Dr. Thomas Bender with Advanced Dermatology and Skin Care Centre- February 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is News Radio seventy ten WNTM. I'm Uncle Henry
here with you once again on Ask the Expert, and
in this episode, we're talking with board certified dermatologist doctor
Thomas Bender with Advanced Dermatology and Skincare Center, a forefront

(00:28):
dermatology clinic. Advanced Dermatology and Skincare Center has a team
of board certified dermatologists with locations of Mobile, Daphne, Baymonette,
and Northwest Florida. You can find out more at their
website advancedderm Clinic dot com. That's Advanceddermclinic dot com. And

(00:48):
you can call and ask questions and make an appointment
at two five one six three one thirty five seventy.
That's two five to one six three, one thirty five seventy,
Doctor Bender. Howra thing's go on this month? That Advanced
Dermatology and Skincare Center.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Things are as always wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
As always wonderful. Now we are leading up, We've got
a month leading up into Marti Gras. Should people be
wearing sunscreen at parade? Doctor Bender?

Speaker 2 (01:15):
You know I always say wear sunscreen on your face
every day. That's what I do. You get up, you
brush your teeth. You put your sunscreen on, and that
way you know you're protected. Whether you're just driving around
town and it's sunny outside, you're getting a lot of
that sun. You've your radiation through the window glass. So
that's kind of a habit I developed years ago, and
I think it really helps.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
So maybe samples of sunscreen would be a great money
graw throw. You know, that's not a.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Bad idea, man. I need to call the the Swiss
you know, LTMD people and see if we can get
some sashets of samples. And I don't know how people
react that I might get some moon pies coming back
at me if I throw those.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
You might you might. Now I want to talk today
a lot about a lot of things, but want to
concentrate a bit on skin cancer this month conversation, Doctor Bender.
Before I get into some specifics about preventing and treating
skin cancer, can you give me and the listener kind
of an overview because you taught me years ago that
more and more cases are being diagnosed every year of

(02:13):
skin cancer. They are.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I mean, I think that's probably a lot of different
factors that are causing that to happen. And the good
news is I think that most people are taking better
care of themselves, and we're all living a little bit longer,
and especially in the United States, and so when you
live longer, you're probably your chances of having a skin
cancer are going to go up dramatically. You know, especially
in South Alabama. Most of us have had a lifetime

(02:36):
of sun exposure starting as a child, and in course,
us kids of the seventies and eighties, you know, we
didn't have the LTMB sunscreens back then. You know, we
were lucky to have like an SPF four Hawaiian tropic
that felt terrible and made just stick to everything that's right.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
So who is most likely to develop skin cancer?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, I mean the more fair that your skin is
as the higher risk. So when you know, put in
the pot a recipe of very fair skin, you know,
those patients usually have light eyes, you know, blonde or
red hair, and then you give them a lot of
sun exposure, especially early in life as a child, teenager,
in their early twenties. That's kind of a recipe to

(03:19):
get skin cancer later in life. And so if those
folks are also maybe they have an outside job, you know,
someone who works in construction for example, and then they
like to fish, you know, in their hobbies, so then
they're outside almost every day of the week, and it
becomes even more critical for them to protect themselves.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Now, you mentioned that the fair skinned, light skinned people
have an increased chance, but can anyone get it? Can
someone dark skin develop skin cancer?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Of course, you know, anyone can have a skin cancer.
You know, patients who have darker skin types, that's kind
of a built in protection for them against skin cancer.
But as we know, darker skinned patients do get skin cancer.
And sometimes those things don't even have a bearing as
far as how much sun exposure that they've had. Sun
exposure is a risk factor, but none of these things

(04:08):
are set in stone. I mean, for example, you always
hear about, you know, the patient who has lung cancer
but never smoked. It hasn't really been exposed to any
chemicals or anything like that during their lifetime. They just
were unlucky in it with lung cancer. So these are
things that we can do to certainly decrease our risk.
And of course, you know, we'll talk about this more
during your show and come in for checkups and making

(04:30):
sure that we can take a look at these patients
and kind of give them an idea of what their
risk is, and that's how we determine how many times
a patient needs to come in, for example, per year.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Okay, well we'll talk about what an office visit would
be like. But give us an idea of the most
effective ways that you know up to prevent skin cancer.
Is it always going to be sunscreen? First?

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, I think that sunscreen is either one A or
one B, and then wearing protective C clothing is one
A or one B, depending on who you ask, And
there's a combination of those things that make sense. I
think that you know folks who are gonna keep their
shirts on when they're outside, and if that's the case,
then you're gonna basically protect with sunscreen whatever airs are exposed.

