♪ >> because I think most members will tell you that that's what they miss most is the collegiality U.S.

Congressman John Yarmouth.

The Kentucky looks back on his 16 years of service.

>> diagnosed and one people would die and the other.

>> Help us here for people with Lou Gehrig's disease.

My background is in virtual acoustics of the ideas that I want to try to make it sound like you're in a space when you're not actually present in this space.

It's a high-tech hearing test.

The feels like the real thing.

>> Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

Leonard Press Endowment for Public Affairs and the KET Millennium Fund.

♪ ♪ >> Good evening and welcome to Kentucky EDITION on Thursday, December 29th.

I'm Casey Parker Bell filling in for Renee Shaw.

Thank you for joining us on this special episode of Kentucky EDITION.

We're focusing on health from what could be a life saving drug to new ways of fighting brain cancer.

We will look back at some of the amazing work taking place in hospitals and science labs right here in Kentucky.

But first, a conversation with U.S., Congressman John Yarmouth.

Kentucky's 3rd congressional district Representative served 8 terms in Washington.

Now he's returning back home to Louisville and passing the baton to a former state Sen who represent Louisville in Congress.

Renee Shaw recently sat down with the congressman for a look back at his years of service.

>> What will you miss?

Well, miss, I will miss the people for you know, the for the you know, maybe it maybe time will tell that be able to KET doing this.

But one of the things that out discovered very early service was the most important part of this job was to make people feel they had a connection to the government.

And so that's a simple as visiting schools going to churches and synagogues going to Costco in the weekend and talk to people and community festivals, whatever it is.

And I miss I miss that and that I never dreamed that that was such an important part of the job.

One has initially decided to write this that as well.

you know, I'll be around town and yeah, just go to Costco and still going to just go more often.

If you want to do which we all do.

>> I did want to ask you about the floor speech today, which they said, you know, your final floor speech and >> you made it through and almost into and and humid.

You mentioned your chief of staff and you just overcome and gratitude to her for how she had served.

Not just you, but the nation >> Well, Julie Carr is a Louisville u of L graduate.

She worked for a number of members before I got there and I didn't know her.

A couple days after I got elected in 2006, she called me and she you know, I'm my name is Julie Karma, Louisville native Louise Slaughter's chief of staff, Louise Slaughter.

Then being the chair of the Rules well about to become the chair of the Rules Committee.

Actually a native of But she said I never thought to have a chance to work for a Democrat from my I'd like to talk about being your chief of staff.

And so she made the decision to leave one of the most powerful people in Congress.

Lewis won't slow to come to work for me and, you know, as I said in the if she had left me at any time during the 16 years, I think I retired the next day because I couldn't have done the job without her.

She's like an alter ego and yeah, I can't imagine a better friend.

Yeah, I'm not sure he choked up thinking about right now.

But she's just been incredible.

And so, yeah, I rehearse the speech the morning before a gave it and I totally lost and I'm standing in my kitchen in Washington.

A lot of it that I did that the morning of speech and I got through it fine.

And but the the moment, the moment and the atmosphere that's different when it's this is the thing right now.

And there won't be another time was again, that that makes perfect sense.

Well, you did start off with a more comedic notes.

>> about clowns.

And and the circus.

And I want you to to to tell us what you're really talking about several years ago, I ran into a former friend of mine and I asked him how you >> miss it.

And he said, I don't miss the circus.

I miss the I've repeated that hundreds of times and it's a great way to describe because I think most members will tell you that that's what they miss most is the >> collegiality and but they don't miss the the every day for the garages.

But what I went on to say was are certain things about the circus that I will miss.

And things like.

I really love the debates.

We had, even though, as I said in the they never changed anybody's But those debates are really important for the country to have.

And down here.

So that on you know, it don't miss the fact that so much of what we say on the floor and committees comes from the border side of our nature.

Instead of the best side of our nature.

And we're doing a lot of performance.

Art and the political theater.

yeah, that's it's a great way to put it because that I think that's again, every former member of talked to said the same thing.

I miss my colleagues.

Yes.

>> Are you still going to where the F on your lapel, sir?

I have been thinking about that.

Probably not.

And we should remind people if they don't know.

That's because you have consistently gotten an F rating from the National Rifle Association.

The association annual warned this proudly for the last 4 years.

Yes, and it's interesting that >> I get my portrait hung in the Budget Committee room as a as a chair and former chairman and I had to decide whether I wanted the f 10 on my porch or And I finally decided, yeah, I mean, every every session of it that Iran is chairman, I had the F and then on.

So it should be on the part of it.

>> It's part of your more.

>> But I'm going, you know, Morgan, a minute.

I want to honor that.

Put any pressure on him.

But hopefully he'll get an F rating from the NRA and he can be the repository.

>> Hymns?

Well, it does seem.

I mean, we talked about gun control and then he had the bill in the state Senate right now.

