Episode 6 Bang Goes the Theory

Hello and welcome to Bang.

We live in a 24/7 world, rushing around,

trying to pack as much into the day as possible,

working far too many hours, if you ask me,

and then wondering why we don't have the energy to do more.

Exactly. If you've had an exhausting day, sit down, relax

and we're going to help explain

those morning, afternoon and evening lulls.

Just try and stay awake for the next half an hour.

Coming up...

Liz finds out what makes your energy levels go up and down.

And Dallas finds out what happens if you don't drink enough water.

I just want to neck that.

Me? I'm going to be putting my body to the test

to see if I can squeeze just enough out of my muscles

to pull off something almost impossible.

I'm going to try...

to fly.

'In order to maximise my power and give me the wings that I need,

'whilst filming this series,

'we've also been building a very unusual aircraft.

'One in which my muscles will be doing all the work.

'And it's going to take a lot of work.

'A lot of cycling.'

-Smack on two minutes.

-And I crashed.

And all of my aeronautical training.

These are the sort of calculations I do for fun.

Oh!

But first, I'm hoping Dallas can give me a few tips

for getting the most out of my body.

Now, how do you make sure your day gets off to a flying start?

If you're anything like me, or most people,

you'll take a hit of the most popular drug in the world.

Who knows what that is?

It is the chemical...

You wake up in the morning...

-Caffeine?

-Caffeine, exactly!

This is, actually in my pocket, pure caffeine.

If you were to eat this, you would be very, very sick indeed.

But do you know how much caffeine is actually in your food and drink?

We're going to play a little game of Play Your Cards Right.

We've got various caffeine related products here

and your job is to go higher or lower,

depending on how much caffeine you think is in the product.

I'll start you off. The nation's favourite, cup of tea, 50mg,

in a cup of tea about that big.

So what do we think for a cola, higher or lower?

ALL: Higher!

It's lower! What about diet cola?

ALL: Lower!

Lower, we think. It's higher! You're all wrong.

OK, a lovely dark chocolate bar? What do we think?

CROWD: Higher! Lower!

50/50 there. Quite a lot higher actually!

Surprising that, I thought.

Now, when we think of caffeine of course, we all think of coffee.

What do we think? Higher than 100mg?

For a mug that size of filter coffee, it's not instant.

Who thinks higher?

It's higher.

Now, strong paracetamol, the extra kind,

for eight of those bad boys,

which is your maximum daily dose...

CROWD: Higher.

Most people think higher. It is amazingly, a whacking 520mg.

That's a lot. Who knew that?

This is one of the sort of energy drinks.

Higher than the paracetemol or lower?

CROWD: Higher! Lower!

Lower! Lower!

You get tonight's star prize, which is a handshake from me.

And what about espresso?

Which you might have after a meal or in the morning.

CROWD: Higher.

Higher than 80? It's lower than 80.

So you all did pretty badly, I reckon.

You're all pretty rubbish.

THEY LAUGH

We all know caffeine can give us a boost when we need it,

but do you know why it does that?

Jem is playing the part of a nerve here, working hard,

firing electrical signals around the body.

The harder he rows, the brighter these lights get.

Now, when you're tired, your brain produces a very useful chemical.

In your hands you've got a chemical called adenosine.

What I'd like you to do

is tire him out by throwing your adenosine molecules at him.

And hopefully they should stick!

'When adenosine attaches, the nerve slows down,

'making your muscles and brain slow down and making you sleepy,

'but when you've had a caffeine hit...'

Now, here's the thing.

A caffeine molecule is a similar shape to the adenosine molecule.

They bind on and block the receptors on the neuron here, like this,

so now, try and make him sleepy.

So he's had his coffee, and now the adenosine doesn't stick on.

No, one stuck! One stuck. There we go.

I'm slightly tired, but not very much.

'But there's a double whammy.'

The body thinks something's happening

because I should feel tired, I'm not feeling tired,

and it produces the hormone adrenaline. You all know adrenaline.

That gears you up, that adrenaline, so when you have a lot of caffeine,

that's what gives you the coffee buzz.

'Keep drinking a lot of coffee,

'and your nerves will compensate by growing extra adenosine receptors

'and you'll have to drink even more coffee to get that buzz.'

Of course, caffeine doesn't actually GIVE you more energy.

Your body's real fuel is food

and many of us are slaves to our hunger.

We've all been there.

You're sat at your desk, it's 4pm,

and you start feeling a little bit drained and sluggish.

And that's when we all get that sugar craving.

I've got a short temper when I'm hungry!

