Comedy of the Week - Best Medicine

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Joining Kiri Pritchard-McLean this week is comedian Daliso Chaponda who champions Denial as the best medicine (or does he?). Urology Consultant Mr Bob Yang explains how a pineapple-flavoured UTI vaccine is changing lives, Dr Dana Damian takes Kiri on a journey through the body with tiny swallowable Origami Surgical Robots, and paramedic Thomas Martin teaches Kiri how to stay alive with Defibrillators.And the panel hear from David, one of the few people in the world who can claim he was brought back from clinical death with a defibrillator - and has also watched the whole incident on video.Best Medicine is your weekly dose of laughter, hope and incredible medicine. Award-winning comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean is joined by a funny and fascinating panel of comedians, doctors, scientists, and historians to celebrate medicine’s inspiring past, present and future.Each week Kiri challenges a panel of medical experts and a comedian to make a case for what they think is 'the best medicine', and each guest champions anything from world-changing science or an obscure invention, to an every-day treatment, an uplifting worldview, an unsung hero or a futuristic cure.Whether it’s origami surgical robots, life-changing pineapple UTI vaccines, Victorian scandal mags, denial, sleep, tiny beating organoid hearts, lifesaving stem cell transplants, gold poo donors or even crying - it’s always something worth celebrating.Hosted by Kiri Pritchard-McLeanFeaturing: Daliso Chaponda, Dr Dana Damian, Thomas Martin and Mr Bob YangWritten by Mel Owen, Pravanya Pillay, Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Ben RowseProducers: Tashi Radha and Ben WorsfieldTheme tune composed by Andrew JonesA Large Time production for BBC Radio 4

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Keri Pritchett-McLean. This is Best Medicine, the show that celebrates medicine's past, present and future. With me today to make a case for what they think is the best medicine, a comedian, Deliso Shaponda, Professor Dana Damian, Thomas Martin, and Mr. Bob Yang. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! you are very used to hanging out in green rooms with people who haven't worked a day in their lives. How did today's green room of medical experts compare? Actually, this was very normal for me because I grew up surrounded by doctors.

My mum's a doctor, my brother's a doctor, my brother is an infectious diseases specialist, and when I go on holiday and I'm like, hey, I'm going to an island, instead of saying, oh, have fun, he's like, oh, you're at risk for this and this and this. Is your brother called Dr. Web MD? Yes. Yes. So Dr. Dana Damian is associate professor in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering

at the University of Sheffield. She leads the Biomedical Robotics Lab, where her group's mission is to create bionic and surgical robots that show life-like behavior in order to achieve long-term personalized healthcare. You and me, both babes. And... Yeah, I'm a roboticist.

I build medical and surgical devices, and so is my spouse. He's a micro-roboticist. He's actually here, but he warned me not to point at him because he's super shy. Well you did point so he's over in that side of the room. Now Thomas Martin is a paramedic clinical team manager and London LifeSaver trainer for London Ambulance Service. So he provides training to schools and the public on how to use a defibrillator as well as perform CPR.

I'm sad, are we not using staying alive anymore? You can use staying alive. My wife's also a paramedic, she's here. I'm not gonna point at her, just in case. See how he didn't move his hands, though. My wife's got a bit of a darker sense of humour. She sings another one bites the dust. So... LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE I'm a bit more optimistic, so... Yeah, yeah, so you go that one.

I saw all the different songs you can use, and my favourite you can use is Baby Shark. LAUGHTER Yeah, but you just want to hope that you don't collapse near a jazz fan. It's actually about the pumps I'm not doing. Now, Mr. Bob Yang is a urology consultant at Royal Berkshire Hospital. He specializes in complex and recurrent urinary tract infections, male and female incontinence and functional urology. This is an absolute dream booking for a comedy science show. LAUGHTER

So, Bob, what got you into the world of piss? Was it wild swimming in our rivers? No, so I've never swam in the UK rivers because I don't want to die, essentially. But I have swam as a child in my ancestral place in China, was a lovely province called Hubei. So Yangtze River runs through that, you can swim in that. But I used to tell people about this and everyone goes,

oh a second, like you guys, where is that place? I had to explain exactly where it is. But now in recent times, everyone knows where it is. Oh, really? Got a big idea of you. No, unfortunately the capital city is a little place called Wuhan where a virus may or may not have come from but I've come from That is all our guests, let's get started

