NEI - Nuclear Energy Institute
04/25/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 04/25/2024 09:21
Radioactive Healing
Paulien Moyaert is a doctor and content creator with more than 160,000 subscribers on YouTube. She joins Jordan and Mary to discuss how nuclear medicine can be used to treat cancer, dementia, and more!
On this episode, Paulien talks about how with the power of radioactive molecules, doctors are reshaping the landscape of cancer treatment, offering more effective diagnosis and enhanced quality of life for patients. She also talks about how much of her job is about educating others.
I think because most people do not know what nuclear medicine is, when they hear the word nuclear medicine, they're often afraid of the word. Some people even think that nuclear medicine is dangerous. I often have people who do not want to have a PET scan because they think they will get cancer from it or it's too dangerous, but they actually don't know that it's a safe procedure and that it can do so many amazing things. It can save people's life.
Paulien says a lot of this comes down to perspective. Many patients are afraid of bone scans because it is a type of nuclear medicine procedure, but not afraid of CT scans even though those give at least double the amount of radioactivity. She didn't know a lot about nuclear medicine either until she was in med school. She didn't know that with nuclear medicine, she'd be working with a wide range of patients - cancer patients, orthopedic patients, dementia patients, and more.
None of that explains what nuclear medicine is, though. Nuclear medicine is a medical specialty that uses different radioactive substances to assess different medical issues, help make a diagnosis, and help treat diseases. It is important to note that this is different than radiology.
Nuclear medicine shows you how the body is functioning, while radiology is a structural imaging technique that shows you how our bones or our liver looks like. And the important thing to know is that molecular changes happen before structural changes. So, we can see that cancer is growing in your breast before any lump is visible. We can detect breast cancer about six months before a CT scan or an X-ray can detect cancer.
Even though nuclear medicine doesn't do things like give you the ability to fly or shoot lasers with your eyes, it's quite clear how important it is to the future of medicine. Being able to detect and treat deadly diseases early will help so many people and so many families affected by things like cancer. Thanks to nuclear medicine and people like Paulien, we can do that.
+ Full Transcript
Mary Carpenter
This is Fissionary, a show exploring how nuclear power is your world. I'm Mary Carpenter.
Jordan Houghton
And I'm Jordan Houghton. Let's jump in.
Mary Carpenter
Hey, Jordan!
Jordan Houghton
Hey, Mary! And hello, Fissionaries, thanks for tuning in.
Mary Carpenter
Hey, Fissionaries. We're so excited you're here, and this is a really cool episode. And for any of my fellow WebMD enthusiasts who have decided that, you know, you have to like, dig to a deep hole and diagnose yourself with a variety of things, this episode is for you because we're actually talking to a real doctor who is brilliant and knows what she's talking about.
Jordan Houghton
The most amazing thing to me about our guest today, who-her name is Dr. Paulien Moyaert-is she is 26 years old and she is doing absolutely, like, world-changing research in medicine, and I'm just so inspired by her, and I'm-it's like another example of, I'm so grateful for so many of the people that we get to work with in this industry who are making a huge difference.
Mary Carpenter
She is so cool and so impressive. I mean, yeah, she is young and at the forefront of nuclear medicine. You know, she talks a bit about how nuclear medicine is used to treat cancer, and I had no idea that it-it's so advanced now that before they use it in the medical procedure, they can literally target the exact part of the body they're going for. I mean, that's so impressive. She talked about how she's using this for dementia and doing all these studies to try and combat that terrible disease. So, you know, I think maybe some of our listeners are familiar with how nuclear power plants play a role in public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isotopes sterilize billions of pieces of medical equipment in hospitals during COVID-19. But, you know, there's so many other ways that nuclear plays a part in, you know, saving lives and touching diseases that touch a lot of our lives as well, so it's a really cool conversation.
Jordan Houghton
It's interesting to me just how many facets nuclear touches in medicine, because there are obviously the diagnostic tools and then there are treatment tools. And then, to your point, even using isotopes to sterilize equipment, which is just-it's amazing. I feel like this is going to be the first of many medical-focused conversations we'll cover here on Fissionary. Mary, I have to ask you though, because I know-you were able to fit in a Kim Kardashian reference into this episode, and it was done in a really interesting way because we know that she and other celebrities, she's not the only one, do these, like, full body scans that look for cancer and you kind of, like, get the whole picture, but they're really expensive. Obviously, if you're a celebrity, if you have a ton of disposable income. So, so why not? But I thought Paulien's take on that was actually interesting.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of taken the internet by storm. Even, you know, a bunch of influencers are doing these scans now. An influencer I follow actually found a brain tumor from one of the scans. So, you know, it's very, very interesting and, you know, tempting to get one of these, but it is expensive. They are cost-prohibitive. Hopefully one day, you know, they'll be easily accessible, you know, I do think that they could save lives in the long run. But Paulien does have a really interesting take that, you know, there's a lot of other things you can do to support your health, you know, you don't have to jump immediately to the Kim Kardashian body scan. So yeah, it was really interesting to get Paulien's take on, you know, kind of this huge trend that we're seeing all over the place. You know, it's a good trend though, right? Like it's a positive trend to take control of your health. So, it's a better trend than I've seen some other trends that have taken the internet by storm. I do feel like people are, you know, like a lot of people have been talking about becoming sober-curious, and, you know, I know a lot of people myself who, you know, cut out alcohol, you know, people have seemed like-2024 to me seems like a year of health and wellness. And, you know, this body scan trend, it's kind of building into that, but I will take that trend any day.
Jordan Houghton
Yeah. Better for the better than for the worse.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah.
Jordan Houghton
All right. Well, let's jump into it. We're thrilled to welcome Paulien Moyaert to our podcast today. She is a nuclear medical resident based in Belgium and is currently studying dementia for her PhD research. She is also a content creator with 160,000 subscribers on YouTube, and her top video has garnered more than 10 million views. Thanks so much for coming on and chatting with Mary and I today! We're really excited to have this conversation. I'd love if you could start by sharing a bit about yourself and what sparked your interest in studying medicine?
Pauline Moyaert
Yes. First of all, thanks for having me, Jordan and Mary! So, my name is Paulien, I'm 26 years old, I'm from Belgium, I have a seven-month-old son, and I studied med school in Belgium too, and we start med school right after high school, so I started at the age of 18. I know that in Canada most people do an undergrad first and then start med school, so-and I think why I started, if I look back, I just wanted to-to help people. My friends always called me the mommy of the group, so, I think that was the best option for me at that point. So, I did an entrance exam. In Belgium, we have to do one big exam and about 5,000 people try that exam and only 500 pass. And luckily, I was one of those 500.
