Episode 11 Operation Ouch!

He's Dr Chris.

And he's Dr Xand.

-Yep, we're twins.

-Do you know just how brilliant your body really is?

Well, now's the time to find out.

We'll be uncovering the ins and outs of what you're made of.

I've got a big hole in my head.

We'll be doing awesome experiments...

-SQUEAKY VOICE:

-You sound ridiculous.

-DEEP VOICE:

-Pipe down, squeaky.

..as we push our own bodies to the limit...

-OK, here we go.

-Oh...

..to show you all the incredible things your body can do.

Hang around because this is going to be fun.

-Coming up today...

-..On Operation Ouch!

We join an Air Ambulance crew at the scene of an emergency.

We discover what this guy's amazing talent is

and we take a look at one of our basic bodily functions.

-That's awful.

-It does smell bad.

But first...in the emergency department in Manchester,

doctors and nurses are ready for their first patient.

Six-year-old Rachel has a deep cut to her hand and a big bandage.

I cut my hand on glass.

After cutting her hand on glass, she may look calm, but don't be fooled.

It hurt a lot.

I bet it did. So how did this happen?

Rachel was playing football with her sister in the garden.

There they are - caught on satellite.

Rachel had possession, her sister went in for the tackle,

the crowd popped up from behind a fence and went wild - nice stadium.

Ooh, nasty shard of glass lurking in the grass.

What a superb break for goal and what dribbling skills.

Rachel was gaining ground but then...disaster!

Suddenly, Rachel slipped and landed right on that shard of glass.

Ooh, referee - ouch!

It looks deep inside and it's a big cut there.

We'd better get that big cut looked at.

Time to bring Dr Thomas Clarke off the substitutes' bench.

We look after any injury to the hands.

What we're really looking for is the extent of the injury

and has she damaged any of the structures in the hand?

And, based on that, does she need an operation?

Dr Thomas takes the dressing off. If you're squeamish, look away now.

Even Rachel doesn't want to look and she's already seen it.

First, Dr Thomas checks to see if the glass has cut any arteries.

Arteries supply blood to the hand

and if they're damaged, Rachel could lose her fingers.

To see if the hand has got blood going to it, press on the fingers.

They go white and then the colour comes back. This is looking good.

That's good news. Now Dr Thomas checks for nerve damage.

Nerves carry messages from the brain to parts of your body and back.

They're like a telephone line between your body and your brain.

PHONE RINGS: Hello.

And it's really dangerous if they get damaged

because your brain would never know if part of your body was hurt.

Er, hello, is anybody there?

Can you do me a couple of things? Straighten your fingers. OK.

-She's saying she can't do this one.

-Is that painful?

-Is it sore?

On examining Rachel's hand,

I can see that some of the movements are weaker than the other hand.

The only way to find out why is to operate,

so surgeons can have a proper look.

Unless she has an operation for us to look at these structures,

she may well be left with a hand that doesn't function properly.

We'll catch up with Dr Thomas and Rachel later.

This is our lab where we're going to put our bodies to the test

to show you how your body works.

Ow, that really hurts.

Just don't try doing today's experiment at home,

but it is something you do do all the time.

Poo. We all do it

and it comes in all different shapes, sizes and smells.

You can tell a lot about your health from looking at your poo.

What you eat and drink can affect what it looks like and that's why,

for several days, Xand and I have been on very different diets.

Xand has been on a very healthy diet.

He's been eating lots of fruit, vegetables and fibre

and drinking lots of water.

Chris has been on a very unhealthy diet of sweet and deep-fried foods.

And I've been collecting my poo.

-Have you?

-Yes.

Today's lab might be a bit smelly.

If you don't like squeamish stuff, this isn't for you.

But we think poo is fascinating and we're going to tell you why.

Let's take a look at the first poo.

Remember, I've been on the healthy diet. Ready?

-Now it does look like poo.

-It certainly smells like poo.

Poo smells because of all the bacteria in your digestive system.

As everything gets broken down, they release gas and smelly chemicals.

There are a couple of interesting things about this. First, it's big,

it's also wet and it's soft like porridge.