So Bob, what do you think is the best medicine? So what I think is the best medicine is a new vaccine for UTIs called MV 140, Yiru Myung. Some big fans of the MV 140 in here. I thought they wrote red red wine but um For the people who aren't already on the MV 140 bus and What is it? So a little bit of a background, I guess, UTIs are a major problem in the world. Half of all women will get a UTI in their lifetime. And actually, most of the time with some antibiotics, it gets better. But it's the group of patients, 20

to 30% that gets infection after infection after infection. Actually, if we look at the stats, you know, last year 150,000 patients were admitted to the NHS with a UTI, of which 4 percent then died. So what we do as clinicians, we give antibiotics and that's great. It's a fantastic treatment. It gets them better, but it is like a nuclear bomb in the body. It will strip you of not just the uropathogen, but all the good bacteria as well. So that's why we, when we found MB140, brought it to the UK for the first time 10 years ago,

because it's a new way to prevent UTIs without using a nuclear bomb. I didn't realize that UTIs could have such a significant impact. I thought it was uncomfortable. But there's more to it than that. Yeah, no, absolutely. If you look at the over 95s, actually the death rate goes up to 10%.

So it's quite an astronomical figure. Not only could you die from it, but the side effects from it can be quite severe. They can fall over, they can get confused, and actually people think, oh, is it the dementia playing up? Actually, it's an underlying UTI that's driving all these processes. Yeah, genuinely. My father was in hospital and he'd had a big fall and it was a UTI, but it was manifesting like it was dementia.

It's really, it has exactly the same symptoms. Exactly. And that's why we started looking into this new vaccine as a way to prevent it from happening in people around the, well, hopefully around the UK. How can you avoid UTIs? So right now what we do is we tell people to drink lots of water for the older ones, you know, especially for women. we rejuvenate the vagina, which is kind of a weird term to say.

Sign me up. LAUGHTER But professionally, what we do is we give them vaginal estrin, so that it's a way to rejuvenate what was lost from the menopause without causing all the side effects of estrin therapies in the body. Yes, because my solution is having vodka and cranberry juice on a night out and I'm not sure that's based in, is that based in anything medical? I mean you're going to have to have a lot of cranberry for that.

I'm having a lot of vodka. And so you said that NV140 was a vaccine, does that mean it comes back? Yeah, so for those who have kids we send you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine.

So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. So if you had a vaccine, you would have a vaccine. immune system is the exact opposite of what we expect. Can you tell me more about the actual vaccine then? Sure, so essentially by stimulating the mouth, the oral pharyngeal, so with a spray underneath the tongue, you get a really strong response in the bladder. Sorry, to get rid of a UTI in your fanny, you spray under your tongue?

Yes. And wait, and then if you have a mouth infection, do you spray the fan? It's a very good question. If you want to, we can try it. It sounds like a breath freshness spray. Yeah, so it's not. So it's actually a pineapple-tasting spray, so very exotic, I know. And it's composed of four of the most common type of uropathogens, or the UTI-causing bacteria. And by spraying on the tongue once a day, every day for three months, 80% of them were then UTI-free in the entire floor. Wow. free in the entire floor. I would argue that doing it once a day for three months is exactly

the sort of behaviour that led to a UTI in the first place then. That sounds like an absolute game changer, especially for that percentage of people who keep getting reinfected. Absolutely, it has become a game changer. So unfortunately, with all these sort of things, the Medical Health Regulation Authority have to be very stringent. So currently it's still off-licensed in the clinical trials phase, but the more evidence we gain from it, we're hoping eventually it will become licensed

and then readily available for all the patients on the NHS. We tried it on a few patients in the UK for the first time about 10 years ago, and the results were so dramatic. Actually, the people with six UTIs in this trial went down to zero in the follow-up period. We really wanted to do a second round of this, right, for the long-term data, but unfortunately, that ended up in 2020, when my hometown kind of messed up my research sometimes. Bob why do you think MV 140 is the best medicine? I think prevention is always better than cure. It's an exotic tasting, immune boosting vaccine

that doesn't require antibiotics, it doesn't require needles, it works in the long term and most importantly it helps women and men, very good, and has minimal side effects. So that's what I think is the best medicine. I can see elbows being nudged and it might be off licence but you could be like an Avon lady shifting units out there. You can see it. Dana what do you think is the best medicine? So I think the best medicine is origami surgical capsules. They're a great band I saw them at Glaston. I don't think I'm alone in this. I'm not totally confident in what origami surgical capsules are. Dana, you're able to help?

