Episode 4 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...

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

It's very hard to think, it's so cold.

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

Oh, no!

Hang around, because this is going to be fun.

Coming up today on Operation Ouch!...

There's a pong in the air...

Oh, that's awful!

..when Chris finds out why we sweat.

I join paramedics on a lifesaving mission.

And we turn the temperature up to show you

how our bodies deal with pain.

Ah, ah!

But first...

Hospital doctors and nurses always expect the unexpected.

Let's see how they fix our first patient.

In Liverpool, six-year-old Benjamin is in Accident and Emergency

and I think there might be something wrong with his hand.

Shut my finger in the door.

Trapped your finger in the door?

Yeah, don't know why, I just had a hunch it was his hand.

It's bleeding.

But how on earth did that happen?

Benjamin was in the car on his way to school with his mum.

He was enjoying the ride.

Whoa, what's this? That's a pretty cool ride to school.

Well, I just thought I'd do something a bit different,

but back to reality. As they pulled up at the school gate,

Benjamin rushed to get out of the car.

But as he slammed the car door shut, his hand was in the way

and chopped his fingertip off.

Ouch.

I looked at it and I thought,

"He's cut the top of his finger off!"

So, where is the end of that finger?

I found it.

Oh, that's good.

Stuck on the car - it was just sticked on the car.

Ahh, that's not so good.

Meet plastic surgeon Dr Charlotte Defty.

If anyone can sort out that finger, she can.

It's bleeding.

Is it bleeding a bit? Is it OK if I have a little look?

I'm going to cut this dressing off, I'll keep away from your finger.

You don't have to look again till it's mended.

Ooh, that looks sore, but luckily not too much is missing.

Where it's come off is basically just where the nail grows from.

We'll just have to smooth off the bone on the end and try

and get the skin just to cover over the end. Otherwise, you can end up

with splinters of nail that stick out, that can be a problem.

So there's a chance Benjamin won't have a fingernail,

but it's more important he has a fully working finger.

In time, you'll just have a slightly shorter finger

and you will be able to use it completely normally.

It's at times like this when you need a comforting word from your dad.

That's going to be your nickname, Stumpy.

Yeah, nice one, Dad(!)

With the plans in place, we'll be back to find out

how Benjamin's surgery goes later on.

Now, we're heading to our lab,

where we're going to put our bodies to the test

to show you how your body works.

Ow, that really hurt.

Just don't try anything you see here at home.

Ow!

-Did that hurt?

-Yes. Get off.

-OK, what about this?

No, but get off, I don't like it.

We all experience pain. You've got over three million pain receptors

throughout your body,

-But some areas, like this...

-Ah!

..have more receptors than other areas, like this.

Now, I know I shouldn't be pinching his arm,

but it was all to explain pain receptors.

Pain receptors are specialised nerve endings.

They act as messengers so when they detect something painful,

they tell your brain you're hurt.

Pain can be really useful sometimes

because it stops you accidentally damaging your body.

But why is it we feel pain differently in different situations?

Sometimes you can stub your toe and be in agony,

other times you cut yourself playing football

and you don't notice,

and that's because pain is in your brain.

This means that you can reduce the amount of pain you experience,

and we're going to show you how.

But before I show you this clever trick,

I'm going to inflict a little bit of pain on Xand

so that we can see how a person reacts normally.

Oh, good(!)

This is a heat stimulation thermode.

It's a pain machine!

I'll put it on the back of Xand's hand

and turn up the temperature until he can't stand it.

I'll do the same to him, and we'll see who can take more pain!

That's a bit dramatic, isn't it?

This medical device is used by scientists

to test people's sensitivity.

The end of the rod will get increasingly hot

the more I turn this dial up.

It won't burn, but let's see how much heat

Xand can take by letting his body send

pain signals to his brain, just like normal.

-Ready, Xand?

-Yeah.

Ahh!

It's not on yet, put your hand back.

All right.

That's the temperature of the probe. I'm going to start turning it up.

Remember, we can only do this because we're doctors.

-Yeah, it gets warm, it's warm now.

-Let's turn it up a bit more.

I can definitely feel that there's a hot thing... Ahhh... Yeah, yeah, OK.

And a bit more again.

Ahhh, ahhhh, aha! So that...that's really burning now.

Yeah, yeah. Ow, ow, ow! Yeah, that's enough, that's enough.

Xand managed to stand the pain up to a temperature of 45.2 degrees.

