Medlife CrisisThe placebo effect is way weirder than you think.
This video is not sponsored, and I imagine it might be quite effective at ensuring none of my future videos are either. I genuinely do think Nebula is a great deal – and you can get 40% off an annual subscription when you sign up via my link: go.nebula.tv/medlifecrisis. This video has already been up there for 3 weeks!
How to use the placebo effect to (actually) feel betterMedlife Crisis2023-05-25 | The placebo effect is way weirder than you think.
This video is not sponsored, and I imagine it might be quite effective at ensuring none of my future videos are either. I genuinely do think Nebula is a great deal – and you can get 40% off an annual subscription when you sign up via my link: go.nebula.tv/medlifecrisis. This video has already been up there for 3 weeks!
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This is a really different video for me. My Mum died in 2018, soon after I'd posted my second ever video to the internet. She had a horrible final year of life, consumed by anxiety and fear about how she would die, having been diagnosed with an incurable terminal disease. I explore the arguments for and against Assisted Dying, both as a son who cared for his mother through a horrible disease, and as a doctor.
Short men are going to great lengths to increase their romantic chances, and overall confidence. Leg lengthening surgery is extremely costly, dangerous, and soaring in popularity. The Internet has boosted the ease with which people can undergo major life-changing operations, leading to the commodification of cosmetic surgery. But what should the medical profession's role be in all of this?
With huge thanks to @CharlesCornellStudios for making the Skee-Lo backing track, allowing me to truly butcher 'I Wish', and to @JordanHarrod for providing her voice for an article excerpt.
Kim Kardashian is the latest celeb to promote private full body MRI screening scans. She and the company claim they are life-saving. The scans themselves involve no radiation and you can learn information about your body. Surely that can't be bad, can it?
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This is an in-depth interview with scientist, author and expert on longevity science, Dr Andrew Steele. We discuss what ageing even is, whether it should be regarded as a disease, how we differ from other animals, where the research is, what treatments look promising, health and economic policy, and what the future looks like.
Watch Andrew and I chat about all things wearable - what numbers you should care about, which you shouldn’t youtu.be/9H40yatCwo0
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I’ll add chapters as soon as I get home! Edit: many thanks to user Dihydrousoxide for making them, which I'm shamelessly stealing!
0:00 Intro 5:37 Why you got into the anti-ageing field? 7:15 Ageing as a cause of death 9:18 What is ageing? 13:32 Hallmarks of Ageing - Senescent Cells 17:25 How do we target senescent cells? 20:10 What are telomeres? 22:40 How do we stop telomeres shortening? 26:00 Evolution optimised for reproduction, not ageing well - BOFFFs 33:54 Autophagy - cellular recycling 42:00 Testing of rapamycin - Effective Dose 45:35 Why don't we have human data on rapamycin? 46:24 Metformin - TAME trial monetary issues 49:04 What is Metformin? 52:50 How does Metformin work as an anti-ageing drug? 54:03 What therapies excite you at the moment? 58:39 Thoughts on Calorie restriction 1:04:53 Rhesus Monkey Diet Trials 1:08:14 Potential Therapies - theoretical mechanistic science 1:12:46 Amyloid Studies 1:17:20 Should we stop ageing? 1:31:29 Where do you see the anti-ageing field being in 2050? 1:43:03 Outro
THANK YOU for your support in 2022. This Christmas I'm donating my sponsorship fee to charity via GiveWell because I know it'll help those in need. If you can join me in giving something, please do – anything helps. Have a wonderful festive season! www.givewell.org/medlife
Writing: Rohin Francis Editing: Tanmay Nandanikar and Rohin Francis Thumbnail design: Simon Buckmaster
0:00 Intro 3:41 The demarcation problem 6:44 Pseudoscience 9:06 Homeopathy and chiropractic 11:20 It's nice to feel nice 13:37 Bioplausibility 16:39 The mechanistic bias 17:06 Hard vs soft; clean vs messy science 20:25 Mechanistic examples: COVID Rx and masks 24:40 Diets 28:12 Vitamin D supplements 36:36 The Big Pharma graveyard 45:33 Most therapies don't work 47:07 Influencers' love of sexy mechanisms 50:25 Closing summary
0:00 Can you be so fit that you don't die 1:06 Why exercise is great, actually 4:49 Exercise dose - how much exercise 6:30 The U-shaped curve 8:42 Extreme exercise isn't benign 10:02 The main heart problem with endurance exercise 12:49 Coronary calcification 13:29 Other electrical problems 14:16 Some key messages 16:36 Why is this so important 17:29 On the roofHuman dairy farms: making money from mother’s milkMedlife Crisis2022-08-04 | ...Farming humans for their blood - imprisoned and drainedMedlife Crisis2022-08-03 | References:
Both these stories came from my friend @sgcarney's horrifying and brilliant book, The Red Market scottcarney.com/the-red-marketHow Big Boobs Changed Medicine ForeverMedlife Crisis2022-07-21 | Watch the companion video exclusively on Nebula: https://nebula.app/videos/medlifecrisis-the-story-of-the-stethoscope-with-dr-adam-rodman
We have a problematic tendency to elevate scientists or doctors to rockstar status, which can lead to fraud, betrayal, malpractice and death. Explore three stories from the exciting but controversial field of regenerative medicine.