(05:16):
You know, the V for a V neck T shirt,
your forearms, four short sleeve shirt, of course, your hands
if you're wearing a long sleeve shirt, and then of
course the legs if you're wearing shorts. So I think
that that's kind of the combination and ideal world. But
the most important thing that a lot of people don't
realize is especially around here in the summer, because I mean,
you're outside for five minutes you're sweating. You really have

(05:38):
to put the sunscreen on at least forty five minutes
before you're gonna go outside. If you do that, it
kind of becomes a part of your skin and can
really do its job in protecting you. If you if
you get outside and you're already sweating, you're like, whoops,
I forgot my sunscreen. You're already behind the eight ball.
You know, you're basically trying to put it on. It's frustrating.
It's not gonna soak in properly, and it's not gonna

(05:58):
protect you like you like it too, and then you're
going to get burned.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Now you mentioned a few minutes ago somen coming in
a car window. Do we need to think about both
those things as well? I like coming in through windows.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Definitely, because most patients don't put any kind of sunscreen,
don't think about protecting their skin unless they're going to
the beach or they're going boating or fishing or golfing,
you know, working in the art, et cetera, et cetera.
But we're getting UV radiation in smaller doses in those
other day, those other days where you're going to work.
All of us gravitate. We're trying to have an office

(06:33):
with a window in it. We're trying to at our
homes sit next to a window, and of course you
v radiation are coming through those windows and can actually
cause increased skin cancer. We see, for example, a lot
of patients who have more pre cancers and skin cancel
on the left side of their face if they were
primarily the driver during their lifetime. Patients who are primarily

(06:53):
the passenger, they're going to have more skin cancer and
pre cancel on the right side of their face and
their right arm. So I think think that that in
itself is pretty good evidence that we need to be
wearing sunscreen every day.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Let's talk about the sunscreen that you have here. It
Advanced Dermatology and Skincare Center. For years, you've been on
the radio advocating for zinc based zinc oxide based sunscreen.
Talk about the products you have here. You have vetted
all of these products as being some of the very best.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Well, you know, I make a pretty good guinea pig,
and so fifteen years ago when I started the practice,
I mean, of course, everybody, you know, we're bringing the
products in here, the different types of sunscreens, I grew
up here. I've tried a bunch of the over the
counter stuff. Of course we get samples of that as well.
I've tried just about all of them that you could
possibly try, and what I came to realize was, you know,

(07:43):
what's comfortable. You know, if it's not comfortable, people aren't
gonna wear it, myself included. And then what works? You know,
what does a really good job at preventing you from
having a burn even if you don't you know, do
what we're all supposed to, what we're all taught to do,
which is reapply, especially if you're out out all day.
And lt MD was probably one of the first things

(08:03):
I added to the practice as far as a product,
and it's really you know, we haven't found anything better
than it over ten plus years, so I think that
something I use personally. You know, they've got a great
facial sunscreen. It's a forty six. Don't be afraid by
the one that says we're SPF one hundred and this
only SPF forty six. That really, once you get to fifty,
it doesn't matter. They're not only supposed to be advertising

(08:26):
an SPF higher than fifty. You put that on your
face in a very small amount. It's going to protect
you mostly all day unless you actively try to wash
it off. And then they have a one four that's
water resistant for the rest of the body that's less pronounced,
a little bit harder to rub in for guys with
hairy arms and whatnot, But you can do it, and
if you do that, you're not going to have the

(08:49):
type of sun damage that someone who's not doing that
is going to have over time.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Now, with cancer in general, we've all been told that
early detection is the key. Same with skin can't.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Of course, I mean the earlier that we detect it
means the smaller that it is usually which then means
the smaller surgery you have to have or treatment, depending
on what we decide to do. So obviously, you know,
early detection is always what we're trying to achieve.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Well, let's let's tell the listener for a listener that's
never been and had their skin check for skin cancer,
talk about how that appointment would go when they come
to Advanced Dermatology and Skincare Center.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
So when the patient comes in, we basically let them
decide what they want us to look at. We're happy
to look at every square you know, millimeter of their
body if they like most patients, probably put a gollon on,
keep their undergarments on, and we do a full skin
check that way. Of course, there's a physician or a

(09:48):
certified physician assistant nurse practitioner in the room, and we
have someone scribing, a medical assistant in the room as well,
and that's really it. You know, most of our if
you look at what most of our men do, they
do an upper body skin checkup. They take their shirt
off and we take a look at them from the
waist up. But again it's always up to the patient
and probably a good idea to have a full skin

(10:09):
check once a year and then you could have a
partial skin check of your exposed areas the other time
or two, depending on how many skin checkups a year
that you need.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
All right, doctor Bender, let's talk about treatment. What happens
if you take a look and you see something. First
of all, do you know when you see something, do
you can you already tell what type of skin cancer
it is or does it need to be biopsied?