It was definitely painful? It wasn't just you kind of wimping out?

No, it was getting more painful.

There was a moment where it was just suddenly it was,

-"Ooh! I want to take my hand away now, that's too painful."

-OK, my go.

I'm going to try the same thing on Chris.

Only I've got a trick up my sleeve. I'm going to distract my brain

and that means I should be able to take more pain than Xand.

So, let's see how long Chris can last.

Chris, this will hurt you a lot more than it'll hurt me.

We'll see about that. I'll use a different technique.

I'm going to distract myself and really pretend

this doesn't hurt, and I reckon I can take more pain.

I'm on a beach.

I'm on a really sunny beach. I'm feeling really good.

You're not on a beach, Chris, you're in a lab

with a red-hot probe sticking into your hand.

It's not red-hot, it's barely hot. Is it on?

How's that beach feeling now?

The beach is quite hot now. OK, OK! I'm done, I'm done!

Let me tell you how you did - 48.2 degrees.

So, that beats you by three degrees.

-No.

-Yep.

-Really?

-Yep.

There's no way I could have gone another three degrees.

Yeah, it really works. So next time you've got to go to the doctor's

and have an injection, try it and see how you get on.

Yes, it's a clever trick. If you think of something relaxing,

you'll find it easier to cope with pain.

Don't feel a thing.

It's not only teams in hospitals that deal with the unexpected.

Wherever you are, if you have an accident,

there'll be a medical crew on standby ready to help.

We're going on call with the UK's emergency services,

heading into the thick of the action to help save lives.

Now it's Chris's turn on the front line.

This is a rapid-response vehicle

belonging to the West Midlands Ambulance Service,

and it's designed to get a paramedic to the scene of an emergency

within minutes.

On call with me today is paramedic Ben White.

It's not long before an emergency call comes in.

We've been called to the home of an 84-year-old lady who's fallen

over and pushed her lifeline button, and that's a button

that she can press that will summon help like us.

At the moment, we have no idea what we're going to turn up and find.

We don't know why she's pushed the button.

James has got his camera and I've got mine,

so I can take you with me right to the heart of the action.

'We don't know how extreme the situation is,

'but Ben gets there fast -

'in just two-and-a-half minutes.

'It's vital we get into the house as quickly as we can.

'The patient could be seriously hurt.'

Hello, my darling, it's the ambulance service.

'We're in and we find a lady called Lottie who's fallen over.'

What happened?

I went to the chair, it was too short and I fell on the floor.

It was a definite sort of fall?

-You didn't black out or collapse or anything?

-No, no, no.

-Okey-doke.

'Paramedic Ben needs to examine Lottie

-'to check for any serious injuries.'

-Any pain there?

-No, no, no.

-OK.

-Any pain down your back?

-No.

-Have you got any pain in your hips at all?

-No.

-Shall we get you up, then?

-Yeah.

We'll pick you up together and put you on the chair.

'When you fall over,

'it's easy to get back up, but as you get older,

'your muscles get weaker and that makes it much harder to move.'

-How are you feeling?

-I'm feeling fine.

-Not dizzy?

-No.

So, Ben's just going to do some thorough checks and make sure

all we have to do here is put her back in the chair and she's safe.

At the moment, everything's sort of looking OK.

Your blood pressure's very good, no injuries that we can find.

We've checked Lottie out, all observations seem fine.

Lottie's got carers that come in four times a day and she's got

the pendant round her neck, so if she becomes unwell,

she can always press it and we'll come back.

It's good news for Lottie but now she's in big trouble

with her friend Ann.

She tells me off.

Because you shouldn't have got out of the chair!

You're never too old to be told off, is that right?

I still get told off.

-Lottie, we'll leave you be, sweetheart.

-All right.

Take care, bye-bye.

If someone falls, can't get up and isn't found, even for a few hours,

that can be really serious. Luckily, Lottie has the button

round her neck, so we were able to be here

within a few minutes. Ben's put her in the chair

and now she's smiling and laughing - it's a really good result.

Thanks to paramedics like Ben who can get to a scene fast,

you'll never be more than a few minutes away

from emergency medical care.

Still to come...

I've put on some high heels in the name of medical research.

Things get whiffy when Chris finds out why we sweat.

Oh, grim!

And we'll show you how to mystify

your friends with another mind-bending trick.

Wow, that's amazing... and so is this.

