Conventional wisdom tells us that, to be healthy, we should exercise and limit fatty foods. Exercise helps us lose weight, build muscle, strengthens our hearts and boosts how we take in and use oxygen for energy — one of the strongest predictors of health and longevity.

But people with high blood sugar often don’t enjoy those benefits from exercise, especially the ability to use oxygen efficiently.

For them, a new study suggests the answer could be eating not less fat, but more.

Exercise medicine scientist Sarah Lessard explains her new study that examines how the keto diet might help people with diabetes and high blood sugar in the latest episode of Big Science Small Pod.

“What we're really finding from this study and from our other studies is that diet and exercise aren't simply working in isolation,” she said. “There are a lot of combined effects. And so we can get the most benefits from exercise if we eat a healthy diet at the same time.”

Not all cases of epilepsy are the same. Some people suffer a few seizures, begin taking one of 30 or more epilepsy medications available, and live a typical life.

But for about a half million U.S. children with treatment-resistant disease, it’s far worse. Their seizures keep coming, making them more likely to die young. They’re at greater risk for learning problems, social and emotional difficulties, and social isolation.

Many of these epilepsies are caused by genetic mutations. Matthew Weston, a neuroscientist at Virginia Tech's Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, leads a team working to identify them.

In the latest episode of Big Science Small Pod, Weston explains what happens in the brain during seizures and how his lab is researching their genetic roots to help develop new treatments for children.

“My goal,” Weston said, “is to understand this in a way that has an … effect on patient care, focused on making these kids’ lives better.”

Lining the vessels that carry blood and oxygen to your brain, there’s a protective filter than keeps bad stuff from getting out of the bloodstream and into the brain where it can do harm. It’s called the blood-brain barrier. But this feature becomes a problem when doctors need to get chemotherapy to a brain tumor. That protective barrier then stands between cancer and drugs that could treat it.

Physician-scientist Cheng-Chia “Fred” Wu of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute is investigating how to use sound to temporarily open that barrier to allow cancer drugs to reach brain tumors, like those caused by the highly lethal childhood cancer he treats, diffuse midline glioma.

“As a radiation doctor, I point beams to fight cancer. That's what we do. Point and shoot,” Wu said. “Ultrasound is very similar to radiation in many ways … and so when I first learned about it, I just felt that this was a technology that can really be transformative.”