That's because the fibre in my diet is holding the water in the poo

and that's very important

because that means this poo is very quick and easy to do.

Fibre makes your poo solid and drinking lots of water

helps your poo glide through your large intestine better too.

-Where's your poo?

-I didn't do a poo cos I had no fibre in my diet.

I can't poo because the junk food I've eaten

is full of fat and sugars but very little fibre,

so my guts find it harder to push through and it sits there for ages.

So it's 1-0 to me. Yes!

It's not a competition.

Day 2. Let's have a look.

So it's less porridgy than it was on day 1,

but that's cos I didn't drink enough water.

There is something else interesting to see. Your body can't break down

the fibre in food like the shell on a piece of sweetcorn.

I've been eating a lot of sweetcorn recently so I can show you.

If you have a look here...that is an undigested piece of sweetcorn.

Xand can't digest the sweetcorn cos he doesn't have the right enzyme.

None of us do and that why it's good to eat sweetcorn

because of its indigestible fibrous outer shell.

I'm starting to get worried about Chris' poo.

-Where's yours?

-Day 2 - still no poo.

-So it's 2-0 to me.

-Do you realise, if you win this competition,

-all you're going to get is more poo?

-And I'll be healthier.

Day 3 for Xand.

Uh-uh! I have a poo.

# Hallelujah! #

Let's forget about mine, then.

Let's have a look.

Euughhh! Oh, Chris, that's awful!

It does smell bad.

Ohhh, that is a terrible poo.

It's small, it's dry, it's hard and it took me ages to do this.

Because I wasn't eating fibre,

there wasn't anything to absorb the water and help me push it through.

And this footage is taken with a special camera. It's a live shot

of the inside of my intestine and it shows how it's clogged up with poo.

The lack of fibre in the junk food

means my gut is taking longer to squeeze it through.

It's just so much work for such a bad result, so put the lid on.

You don't want a poo like this.

-So it's lots of fibre and plenty of water from now on.

-Absolutely.

Emergency rescue teams need to get to the scene of an accident quickly.

There are lots of different ways they can get there to help you.

We're checking in with the UK's emergency services

who head into the thick of the action to help save lives every day.

Today, we're sending the cameras on a special mission.

I'm in awe of a very special group of people

and I want you to see exactly what they do, so meet the A Team

who fly by the seat of their pants in an awesome helicopter.

This is the Midlands Air Ambulance.

This airborne medical service has three helicopters

always ready for emergency action.

With a highly skilled team made up of paramedics, doctors

and, of course, pilots,

they look after six counties, serve five and a half million people

and can get a patient to hospital in just 15 minutes. Always on standby,

they're ready for every call.

Flying high on today's special assignment are Dr Jon Bingham

and Paramedic Stef Cormack.

When the phone rings, they have to be ready to go within seconds.

It's five o'clock and a call's come in.

The team write information down on special pads on their knees

for speed and to keep their hands free.

With the helicopter fuelled and ready to go,

it's not long before they're airborne. Helicopters are small,

so I wait at base while the team are called to the scene of an accident

where a car is on fire.

We've got reports of an adult who's been involved in a car fire.

See the car fire out the window now.

It was like a huge bonfire. Lots and lots of smoke.

What kind of things are going through your head?

The first thing is always safety - where can we land

where we can get to the patient quickly,

but we're far enough away or in a place where we're not going to be

involved in the smoke or the fire in the way of the fire crew?

Fire's obviously still going, so we're staying a safe distance back.

As the fire service tackled the burning car,

Dr Jon assessed the driver.

Didn't have any burns injuries.

That's one thing that can cause a huge problem and, fortunately,

he could tell us he's not been burned, nothing from the flames.

From the breathing-in-the-smoke point of view, people often develop

respiratory distress - difficulty breathing.

-So your throat feels a little bit sore?

-No, not sore just...

-A cough?

But your breathing feels OK?

-No other problems with dizziness, no pain, anything else at all?

-No.

As well as being able to get to a scene quickly,

an air ambulance crew have another huge benefit -

with a doctor on board, casualties can be assessed and treated on site.