0:00 The Great Men of Medicine 4:20 A change of mind: Head Transplants 9:26 Harvard's house of cards: Cardiac Stem Cells 13:30 He lied about everything: Synthetic Tracheas 22:37 Crime doesn't exist in a vacuum: The Enablers 24:20 Welcome to Maaariokaaart 25:03 Doomed to repeat historyThe Human Body is a Joke – Science Stand Up Comedy | Dr Rohin FrancisMedlife Crisis2022-05-10 | Yet more human body fails. This time it’s parts of the body that seem actively intent on just being total d*cks.
This set was recorded at a ‘best of’ live gig hosted by Festival of the Spoken Nerd at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre. It was my first live gig for two and a half years or so (can’t think why), and I’m sure it shows but it was great fun. Especially at such a cool venue!
Find their new series of “A Podcast Of Unnecessary Detail” wherever you get your podcasts, or at @UnnecessaryDetail. I'm in episode 1, which is out TODAY! But don’t let that put you off.
I can't actually recall how I found this, I just stumbled on it on twitter and had no idea what I was watching. The videos at the time had about 100 views each, the first one has now ticked past 180k views. One MIGHT suggest that I had secretly invested in these NFTs and I've just given them free publicity...muahaha. Well not really, as they're not on sale yet. Plus I'm not that smart anyway.
I hope it's evident that I am not seeking drama and am working on the assumption that most/all of these medfluencers didn't get the full story, but I'd probably recommend others give NFTs a wide berth. Wanting to raise money for charity is a noble goal, but there are ways to do it without all this scammy overlay. NFT minting is ultimately a way of raising money from gullible people who receive very little in exchange. If the goal is delivering healthcare to remote areas, again the web3 angle seems unnecessary.
0:00 When techbros and medicine collide 1:06 Medical grifters hiding in plain sight 6:53 Should you get that full body scan? 11:59 How much AF is too much? 14:20 Should you continuously monitor your glucose? 17:42 Antifragile biology 18:58 Summary - we're not computers
Editor: Tanmay NandanikarHow To Do CPR In SpaceMedlife Crisis2022-04-03 | It's a common everyday scenario. Cardiac arrest in space. Make sure you're prepared – you could save a life.
If you want to access Nebula for only $14.79 for A WHOLE YEAR you also get year's subscription to CuriosityStream thrown in for free! curiositystream.com/medlife. It's the best way to support me to keep making videos.
Watch a bonus companion video exclusively on Nebula, of my chat with space doctor Sindu: https://nebula.app/videos/medlifecrisis-bonus-cpr-in-space-interview-with-dr-sindujen-sriharan-companion-video
References: Sindu’s paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33468291 ESAM guidelines: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/viewer.html?pdfurl=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Fcontent%2Fpdf%2F10.1186%2Fs13049-020-00793-y.pdf&clen=771091&chunk=true&pdffilename=Hinkelbein2020_Article_CardiopulmonaryResuscitationCP.pdfDoing Real Science (and Breakdancing) In Zero GravityMedlife Crisis2022-02-01 | Support the channel by visiting curiositystream.com/medlife and use the code 'medlife' for a year of CuriosityStream and Nebula – where you'll find 14 and a half extra minutes of footage at the end of this video!
I got to do some real science in weightlessness! A total of 23 whole astro minutes in freefall. This wasn't a tourist flight but a real life science campaign with the European Space Agency and NASA. It really was a dream come true. I've wanted to do a parabolic flight ever since I watched 'The Making of Apollo 13' (the movie not the actual event) as a kid and learnt how they filmed it. I guess this will be the closest I'll get to going into space!
Huge thank you to Neil Melville,
Ruth McAvinia,
Anne-Clotilde Duchesne,
Sébastien Turay,
Karina Marshall-Goebel,
Rosita Suenson, Lars, and all the scientists I met and chatted to on the campaign.