If a snack's going to happen, it's about that time,

a cup of tea and chocolate bar, maybe.

Chocolate after chocolate. Hour after hour.

I'll get a doughnut or pastry

or something like that in the mid-afternoon, to keep going.

-You have chocolate every hour?

-Basically.

Exactly. You get that familiar slump and you reach for the sugary food

in the hope it'll raise your blood sugar level.

I'm using this squash court to illustrate the highs and lows

that many of us feel during a typical day

with three square meals.

You start off your morning a bit sluggish, a bit sleepy.

You get some breakfast into you to kick-start your day,

and raise those energy levels to get you through the morning

and then gradually you start feeling a little bit hungry,

you think you need to refuel.

You have your lunch, you feel OK again,

until you hit that famous 4pm slump,

when you literally think you won't get through the rest of the day

without a nice sugar fix to raise those blood sugar levels again

until you have your dinner.

Now, sugar is your body's main fuel,

and it is carried around in your blood, but here's the twist -

it's not the levels of sugar in your blood

that make you feel weak and grumpy.

Our blood sugar is maintained through very tight levels

during the day and really doesn't change very much.

It would look much more like this.

No peaks and troughs going on at all with our blood sugar?

Very little ones.

-More like waves than the mountain peaks that you had drawn.

-OK.

'Your body is very good at keeping the sugar in your blood'

'at a constant level. If you're healthy,'

'you never really run low.'

'Instead, the levels are constantly topped up from fuel reserves'

'big enough to get you through any day, even without snacking.'

'So what is it that causes those energy dips?'

Part of what you may be feeling may be the body's response

to stopping the blood sugar falling,

of which the most important hormone is probably insulin.

'So what's really going up and down are your hormone levels.'

'They are controlled by things like how full your belly is,'

'how busy you are, or just your daily routine.'

'Unless you're a diabetic,'

'you release insulin after eating,'

'and it's the hormone that makes sure excess blood sugar is stored away'

'in your muscles and liver.'

I get it now. Insulin peaks when you eat something,

deals with that sugar, troughs again. You eat something else,

-it peaks to deal with that sugar, troughs again.

-Yes.

And so on throughout the day.

'But it's not the only hormone involved.'

'One of the newest discoveries is a hormone called ghrelin,'

'which seems to affect how you feel and even how you think.'

Ghrelin is a hormone that is very much

involved in the feeling of wanting to eat

and then having eaten, and it's also possible that your body,

because you have been eating at 4 o'clock every afternoon,

is actually expecting you to eat at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

So your psychology is also playing a part in this "I need to eat"

sort of feeling.

Psychology or physiology.

It's the fact that the body does become used to what you do

and so it will prepare itself for things that are going to happen.

So now you know.

Turns out that daily 4pm chocolate fix isn't the answer.

This Olympic velodrome is soon going to be full of people

achieving superhuman feats of pedal power and endurance.

Of course, I'm hoping to achieve my own too,

by pedalling into the air.

But I'm not an Olympic cyclist.

I'm just an ordinary bloke.

I wonder, is there anything you and I can do

to coax an extraordinary performance from our own ordinary muscles?

As I climb these stairs,

something physical is changing about me,

and not necessarily in a good way.

Even though I've got plenty of energy still

from a rather large lunch,

and my lungs are still sucking in plenty of oxygen,

by the time I get to the top,

even though my legs would appear exactly the same on the outside,

on the inside, they feel very, very different.

Somehow, in less than a minute, I've lost all my power.

I would love to know exactly how that happens,

because if I'm going to fly an aeroplane,

that is the last thing I want whilst I'm trying to pedal it.

They're trying to understand

exactly what stops muscles working

here at the University of Exeter,

and so that I can see what they've discovered,

I'm preparing to go into a slightly intimidating machine.

What we're going to do today is try and measure

what's actually happening inside your muscle

-in terms of energy production while you exercise.

-Right.

The way we do that is, we put you in that MRI machine

and we'll lay you down on your stomach,

and there'll be a special bit of the machine

that's measuring what's going on in the muscle in the top of your leg.

I start by repeatedly lifting

a relatively light weight with my foot.

Meanwhile, the machine is detecting

the levels of different chemicals inside my leg muscle.

I'm pretty sure I could do this all day.

So, on to a much heavier weight,

and I can feel it straight away.

He's actually doing very well.

But I feel close to my limit.

I would have expected him to quit...ah.

OK. Looks like he's quit.

Phil had detected a crucial change inside my muscles,

and that's what told him the second weight was too much,

while I could have kept lifting the first one as long as I wanted.