The crisis aversion rights retention.

So it's kind of a red flag I do want to talk to you about kind of missed opportunities and policies, policy proposals that have languished for years and gun control, even though there's been some movement and in a direction we've heard the president say there needs to be more, Don.

And we've had some recent incidents that says something is still not working here.

Do you believe that's one of the greatest missed opportunities that you would see during your Absolutely.

And we passed the first gun safety last year in since the Mid 90's, which was a step in the right direction.

It was totally We need to do so much more.

>> And the American people want us to do so much more.

The members of the NRA wants to do so much more.

Which is interesting.

Yeah.

And but you know, the the NRA has a hold on mostly the leadership of an online or at least some of the other eye on the mostly on the Republican side.

And we haven't been able to get anything more significant than we have been able to get to universal background checks and anything with assault weapons and so forth.

Red flag laws and these are things that the American people think are very reasonable things to do by huge >> And just the political will is not there.

The courage to do that is that often the reason why things just languishes because of the money that's in politics and the influence in politics, the lobbying that goes along and this the constant need to seek reelection.

>> Of course, and we particularly in the house where you have most of the districts are a pretty much solid Republican or Democratic district.

So members are not afraid of challenges from the others.

The other party, they're afraid of child challenges from their own party in the primary so that those issues become much more significant than they in the general election.

But you mentioned one thing.

That's also my great frustration is that we haven't been able to do anything about money in politics and starting with.

the the not the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court and then a subsequent decision than a year which I can remember.

but just open the floodgates we even even those who.

You've like Mitch McConnell and one said, you know, the answer is disclosure.

Well, we tried to pass what we call the disclose act and Republicans have blocked that.

you know, now we have situation in which one guy gave a billion and a half dollars this year.

2 of the put it in the political system.

And that's just crazy.

but that's that's another reason.

You're right.

Why the the members it's so hard to get certain actions taken at some point because they're so dependent on.

>> On the money and the gerrymandering, right, that it now has really given a buoy to those on the extreme left and extreme.

Right.

And like you said, it's not so much worrying about the general election.

It's being primary that right but it seems like in this what what is the 100 18th Congress?

There was some pushback from French, right?

Would you agree with that?

>> There was.

I was glad to see that.

there were a number of elections where you had people primarily on the Republican side who were election than Ayers, we're kind of we're indoors by Donald Trump about Donald Trump really won the 2020 election or elections are corrupt and we need to worry about that when there's no evidence that they are.

And most of them lost, which was a good sign.

♪ >> We move on now to medical news.

The newly approved drug is giving hope to the estimated 20,000 Americans currently living with a less or Lou Gehrig's disease.

But some of the scientific community say the drug did not undergo the same rigorous testing like most drugs approved by the FDA.

We spoke to one Kentucky man battling the disease.

He says Ellis patients like himself.

>> Could not have time to wait.

>> This is a great, great way for the homeless community patients when other initially diagnosed are just devastated by the fact is that just because of the severity of it and you know, anything that can give them help in any type of medication, drug treatment or anything that can get an extended life.

>> Expectancy, I mean that they they're they're searching for that.

They're wanting that this was something that we were, you know, that we we were excited to promote it and one can get for our patients.

It could potentially add tend 18 months to a person's lifespan.

Now that doesn't sound like much tonight, but when you consider that somebody they'll as dies within 18 months or the Max.

>> 5 years, the 18 month.

Good at anywhere from 25 to 70% of their life.

>> It's gone through 2 phases so far and has proven to be so far safe and effective.

The phase 3 trial for this drug is going to be done by 2024.

And this is what makes this so great.

The FDA does not usually approve a drug without a phase.

3.

>> Trial COVID kind of taught us that that we needed to get drugs to market faster mail is people really can the word to wait.

>> Along the years, years or even sometimes decades process.

>> 4.

A drug that could go through all the research and studies and the approval process.

>> They're desperate.

There.

Is there live to really have a 3 to 5 year.

Mike Spann, once you're diagnosed with a less.

>> diagnosed and one in people are dying and the other end.

>> As far as we know right now, this is not a this is not causing any harm.

So if it has any promise it all, it's worth.

It's worth the risk.

>> I might live to see my son graduate high school.

I lived to see our young this.

What we had to wait.

I school Mike with the sea.

My daughter graduate My sons.

Could there be risks?

Yes, it could be.

Let let's face terminally ill.

I'm going to take that risk potentially if I think there's a reward for him.

>> According to a less association, some insurance companies will not pay for the drug.

So not all U.S. patients have access to it.

A neurosurgery team with the University of Louisville Health.

He's taking a new approach to treating brain tumors and the tile therapy is providing patients access to an innovative treatment.

They can extend their lifespan, one proving their quality of life.

>> Well, we all have and I just blacked out one evening.