Into a darkened room steps a man. But this is no ordinary man.

So, what makes him so special?

-Is it the red hair?

-No, Chris.

-Is it the shades?

-No, Chris.

-Hmmm... Is it the sword?

Well, almost. In fact, this man is hiding an amazing body -

yes, meet the mighty Gareth.

He has mastered the art of swallowing a sword.

Sword-swallowing is a skill that takes years of practice

and training.

So don't ever try this at home, because it would kill you.

In fact, don't go sticking anything down your throat, ever.

It's too dangerous.

When Gareth swallows his sword, it goes down his throat,

into his stomach, narrowly missing his heart and lungs.

In fact, if he made even one mistake, he'd be dead.

And there's even more to this skill than precision.

To do this amazing trick, Gareth has to make his body

fight its natural desire to reject the sword.

The gag reflex at the back of the throat,

-that makes you just want to be sick.

-Yes, I feel that just watching.

And it's taken Gareth years to learn

how to manoeuvre the sword past the vital organs in his body safely.

The hardest bit is relaxing

while doing something which is totally unrelaxing.

You can say that again.

I'm not sure he can, with that sword in his mouth!

And in case you thought it was all a big trick...

BEEPING ..it isn't.

Now, that's amazing.

That's not amazing, Xand. Let's go to Accident and Emergency

and see how our patient's getting along.

Six-year-old Benjamin is in hospital with ten fingers,

but only nine fingertips. He was rushing to get out of the car

when he accidentally closed the door on his hand.

He chopped the top of his finger off.

Having been examined by Dr Charlotte Defty, Benjamin gets gowned up

and the surgical team prepare to operate.

Benjamin's having a general anaesthetic to send him to sleep.

Now, nobody's ever got to 20.

Can you count and see if you can get to 20 for me?

One, two, three...

A general anaesthetic is a combination of drugs

which put you into a temporary state of unconsciousness,

keep you still and reduce the body's normal reactions to pain.

-..12...

-Benjamin's still counting,

but will he make it to 20 before the anaesthetic kicks in?

..15, 16...

I don't think so.

But now he's fast asleep, Dr Charlotte can get started.

Check out those specs.

They might look weird, but they'll magnify Benjamin's finger,

making it look 3½ times bigger

and easier for Dr Charlotte to work on.

Get ready for some fiddly finger work.

First, Dr Charlotte has to nibble away at the bone.

Only when it's lower than the level of the flesh,

can the soft tissue be closed together.

Then it's time for some stitches.

Finger fixed and dressing on, the operation's all done.

Everything went very smoothly. He'll be able to go home today,

as soon as he recovers from the anaesthetic.

Two hours later, Benjamin's awake and looking happy.

And it's time for Dad to offer some more words of comfort.

-How's your finger now?

-Fine.

-You sure?

-Yep.

How do you know? Cos it's not there.

Yeah, you really do need to work on the TLC, Dad.

Anyway, Dr Charlotte's here to check up on her patient

-and deliver some surprise news.

-He will have a nail, OK?

-Smashing!

-It'll just be a little bit shorter than it was before.

Great result, he'll have a nail after all.

Your fingertip will grow. It just won't quite be as big

as the other fingertip on the other hand.

Nice one, Doc, you've nailed it.

Bye! Bye!

We've got loads of amazing body tricks to show you.

Here's how to confuse your friends' brains using just water.

Right this is called... Xand, I need a bowl full of ice-cold water.

Now I need a bowl full of medium-temperature water.

And now I need a bowl full of hot water -

hot from the tap, not from a kettle.

I'll put this hand in the ice-cold water

and this hand in the hot water, and I'll leave them there

for one minute.

And now I'm going to put both hands in the middle bowl.

That is weird. The hand that was in the ice water feels boiling hot.

The hand that was in the hot water feels freezing cold.

I'm in the state of total neural confusion. Xand, what is going on?

For the hand that was in the cold water,

the warm-sensing nerves in Chris's skin became much more active,

and all the cold senses were shut off.

This fooled the brain into thinking his cold hand was hot.

And for the hand in hot water, it was the other way around.

So, the cold-sensing nerves in my skin became more active

and all the hot senses were shut off.

This fooled my brain into thinking my hot hand was cold.

Try it out on your friends and confuse their brains.

Now it's time for us to hit the hospitals

to show you what goes on.

Today we're in the Gait Lab.

