

Reducing incidents and prevalence of brain and neurological disorders. That's what I hope. 

Sam Pauly (38:50):

And do you feel hopeful for it? 

Dr. Antonella Santuccione-Chadha (38:52):

Yeah. I think that with preventative measures we can, and of course we also have to bring the right treatments for patients, but this takes a bit of time. 

Sam Pauly (39:02):

Thomas, for Precision Medicine, personalized medicine, what's your hope for the future? 

Dr Thomas Penzel (39:07):

My hope is that caregivers recognize the importance of sleep and do not see reported sleep problems just as a symptom, but that they distinguish between symptoms and some underlying sleep disorders. 

Sam Pauly (39:25):

Well, antonella at Thomas, it's been such a fascinating conversation to have with you both and thank you very much for those last messages of hope as well. But thank you Antonella from Women's Brain Foundation and Thomas from the World Sleep Society. Thank you both for being with us. Well that brings us to the end of this episode of the One Voice for Neurology podcast. Do follow us on social media to stay up to date. You'll find us on LinkedIn and also on X with the handle at one neurology. And you can also explore more from the One Neurology partnership@oneneurology.net. Thanks for listening. And do join us again soon as we continue to speak with one voice for better brain health for all.