Mary Carpenter
Really impressive. And you're not just a doctor, but also a successful content creator, like Jordan mentioned, with over 160,000 subscribers on YouTube and millions of views. What inspired you to start that channel and do you-did you have any prior experience creating content?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, good question. So, I started med school at the age of 18, and that was in 2015. And then, med school in Belgium is six years, so after those six years I graduated as a doctor, and then I decided to go into nuclear medicine and I am currently combining nuclear medicine residency with a PhD. And I had the opportunity to move to Canada for two years, so from 2021 to 2023, I lived in Canada and we arrived there during, I think, the second COVID lockdown, it was. And yeah, what do you do if you're there with your husband and you're stuck in a house so you don't have any friends there? I didn't have a social life, I couldn't go to the gym. So that's when I thought, oh, well, let's start, make one YouTube video and we'll see where it goes. And, yeah. One more thing that I learned from the first month of my PhD was that it seemed to me that the more people know about a subject, the more difficult it was to explain things in a simple way. I always work with people who are so much smarter than me, and I often have to ask them for help. Most of the time I'm sitting there and I'm nodding, but actually, I don't have a clue what they're saying. And I realized that there are many people who are thinking in the same way. And that's why I started this YouTube channel.
Mary Carpenter
It seems like medicine and nuclear energy have a lot in common in that space! Asking questions and getting really complicated answers.
Jordan Houghton
Did you expect your channel to blow up the way that it has when you first started?
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Oh, absolutely not! So I-my first video was launched, I think it was December 25 because I-yeah, I didn't have much to do. And then I started with zero views, zero subscribers and then it took me I think three or four months to get to 300 subscribers. And then I remember that there was a point where I said to my husband, I'm going to delete everything because no one knows that I'm doing this, and it feels like I'm failing, so just like, let's forget that this happened and delete everything. But he, yeah, he said I couldn't do it and so I didn't. And then, a few months later, I hit my first thousand subscribers and then it blew up. From year one to year two, I had suddenly 100,000 subscribers, so it went really fast at that point.
Mary Carpenter
So, you have all these subscribers now, what kind of audiences are you reaching with your content? Who are you talking to?
Paulien Moyaert
Mainly young people, people between, I would say, 20 and 35 years old. I have a mixture. I have a lot of people with some kind of medical background. People watching my nuclear medicine videos are most often technologists or nurses or doctors, but I also have videos about the symptoms of a heart attack or the symptoms of a stroke, and that, yeah, people with a whole lot-like, different kinds of backgrounds watch that kind of video. So it's-yeah. All kinds of people, I would say.
Jordan Houghton
Why do you think so many people are interested in nuclear medicine?
Paulien Moyaert
I think because most people do not know what nuclear medicine is. Like, when they hear the word nuclear medicine, they're often afraid of the word. Some people even think that nuclear medicine is dangerous. I often have people who do not want to have a PET scan, which is a nuclear medicine type of scan because they think they will get cancer from it or because it's too dangerous, but they actually don't know that it's a safe procedure and that it can do so many amazing things. It can save people's life.
Mary Carpenter
How do you reassure your patients that it's safe and effective and a lifesaving treatment?
Paulien Moyaert
I often give them a comparison. Like, if I compare a bone scan, which is a type of nuclear medicine procedure, with a CT scan, which is a radiology type of scan, they do not know that a CT scan gives at least double the amount of radioactivity than that of a bone scan. And I also often tell them that there are also natural sources of radiation in the ground. So people just walking around are getting radioactivity. And lastly, when we're flying, there's also quite a lot of radioactivity. For example, aircrew members experience about the same level of radiation annually compared to that of a bone scan, without ever having a bone scan. So, I think we just have to put it in perspective.
Jordan Houghton
I love that you're doing that. I have found in this work that it's true. A lot of people don't realize how much naturally occurring exposure to radiation that they get just going about their daily lives. We heard that initially, nuclear medicine wasn't on your radar, and you even contemplated calling in sick when it was introduced during your medical school rotations. Can you share your perspective on that experience and what changed for you?
Paulien Moyaert
Yes, of course. So, the last one and a half year of med school in Belgium consists of doing clinical rotations. So that means that every month you work in a different hospital with different doctors, other different specialties, and I had to do one week of radiology. And of that one week, I had to do only one day of nuclear medicine. We only had one hour of nuclear medicine in our whole med, and I thought, okay, why would I like nuclear medicine? It's only sitting behind a desk the whole day, and it's very technical, and I won't see any patients, so I thought it this won't be something for me. But yeah, I didn't call in sick so I went and that day and much changed because it was a very kind doctor who showed me everything. And what I didn't know was that nuclear medicine actually consists of many medical specialties, because I see patients with cancer, but I also see patients with orthopedic problems, patients with dementia. So, I like the fact that I see such a variety of patients. And what I also like about nuclear medicine is that we not only diagnose people, we can also treat people. So for me, nuclear medicine has it all.
Mary Carpenter
That's really interesting, and I want to take that to segue and kind of step back for a minute. If anyone in our audience doesn't understand, can you quickly explain what nuclear medicine is and how it works?
Paulien Moyaert
So nuclear medicine is a medical specialty that uses radioactive substances. It's usually created in a lab, and what they do is-so you have your radioactive substance in many hospitals in Belgium, it's made in the basement. So, they usually start around 4 or 5am to make it and then the first scans will start around 9am. That's also why we don't have any emergencies in nuclear medicine because it takes about four to five hours to create the radioactive molecules. And what they do is, you actually have two components. First, you have the radioactive substance, and then you also have, yeah, the tag, or I often call it a GPS. And you combine that-those two. And the GPS is always different based on what you would like to see. If someone has breast cancer it will be another type of GPS or tag than when someone has prostate cancer. So, what we do is for example, you are a patient with breast cancer, then you will come to the nuclear medicine department and we'll inject you with a specific type of radioactive substance. Then you'll walk around for 90 minutes and you come back, and then we will take pictures of you with a PET scan. And what you have to know is that a radioactive substance is a bit like a glow in a dark tag, so that glow in the dark tag will attach to all the cancer cells in your body. And when I look at your picture taken with a PET scan, I truly hope that I will only see that glow in the dark tag lighting up in your breast, because that means that the cancer is confined to your breast, and then the treatment is fairly simple, I would say, what we can do is we can amputate the breast and the disease is gone. It would be bad news if I would see that there are spots lining up, both in your breast, but also in your liver or on your ribs, because that means that the disease has already spread to other parts of the body, and then we have to-yeah, then amputating the breast won't really cure it because it's already spread. So, then we have to give you chemotherapy. So, coming to a nuclear medicine department can change people's life, I can tell you, oh, you will be cured, or I might have to tell you you'll probably die from cancer.