Yes. Origami surgical capsules are smaller robots that can be swallowed in a pill. The fact that they are origami means that we can fold them really, really small. They go down into the stomach or gastrointestinal tract and they would transform like origami in order to perform medical surgical tasks. And they will be also controlled remotely from outside of the body like a Mars rover. This is actually happening now? In my lab.

I thought we're like a hundred years away from Also, I thought you're gonna say in my body Like a transformer and just like something bursts out of here So you swallow these robots and then what do they do once they're in there? So yeah, they would navigate to the site of a wound they could treat ancer, like patching an ulcer in the stomach, where they would dilate the bowel where there is scar or stricture and there is kind of a congestion there, where they would even regenerate tissue. That's some of the medical conditions that we work on in the lab, but I think they could

do much more than that. Everything, you are using it for good, but eventually... Here we go, here we go. All technology gets abused by the military and pornographers. You're showing your hand there because you did say they were very small. Are you like a Mars rover, you're controlling them on the outside? Yes, you can control them with electromagnetic coils from outside of the body. Yeah, my spouse is actually dealing with all of that

remote control, he's an expert on origami as well as on the electromagnetic coils. You just threw in very casually that your husband is also an expert on origami. Yeah. Like that household needs any more skills. So they're called origami capsules so is this an inspiration for it? For sure yeah my spouse is Japanese

he kind of took the origami to the next level you know he's trying to use smarter materials that actually self fold or move the whole sort of structure. That is absolutely incredible. This is much cooler than a car turning into a human. This is... LAUGHTER Can I ask, these robots, do they stay in there forever? No. Some parts may biodegrade. Some other parts will actually, you know,

follow the passive way through the gastrointestinal. So the ones you said that are biodegrade, what are they made of? What we are looking for is medical grade materials that are as soft as the tissues around which they work. Hydrogels, could be polymers, elastomers. My spouse and I developed a origami patch and so we actually used sausage skin as one of our layers. It is well tested as a biodegradable material.

And it fit very well as a structural layer. And this is why I went vegan. I'd put anything in sausage to bulk it out, wouldn't I? Pig snout, sawdust, nano robots. Dana, incredible. Thank you so much. It's amazing, isn't it? Deliso, what do you think is the best medicine? I think denial is the best Medicine. Especially... Spoken like a true man, if you may ask.

Yes. No, but this is why I think it needs to be defended, because recently it's been also, oh, everyone's trying to get in... Deliso, I know you very well, and it sounds like you're trying to get ahead of a scandal. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER When life is rough, the British way to deal with it is to talk about it. You complain to your mates, you complain to everybody. The Malawian way to deal without it is to deny anything is wrong, act like everything

is okay. Right? And I was even looking at the things which the NHSE are the symptoms of being in denial. Number one, you refuse to talk about the problem. Good! I don't want to hear about it! Let's go for a pint. I don't want to listen to your horrible life, okay?

Number two, you find ways to justify your behavior, such as going on the radio to defend it. And I think, look, this is the thing, is that the power of the mind is amazing. Jokes aside, I did some research into placebos, and there's a lot of proof that placebos work, particularly with erectile dysfunction. I'm not saying that I personally have any experience. But like there are even cases,

like in the second world war, there was this guy Henry Knowles Beecher, who was an anesthetist. And when they were running out of morphine, he would just use salt water instead. And because people thought it was morphine, it would work anyway. Wow. Right.

And similarly, I feel like being in denial makes you happy. Like I'm one of the happiest people you will ever meet, right? Not because my life is perfect, but because I ignore all of the nonsense. And so I often think being not in touch with how bad things are, it's self-defense. It's self-defense against despair. Eventually things will fall apart, but until then, I'll be at the top of the world. I was going to say, Dalito, if you just want a consultation about your erectile dysfunction, you could just ask. Well, have you ever had something where you've had sort of denial about it and it has helped? Yes.

So, for example, I was being kicked out of Canada. Some years ago, I was going to be deported. There was nothing I could do about it. So I just pretended everything was okay, hung out with friends, had a good laugh, enjoyed life and then was kicked out. I know you very well, DeLisa. I'm pretty sure that you are not prescribing denial for every form of mental health crisis. It's not for everything.