So we're just going to get a full set of observations

to make sure he's breathing normally, his oxygen levels are good

and blood pressure's OK and if, following that, he's still good,

then there's no reason why he can't be discharged from the scene.

It was a large, dangerous fire, but now the flames are under control.

Is there anything left of the car?

It's basically just a shell. The tyres have melted off,

stuck to the road, there's nothing inside. Even the engine,

it doesn't even look like an engine - bits of wires hanging out.

It was a lucky escape and with the patient discharged from the scene,

the team were able to head back to the helicopter.

We need to get things packed up quickly and move on to the next job.

You never know what the next call is going to be.

It's just the nature of the job.

With such fast helicopters and great expertise on board,

the air ambulance are a vital addition to our emergency services.

They're definitely the team I'd want to help me.

Still to come.

We'll show you an amazing trick to impress your friends.

I donate blood...

While I have mine sucked out of me by one of these.

It's thinner than a thread of cotton.

Amazing. And so's this.

An ordinary paperboy on an ordinary bike

with a bag full of ordinary newspapers.

Oh, look, a daffodil. Yeah, that's not very interesting.

So this guy likes to cycle, there's nothing amazing about that.

Oh, yeah? Take a look at this.

A not very ordinary road and a not very ordinary bike.

This is Dan Pullen - a junior BMX champion, the national number one.

To get to be BMX champion, Dan uses the whole of his amazing body.

His brain prepares for the speed and stunts

by releasing adrenaline to the muscles so they work for longer.

And when you ride a bike like this, you need balance, control and power.

Nice wheelie. He has powerful muscles on the front of his thighs

that power those accelerations

and flex his legs for takeoff and landings.

On the back of his thighs, his hamstrings are working hard

to co-ordinate his knees and hips, keeping him balanced and flexible.

And his calf muscles provide power for uphill scrambles.

These muscles support his upper leg

and flex his feet so he can balance on the pedals.

This sport involves a lot of training and a lot of commitment.

A lot of gym work with the weights and stuff like that.

Wow. Dan has skills.

His whole body works together to co-ordinate control of the bike

and power into the jumps and absorb the landings.

This week's hero - BMX boy. Now that's amazing.

That's not amazing, Xand. Let's go to accident and emergency

to see how our patient's getting along.

We're back in Manchester

with six-year-old Rachel and her cut hand.

Rachel was playing football in the garden. The crowd were going wild -

there they are. Then she slipped and cut her hand on a piece of glass.

Her cut was very deep so she needs an operation

to check if the movement in her hand is affected.

Dad explains how serious this could be.

When you're playing on the Xbox, you won't be able to move round.

So if you have the operation, you'll be able to game again.

-Shall we get this operation done, then, Rachel?

-Ready to go.

Once Rachel's asleep, the operating team examine the injury

and find that the glass has cut through the muscle and the nerve

that gives sensation to two of her fingers.

She's had a very lucky escape cos the glass had narrowly missed

another important nerve by just one millimetre.

The doctors repair the damage and, soon, Rachel will be as good as new.

After Rachel wakes up from the operation, she comes to a decision.

I'm not playing football for a while.

I think that's a thumbs up. Yep, there's the thumb.

The doctors give her the all-clear to go home. After the surgery,

Rachel made a great recovery and has full use of her hand again.

-Bye.

-Mind that hand!

We've got loads of amazing tricks for you.

Here's one to show off how strong you are to your friends.

-Xand, I want you to try and pull my fists apart.

-This is a great trick.

-No, I can't do it.

-OK, now you do the same thing,

but I'm going to separate Xand's fists using just my fingers.

Your friend'll be feeling pretty confident.

You won't be able to pull my fists apart

because I have the strength of 20 men and not even a team of...

If Xand's pressing his fists together so tightly like this,

there's nothing to stop them being separated like that.

So when you try this trick,

just push your fists upwards and downwards against each other

so your friend can't separate them.

When you do it to your friend, they'll copy what you did,

so use your fingers to push and pull

their fists towards and away from you. And it works.

Blood. If you're sick and you need it, nothing else will do.

The tricky bit is there's only one way of getting hold of blood -

taking it out of people. People like me.

About 4,000 litres of blood are used in hospitals all over England daily.