Speaker 2 (10:33):
I mean most of the time we can, you know,
we can just from experience, you know, we can look
at it and say, okay, it looks like a basil cell.
That looks like a squam of cellar. This is worrisome
from melanoma. You know, those are all those are probably
the three most common skin cancers that we see in
clinic on a regular basis. But we do biopsy it,
so we take a little piece of it because we
have to make sure that we have the right diagnosis

(10:54):
before we can present the right treatment options to the patient.
So we take a small biopsy and to send that
off and usually within a week or so, we have
a result and we call the patient let them know, hey,
you know, this was a squamas cell. This was a
basil cell, and you know it depending on where it is,
depending on if it's a more aggressive type of basil
cellars squamus cell, then you may end up with most surgery,

(11:16):
you know, where we're removing the skin cancer. We've talked
about it before, and while the patient waits, we make
a slide. We make sure that the tumor's completely gone
before we do the closure, or they could do superficial
radiation therapy, you know, especially for a patient who maybe
hasn't been to the dermatologist in a while and they
have multiple skin cancer. We can actually treat multiple skin
cancers at once with superficial radiation therapy. Or someone who's

(11:39):
had a lot of skin cancers removed, they have what
I call surgery fatigue. They just are like, I just
don't want to have any more surgery, but they do
want to do something for their skin cancer. The last
thing we want to do is to not treat skin
cancer because there is a high curate when we treat it.
But if you don't treat it and you're unlucky and
it does metastasize somewhere, it's a bad, bad customer. There's

(12:01):
not much that can be done for it at that point.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
You just mentioned if it's a patient who's had multiple
surgeries or surgery fatigue. How frequent is it that someone
has multiple skin cancers.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
I mean, I don't have a number in my head.
We have a lot of patients. Most of them are
older gentlemen who've been working outside their entire life. And
then they have hobbies, you know, like we mentioned earlier.
Maybe they love to play golf, maybe they like to fish,
and so they've been outside most of their life and
they're growing a lot of pre cancers and skin cancers
and they've never really protected themselves, and so they can
have three unfour skin cancers at a time.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Okay, so uh, you mentioned the cure rate is high
for skin cancer when when detected early. You also mentioned
most surgery. That's really the gold standard, isn't it It is?

Speaker 2 (12:50):
You know, most surgery, which is basically named after the
guy who created doctor Mo's mohs. He was a general surgeon,
I think he was up in the Midwest, and he
came up with this better procedure to get a higher
curate for patients. And the main thing that we do
is the surgeon is also the pathologist. So basically, you know,

(13:11):
as I mentioned earlier, he'll take where he sees the
tumor with very narrow margins, and they basically take that
they cut it instead of bread loafing it, they cut
it all the way across the tumor so that they
can see the whole thing on the slide. And when
you do that, you increase your curate substantially. And so

(13:31):
that's why it's the gold standard, especially for a tumor
on the face, where we're really trying to conserve tissue
that we're removing and trying to not only get rid
of the skin cancer but also come up with a
really good esthetic outcome.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Now, when someone is diagnosed with skin cancer, do you
have to call on other specialties to get involved as well?
Uncollagious and things like that.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
You know, with melanoma is the primary reason that we
get surge gonecology, and of course we're very blessed we've
got a lot of really good searchgoncologists in the Mobile
area that we utilize and that are partners of ours.
And so if a patient has a deeper melanoma and biobcy,
then we send, you know, to one of the searchgoncologists.
And for example, also if we have a maybe have

(14:17):
a tumor that's on the eyelid or really close to
the eyes, and so you know, we remove the tumor
and we set it up where one of the icloplastic
surgeons in town can close the area for the patient.
So those are two examples where we you know, partner
with some other local physicians in the area to make
sure that the patient gets the absolute best outcome.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
When someone is diagnosed with the skin cancer and successfully treated,
how does how often do you see them from that point?
Because I'm going to guess you need to see them
more frequently.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Those patients are going to come in every four to
six months, you know, for skin checkups for a period
of time, usually at least two years. I mean, if
they see you for a couple of years and they're
really not having any recurrent are growing any new tumors,
or having a lot of pre cancers, then we'll start
to expand it out more towards a six month time frame.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Okay, now you've been you've been a dermatologist for a while. Now,
have you noticed skin cancer treatments getting better through the years,
making advances? Oh?