And I'm also saying it's a pause. It's a stopgap. Eventually Eventually you have to deal with the problem but sometimes your body needs a little bit of self-defense against the immense stress. You ignore it and you deal with it later. Yeah, no. Someone in my life who has acute mental health things going on and there are certain things that she just can't get to yet. So she's like I shut the door on those things, I deal with that and then when I'm feeling better, we'll move on to these things.

I always say, this is not for everybody. It's like tightrope walking. You quickly realize if you're the sort of person who can have the envelopes piling up, they're about to evict you and you're out having a drink. You've described yourself very well Okay, Dali so why is denial the best medicine I think this is actually it's a very human way of coping when it's too much you make light of it and Whatever problems you're having just ignore them

you're having, just ignore them. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Tom, what do you think is the best medicine? So, what I think the best medicine is, is defibrillation. Oh, defibrillator, okay. Amazing machines. That much is clear. Sorry. Clear! LAUGHTER is clear. Sorry, clear! That hurts me deep. The crowd is wrong. That was genius. So have you used one of these on someone?

Yeah, I've used many times. Unfortunately over my nine-year career I've used them quite a lot of times and sometimes multiple times on people. So I live in rural Wales and we have them in phone boxes instead of hospitals. So that works well. But I wouldn't know when to use it. Yeah, I think that's the big thing like a lot of people are kind of possibly hesitant to use it. A bit scary. I think we've got on board mostly is like what CPR is about

and CPR is very, very important. I'm not trying to downplay us all but defibrillation is that next step every minute you don't do CPR or don't use a defibrillator if someone's in cardiac arrest. It's a 10% reduction in survivability. 10 minutes in theory is a hundred percent. So, you know, and on average ambulances will get there in seven minutes. So that's why it's important to encourage CPR and then the defibrillation as well.

You can actually be dead in four different rhythms of the heart. So, you know, it's so, uh, you have the classic ACEs to leave where it's flat. You have, um, the the classic Aces Sali where it's flat. You have the one on Telly. The one on Telly. Yeah, that one. Unbelievably, you don't shock it. What? You don't shock the flat one? No. Oh my god. Holby City has lied to me.

With the AED, what you guys will use, hopefully. You won't need to worry about that. It will just tell you not to shock. Sorry, a question. But don't you have to be trained to use it? You can be trained to use it, but they're honestly so, so simple to use that anyone can use it. Don't waste your time on him, he'll deny you ever knew how to use it. So yeah, we're trying to train kids. There's a London Lifesavers program going on in London

at the moment. In the next five years, the aim is that we will train every school-aged person for year eight and seven, I believe, to be able to use a defibrillator and do CPR. And there's already been cases where children have performed CPR on their parents and then save them. Wow. So, you know. Amazing.

Well, I reckon if those little thickos can do it, I can. Can I have a go? Yeah, I have one behind me. Great, so we'll swap places. So, I've got sort of a, yeah, genuinely a severed torso in front of me, and so I'm going to use a defibrillator on this. You're going to use a defibrillator. So, you've got to imagine, a bit of imagination here,

this patient has collapsed, this person has collapsed in front of you. Doesn't look well, to be honest. Yeah, you've done a few checks, you don't think they're breathing, and you can't wake them up. Someone's going to get you one of these. This is a defibrillator. This little white lunchbox. There is no sandwiches in them. So I'll just open it. Just open it.

There we go. Adult mode. Saucy. Remove all clothing. It says remove all clothing from patient's chest. I'm glad it said patients. Listen, I'll do it for the show, guys. OK, so chest is bare.

Apply pads to bare skin exactly as shown in the pictures. OK. So one on the right hand side by the collarbone Apply pads to bare skin exactly as shown in the pictures. Okay. So one on the right hand side by the collarbone and one in the armpit kind of region just under the armpit. Yeah. Okay. Do not touch patient. So yeah, get off the patient.

Analyzing heart rhythm. So now the machine is doing all its fancy stuff and looking at the heart. You don't need to do anything. Okay. Everyone clear. It's now made a decision. Press the flashing button. I pressed that. Press the flashing button. Shock anything. Okay. Everyone clear. It's now made a decision. So, I press that? Press the flashing button.

Shock delivered. And that is it. It's important to know that you can't hurt people with it. It won't do it wrong. So, don't feel frightened. Does sound like a challenge that, doesn't it? So, like, I had to do a paediatric first aid course. I'm a foster carer.