It's vital for life-saving treatments

and that's why donations are so important.

I'm just about to insert a needle into your arm, Xand.

So that's in and it really didn't hurt at all.

You feel a bit of a scratch and it's not a very nice idea,

-but Linda's an expert so it's fine.

-You're doing really well there.

There it is, filling up.

Your body is actually a blood factory.

It's constantly making new blood, but it makes it in a place

you might not expect - in the middle of your bones.

Our bodies can produce two million red blood cells every second!

That's incredible.

I'm donating about half a litre of blood -

the equivalent of almost two cans of fizzy drink,

that's around 13% of the blood circulating around my body.

You can't give blood until you're 17,

but you can receive it and it could save your life.

That's me done and it only took five minutes.

It's going to come out now.

And just keep pressure on there for us, OK, that's lovely.

-Thank you very much.

-It's been a pleasure.

This is a bag of my blood and some time in the next 35 days,

it's going to be put inside someone else - possibly saving their life.

But it can't go straight into them.

First it's got to go to the blood factory.

This is the largest blood factory in the world and we're going in.

I've never seen anything like this.

Behind me are 800 bags of live human blood! Waaahhh!

And John Kirkwood is here to tell me what's going to happen to my blood.

Your blood will be one of 3,000 donations from donors.

-So about a small swimming pool full of blood every day?

-Yes.

All the blood first gets put onto a giant rack where it's filtered

to remove some of the cells which can't be used by every patient.

-What happens next?

-The pack goes to what we call a manufacturing pod

and then we will take out the plasma and the platelets and the red cells.

The factory's job is to process and sort blood into three main products

which treat patients with different medical needs.

The first product is red blood cells

which are often used for operations and transfusions.

Then there are plasma and platelets.

The darker liquid - plasma -

contains proteins and cells to help patients fight diseases.

Finally, platelets are tiny but important. They help blood clot

and can be used for specialist bone marrow and cancer treatments.

To split up the red blood cells from the plasma and platelets,

the blood is put into here. It acts just like a big washing machine

and spins round really fast

causing different cells to separate into three layers.

Then a big press squeezes out the plasma and platelets

so you end up with them in bags up here

and the red blood cells at the bottom.

In a different part of the factory,

a vital step is taking place - testing.

Every unit of blood that's donated has to be tested for two reasons.

First, blood can carry diseases.

You really don't want to catch a disease from a blood transfusion.

Blood also needs to be tested because,

just like people have different colour eyes or hair,

people have different kinds of blood. This is called blood groups.

There's A, there's B, there's AB, there's O.

Now, if you get given the wrong kind of blood, this could be fatal.

But don't worry, these guys are very good at what they do.

These are the final products of this massive blood factory.

Thousands of bags of living human blood, including mine,

all going out to save lives.

Because thousands of litres of blood are being used every day in the UK,

it's vital that blood donations keep coming into the factory

to be processed ready to use in our hospitals.

That's around 23,000 litres of blood!

Our next patient was just having a normal day.

But now they're in Accident and Emergency - let's meet them.

Five-year-old Maxton turns up feeling a bit patchy.

I hurt my eye and it really hurts.

Well, you seem cheery enough about it. What's it like under there?

Disgusting.

Disgusting? Oh, dear. How did this happen?

Maxton was at school.

It was break time and he was balancing on some tree stumps.

Nice headband, Maxton.

He was jumping across to the other side of a dangerous swamp,

the red monkeys were cheering him on and there it was - the treasure.

With a burst of speed, he hopped across when...

Oh, no! He lost his balance and he crashed his face into a tree stump.

Ouch! Off to hospital for Maxton.

Good walk, Maxton.

Watch where you're going, you'll do the other eye in! Phew.

Here's Dr Gemma McLeod to have a look at Maxton.

-What happened to you today?

-I banged my eye and it was all bleeding.

Can we have a little look at this head?

Yeah, come on, time to reveal all.

Oh, dear, where's the end of your eyebrow gone?

-Is it painful across here?

-Erm, no, it's only this side.

-Just this side. This side's all OK, yeah?

-Yeah, it's OK.

All my body is OK, except for the eye.