Your muscle can make energy

in what we call anaerobic or a very sustainable manner.

-Yeah.

-If you go above that level, there's sort of a line of credit

that you can borrow against, which is called creatine phosphate.

'With the light weight, Phil could see'

'lots of this anaerobic fuel reserve'

'in my muscles.'

Now what you'll see is, as we add more weight,

look at the difference in the graphs. HE WHISTLES

As soon as the second chemical began to appear,

he knew I was eating into that limited fuel reserve

and I was on borrowed time.

This peak here represents your sort of waste products -

-if you think of it as your car exhaust.

-Yeah.

What you're experiencing there is

-what's called a threshold phenomenon.

-Right.

When we take you across this threshold, OK,

and you had that sudden feeling that,

"Wow, I can't do this for very long",

you're feeling what any track athlete has felt

when they've run a longer distance.

They say, "I can go this way for a while,

"but if I go any harder, something bad will happen."

'Phil has found that all muscles have this threshold,'

'a level of work beyond which they just can't keep going.'

'I need to find out what this limit is for my legs,'

'because I don't want them to give out on me'

'when I'm in mid-air.'

'It's been four weeks since we started this job.'

'The plane is just beginning to take shape,'

and I'm finding what time I can to practise flying.'

'From my calculations,'

'I think I know how much power I'll need to take off.'

'Now I need to know whether I can deliver it.

'Dr Gary Brickley studies muscle performance'

'and trains the British Paralympic cycling team.'

'He should be able to tell me.'

What kind of wattage do you think you've got to do for this?

I can't see the plane staying in the air with less than 350 watts.

-So, half a horsepower.

-Right.

What would you imagine... for a normal person,

is that a reasonable thing to aim for?

I think for 350 watts, you need to be doing a fair bit of cycling.

Chris Hoy might produce 2,200 watts.

No way! For how long?

But only for five seconds.

Oh, right.

See, now, I'm massively nervous,

because if I get on here and I'm not even close to 350 watts,

it means I'm not even close to really being in a position

-to pedal an aeroplane.

-Yeah.

Gary sets me a series of cycling tests,

monitoring my body as he increases the power each time.

Finally, he sets the level at 350 watts -

the maximum for this test, but the minimum I'll need to power my plane.

One minute, 10 seconds to go.

One...and ease off.

HE PANTS

I can pedal hard enough, but for how long?

Time for the critical result -

my threshold for sustainable power output.

The power that you're going to sustain beyond 10-20 minutes,

for you, occurs about 275.

'275 watts. I mean, that's way below the 350 I reckon the plane needs.

'It seems, even if I do get into the air,

'I won't to be able to stay there for all that long.

'But Gary did have some better news.

'With training, it's possible to raise that threshold.'

And really,

I want to train to be good at this kind of thing for five minutes.

There's quite a lot of recent research suggesting you can do

some very short efforts, 30-second efforts repeated four or five times

with a four- to five-minute recovery, and you can get

some big developments just from doing those short efforts.

But those are maximal efforts.

-So, like, the absolute most I can do?

-Yeah, yeah.

What's the shortest timeframe that I would start noticing a result?

There's some good studies showing that you can change

-within two weeks.

-Good.

I now have a plan.

I don't have a plane, but I do have a plan.

Now I've got some scientific analysis of what my muscles

are capable of, it looks like I might just

have the power to pedal a plane, but it's a marginal thing.

My next step is to see what I can do to give me that extra boost,

to swing the odds back in my favour.

And the fact is I'm happy to try just about anything.

Jem, even for you, that looks so unpleasant.

Is this you in training now?

In as much as I've been slinging together a skycycle, as I call it.

-It's my training device.

-Leave it to the experts.

-A skycycle - what?

-I'm going to have a go.

Basically, I need to generate, what is it, about 400 watts?

-Yeah, and then sustain that long enough to get into the air.

-OK.

Get pedalling, Dallas. So, first, you've got to do a work lamp.

-Yes!

-'That's just 60 watts.'

-Result.

You've got to maintain that whilst doing the personal computer.

Come on!

Then keep going at that rate all the way to the desk lamp.

-Yes, beautiful!

-'An old 100-watt light bulb.'

Now, to cool you down a bit, we're going to put the fan on.

-0K, there is the fan.

-My God! That's awesome!

And, to stay in the air, you've also got to do

the old school television.

-Come on, Dallas, get the television on!

-The television - come on!

'All these running together is about the power I might need,

'if I'm lucky, to get the plane in the air.'

-Keep going, keep going!

-Yes!

-Yes! And the TV. Now you're flying!

-I'm flying!

-That's genius.

Here, you might need this.

Plenty of people think that sipping a bottle of water all day

keeps you alert and full of energy,

but what about this eight glasses a day thing?

-I went to find out.

-Breathe, Dallas, breathe.

'I guess the first question is why we need water at all.

'To find out, I'm going to join a training session with Olympic

'athletes Coral and John.

'The plan is to get really sweaty

'so I can find out how dehydration affects my body and my mind.

'First, a test to check my usual reaction times

'and hand-to-eye coordination.

'Then it's onto the scales.

'Later on, I'll be weighed again to show how much I've sweated

'because that will reveal how many glasses of water

'I'd need to drink to replace all that sweat.

'Finally, before the torture begins,

'they measure my heart rate with a gentle jog.'

Right, I'm just getting changed, ready for the work-out.

I know this is going to be painful.

-'We kick off with the mother of all circuit sessions.'

-Come on!

-Keep going, keep going!

-Another 25 seconds to go.

And get back nice and quick.

Get in, get in, get in!

Three, two, one and time there. Well done. Woo!

And I need water. I'll wrestle you for it.

THEY LAUGH

-Don't think you're winning!

-Maybe I won't!

For you, when you're doing a work-out like that, I was sort of

watching you, and when we'd stop you'd have a bottle of water nearby.

When you come into elite sport it's a habit that you do.

If you haven't taken enough water, do you really notice when you're

-actually doing something like this?

-For handball, when we're playing,

because it's such a high reaction sport you notice that

you're a split second off the pace, and in elite sport

that's all it takes for a goal to be scored

or someone to win the race before you.

All I want for lunch is a glass of water. Oh!

'With hardly a moment to recover, the guys handed me over to their

'performance nutritionist, James Collins.

'He had something even worse in store for me.'

Oh, yeah, it's a lot warmer.

-You can actually feel it hitting you as you come through.

-Yeah, yeah.

This is kind of, you know, a hot summer's day.

We've really tailored this environment now,

and we're going to increase the intensity so we get some sweat out of you.

What are we at, Dallas? 169. Keep it going.

'The heat in there soon got the sweat really pouring from me.

'I couldn't get out of there soon enough.'

Three, two, one. OK, wrap it up there.

Right, finished the exercise for the day.

Actually, my God it was tough.

'Then it's my final weigh-in.

'And I repeat the reaction tests from earlier

'to see if there's any difference.'

'And finally, I repeat the gentle jog.

'But though I'm running no faster than before,

'my heart rate is totally different.'

Oh, God, that feels good.

This is a great visual to start with.

Average heart rate, 154 pre-exercise.

Post, 170.

-That's quite...

-170, that's a big jump.

This would be from the levels of dehydration

and the reduced volume of your blood.

'So because my blood is thicker, my heart's having to work much harder

to pump it, and it's also slowing everything down in my body,

'which is obvious from my reaction tests.'

Let's talk about the cognitive scores, cos I think, ultimately,

to people watching this at home,

that's what it all boils down to, really.

How we function if we are dehydrated.

On the whole, as we'd expect,

reaction times were significantly down.

-Almost a third.

-Wow, as much as that?

A third, yeah. Exactly. The other thing was hand-eye coordination.

Significantly down also, so again, probably for everyone,

the general public, these are two really big things now

that can have an impact, possibly after the gym

when they're driving home, and maybe even going back into the office

after a gym session.

'So how much water did I lose to affect my performance this much?'

You can see the drop-off here in fluid.

Now, you'd lost 0.83% of your body weight by lunch,

and what we can see, actually the best visual

for your final fluid loss...

-Ah-ha, here we go.

-..would be here. This is your fluid loss for the day.

-That seems like...

-900ml.

-That seems like quite a lot, doesn't it?

'But 900ml is only four glasses,

'even after what I went through today.

'I'd have to sweat as much again overnight to need eight glasses,

'and that's ignoring the fact we get almost half of our water

'from the food that we eat. So do we have to drink eight glasses a day?

'Well, even on a day like mine, it's more than enough.'

OK, time for another one of Doctor Yan's weekly brainteasers,

and this week, he's doing something rather odd with a plate of food.

This is my lunch,

and there's something very simple I'm going to do to it,

without adding or taking anything away,

that will make it more filling.

Can you guess what it is and how it works?

And you can find Doctor Yan's answer on our website, as always.

While you're there, follow the links to the Open University

from our website, grab yourself one of these free posters, or call...

Right, time to get back to Jem's flying ambitions.

When building a human-powered plane, weight is everything.

Every extra gram has to somehow be powered into the air.

And as you build it, and the weight of the plane creeps up,

is there any way of making the power of the pilot creep up as well?

You'd think, with the scientific understanding we now have

of how muscles work, somebody would know

of something that can give them that extra little kick.

'And that somebody is Professor Andy Jones and his team in Exeter.'

I'm going to cut to the chase, Andy. Is there anything I can take

that won't get me arrested, that might boost my performance?

Well, I've got a couple of things you can take.

It'll involve you doing a bit more exercise, I'm afraid.

It's all good training.

'Here we go.

'Yet another cycling test!

'This time, Andy sets the level,

'and I have to cycle for as long as I can.'

Four and a half minutes.

'And all the time, my body is being monitored.'

That's eight.

OK, well done.

'Then it's time to see

'if Andy can improve my performance in a very unusual sounding way.'

I think we should give you a rest overnight

-and bring you back tomorrow.

-Thank you.

But before you come in, I'm going to give you a couple of these,

which are concentrated beetroot juice shots.

They contain quite a lot of nitrate,

and we've been doing some research which shows that taking more

nitrate in your diet may be able to make your muscles more efficient.

-Thank you.

-See you in the morning. Cheers.

'After a night's rest, it's time for my beetroot breakfast.

'And a couple of hours of waiting for any benefit to kick in.'

I'm so much more worried about the practicalities

of making an aircraft than I am about powering the thing.

Cos effectively, what I'm trying to do is make something that

makes me into a shape that my own muscles can power into the air,

and I have to be responsible, through my own legs,

for every single gram that leaves the ground

and is kind of suspended in mid-air, cruising.

And that's, that's an awful lot.

If these little beetroot drinks,

if they give me just an extra 10 watts of power

which is, you know, what would run a radio or something,

that could lift me an extra three kilos off the ground.

-New day.

-Exactly.

On the beetroot juice.

'Time to put the beetroot to the test.'

I'll give you time up to seven minutes again

and leave you to carry on after that.

I can't pretend I'm not nervous.

Let's make this one count this morning.

-Doing much better than yesterday afternoon, I'll say that.

-Yeah.

That's seven minutes. One more round, let's go.

Let's see how much we can do.

Going really well, now. Excellent job.

That's good, as much as you can do. Come on, keep it going.

That's it, keep on top of it.

This is really good, Jem, very impressive. Superb.

OK, well done.

HE BREATHES HEAVILY

Good. That's much more than last time.

Nine minutes and 22.

Well done. Good effort.

So, what we have here is the control in blue.

This is what you did yesterday morning.

And then, this morning's beetroot juice trial in the red.

'The red graph goes up more quickly and higher at the start,

showing my muscles were using more aerobic energy than before.'

So the anaerobic stuff, that's energy that's

stored in my muscles that I don't even need to breathe to use.

-That's just there, ready to go for a burst.

-Yeah.

-Right.

So, what this means is that you've used less of that anaerobic

-energy in that early phase.

-Right.

It's still available to you in your muscles, but now you can use

it towards the end of exercise to enable you to keep going longer.

You went 17% longer compared to yesterday morning,

but that's almost exactly what we find, 17 or 18%.

-Oh, really?

-So, you're bang on again.

You're textbook as regards to the beetroot effect.

I mean, I've experienced some benefit for a fella who's

flogging his guts out.

But would this make any difference to people in a more

day-to-day manner?

Yeah, we believe so. Because every activity has an energy cost,

whether you're an old person climbing a flight of stairs,

or somebody with heart disease walking to the shops.

All of these things have an energy cost,

and so if we can make that energy supply more efficiently,

and if we can make people feel easier while they do those tasks,

they may be able to perform them whereas previously they struggled.

And who discovered it?

-I guess we did, at least for beetroot juice.

-Wow.

So, Jem, are you set? Water levels?

-Check.

-Beetroot levels.

-Check.

-Blood sugar.

-Check.

-Aeroplane.

-No.

That is the unfeasibly difficult bit, which is a work in progress,

and we'll keep you updated next time round.

OK, here we go. Let the experiment commence.

Travel is the subject.

Dallas and Doctor Yan will be finding out the best strategy for beating traffic jams.

I hate sitting in traffic.

Liz will be testing a cure for travel sickness.

What is it about ferries, coaches

and even fairground attractions that make us go green around the gills?

'And I'll find out if my plan to rise above all those travel nightmares

'by pedalling into the sky is any more than just a dream.'

So we will see you soon.

ALL: Bye.

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