Michael Mosley: Wonders Of The Human Body (Channel 5)
To see the Daily Mail’s much-loved medical expert Dr Michael Mosley bouncing around full of vim, filmed a few months before his tragic death on holiday, provokes a cascade of emotions.
It’s saddening to see him evidently worried about his own mortality, heart-breaking to watch him hurl himself into experiments and fitness tests, but also a delight to witness his inexhaustible zest for life.
No presenter ever enjoyed his subject — our health, his own health, the marvels of medicine and new advances in science — more than Dr Mosley, nor explained it better.
He was at Oxford University, in the first episode of this three-part series, to discover whether he was developing heart disease, in Michael Mosley: Wonders Of The Human Body (Ch5).
The prospect plainly unsettled him. His own father died from cardiac disease, aged 74. Michael, who was 66 at the time of filming, admitted he lay awake all night before his heart test results: ‘I was really, really worried.’
Dr Michael Mosley bouncing around full of vim, filmed a few months before his tragic death on holiday, provokes a cascade of emotions
No presenter ever enjoyed his subject — our health, his own health, the marvels of medicine and new advances in science — more than Dr Mosley
After dye was injected into his blood, he underwent a CT scan to inspect his arteries. To his alarm, plaque was beginning to build up, narrowing vital blood vessels.
‘What I’m looking at is a ticking time bomb,’ he said, ‘a potential heart attack coming down the line.’
But the scan also indicated that the plaques were stable and unlikely to burst, which could have been instantly fatal. His overall risk of a heart attack within eight years was calculated at 5.9 per cent.
A tragic pall of irony hung over the whole show. In June this year, while on holiday with his wife Claire in Crete, he took a walk in the blazing afternoon sun and was apparently overcome by the heat. Despite a frantic search, his body was not discovered for several days.
Seeing him at his irrepressible best in this series, it is almost inconceivable that he had such a short time left to live.
He leapt fully clothed into a bath and announced that the average human mouth produces enough saliva in three months to fill the tub to overflowing.
Then he headed to another medical lab where a camera was inserted down his nose and into the back of his throat.
Seeing him at his irrepressible best in this series, it is almost inconceivable that he had such a short time left to live
The show sees him head to a medical lab where a camera was inserted down his nose and into the back of his throat
Mosley is credited with popularising the 5:2 diet, a form of intermittent fasting, through his book The Fast Diet, and he often pushed his body to extreme lengths during his research into health and wellbeing
As he chattered, giggled and gargled, we saw how his epiglottis — a flap of pink flesh — kept fo
od and saliva from dribbling into his air passage.
A close-up of him swallowing a bite of banana gave me ‘the ick’, as Love Islanders say, but it was weirdly interesting too.
He did baulk at the prospect of a dip in the icy North Sea off the Ayrshire coast, but donned a wetsuit to have a go at cold water immersion in the slightly balmier climes of Bath in Somerset.
And he sent a bunch of shoppers round a DIY store, pushing trolleys with heart monitors built into the handles.
It was all great fun, informative and slightly wacky. There will never be anyone quite like him.