Walking. Most of us don't think about it that much, but what is it,

what affects it and, most importantly,

why am I wearing this outfit?

I'm here at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool,

at a special laboratory, the Gait Lab,

and I'm going to get some answers.

All walks are different, and your own style of walking is your gait.

Gait Lab manager Gill Holmes is here to tell me more.

People that come have something wrong with them.

The doctors that are looking after them want to understand

what it is that is making them walk in an odd way

and what do we do about it.

So, the more you know about someone's walk, the more that doctors

can make decisions about how to do surgery, how to reposition muscles,

how to help people do exercises to get them better.

In this amazing room, sophisticated cameras

and computer technology help create 3D models of your walk.

So we will look at them very accurately

and we'll describe

how they're walking and what they're doing wrong.

Yes, but why am I dressed in this ridiculous outfit?

To know where you are and what you're doing, we put markers on you.

Time to put my best foot forward - let's start walking.

Off you go.

So I've done my walking and now I'm going to have a look

at the 3D model of me, and see what's going on.

You have got a normal, efficient way of walking.

Is this the kind of walk that a cool person would have,

like a movie star, a dancer or something like that?

Um...it's an ordinary walk.

It's an ordinary walk?

So, my barefoot walk looks good, but most of the time we wear shoes.

Are there any kind of shoes that are bad for you?

Um...yes, there are shoes that are bad for you -

shoes that are too small,

or girls tend to wear shoes that are too high.

Have you got anything in a different colour?

If Chris could see me now.

Gill wants to show me how shoes can affect the way your muscles

and joints work.

I'm gaining a bit of confidence now.

I think they're quite impressed.

But as I discover, it's really hard to walk fast.

By looking at my stick figure,

you can see that my knees never straighten in heels,

which has a big knock-on effect on the rest of my body.

You can see how bad it would be for someone to wear heels

-the entire time.

-You'd expect them

to have foot problems, you'd expect them to start to have

some knee, hip and back problems.

In fact, all styles of shoes can affect your body, and no matter what

you wear on your feet, it's really important your shoes fit properly.

I've learned that my walk is basically normal.

We've also seen how much shoes affect the way you walk,

but, most tragically, my ambitions to be a catwalk model

have been destroyed.

Thanks, Gill(!)

In fact, the answer is C -

enough to fill a family car.

1,264 litres, to be precise.

Ugh! This is a case for Investigation Ouch!

-HE SNIFFS

-Ugh!

Your feet have over 250,000 sweat glands.

Sweat is mainly salt and water, but when you mix it

with the otherwise harmless bacteria that live on my feet...

and the warm, moist socks that they live in, it's a real feast.

And what you're smelling is the waste products

from the bacteria. Ugh!

This is Loughborough University,

the place to come to study all things sweaty.

We're going to find out why we sweat

and find out where we sweat the most.

Using some high-tech equipment

and this sweat collection vest,

we're going to collect Chris's sweat.

Now I've got to run on this treadmill in this room,

which is kept at 50 degrees Celsius, and that is really hot.

-If your bath was this hot, you'd burn yourself.

-Off you go, then.

I'm just jogging.

If I was doing this outside, this would be relatively easy.

I've just got these fans in front of me, blowing hot air at me.

Running in a room which is 50 degrees

is causing Chris's body temperature to rise dramatically.

If it rose to the same temperature as the room, he'd definitely be dead.

So I need to lose heat, and it's very hard to lose heat

when the air around you is hotter than you need to be.

And the only way you can do it is by sweating.

So the reason we sweat is to take the heat energy away from our bodies

to allow us to cool down when we get hot.

But it doesn't work very well

when you've put on a bin bag which stops you evaporating sweat.

True, but you can't stop running yet.

The sweat Chris is producing is not only full of salt.

There are other things lurking in there, too.

In fact, sweat is a lot like your pee - it's a lot like urine.

You can think about that next time you lick it off your upper lip.

Gross. I think we've got enough sweat, though.

OK, let's stop, Chris.

This is Professor George Havenith an expert in sweat.

Well, it's a smelly job but somebody's got to do it.

He's weighing all the pads from Chris's vest and shoes to find out

how much sweat he's made and where the most sweat has come from.

We've just measured me and I'm a kilo lighter now than I was

at the beginning, and that is that much sweat that I've made,

-which is quite a lot in half an hour, isn't it?

-Yes.

Typically, top athletes would go up to three to four litres.