Jordan Houghton
You mentioned a distinction between nuclear medicine and radiology, and I'm wondering if you could explain that a little bit, what the difference is between the two?
Paulien Moyaert
With nuclear medicine, we look at that-that's what we call a molecular imaging technique. And nuclear medicine shows you how the body is functioning. So, for example, it can show you how the liver is functioning, or how the bones are functioning, while radiology is a structural imaging technique that shows you how our bones or how our liver looks like. And the important thing to know is that molecular changes happen before structural changes. So, we can, for example, see that cancer is growing in your breast before any lump is visible. So that's why nuclear medicine is so important. We can detect-I think it was, we can detect breast cancer about six months before a CT scan or an X-ray can detect cancer.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, that's really interesting that it's so advanced now that you can target it at different parts of the body. That's incredibly cool. And what happens after a patient receives this treatment? Does it just flush out of their body, or what happens next?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, it's excreted through urine, and it usually takes about 24 hours. So, I have to tell the patients that they will be radioactive for 24 hours. And when I say that, you have to see the look in their face! The look in their face, they're often like, what? I would be radioactive? Can I sleep with my husband? They often ask me, can I have sex with my husband? And I have to reassure them, yes, you can! So yeah, you will be radioactive, but it's not dangerous. You can do whatever you want, but to be absolutely sure, we advise them not to hold small babies, little babies, or to breastfeed for 24 hours. But apart from that, they can do anything they want.
Jordan Houghton
How do people feel about this? How do they receive, like, you're going to ingest radioactive material and you're going to be radioactive?
Paulien Moyaert
They're often afraid, I have to reassure them over and over again. And that's why I like that you're having this podcast, because I think we have to educate people that nuclear medicine or nuclear energy is designed to be safe and-okay, there are risks, but it can always go wrong, and we have to look at the benefits too. And for nuclear medicine, it has changed a lot of lives.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, you mentioned cancer. And I know you're also combining your residency with a PhD in dementia, where you're working on diagnosing dementia ten years before symptoms start. How does nuclear technology help detect dementia, and especially that early?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, so I'll give you a little bit of background. We know that dementia can be seen in the brain up to ten years before the first symptoms appear, because right now, dementia is diagnosed when people experience symptoms, when they start to forget things. But the problem is, it's already too late then, the brain cells have already died, and there's not much we can do at this point. The only drugs we have in Belgium right now are symptomatic. So, what they do is we give you drugs and they will make you forget maybe two or three things a day instead of five or six. So, it will help you a little bit in your daily life, but it won't do that much. While if we can diagnose you ten years earlier, so if we can say, oh, you will probably develop dementia in ten years' time, we have a window of opportunity of ten years. And in my opinion, it's much, much easier to prevent something from happening than to treat something that has already happened. And I often compare it with a heart attack. Nowadays, we treat people for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and we do that because we want to prevent a heart attack or stroke from happening in the first place. And I think that will be the same with dementia too. And so yeah, we use, or I use, right now, a PET scan to try to diagnose dementia in an early stage. We're still refining that process because, yeah, it's pretty early, but I think that will be the future of dementia care. And one more thing, in America, there's a drug approved that can alter the progression of dementia. So, that's the first drug approved that can really change the progression, so I hope that this will be approved in Canada, in Europe, in a few years, because that could hopefully delay the onset of the disease. That would be really helpful.
Jordan Houghton
This is so interesting to me, and also just really exciting to know how this could revolutionize care for people and prevent horrible, destructive, life altering, and deadly diseases. What else is on your radar? What other big advancements are you looking at to see in the next several years in nuclear medicine?
Paulien Moyaert
I think the biggest advancement will be in the field of oncology. I truly hope and I think that we can change cancer from a deadly disease at this point to a more chronic disease. We already see that with prostate cancer, there are treatments that we can give that can make prostate cancer a chronic disease, and that means that people will die, which prostate cancer, but not of prostate cancer.
Jordan Houghton
So, you're saying that it's something that they'll have and they'll live with, but it will be treatable to the point that it's not something that is ultimately the reason they die?
Paulien Moyaert
Yes, correct.
Mary Carpenter
So, it sounds like you're looking at nuclear medicine as a way for preventative treatment for dementia. Do you feel that same way about cancer? I know you're using it now to find, you know, where it's spread, where it is in the body. But are you looking at it all as a way to, I don't know, maybe do scans ahead of time to confirm, like, there's no cancer in the body before you have questions that there might be? Are there any other ways you're going to use it preventatively, like you are with dementia?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, that's a really good question, I haven't really thought about that. But as you say, we now have, like, two main points of use. So, we have a diagnostic view- we diagnose cancer, and we also have a therapeutic view where we treat cancer. At this point, I don't think that we'll use it as a preventive measurement because, to be honest, it's just way too expensive to do that now, but I think there will be a lot of advancements in the field of the therapeutic field.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, because I see, you know, some Instagram influencers and, like, I think Kim Kardashian did it, do these like full body scans, you know, to see if they have anything that shouldn't be in their body, and I'm wondering if nuclear medicine has a way to kind of evolve that so one day it's, you know, more accessible for more people.
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, I think it could be, but it is still radioactivity. Like, as a doctor, I wouldn't recommend everyone to get a PET scan, because if you don't need it, why would I expose you to such an amount of radioactivity? Of course, if I think you have cancer and you're maybe about to die, yeah, let's give you a PET scan and hopefully I can treat you. But if you don't have any symptoms, I would say, okay, maybe do a regular blood checkup or maybe an X-ray. But that's not something I even would recommend. I think just living healthy and going to your family physician every now and then would be sufficient.
Jordan Houghton
Thank you for saying that because I'm like, I should sign up for a PET scan right now and make sure that we found something before anything happens, right? Like, sign me up!
Mary Carpenter
Yep, so I'm gonna go!
Paulien Moyaert
But I have to say that, if there's something in your body, it has to be, I think it has to be 1 or 2mm big before you can see it. So, if you're too early, you won't see anything. So, not everyone with cancer, if they have the PET scan and it's negative, I can't say for sure you don't have cancer, maybe it's just too small to see.
Jordan Houghton
Right, right. Makes sense. That makes sense. I-you mentioned prostate cancer, and I wanted to ask for you to talk a little bit more about radio cancer treatment that is improving prostate cancer results.
Paulien Moyaert
Yes that's true. So, we have a specific type of radioactive substance that is used to treat prostate cancer. And that's called lutetium. And if we inject that lutetium into the body, it attached-it specifically attaches to all the prostate cancer cells in your body. So, if your prostate cancer has metastasized to the bone, to the liver, it will attach there and it will give off radioactivity and kill all the cancer cells in your body. And this has absolutely revolutionized the treatment of prostate cancer, because compared to, for example, chemo, it's much more specific. It only targets the cancer cells because of that specific GPS tag, so you won't have the side effects that chemotherapy gives you. You won't lose your hair, you won't get sick. And I have-like, there's one study that showed that people who were treated with lutetium live for about 12 months without their cancer progressing, compared to only six months when they were treated with chemotherapy.
Jordan Houghton
I have so many follow up questions because this is fascinating to me! First, is this something that can be used, or do we hope it to be used, to treat other types of cancer beyond prostate cancer? Because it sounds amazing that, one, you can do it without the horrible side effects of chemo, but also the outcome is so great. And then I'm wondering, even in just the case of prostate cancer, is it something that can be repeated? So, if you have the treatment and it targets all the prostate cancer cells, you come-you said you could go 12 months without it progressing. Can you come back and repeat it if it starts to reappear and do the same thing again?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, very good question. So, the first question, yes, it has already been used for other treatments and other cancers as well, so that's very promising. And the second part of your question, it can be repeated, but we sometimes see that cancer cells change, and that it does not any longer respond to that type of treatment. So, that's something that we're looking into right now. But you have to know that when people come to see me for that type of treatment, they know that they won't have that much time left. So, we as nuclear medicine physicians often give them a few months extra. And at that point, it makes a huge difference.
Mary Carpenter
Is this something you're working on, you know, with the global medical community? It sounds like it's-nuclear medicine is very well received in Europe, and, you know, you're making all these advances and doing all these interesting things with cancer and dementia. You know, we're in the United States-are you working with doctors here, or Asia? Is this kind of a global-is there a global consensus on nuclear medicine?
Paulien Moyaert
Yes, yes. There are not that many nuclear medicine physicians compared to, for example, cardiologists or gynecologists, so we're a much smaller group. But to give you an example, my study is a collaboration between different countries. So, I work with people from Canada, people from the Netherlands, people from New Zealand, so yeah, I feel like, nuclear medicine physicians often work together, and that's something that we have to do. I think in Belgium there are only maybe 40, 50 max nuclear medicine physicians, so we have to work together if we want to achieve something.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah. It seems like such important work, and we need as many people working on it as possible. What else is big in the nuclear medicine space?
Paulien Moyaert
I just think that people underestimate the power of nuclear medicine procedures. They often don't know it, they're afraid of it, but we have to tell the world that nuclear medicine scans are truly amazing and that they're designed to save people's life. I think that's my main takeaway from this.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah. Lifesaving treatments.
Paulien Moyaert
Have you ever had nuclear medicine scan, a bone scan or a PET scan or?
Mary Carpenter
I don't think so.
Jordan Houghton
I've had a lot of X-rays and CT scans, but not anything beyond that.
Mary Carpenter
That's probably a good thing.
Jordan Houghton
Yeah, which I guess is good!
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, it's good! Fingers crossed.
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, I think it's super good! Because if you would have needed a PET scan, I would think oh is there something wrong with you? Like, do you have any disease? But there are also many types of scans, like, I mentioned a bone scan, which is sometimes a very good alternative to an X-ray, like when people come into the E.R. with, for example, a stress fracture. That's a type of fracture that people get from repetitive movements, for example, from running or playing football. And when they do an X-ray it's often negative, so they don't see the fracture because it's not yet there. Maybe it's not yet completely broken, I would say. But if you would do a bone scan at that point, it's a molecular imaging technique so it would show up, and it would light up, and that means that there's something there but we do not yet see it on an X-ray. So, I think that's something that will hopefully get more popular in the upcoming years, because even a lot of doctors do not know how amazing nuclear medicine is and what it can do.
Mary Carpenter
So, you can catch this bone fracture before it even happens, really, to prevent it from getting worse.
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, that-yeah. That's good, that's how I see it. Sometimes you see that, like, the bone cells are damaged and that they are repairing themselves, and that's what you see on the bone scan. But if it's not completely broken, if it's inside, like, the bone itself, you won't see it on an X-ray.
Jordan Houghton
Yeah, unfortunately, any time anyone in my family has gone in for orthopedic X-ray, it's been catastrophic enough that even I, who have no medical training, can see that there is something very wrong.
Mary Carpenter
You're past preventative!
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah! At that point, like, if I can tell…
Jordan Houghton
I remember when I was pregnant and you're doing ultrasounds and, you know, they can see all the-and I couldn't see I couldn't tell anything, I had no idea what I was looking at. They're like, there's the heart, there's the leg, and I'm like, wonderful. I'm glad that you could tell! But when I go in and see an X-ray and even I can see the break, I'm like, we're in trouble. Paulien, I would love to ask you, we were talking about food a little bit at the top and we are big foodies. We would love to know-this is our international take this week-where is your favorite place to eat in Belgium? Or, what is your favorite food?
Paulien Moyaert
I don't think I have one favorite restaurant in Belgium, but I would say that I absolutely love our French fries. Yeah, that would be my go-to meal every Friday with my husband, absolutely.
Mary Carpenter
Excellent answer. They're so good!
Jordan Houghton
That is awesome.
Paulien Moyaert
What is your favorite food?
Mary Carpenter
Oh, that is such a tough question. You know, somebody asked me this last week also, which is kind of wild that this keeps coming up. And I gave an answer, I love, like, chicken parmesan, which is an Americanized version of-I don't even think it really exists in Italy, but… And then I started thinking, like, I also love tacos and like, chips and queso, like, I could go on all day! Like, I love tuna, like sashimi, I really like anything!
Jordan Houghton
I was trying to think about it too, Mary, like what cuisine? And I was trying to think of something uniquely American. But I think something that we do really great here is our own takes on all of these great international cuisines.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, like Tex Mex. One more question. Are there any other people in the field we should be following? Like, any other medical, especially nuclear medicine, content creators that we should also be following?
Paulien Moyaert
So, if they want to get in touch with me or follow me on YouTube, you can find me if you look for my name, Paulien Moyaert. But if you want to look for other researchers or doctors, one doctor I know is Michael Hofman. He's an Australian doctor who focuses on nuclear medicine treatments and especially on cancer, like, prostate cancer treatments.