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Definitely. I mean I think that you know the processes
that we're using now. I mean, of course, you know
our MOS process and the nurses that we have assisting
our MOS surgeon, they just do a wonderful job make
the patient feel as comfortable as possible. You know, the
facility that we have here, we're actually, as we speak,
we're building out a you know, about a four thousand
square foot area for our MOS surgeon and his team

(15:42):
to operate downstairs in our building. And you know, we've
added a couple more providers just trying to make sure
patients have good access to care. But uh, you know,
that's that's all part of it. We add a general
cure in which they're doing a lot of advertising now,
so a lot of patients start hearing about that superficial
radiation therapy. Another name for it is gentle cure, and

(16:04):
so you know, I've been offering that now for over
a decade. You know, I saw the utility in it
years ago. It was something that dermatologists did do twenty
or thirty years ago, but very few and so we
had the equipment when we were at Providence before we
built this clinic, and now we have a full time
radiation therapist that's helping us to make sure that we're

(16:25):
doing the absolute best possible treatments with supers radiation therapy
for patients who have, like I mentioned earlier, surgery fatigue.
You may they've had mo's on their face numerous times.
You know, those were not terrible experiences, but surgery in
itself is stressful, even when it's done real well, and
so it's nice for those patients to have an option.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Well, you told us a few minutes ago that that
catching it early is a key early detection, a key
to a successful outcome. And it occurs to me that nowadays,
because of the way advanced dermatology and skincare center operates,
people don't have to waigh for an appointment. I mean
it really early detection is easier because you don't have

(17:03):
to wait three months. I can remember years ago four months,
five months to go see a dermatologist. That is a
thing of the past here.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, it wasn't long when I came back home after
my military service that you know, I was six months out,
and you know, I just thought to myself, you know,
that's terrible. You know, patients need to be able to
get in sooner. Me our own patients who are already
established with us, if they have a spot they're concerned about,
need to get be able to get in sooner. And

(17:31):
so we've added you know, both board certified dermatologists and
certified pas and nurse practitioners to our team. And so,
you know, my goal is for patients to be able
to get in certainly within a week if they if
they need to get in and see someone, you may
not be able to see the person you're used to seeing,
you know, if they're not available. But you know, in
a pinch, it's nice to have someone you can see

(17:51):
and then of course you go back to your other provider.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Well, it is it is much much easier these days
to get an appointment thanks to Advanced Dermatology Skincare Center.
So once someone's been treated successfully, you say they're going
to be coming in every now and again. Is that
going to go on for years? Just making sure, monitoring
for for years to come?

Speaker 2 (18:13):
For most patients, it's going to go on for years,
and we adjust as we need to. For some of
our older patients, I just tell them, I said, look,
you're going to come in every four months for the
foreseeable future. And you know, we just took off a
couple of skin cancers, you know, a few months ago,
we're now treating you, for example, with SRT for a
couple of skin cancers. You've got lots of pre cancers.
They need to just kind of probably commit to being
seen about every four months for the rest of their life.

(18:35):
You know, this damage, once it's done, you're going to
keep kind of producing these things. Even if you start,
you know, living a little cleaner life and protecting yourself.
But you know, certainly you're gonna it's never too late
to make those changes. It will help, but it's not
going to take care of it, you know, one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Okay, now you mentioned living a cleaner life. Aside from
sunscreen and the right clothes, Am I gonna have to
have a special diet? Is there anything else I need
to be doing here other than sunscreen and special clothes?

Speaker 2 (19:05):
You know, I think that that cleaner word. You know,
I think that in our world, those are the most
important things that we've talked about. You know, the zincics
that sunscreen protecting your skin, come in for your skin
checkups periodically. But I mean I think that it could
benefit us, not only our skin, but every us from
a health perspective, if we did live a cleaner life.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
You know what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (19:27):
Well, you know, we pretty much decided. You know, it's
all about inflammation and what is what causes increase inflammation
carbohydrates and sugar, and so you know, I think that
trying to decrease those two things in your diet would
definitely help you, not have healthier skin, but just be
healthier in general.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
Okay, doctor Bender, we are almost out of time here.
One more thing I want to ask you about before
we're at a time. I noticed that this month at
Advanced Termatology and Skincare Center, you're offering two hundred dollars
off the mirror dry procedure. Can you explain to the
listener that hasn't heard you talk about it before, what
is mirrordry.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Mirrordry is basically using microwave energy to heat up the glands.
It's approofd for to remove the glands and the armpits.
And when you do that, you have substantially less sweating.
I mean one treatment probably seventy percent reduction in sweating
plus or minus. You know, when patients need a second treatment,
we offer them that. That happens rarely, so it's just

(20:27):
a great treatment. You come in, we numb up your armpits,
We treat you with the mirror dry, a little bit
of swelling, usually for just a few days, and you're
on your way. Works wonderfully, Doctor Bender, thank you, Thank you, sir.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
You've been listening to board certified dermatologist doctor Thomas Bender
with Advanced Dermatology and Skincare Center, a forefront dermatology clinic.
You can find out more about doctor Bender and the
services he provides at the website advancedderm Clinic dot com
that's Advanced derm Clinic dot com. Or you can call

(21:02):
two five one six three one thirty five seventy. That's
two five one six three one thirty five seventy for
Advanced Dermatology and Skincare Center