Dr. Mitchell Elliott Bender

So we as dermatologists, in addition to trying to take care of their skin, we're supposed to, let's say, screen the patient for excessive triglyceride or cholesterol levels.

And very often we'll find them.

So if I do find them, I'm not, I don't consider myself qualified to give people the best therapy for that, but I'm going to send them to someone like Barry and

who is going to look at that and prescribe a diet, maybe weight reduction, the right kind of statin agent or other medicine to get those lipid levels down.

So we work as a team.

I work on the skin and do my thing.

Barry or the family practitioner or internist or pediatrician will work on the internal aspect and the patient will come out better for it.

The answer is yes.

There are differences in risk.

Just a few examples.

Certainly for melanoma, one of the most serious kinds of cancer, if you're fair complected, blue eyes, blonde, freckled, and you don't tan very well, maybe slightly, if not at all, those people are at a higher risk of skin cancer.

OK, and those are the people you really want to keep out of tanning beds, use sunscreen, hat and some protective clothing like we discussed.

We also know if you take redheads, people with red hair, redheads are found to have even a higher risk because they have there are two kinds of pigment in the skin.

Caucasian people, African-Americans, Native Americans, Asians, they have one kind of pigment.

It's called eumelanin, E-U-M-E-L-A-N-I-N.

Redheads have a different kind of pigment called pheomelanin.

And that one does not mitigate sun damage as well as the eumelanin.

So redheads are more prone towards melanoma.

And also, redheads are more likely to have a particular gene mutation, which makes them prone towards

towards skin cancer.