Mary Carpenter
Well, Paulien, thanks so much for joining us today. This was so, so interesting, I know our listeners will love this conversation. Really, really cool. And we'd love to have you back as you progress in your research and learn how it's going. That was such an interesting conversation. Paulien had so much knowledge and, I mean, I could talk to her all day. I still have so many questions. But I want to say a huge thank you to Paulien for joining us! We really enjoyed having her on the show, and, you know, it's a great reminder to, you know, jump on the health trends that we're seeing and schedule, you know, all of your checkups and, you know, make sure you're healthy.
Jordan Houghton
I do like the balance that was offered though, because yes, definitely do preventive wellness checks, but also enjoy some French fries.
Mary Carpenter
Yes! I will never turn down a fry.
Jordan Houghton
It's all about balance.
Mary Carpenter
Yes! Exactly.
Jordan Houghton
If you want to learn more about nuclear medicine, we recommend checking out Paulien's YouTube channel, which we have linked in the show notes.
Mary Carpenter
And don't forget to rate and subscribe to Fissionary on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening today. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time, Fissionaries!
This is Fissionary, a show exploring how nuclear power is your world. I'm Mary Carpenter.
Jordan Houghton
And I'm Jordan Houghton. Let's jump in.
Mary Carpenter
Hey, Jordan!
Jordan Houghton
Hey, Mary! And hello, Fissionaries, thanks for tuning in.
Mary Carpenter
Hey, Fissionaries. We're so excited you're here, and this is a really cool episode. And for any of my fellow WebMD enthusiasts who have decided that, you know, you have to like, dig to a deep hole and diagnose yourself with a variety of things, this episode is for you because we're actually talking to a real doctor who is brilliant and knows what she's talking about.
Jordan Houghton
The most amazing thing to me about our guest today, who-her name is Dr. Paulien Moyaert-is she is 26 years old and she is doing absolutely, like, world-changing research in medicine, and I'm just so inspired by her, and I'm-it's like another example of, I'm so grateful for so many of the people that we get to work with in this industry who are making a huge difference.
Mary Carpenter
She is so cool and so impressive. I mean, yeah, she is young and at the forefront of nuclear medicine. You know, she talks a bit about how nuclear medicine is used to treat cancer, and I had no idea that it-it's so advanced now that before they use it in the medical procedure, they can literally target the exact part of the body they're going for. I mean, that's so impressive. She talked about how she's using this for dementia and doing all these studies to try and combat that terrible disease. So, you know, I think maybe some of our listeners are familiar with how nuclear power plants play a role in public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isotopes sterilize billions of pieces of medical equipment in hospitals during COVID-19. But, you know, there's so many other ways that nuclear plays a part in, you know, saving lives and touching diseases that touch a lot of our lives as well, so it's a really cool conversation.
Jordan Houghton
It's interesting to me just how many facets nuclear touches in medicine, because there are obviously the diagnostic tools and then there are treatment tools. And then, to your point, even using isotopes to sterilize equipment, which is just-it's amazing. I feel like this is going to be the first of many medical-focused conversations we'll cover here on Fissionary. Mary, I have to ask you though, because I know-you were able to fit in a Kim Kardashian reference into this episode, and it was done in a really interesting way because we know that she and other celebrities, she's not the only one, do these, like, full body scans that look for cancer and you kind of, like, get the whole picture, but they're really expensive. Obviously, if you're a celebrity, if you have a ton of disposable income. So, so why not? But I thought Paulien's take on that was actually interesting.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of taken the internet by storm. Even, you know, a bunch of influencers are doing these scans now. An influencer I follow actually found a brain tumor from one of the scans. So, you know, it's very, very interesting and, you know, tempting to get one of these, but it is expensive. They are cost-prohibitive. Hopefully one day, you know, they'll be easily accessible, you know, I do think that they could save lives in the long run. But Paulien does have a really interesting take that, you know, there's a lot of other things you can do to support your health, you know, you don't have to jump immediately to the Kim Kardashian body scan. So yeah, it was really interesting to get Paulien's take on, you know, kind of this huge trend that we're seeing all over the place. You know, it's a good trend though, right? Like it's a positive trend to take control of your health. So, it's a better trend than I've seen some other trends that have taken the internet by storm. I do feel like people are, you know, like a lot of people have been talking about becoming sober-curious, and, you know, I know a lot of people myself who, you know, cut out alcohol, you know, people have seemed like-2024 to me seems like a year of health and wellness. And, you know, this body scan trend, it's kind of building into that, but I will take that trend any day.
Jordan Houghton
Yeah. Better for the better than for the worse.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah.
Jordan Houghton
All right. Well, let's jump into it. We're thrilled to welcome Paulien Moyaert to our podcast today. She is a nuclear medical resident based in Belgium and is currently studying dementia for her PhD research. She is also a content creator with 160,000 subscribers on YouTube, and her top video has garnered more than 10 million views. Thanks so much for coming on and chatting with Mary and I today! We're really excited to have this conversation. I'd love if you could start by sharing a bit about yourself and what sparked your interest in studying medicine?
Pauline Moyaert
Yes. First of all, thanks for having me, Jordan and Mary! So, my name is Paulien, I'm 26 years old, I'm from Belgium, I have a seven-month-old son, and I studied med school in Belgium too, and we start med school right after high school, so I started at the age of 18. I know that in Canada most people do an undergrad first and then start med school, so-and I think why I started, if I look back, I just wanted to-to help people. My friends always called me the mommy of the group, so, I think that was the best option for me at that point. So, I did an entrance exam. In Belgium, we have to do one big exam and about 5,000 people try that exam and only 500 pass. And luckily, I was one of those 500.
Mary Carpenter
Really impressive. And you're not just a doctor, but also a successful content creator, like Jordan mentioned, with over 160,000 subscribers on YouTube and millions of views. What inspired you to start that channel and do you-did you have any prior experience creating content?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, good question. So, I started med school at the age of 18, and that was in 2015. And then, med school in Belgium is six years, so after those six years I graduated as a doctor, and then I decided to go into nuclear medicine and I am currently combining nuclear medicine residency with a PhD. And I had the opportunity to move to Canada for two years, so from 2021 to 2023, I lived in Canada and we arrived there during, I think, the second COVID lockdown, it was. And yeah, what do you do if you're there with your husband and you're stuck in a house so you don't have any friends there? I didn't have a social life, I couldn't go to the gym. So that's when I thought, oh, well, let's start, make one YouTube video and we'll see where it goes. And, yeah. One more thing that I learned from the first month of my PhD was that it seemed to me that the more people know about a subject, the more difficult it was to explain things in a simple way. I always work with people who are so much smarter than me, and I often have to ask them for help. Most of the time I'm sitting there and I'm nodding, but actually, I don't have a clue what they're saying. And I realized that there are many people who are thinking in the same way. And that's why I started this YouTube channel.
Mary Carpenter
It seems like medicine and nuclear energy have a lot in common in that space! Asking questions and getting really complicated answers.
Jordan Houghton
Did you expect your channel to blow up the way that it has when you first started?
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Oh, absolutely not! So I-my first video was launched, I think it was December 25 because I-yeah, I didn't have much to do. And then I started with zero views, zero subscribers and then it took me I think three or four months to get to 300 subscribers. And then I remember that there was a point where I said to my husband, I'm going to delete everything because no one knows that I'm doing this, and it feels like I'm failing, so just like, let's forget that this happened and delete everything. But he, yeah, he said I couldn't do it and so I didn't. And then, a few months later, I hit my first thousand subscribers and then it blew up. From year one to year two, I had suddenly 100,000 subscribers, so it went really fast at that point.
Mary Carpenter
So, you have all these subscribers now, what kind of audiences are you reaching with your content? Who are you talking to?
Paulien Moyaert
Mainly young people, people between, I would say, 20 and 35 years old. I have a mixture. I have a lot of people with some kind of medical background. People watching my nuclear medicine videos are most often technologists or nurses or doctors, but I also have videos about the symptoms of a heart attack or the symptoms of a stroke, and that, yeah, people with a whole lot-like, different kinds of backgrounds watch that kind of video. So it's-yeah. All kinds of people, I would say.
Jordan Houghton
Why do you think so many people are interested in nuclear medicine?
Paulien Moyaert
I think because most people do not know what nuclear medicine is. Like, when they hear the word nuclear medicine, they're often afraid of the word. Some people even think that nuclear medicine is dangerous. I often have people who do not want to have a PET scan, which is a nuclear medicine type of scan because they think they will get cancer from it or because it's too dangerous, but they actually don't know that it's a safe procedure and that it can do so many amazing things. It can save people's life.
Mary Carpenter
How do you reassure your patients that it's safe and effective and a lifesaving treatment?
Paulien Moyaert
I often give them a comparison. Like, if I compare a bone scan, which is a type of nuclear medicine procedure, with a CT scan, which is a radiology type of scan, they do not know that a CT scan gives at least double the amount of radioactivity than that of a bone scan. And I also often tell them that there are also natural sources of radiation in the ground. So people just walking around are getting radioactivity. And lastly, when we're flying, there's also quite a lot of radioactivity. For example, aircrew members experience about the same level of radiation annually compared to that of a bone scan, without ever having a bone scan. So, I think we just have to put it in perspective.
Jordan Houghton
I love that you're doing that. I have found in this work that it's true. A lot of people don't realize how much naturally occurring exposure to radiation that they get just going about their daily lives. We heard that initially, nuclear medicine wasn't on your radar, and you even contemplated calling in sick when it was introduced during your medical school rotations. Can you share your perspective on that experience and what changed for you?
Paulien Moyaert
Yes, of course. So, the last one and a half year of med school in Belgium consists of doing clinical rotations. So that means that every month you work in a different hospital with different doctors, other different specialties, and I had to do one week of radiology. And of that one week, I had to do only one day of nuclear medicine. We only had one hour of nuclear medicine in our whole med, and I thought, okay, why would I like nuclear medicine? It's only sitting behind a desk the whole day, and it's very technical, and I won't see any patients, so I thought it this won't be something for me. But yeah, I didn't call in sick so I went and that day and much changed because it was a very kind doctor who showed me everything. And what I didn't know was that nuclear medicine actually consists of many medical specialties, because I see patients with cancer, but I also see patients with orthopedic problems, patients with dementia. So, I like the fact that I see such a variety of patients. And what I also like about nuclear medicine is that we not only diagnose people, we can also treat people. So for me, nuclear medicine has it all.
Mary Carpenter
That's really interesting, and I want to take that to segue and kind of step back for a minute. If anyone in our audience doesn't understand, can you quickly explain what nuclear medicine is and how it works?
Paulien Moyaert
So nuclear medicine is a medical specialty that uses radioactive substances. It's usually created in a lab, and what they do is-so you have your radioactive substance in many hospitals in Belgium, it's made in the basement. So, they usually start around 4 or 5am to make it and then the first scans will start around 9am. That's also why we don't have any emergencies in nuclear medicine because it takes about four to five hours to create the radioactive molecules. And what they do is, you actually have two components. First, you have the radioactive substance, and then you also have, yeah, the tag, or I often call it a GPS. And you combine that-those two. And the GPS is always different based on what you would like to see. If someone has breast cancer it will be another type of GPS or tag than when someone has prostate cancer. So, what we do is for example, you are a patient with breast cancer, then you will come to the nuclear medicine department and we'll inject you with a specific type of radioactive substance. Then you'll walk around for 90 minutes and you come back, and then we will take pictures of you with a PET scan. And what you have to know is that a radioactive substance is a bit like a glow in a dark tag, so that glow in the dark tag will attach to all the cancer cells in your body. And when I look at your picture taken with a PET scan, I truly hope that I will only see that glow in the dark tag lighting up in your breast, because that means that the cancer is confined to your breast, and then the treatment is fairly simple, I would say, what we can do is we can amputate the breast and the disease is gone. It would be bad news if I would see that there are spots lining up, both in your breast, but also in your liver or on your ribs, because that means that the disease has already spread to other parts of the body, and then we have to-yeah, then amputating the breast won't really cure it because it's already spread. So, then we have to give you chemotherapy. So, coming to a nuclear medicine department can change people's life, I can tell you, oh, you will be cured, or I might have to tell you you'll probably die from cancer.
Jordan Houghton
You mentioned a distinction between nuclear medicine and radiology, and I'm wondering if you could explain that a little bit, what the difference is between the two?
Paulien Moyaert
With nuclear medicine, we look at that-that's what we call a molecular imaging technique. And nuclear medicine shows you how the body is functioning. So, for example, it can show you how the liver is functioning, or how the bones are functioning, while radiology is a structural imaging technique that shows you how our bones or how our liver looks like. And the important thing to know is that molecular changes happen before structural changes. So, we can, for example, see that cancer is growing in your breast before any lump is visible. So that's why nuclear medicine is so important. We can detect-I think it was, we can detect breast cancer about six months before a CT scan or an X-ray can detect cancer.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, that's really interesting that it's so advanced now that you can target it at different parts of the body. That's incredibly cool. And what happens after a patient receives this treatment? Does it just flush out of their body, or what happens next?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, it's excreted through urine, and it usually takes about 24 hours. So, I have to tell the patients that they will be radioactive for 24 hours. And when I say that, you have to see the look in their face! The look in their face, they're often like, what? I would be radioactive? Can I sleep with my husband? They often ask me, can I have sex with my husband? And I have to reassure them, yes, you can! So yeah, you will be radioactive, but it's not dangerous. You can do whatever you want, but to be absolutely sure, we advise them not to hold small babies, little babies, or to breastfeed for 24 hours. But apart from that, they can do anything they want.
