How sugar affects the brain • 2014

88:29

An ambitious account of the story of human physiology in a feature-length dramatised documentary. Harnessing the magic of the most modern visual effects, we tell the story of the human body—inside and out—as it lives, grows, and dies on this predestined journey we call life. This unique National Geographic docudrama traces the life of a man, Adam, from the Cradle to the Grave, explaining the science behind our highs and lows, the rites of passage we all go through and exploring the inner workings of our bodies and how they change through time. The 90-year-old narrator, Adam, reflects on his life from conception through boyhood, adolescence and beyond, revealing the events that shape him. Along the way we meet the class bully, Adam's first love and the sergeant major preparing him and fellow recruits for Vietnam. With the aid of stunning computer-generated visuals, we go under the skin to reveal how Adam's body responds to major life events, and his story is told in dramatic scenes from the 1950s to the present day.

2016 • Health

54:32

Reveals just how dangerous too much fat is to our most vital internal organs. The programme follows a specialist pathology team as they conduct a post-mortem on the body of a 17-stone woman whose body was donated to medical science. Their findings, as they dissect the body and its organs, are startling, exposing the devastating impact of obesity with stunning visuals and fascinating medical facts. Morbid obesity reduces life expectancy by an average of nine years and is blamed for over 30,000 deaths in the UK every year. With 65 per cent of people already overweight or obese, this extraordinary film is a powerful contribution to the debate about fat, food, lifestyle and how the health service will cope with the growing obesity crisis.

2016 • Health

59:17

How bad can our drinking pattern be for our health? Doctors and genetically identical twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken want to find out. With the current drinking guidelines under review, the twins embark on self-experimentation to see the effects of different drinking patterns on their health. With Chris drinking 21 units spread evenly across the week and Xand having his 21 in single weekly binges, how will their bodies differ after a month? Catching up with the latest research into alcohol drinking patterns, we ask if moderate drinking is genuinely good for us - and whether binge drinking is really that bad.

Horizon • Health

96:01

Examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.

2011 • Health

28:29

If you were told you could get fit with just a few minutes of exercise a week would you believe it? Anja Taylor looks at whether exercise impacts aging and if changes in your mitochondria resulting from exercise effectively retard aging.

S1E2 • Catalyst: Season 2 • 2017 • Health

59:12

For hundreds of years, psychiatry has treated voices and hallucinations as an enemy - regarding them as 'insanity' or 'madness' and seeing them as something to be quashed and even frightened of. But today, new scientific and psychological insights into how the brain works are leading to a radical rethink on what such experiences are - and how they should be treated. Horizon follows three people living with voices, hallucinations and paranoia, to explore what causes this kind of phenomena. Providing a rare first-hand insight into these experiences, they reveal just what it is like to live with them day to day. They examine the impact of social, biological and environmental influences on conditions traditionally associated with insanity, such as schizophrenia and psychosis, and within the film they look at how new ways of understanding the brain are leading to a dramatic change in treatments and approaches, and examine whether targeting the root causes of psychosis can lead to recovery. Above all, they try to uncover why it happened to them - and whether it could happen to you.

Horizon • 2017 • Health