That's it, look on the bright side.

So how are we going to fix him up, Dr Gemma?

I think we might need to glue that head injury that you've got there.

We need to bring it back together.

He doesn't look impressed.

They're all going to laugh at me at school!

They won't laugh at you at school.

Imagine my head was cracked together,

you'd have to glue my whole head like that, round my face too.

-Ending up...

-On my nose.

-Right, I don't think that's going to happen.

Although it looks quite nasty at the moment,

it should come together quite nicely with our special glue.

Dr Gemma's right. It is quite nasty,

but imagine if his whole head WAS cracked open

-and we had to glue his whole head...

-Don't YOU start.

You're so brave, Maxton. I wish they were all like you.

That's it, you've done it! Well done, you were brilliant. Yeah.

With the gluing over, the nurse applies some small plasters

called steri-strips to make sure the cut stays closed.

And that's it - let's give Maxton a big hand.

Er, not quite what I had in mind.

-Yeah!

-Bye.

Bye. I've got a glove on, bye.

BUZZING

-Uhh! Look at that!

-Man up, there are much worse things that can bite you.

It's time for Investigation Ouch!

As a doctor, my specialty is tropical medicine

and it takes me all over the world,

but one of the best places to study it is right here in the UK

at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

and I'm going to show you what they keep in the basement.

Some countries have tropical warm temperatures -

just the right conditions for disease-spreading animals

to thrive and multiply.

In this room are 8,000 of one of the deadliest animals in the world

and, no, this is not a tank full of great white sharks.

These are tsetse flies. Aaarrrgghhhh!

Tsetse flies live in 35 countries across Africa.

When they bite a human, they cause a fatal disease

called sleeping sickness by injecting a nasty parasite.

This laboratory in Liverpool

is trying to find a cure to help millions of people.

This is Dr Alvaro Acosta-Serrano. He's the chief scientist

who looks after the flies, and they're hungry.

He's just served up some blood for them to feed on

so he can research their habits.

This is a special sheet that's heated

so the flies think it's real skin.

Underneath the skin is animal blood, so the flies bite through the skin

and drink the blood as they would in real life.

Look at those bellies - they're red because they're full of blood.

-How often do you have to feed the flies?

-Every other day.

So you've basically got 8,000 pet flies in the basement

that need feeding every two days. That is a lot of work.

So I thought I would help Dr Alvaro out and feed one of the flies

by letting it bite me right now. But don't worry, these flies are sterile

which means they don't carry any disease.

So this fly is sucking up my blood through its proboscis -

that long straw-like thing at the front.

How much blood is he going to drink?

-It's going to take at least twice its own weight.

-Twice its own weight.

That's the equivalent of me drinking 300 pints of milk for breakfast.

While he's eating, he's leaving a sort of substance on my arm -

-what is that?

-He's just getting rid of the waste from blood.

So I'm not just being eaten,

this fly's also having a poo on me.

Nice. And look at how much its body has grown in just five minutes.

It's full of my blood.

If this was a wild fly and it was carrying the parasite,

it could make me very sick indeed.

This green and yellow stuff is blood under a special microscope,

but see those wriggly worm things?

They're the parasites that the tsetse fly injects.

Those parasites multiply in the bloodstream and make the patient

feel extremely unwell and then they move to the central nervous system,

to the brain where they multiply further.

The patient feels drowsy, increasingly sleepy

and over the course of weeks to a month, they die.

That's why it's so important that the team study the flies

and find out more about the parasite

to stop them from causing people harm.

At the moment, there's no vaccine to prevent sleeping sickness

and the only way they can keep the disease at bay

is by setting up giant fly traps.

So the investigation for Dr Alvaro and his team must continue.

My experience with tsetse flies here in Liverpool has been fascinating.

Even being bitten was quite fun.

But in Africa, they spread one of the most fatal diseases known to man

and that's why the work done by Alvaro and his team is so important.

Next time - we take a look at breathing. Yep, that's a lung.

-Believe it or not, this man has an amazing body.

-Nice deckchair.

And we get picky

as we discover all about the stuff that comes out of your nose.

-So we'll see you next time on...

-Operation Ouch!