Nyad.

Ended up at U of L hospital because of it.

Got my head open.

And they did it.

A stand.

>> And came back to the set.

I bring to it.

>> Well, that they offer me a lot of treatment options.

All of which didn't work out very well.

So they came up with this gamma tile.

Breaking therapy.

>> Given how therapy is an implanted, a device that emits radiation, the radiation.

That summit is very In terms of the distance, it goes and we call that conceptually breaking therapy.

Is the jargon word for that?

When we insert anything that's radioactive and emits radiation.

The benefit of that is that it doesn't go very far.

And so the tissue affected is much less than it was given to you from an external source like a regular radiation machine.

>> But you do use to stick to tie against the tumor.

Most of the radiation is delivered 2, is that you to live within 5 meters, delivers a radiance and then but away from it the moment they will get very little.

So there's a little side effects.

>> The downside, of course, is that it's invasive.

But if you're going to have an invasive procedure anyway, sometimes combining breaking therapy with an invasive procedure can give you the best of both worlds that you might need.

The best use us ever best use.

The one that we we treat is, you know, we you know, we have South coca metastatic thanks to of the someone else, most common lung cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, and things I that he's met a testing brain cancer with no known origin.

They have had a difficult time finding.

The words stop came from so difficult time trying to treat it.

Tom needed a very customized plan, had already had 2 rounds of radiation.

He already had one surgery.

>> He needed something that was going to be a little bit different than what we normally would do.

When you get into that area.

I think you need to have as many options as possible because you're not going to have the same plan work for every patient.

>> You know, felt that.

I'm not ready to go yet.

You know, I just felt this.

Not my time.

And so I decided to take this chance.

It's the first one in Kentucky, which I think is great because Kentuckyian suffer more often from cancer than any other state in the union.

And so we need this therapy desperately here.

I'm incredibly proud to part of the team that that did this and that came up with this hopefully clown road for people buying me.

They're going to go through this because, you know, there's going to give you the people that will, you know.

If I can be somebody else or done down the road summit.

>> Sleep >> deprivation has become a public health crisis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention among the areas of the country, getting the least amount of sleep as rural Appalachia.

2 researchers at the University of Kentucky are trying to understand why almost 58% of adults in eastern Kentucky are having a hard time getting their arrest.

>> As a society, we don't really prioritize sleep.

We think about almost as like.

A weakness.

You're not working hard enough if you're needing more sleep.

But in fact, we know that sleep is so critical to so many aspects of our health and well-being that I think a shift towards thinking about this is a priority is really important in the United States in general and in places like Eastern Kentucky, in particular.

Statistically the rates of sleep disorders are so high.

>> That we know that there are crisis and then if we KET going down this path, we're only going to worsen with worse outcomes.

We need to do research in these areas and we need to find solutions for these health issues before they continue to spiral.

We know that adult and eastern Kentucky have some of the highest rates of insufficient sleep in the entire nation.

The purpose of the study is to find out why adult and 3 Jun have some of the worst health outcomes in general and the whole nation.

And there are such strong bi-directional relationship between sleep and health.

So if we can improve people sleep in the region, hopefully we can improve their health overall.

>> When we started this project is really just focused on sleep and health, but several of our communities have been impacted dramatically by the recent flooding in eastern Kentucky.

And so we know from things like natural disasters that that has had a dramatic impact on sleep and all sorts of aspects of psychological and physical health long term.

>> Insomnia, which is difficulty getting and staying asleep, sleep apnea, which is waking during the night, Sir Ken Shift disorder where individuals are a week at night and sleep during the day.

All of these together we think of them asleep, deficiencies and we know that they're correlated with cardiovascular disease.

Increased risk of stroke, obesity, depression, anxiety.

We know things like working night shifts or shift work or other types of jobs.

>> That impact or disrupt us having regular sleep.

We also see that things like stress, things a lack of economic resources or poverty.

Those can have a really big impact in general women are more likely than men.

>> To suffer from these sleep issues.

We also know that socioeconomic status played a large role in sleep.

So the lower your sister, economic status or another way to think that higher rates of poverty for Cissy to rip her sleep and then people of color have higher rates of insufficient sleep insomnia for asking a variety of open ended in a few questions to hear about.

Participants lived experience with sleep and health problems and things that might be impacting that.

>> So we're going to have a variety of different measures within that that we can see how things like sleep and health problems actually changing over time.

>> Our project is actually structure to look at all 3 levels, the individual, the social and thus idol at the individual level, we will work with people in the future on things like sleep hygiene, improving your room and putting your habits, improving your thoughts and behaviors around sleep workplaces that expect long business hours.

That also impacts people's circadian rhythms and keeps them from getting the sleep that they would normally get.

During the night.

We are committed to working with individuals in the region to improve their sleep in the short term, the long term as best we can.