Jordan Houghton
How do people feel about this? How do they receive, like, you're going to ingest radioactive material and you're going to be radioactive?
Paulien Moyaert
They're often afraid, I have to reassure them over and over again. And that's why I like that you're having this podcast, because I think we have to educate people that nuclear medicine or nuclear energy is designed to be safe and-okay, there are risks, but it can always go wrong, and we have to look at the benefits too. And for nuclear medicine, it has changed a lot of lives.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, you mentioned cancer. And I know you're also combining your residency with a PhD in dementia, where you're working on diagnosing dementia ten years before symptoms start. How does nuclear technology help detect dementia, and especially that early?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, so I'll give you a little bit of background. We know that dementia can be seen in the brain up to ten years before the first symptoms appear, because right now, dementia is diagnosed when people experience symptoms, when they start to forget things. But the problem is, it's already too late then, the brain cells have already died, and there's not much we can do at this point. The only drugs we have in Belgium right now are symptomatic. So, what they do is we give you drugs and they will make you forget maybe two or three things a day instead of five or six. So, it will help you a little bit in your daily life, but it won't do that much. While if we can diagnose you ten years earlier, so if we can say, oh, you will probably develop dementia in ten years' time, we have a window of opportunity of ten years. And in my opinion, it's much, much easier to prevent something from happening than to treat something that has already happened. And I often compare it with a heart attack. Nowadays, we treat people for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and we do that because we want to prevent a heart attack or stroke from happening in the first place. And I think that will be the same with dementia too. And so yeah, we use, or I use, right now, a PET scan to try to diagnose dementia in an early stage. We're still refining that process because, yeah, it's pretty early, but I think that will be the future of dementia care. And one more thing, in America, there's a drug approved that can alter the progression of dementia. So, that's the first drug approved that can really change the progression, so I hope that this will be approved in Canada, in Europe, in a few years, because that could hopefully delay the onset of the disease. That would be really helpful.
Jordan Houghton
This is so interesting to me, and also just really exciting to know how this could revolutionize care for people and prevent horrible, destructive, life altering, and deadly diseases. What else is on your radar? What other big advancements are you looking at to see in the next several years in nuclear medicine?
Paulien Moyaert
I think the biggest advancement will be in the field of oncology. I truly hope and I think that we can change cancer from a deadly disease at this point to a more chronic disease. We already see that with prostate cancer, there are treatments that we can give that can make prostate cancer a chronic disease, and that means that people will die, which prostate cancer, but not of prostate cancer.
Jordan Houghton
So, you're saying that it's something that they'll have and they'll live with, but it will be treatable to the point that it's not something that is ultimately the reason they die?
Paulien Moyaert
Yes, correct.
Mary Carpenter
So, it sounds like you're looking at nuclear medicine as a way for preventative treatment for dementia. Do you feel that same way about cancer? I know you're using it now to find, you know, where it's spread, where it is in the body. But are you looking at it all as a way to, I don't know, maybe do scans ahead of time to confirm, like, there's no cancer in the body before you have questions that there might be? Are there any other ways you're going to use it preventatively, like you are with dementia?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, that's a really good question, I haven't really thought about that. But as you say, we now have, like, two main points of use. So, we have a diagnostic view- we diagnose cancer, and we also have a therapeutic view where we treat cancer. At this point, I don't think that we'll use it as a preventive measurement because, to be honest, it's just way too expensive to do that now, but I think there will be a lot of advancements in the field of the therapeutic field.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, because I see, you know, some Instagram influencers and, like, I think Kim Kardashian did it, do these like full body scans, you know, to see if they have anything that shouldn't be in their body, and I'm wondering if nuclear medicine has a way to kind of evolve that so one day it's, you know, more accessible for more people.
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, I think it could be, but it is still radioactivity. Like, as a doctor, I wouldn't recommend everyone to get a PET scan, because if you don't need it, why would I expose you to such an amount of radioactivity? Of course, if I think you have cancer and you're maybe about to die, yeah, let's give you a PET scan and hopefully I can treat you. But if you don't have any symptoms, I would say, okay, maybe do a regular blood checkup or maybe an X-ray. But that's not something I even would recommend. I think just living healthy and going to your family physician every now and then would be sufficient.
Jordan Houghton
Thank you for saying that because I'm like, I should sign up for a PET scan right now and make sure that we found something before anything happens, right? Like, sign me up!
Mary Carpenter
Yep, so I'm gonna go!
Paulien Moyaert
But I have to say that, if there's something in your body, it has to be, I think it has to be 1 or 2mm big before you can see it. So, if you're too early, you won't see anything. So, not everyone with cancer, if they have the PET scan and it's negative, I can't say for sure you don't have cancer, maybe it's just too small to see.
Jordan Houghton
Right, right. Makes sense. That makes sense. I-you mentioned prostate cancer, and I wanted to ask for you to talk a little bit more about radio cancer treatment that is improving prostate cancer results.
Paulien Moyaert
Yes that's true. So, we have a specific type of radioactive substance that is used to treat prostate cancer. And that's called lutetium. And if we inject that lutetium into the body, it attached-it specifically attaches to all the prostate cancer cells in your body. So, if your prostate cancer has metastasized to the bone, to the liver, it will attach there and it will give off radioactivity and kill all the cancer cells in your body. And this has absolutely revolutionized the treatment of prostate cancer, because compared to, for example, chemo, it's much more specific. It only targets the cancer cells because of that specific GPS tag, so you won't have the side effects that chemotherapy gives you. You won't lose your hair, you won't get sick. And I have-like, there's one study that showed that people who were treated with lutetium live for about 12 months without their cancer progressing, compared to only six months when they were treated with chemotherapy.
Jordan Houghton
I have so many follow up questions because this is fascinating to me! First, is this something that can be used, or do we hope it to be used, to treat other types of cancer beyond prostate cancer? Because it sounds amazing that, one, you can do it without the horrible side effects of chemo, but also the outcome is so great. And then I'm wondering, even in just the case of prostate cancer, is it something that can be repeated? So, if you have the treatment and it targets all the prostate cancer cells, you come-you said you could go 12 months without it progressing. Can you come back and repeat it if it starts to reappear and do the same thing again?
