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Home > UC Science Today > The weekly roundup - Feb 24th
Podcast: UC Science Today
Episode:

The weekly roundup - Feb 24th
Category: Science & Medicine
Duration: 00:02:10
Publish Date: 2017-02-24 18:00:00
Description: This week on Science Today – we looked into how race and ethnicity affect health. Noah Zaitlen at the University of California, San Francisco, describes the connection they found in their new research. "People from different countries, from different communities, get sick from different diseases, they respond differently to different medications. We know that some of that is because of differences in their genetics and some of that is because of differences in their environment." And that includes exposure to pollution or differences in diet or stress levels – all of which doctors and scientists alike overlooked in the past in favor of genetics and ancestry. So Zaitlen hopes doctors will start including this information in their usual form, as it's a better way to assess a patient’s health. And on the subject of patients and health, wouldn’t it be wonderful if cancer patients did not suffer from the systemic toxicity of chemotherapy? We talked to a materials scientist Chelsea Chen at the Berkeley Lab who has been collaborating with a UCSF physician to design a device to do just that. "What he came up with is that he wants to place this device at the draining vein exiting the tumor, so this device can catch the excessive chemotherapy before it enters the body circulation and this way, it further reduces the systemic toxicity of the drugs. So we designed this device that we call the ChemoFilter." Hopefully this will be ready for treatment in a few years. And finally, do you snack a lot during the day? If so, your teeth are at risk. Dr. Peter Rechmann of the UCSF School of Dentistry says one tip to reduce cavities is to eat fast. "We kept on telling our patients you can have chocolate, no problem, eat the whole thing in 10 minutes and brush your teeth or use chewing gum, but don’t eat the chocolate over, piece-by-piece, ever 10 minutes a piece. That is terrible." The problem is, it leaves more sugar for bacteria in your mouth. For you snackers out there one tip is to munch on nuts – Rechmann says it’s one of the safest snacks because there’s not a lot of sugar for bacteria and it kills your hunger pangs pretty fast. So, how’s that for food for thought? To hear more University of California research stories, subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud or Facebook. Thanks for listening, I’m Larissa Branin. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/race_health https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/filter_chemo https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/teeth_snacks
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