>> In a recent Gallup poll, 40% of adults 18 to 49 reported getting less than the recommended 7 hours of sleep a night.

A hearing aid can drastically improve the quality of life for those suffering from hearing loss, but testing a hearing aid in different environments can be difficult.

3 researchers at the University of Louisville are looking to virtual reality technology.

Tell patients find the right fit before they leave the audiologist office.

When you fit a hearing aid, you do it in a quiet clinic.

Quite clinics are not the problem areas.

It's when you go out into noisy restaurants river.

Brent churches.

>> You know, these are the places where people have problems where we've created is an audio visual virtual reality system.

So that while you're still in that clinic without even leaving, we can put up a visual of and the restaurant or a river bring church or whatever setting is the most difficult for you.

And then the ideas that you're wearing hearing it as well.

So the ideology just can make changes.

And that hearing aid and directly ask you.

>> How does that sound was that better?

We're able to simulate sounds coming from any direction, not just the directions where you have loudspeaker set up around your living room when you, you know, listen to movies and so forth.

So.

>> So this is much better.

It's much more accurate.

It takes into account the way that the head and the external years all act acoustically on the listing situations that we experience, what Matthews done is to now in the great in what the hearing aid also does acoustically in the listening situation, my background is in virtual acoustics of the ideas that I want to try to make it sound like you're in a space when you're not actually present in this space.

>> You can do this by surrounding some of the bunch of loudspeakers.

But you can also do this more simply by just using a pair of headphones.

We have sort of 2 versions that were working on a one which most people think about instantly is over a virtual reality headset.

So you can wear a VR headset and you have some hearing aids and headphones that provide the audio of that room that you're supposed to be sitting in.

So it's a or some version.

We have another version that actually just uses 3 external screen.

It's not quite as immersive, but it still gives you a visual of I'm sitting in a restaurant.

There's a talker there and there's another talker there that I want to hear.

If I can demonstrate to an audiologist the benefits of feature a B and C they will then know how to properly tune.

Those features for all 100 of their clinic patients that come in during this month.

So that way they can use the expertise and be the expert and better recommend the solutions and more confidently recommend them to their patients over there.

Hear church, the healing power food is the focus of a new course.

>> Being offered at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

It is teaching future doctors how to incorporate healthy food options and to care for patients.

>> Culinary medicine combines the art of cooking with the science of food.

So you think about the science of food and how it impacts our body in a healthy way or not a healthy way.

And then you think about the art of food preparation.

So how can we combine that art of cooking in science of food.

And what we know about food to benefit health, many health conditions can occur because of our nutrition because of what we eat are we don't eat.

And so understanding that many chronic or short-term health conditions can be influenced by food is a reason to educate medical professionals around this.

>> Food definitely like very important to my knowledge because what are you doing?

Hospital?

One of the medicine you pay is only a short period of time, what are you going to eat will be my building your system.

So just have to be realized what the consequence off, what the food you eat.

>> So for someone who's battling an illness?

If they're taking in a lot of processed foods, a lot of heavy, let's say Fried foods, ally, lacking whole foods in their diet.

They're setting up potential stage for inflammation.

A nutrition can really set the stage for healing.

It provides plenty of nutrients, vitamin C and zinc, for example, we know are really important to healing.

I was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 2020 may.

>> And I was shock for a couple weeks and that doing that time.

I went through 2 major surgeries would last 8 to 10 hours small during this process.

They remove the gallbladder and panics.

So which is all the delicious fried food and a very healthy food, which I enjoy a lot and they have to focus on the.

Fibers, proteins and veggies.

>> So patients that are recovering from what say chemotherapy or radiation treatments and there recovered from cancer, let's say, but they can have a consistent metallic taste in their mouth for weeks to months.

>> So as I started the chemo, the same food, it's different to me.

And the I know it's the same food and I know what it's supposed to taste like.

But when you eat, it pays to France to food.

I'm able to eat and not able to eat is chance to might buy it a lot in past couple years.

>> The course is 8 weeks long.

There's a lot of information packed into those 8 weeks.

Then we launch into a macho, dedicated to different chronic diseases.

So there's one of them in a box syndrome, one on cancer when on G I health of the Micro mental neurological disorders.

And so and each one of those models are on a chronic condition.

There's something for students to watch some things for students to read and then something for students to do so.

Connery Medicine has a place in the conversation as it relates to nutrition and food that can serve our bodies.

Good in a positive and health promoting way.

>> This new course will be offered to medical students at 3 campuses in Lexington, Bowling Green and northern Kentucky.

We hope you'll join us again tomorrow night at 6.30, Eastern 5.30, central for Kentucky Edition, we inform connect and inspire subscribe to our weekly Kentucky Edition email newsletter and watch full episodes and clips KET Dot Org.

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We hope you enjoyed our show tonight.

Thank you for joining us.

Please take care.

♪