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, very good question. So, the first question, yes, it has already been used for other treatments and other cancers as well, so that's very promising. And the second part of your question, it can be repeated, but we sometimes see that cancer cells change, and that it does not any longer respond to that type of treatment. So, that's something that we're looking into right now. But you have to know that when people come to see me for that type of treatment, they know that they won't have that much time left. So, we as nuclear medicine physicians often give them a few months extra. And at that point, it makes a huge difference.
Mary Carpenter
Is this something you're working on, you know, with the global medical community? It sounds like it's-nuclear medicine is very well received in Europe, and, you know, you're making all these advances and doing all these interesting things with cancer and dementia. You know, we're in the United States-are you working with doctors here, or Asia? Is this kind of a global-is there a global consensus on nuclear medicine?
Paulien Moyaert
Yes, yes. There are not that many nuclear medicine physicians compared to, for example, cardiologists or gynecologists, so we're a much smaller group. But to give you an example, my study is a collaboration between different countries. So, I work with people from Canada, people from the Netherlands, people from New Zealand, so yeah, I feel like, nuclear medicine physicians often work together, and that's something that we have to do. I think in Belgium there are only maybe 40, 50 max nuclear medicine physicians, so we have to work together if we want to achieve something.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah. It seems like such important work, and we need as many people working on it as possible. What else is big in the nuclear medicine space?
Paulien Moyaert
I just think that people underestimate the power of nuclear medicine procedures. They often don't know it, they're afraid of it, but we have to tell the world that nuclear medicine scans are truly amazing and that they're designed to save people's life. I think that's my main takeaway from this.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah. Lifesaving treatments.
Paulien Moyaert
Have you ever had nuclear medicine scan, a bone scan or a PET scan or?
Mary Carpenter
I don't think so.
Jordan Houghton
I've had a lot of X-rays and CT scans, but not anything beyond that.
Mary Carpenter
That's probably a good thing.
Jordan Houghton
Yeah, which I guess is good!
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, it's good! Fingers crossed.
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, I think it's super good! Because if you would have needed a PET scan, I would think oh is there something wrong with you? Like, do you have any disease? But there are also many types of scans, like, I mentioned a bone scan, which is sometimes a very good alternative to an X-ray, like when people come into the E.R. with, for example, a stress fracture. That's a type of fracture that people get from repetitive movements, for example, from running or playing football. And when they do an X-ray it's often negative, so they don't see the fracture because it's not yet there. Maybe it's not yet completely broken, I would say. But if you would do a bone scan at that point, it's a molecular imaging technique so it would show up, and it would light up, and that means that there's something there but we do not yet see it on an X-ray. So, I think that's something that will hopefully get more popular in the upcoming years, because even a lot of doctors do not know how amazing nuclear medicine is and what it can do.
Mary Carpenter
So, you can catch this bone fracture before it even happens, really, to prevent it from getting worse.
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah, that-yeah. That's good, that's how I see it. Sometimes you see that, like, the bone cells are damaged and that they are repairing themselves, and that's what you see on the bone scan. But if it's not completely broken, if it's inside, like, the bone itself, you won't see it on an X-ray.
Jordan Houghton
Yeah, unfortunately, any time anyone in my family has gone in for orthopedic X-ray, it's been catastrophic enough that even I, who have no medical training, can see that there is something very wrong.
Mary Carpenter
You're past preventative!
Paulien Moyaert
Yeah! At that point, like, if I can tell…
Jordan Houghton
I remember when I was pregnant and you're doing ultrasounds and, you know, they can see all the-and I couldn't see I couldn't tell anything, I had no idea what I was looking at. They're like, there's the heart, there's the leg, and I'm like, wonderful. I'm glad that you could tell! But when I go in and see an X-ray and even I can see the break, I'm like, we're in trouble. Paulien, I would love to ask you, we were talking about food a little bit at the top and we are big foodies. We would love to know-this is our international take this week-where is your favorite place to eat in Belgium? Or, what is your favorite food?
Paulien Moyaert
I don't think I have one favorite restaurant in Belgium, but I would say that I absolutely love our French fries. Yeah, that would be my go-to meal every Friday with my husband, absolutely.
Mary Carpenter
Excellent answer. They're so good!
Jordan Houghton
That is awesome.
Paulien Moyaert
What is your favorite food?
Mary Carpenter
Oh, that is such a tough question. You know, somebody asked me this last week also, which is kind of wild that this keeps coming up. And I gave an answer, I love, like, chicken parmesan, which is an Americanized version of-I don't even think it really exists in Italy, but… And then I started thinking, like, I also love tacos and like, chips and queso, like, I could go on all day! Like, I love tuna, like sashimi, I really like anything!
Jordan Houghton
I was trying to think about it too, Mary, like what cuisine? And I was trying to think of something uniquely American. But I think something that we do really great here is our own takes on all of these great international cuisines.
Mary Carpenter
Yeah, like Tex Mex. One more question. Are there any other people in the field we should be following? Like, any other medical, especially nuclear medicine, content creators that we should also be following?
Paulien Moyaert
So, if they want to get in touch with me or follow me on YouTube, you can find me if you look for my name, Paulien Moyaert. But if you want to look for other researchers or doctors, one doctor I know is Michael Hofman. He's an Australian doctor who focuses on nuclear medicine treatments and especially on cancer, like, prostate cancer treatments.
Mary Carpenter
Well, Paulien, thanks so much for joining us today. This was so, so interesting, I know our listeners will love this conversation. Really, really cool. And we'd love to have you back as you progress in your research and learn how it's going. That was such an interesting conversation. Paulien had so much knowledge and, I mean, I could talk to her all day. I still have so many questions. But I want to say a huge thank you to Paulien for joining us! We really enjoyed having her on the show, and, you know, it's a great reminder to, you know, jump on the health trends that we're seeing and schedule, you know, all of your checkups and, you know, make sure you're healthy.
Jordan Houghton
I do like the balance that was offered though, because yes, definitely do preventive wellness checks, but also enjoy some French fries.
Mary Carpenter
Yes! I will never turn down a fry.
Jordan Houghton
It's all about balance.
Mary Carpenter
Yes! Exactly.
Jordan Houghton
If you want to learn more about nuclear medicine, we recommend checking out Paulien's YouTube channel, which we have linked in the show notes.
Mary Carpenter
And don't forget to rate and subscribe to Fissionary on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening today. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time, Fissionaries!
The next episode airs on Thursday, May 9th-make sure you tune in, Fissionaries!