You, with just over a litre in half an hour, 40 minutes,

that's a great performance.

I'm slightly offended. I thought I was a top athlete.

Dream on, Chris. Anyway, let's find out where you were the sweatiest.

If we compare the different values for the pads,

we see you sweated a lot more on your back, on your spine,

-rather than on the front.

-Really? OK.

That's typically what we find.

The sweatiest part is your forehead, with almost everybody.

Usually about double the amount of the rest of the body.

-And then the back is the second part.

-What about my feet?

Surprisingly enough, feet sweat a lot less than we think.

Usually, we have feet in shoes, and that encapsulates the sweat

and that's why we think they're very sweaty. But when we exercise,

feet sweat only about a fifth of the rest of your body.

So, we now know that Chris's feet are not the sweatiest part,

but are they the smelliest?

I've been running in the heat room, I've sweated masses,

but which smells worse - the pads from my body or my feet?

You've got to find someone willing to have a whiff first, though.

-No, thanks.

-No, thanks, you sure? Just smell my trainers?

-No?

-'First, sweat from his body.'

-What do you think?

-Not very nice.

It's not a great smell, I've got to say.

OK, try a trainer.

Ugh, that's awful, really disgusting.

Ohh, yeah, they're bad.

Ohhh, grim.

I think we've got a whiffy winner.

My feet were by far the smelliest, and I don't find that surprising.

-These are Xand's trainers.

-Oh, that's where they went!

But it's clear that, despite our feet being less sweaty than other parts

of our bodies, they are indeed smellier,

and that's because they're wrapped up in shoes every day.

But without sweat,

your body wouldn't be able to regulate its temperature

and you simply wouldn't survive.

In the UK, over five million people each year have to visit

an emergency department.

And some cases are stranger than others.

Let's meet the next patient.

In Liverpool, 14-year-old Kyle has come in

complaining of a sore and swollen hand after a run-in with a wall.

When I woke up the next morning, it was just dead swollen

and bruised and hurting.

Hang on a minute, what happened with this wall?

Kyle was in his Spanish class at school,

in the middle of an oral exam.

The teacher was firing questions at him.

Como te llamas? Donde vives?

The questions were coming thick and fast. I like the lizard.

Que desea comer?

A que hora es el proximo tren?

Uh-oh! He'd forgotten everything he knew.

Frustrated and angry with himself, he shot out of the classroom.

It was then that the wall, completely unprovoked,

suddenly and brutally hit Kyle's hand.

OK, Kyle whacked the wall with his hand. Ouch!

It was a stupid thing to do.

Si, estupido.

But that hand does look pretty painful.

I was doing swimming yesterday in school, PE.

That hurt, just touching the water with me hand.

Best get you looked at, then, Kyle.

You'll have to 'fess up to Sister Jo what you've done, though, mi amigo.

I had a Spanish test and I failed,

so I got angry and disappointed and I just hit the wall.

I can see the bruising there.

Right, what we'll do is send you for an X-ray and take it from there.

X-ray it is, then,

and I have a feeling it's going to be more than a sprain.

While we wait for the results, come on, Kyle,

let's have another go at that Spanish.

How do you say "I've hurt my hand"?

And with the walls trembling with fear in case he gets it wrong...

Mi mano es malo.

That'll do. Walls relax, he's got it.

Enter Dr Bimal Metha. He's been checking out

Kyle's X-rays to find out why that hand hurts.

If you look on this side, you can see it's nice and smooth,

but here, there's a funny bump.

Yep, that funny bump might not look like much,

but it's actually a painful fracture. Better break the news to Kyle.

As expected, cos walls are harder than bones, the wall's won.

Your bone has broken. That's called a boxer's fracture.

Boxer's fractures are one of the most common hand breaks

doctors see - usually caused

when a closed fist hits something immovable, like a wall.

They can be extremely painful.

So, the next time you feel frustrated,

you might just want to stop and think.

It's not a serious fracture.

The main thing is, it's going to be sore in the next two to three weeks.

Luckily for Kyle, there's no big plaster cast.

OK? Just keep that clean and dry.

Fingers strapped together and he's on his way home.

BOTH: Adios, amigo.

Bye!

Next time...

Things get chilly when I enter a room colder than anywhere on the planet.

I explore the inside of Xand's head.

If Chris gets this wrong, he could kill me.

And this man reveals an extraordinary body.

So, see you next time on...

BOTH: Operation Ouch!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd