Health documentary series giving guidance on how to keep the body's organs working at peak performance. In the dissection lab, doctor and anatomist Alice Roberts shows exactly what human organs look like up close. In this episode, she puts three rugby players through their paces to find out how their kidneys cope under stress. And she sends her own blood pressure rocketing when she comes face to face with one of her greatest fears.
Dr Alice deploys some shock tactics to make one confirmed smoker realize just how much she's damaging her lungs. Lisa Garrity's will power lets her down and on a night in the pub, she can easily binge smoke her way through 40 cigarettes. She meets up with Dr Alice in the lab to dissect a pair of lungs while outside in the real world they come face to face with a cancerous lung tumor cut out of 56-year-old Christine, a lifelong smoker. Will it be enough to convince Lisa to quit? Meanwhile, Dr Alice is testing her own lungs to the max - measuring their function while she suffers an asthma attack triggered by her own allergy to dust mites. She also wants to know if her own form of exercise, cycling, may be doing her more harm than good if she travels through a traffic clogged city. Plus she finds out which vitamin packed foods make up a tasty meal which can help keep the lungs - and all the organs in the body - working at peak performance.
Stephen Hall is putting his under plenty of stress, running a busy pub and doing all the wrong thing by binge smoking, drinking and eating. Dr Alice puts Stephen's heart and stress levels through plenty of tests and the results prove Stephen's got to make drastic changes to his lifestyle. Dr Alice also visits a pub and a chip shop - all in the name of good science of course - to analyze just what's happening to her body when she's drinking alcohol and eating greasy foods. With Dr Alice, forget boring school Biology. This is a hands on, no-nonsense guide to how we can all keep our organs working at peak performance.
Alice investigates just how good carrots really are for our eyes and whether the vast range of sunglasses on the high street give us enough protection from sun damage. Alice checks out the pros and cons of modern, laser eye surgery and gets a first-hand account of living with vision impairment.
The body's biggest organ is under scrutiny - the skin. Alice puts her own outer layer to the test, and runs her face through a computer program which ages her till she looks 80. She meets Ed, a 22-year-old farmer who is exposing his skin to the hazards of the elements and finds out just what happens when skin cancer needs surgery.
In this final episode, she looks at the most complex organ - the brain - and gets to see her own brain, in close up, via an MRI scan. Alice deprives herself of sleep for two nights to reach some surprising results. She also meets World Memory Champion, Dominic O'Brien who can remember 54 packs of playing cards in the right order having seen them only once.
Dr Alice Roberts returns with a new series of the medical show that shows you how to look after your vital organs. The first program is about those bits men don't like to mention to their doctors - their reproductive organs. Yet, with 10,000 men a year in this country dying from prostate cancer, a condition which is nearly always curable if caught early enough, men may need to learn more about their bodies. So with her trademark no-nonsense style, Alice gets to work explaining how the male anatomy works and offers practical advice on how to keep it all in perfect working order.
Dr Alice Roberts turns her attention to the female reproductive organs. Along with her trademark dissections and drawings, Alice also uses an MRI scanner to take images of her own anatomy... all to explain how everything fits together. She witnesses the birth of a baby girl and examines some new scientific research which suggests that women advertise their most fertile times to men without even realizing it themselves.
Liver disease is in danger of becoming a ticking time bomb in the UK - with one in ten of us likely to experience a problem with our liver at some point in our lives. Dr Alice Roberts explains what the liver does and why its ability to suffer in silence until it is too late is both its strength and its biggest weakness. She offers advice on how best to monitor your alcohol consumption, information about other ways you can damage your liver, and a chance to see both a liver transplant taking place and stem cell research aimed at making replacement livers in the future.
Dr Alice Roberts peers inside her own stomach by swallowing a tiny camera - one of the latest diagnostic tools in modern medicine. The pictures recorded reveal some surprising, if harmless, results. Using dissection, drawing and some unusual tests involving sweet corn and a stop watch, we find where the stomach and intestines are, how big they are and how best to look after them. And with bowel cancer the second most common cause of death from cancer it is a message we all need to hear.
Dr Alice Roberts gets a short insight into what it is like for the nine million people in the UK who suffer from some form of hearing loss by using specially-designed headphones and she discovers how loud noise can cause irretrievable damage to our ears. Using her skills as an anatomist, Dr Alice also explains some of the roles of the nose and the throat and finds out why, for some, snoring can be a sign of a life-threatening condition.
Dr Alice Roberts is put through a terrifying experience in the interests of testing how well her immune system will respond to threat. Only marginally less terrifying are the swabs taken by a microbiologist on a shared student house as Dr Alice is joined in her investigation into how the immune system works by a group of teenagers. They want to find out why they're so often ill ...could their party lifestyle and laid back approach to housework be a problem? Using all the means at her disposal - dissections, drawings, paint ball guns and even cakes... Dr Alice explains the fantastic complexity of our immune system.
Half of all reported pain is due to problems with bones, muscles and joints so Dr Alice Roberts has some much needed advice on how to look after them. We see what a so called "slipped disc" actually looks like, what happens to a joint when it's damaged by osteoarthritis and discover that our bones, as well as our muscles can change shape if we change the way we use them.
Doctor and anatomist Alice Roberts looks at how the organs of the body work together in unison and conducts an orchestra to prove her point, and also revisits some of the people who featured in previous episodes, as she concludes her tour of the human body. Dr Alice takes to the treadmill in an exercise challenge at Liverpool John Moores University's School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, and examines whether regular exercise can counterbalance the natural deterioration of our fitness levels as our body ages. She then sees how the latest medical technology, such as 3-D scanning, will help doctors diagnose illness in the future. Bob Marshall, a retired pilot from Brighton, owes his life to St Mary's Hospital in London after their 3-D scans of his body showed up a life-threatening abdominal aortic aneurism. And how did Lisa Garrity, a 34-year-old woman living in London who appeared in the first series, get on with her pledge to give up smoking? There is also emotional news for Christine Aughton from Wolverhampton, who underwent an operation to remove a lung cancer tumor, which Lisa and Dr Alice observed. Dr Alice believes that medical advances in treatment are only half the story. Ultimately, she concludes that to have the best chance of living a long, happy and healthy life, people need to try to eat a balanced diet and take as much exercise as possible.