And one of the things we learnt about defibrillators is if you're a woman you are much less likely to survive if you're a neurodefibrillator, this is absolutely true and it's because they defibrillators work on bare skin and people look at woman and would have to take her top off like to get to the bare skin and then they panic and basically go let her die with dignity. and basically go, let her die with dignity. So... So I just want to say as a public service announcement, as someone who's clearly got a public heart

stuck in the post, whip them out guys, please. So we have someone with us tonight who owes their life to a defibrillator. David, you are familiar with the defibrillator, shall we say? Intimately. A few years back when I was 53, I was fit and healthy, run a couple of midlife crisis marathons, came to work, went for a swim at lunchtime, swam my 500 meters, got out, sat on a lounge by the side of the pool. And there I had a cardiac arrest where my heart stopped for seven minutes.

Seven minutes? A chap called Alex who was a building service manager, he saved my life. Defibrillator was brought in, pads put on me, one shock and it restarted my heart. I started breathing again and I was fully conscious and then I said thank you to Alex I'm gonna have a shower, put my suit on because I've got a meeting at two I want to go back to work. The hustle culture is real David. So you've got a very good recollection of what happened. Well it's quite interesting because the whole episode was captured on CCTV in colour at

the swim pool. So you got 200 quid from you being framed? Yep. Wow! Yeah. So... Yes. You've got to start speaking quickly otherwise we're gonna get the machine. Yeah, exactly. So I'm one of the few people in the world

who's watched himself have cardiac arrest, clinical death and then resuscitation. Wow. I mean, you say that, I've watched myself die on every terrestrial TV channel. How did it, I can't believe you've re-watched the tapes. That must have been disturbing. I found it very disturbing. Disturbing how fat I looked in a press room. So have you used defibrillator since?

Yes, I've now jacked in being an IT nerd and I work as an emergency care assistant alongside a paramedic on frontline ambulance. Actually, I was on shift on Sunday and we had a patient on the back of the ambulance talking to me and they went into cardiac arrest in front of me in the paramedic. We did one shock and the patient was back inside a minute and we delivered them to resus hospital alive and talking. Oh amazing. So Tom why do you think defibrillators are the best medicine? I think it's kind of improving, hopefully, in front of us. But basically I think because with the press of a button you can save someone's life and you do not need to be trained to do it.

So now I have to choose the best medicine. Oh yikes. Denial, NV140, origami surgical capsules and defibrillators. Okay, this is very difficult. What do we think? Is there anything? Defibrillators. Origami! I'm switching. David, what do you think? I think NV140. You think NV140? I smell a UTI. And if I can smell it, you really need help for it.

I also think like your robots are gonna get more advanced and then they can go give me a little heart reset because they're just gonna get more advanced. Well funny you should talk about that David we were chatting backstage you have like a robot inside you? I have a dual pacemaker defibrillator in my chest above my heart. So it regulates and and your heart rate But you're also yes, it paces my heart at the moment and will shock my heart if it goes into a dangerous rhythm It's got a siren in it. So my it will be a warning siren from my chest if it's going to shock me. Yeah Terrifying if you hear it. Yes, I've had it once

I was swimming one morning, pounding up and down the pool, and I heard the siren go off. So I went straight to the side of the pool, and I thought the best thing I can do is lie down on the tiles, wait for this thing to shock me. And there was a couple of lifeguards looking at me thinking, what is this idiot doing? What is he doing? And those speedos do not suit him.

And as I was lying there, I realised it wasn't my defibrillator, it was the building fire alarm test. Oh, that's absolutely brilliant. I think I'm going to go defibrillators. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Best Medicine was hosted by me, Keira Pritchett-McLean, Thank you very much, goodbye! Best Medicine was hosted by me, Kiri Pritchett-McLean and featured DeLisa Shaponda, Dr. Dana Damian, Thomas Martin and Mr. Bob Yang.

It was written by Mel Owen, Pravanya Pele, Kiri Pritchett-McLean and Ben Rouse. The producers were Tashi Radha and Ben Walsfield and it was a large time production for BBC Radio 4. host a podcast you might like for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds called Now You're Asking. Each week we take real listeners questions about life, love, lingerie, cats, dogs, dentists, pockets or the lack of, anything really, and apply our worldly wisdom in a way which we hope will help, but also hopefully entertain. Join us why don't you? Search up Now You're Asking on BBC Sounds. Tanking you.