As the channel scales up, I'm really trying to commit to things I've wanted to do but previously told myself I don't have time or money to address. The first on that list is subtitles, which I'm going to do my best to provide for every video if I can. Sometimes they're uploaded a bit last minute/impromptu and I'll endeavour to get them up afterwards, but I'm now working with a company to get subtitles in place before publication if possible. To everyone who uses subtitles – sorry it took so long.
This is my second video in a row that could be listened to as a podcast. So stop pestering me about still not having gotten around to starting that podcast. This is actually supreme efficiency pal. But seriously, I know it's kinda boring, it would make me happy if you just stuck it at x2 speed.
I haven't watched this back fully but I hope my message came across reasonably clearly. The last thing I would want to be doing is stoking the culture wars or misinformation which both surround COVID topics, especially vaccination. I'm just trying to say that...shit's complicated, ya get me?
00:00 Why Prof Nutt is a hero 01:51 The Nutt case & Nutt sack 04:55 Interview start 05:25 Politicians vs scientists 2009 to 2021 07:42 Slap in the face 09:03 Does the UK get anything right? 09:31 Medical cannabis & its promise 12:50 Why don't doctors prescribe cannabis? 15:09 What can HCWs do to help? 17:06 How to learn more 17:56 Why drug research is so hard 19:28 "They'll steal the heroin!" 21:20 Who killed psychedelic research? 25:34 Did recreational drug use ruin things? 26:55 What is a psychedelic? 28:00 MDMA is the opposite of a psychedelic 28:50 Did drugs help humans evolve? 30:24 A lost sleep revolution & how the brain makes humans human 34:12 CTRL+ALT+DEL for the brain? 37:18 The power of psychedelic psychotherapy 39:24 Psilocybin vs SSRI antidepressants 43:47 Timothy Leary was wrong 46:26 Aldous Huxley, mescaline & opening the brain 47:05 "You probably haven't seen those since you were a baby" 48:25 The brain orchestra and default mode network 49:44 How psychedelics break habits 51:41 Fly on the wall for psychedelic therapy 53:50 "Fuck off I'm talking to God!" 55:20 Ayahuasca retreats vs conventional therapy 57:32 Does psychedelic hype worry you? 59:27 Steve Jobs & the role of money 01:01:20 Stigma against mental health 01:02:09 Is the USA leading the way? 01:03:08 Harnessing the power of placebo 01:04:22 Silicon Valley & Micro-dosing 01:09:16 Closing
The Drug Science charity, independent unbiased drug information: drugscience.org.uk
420k subscribers drug themed Q&A – I tried to answer as many of your questions as I could, this is the longest one yet. Plenty of non-drug questions too.
00:00 Intro 01:12 NOT the sponsor 04:52 Wee announcement 06:45 What should be legal that isn't? 10:17 Disclaimer (don't get me fired) 11:30 LSD, shrooms – no side effects? 15:26 Why are journals so expensive? 16:41 Why do surgeons exist? 17:30 YouTuber mansion tour 18:00 Does being the boss feel different? 18:08 Psychedelics are supernatural? 19:36 Moderate drug use = good? 21:58 Which world leader should do drugs? 22:48 Cocaine = wake up during CPR? 27:12 Which sport, but drunk? 27:37 Spunk for strep? 28:50 Is "his heart was too big" a thing? 31:08 Which doctors most fun when stoned? 32:03 Opinion on legalisation/regulation? 34:12 Why so many medics addicts? 37:51 Should doctors do weed? 39:24 Diff'rent booze for diff'rent folks? 40:15 Microdosing & nootropics 41:42 Should docs have drug tests? 42:58 Have you made mistakes? 43:44 Drinking as a teen 46:00 This questioner is now blocked 46:21 Aspirin vs paracetamol 47:30 Airborne emergencies 48:03 Stigma from medics to addicts 51:01 Coke vs weed 51:22 Skillshare! Great way to support this channel
Go subscribe to @SabineHossenfelder and watch the other half of this video, where I ask her some questions about physics! youtube.com/watch?v=bIT8_lS4vRY
And make sure you're subscribed to the Royal Institution's channel too as you'll see a third instalment in this epic trilogy there some time soon!
00:00 History being made 01:40 Does the heart have 5 chambers 03:23 How does the heart actually beat 07:16 Should you do CPR in a bed 09:22 Favourite surgery 11:59 Am I weird 12:08 Why don't we have a good artificial heart yet 16:30 How long can you live without a heart 17:18 Why do doctors use such long words 19:50 Close & Sabine's videoA Student Drank 2L Of Energy Drink A Day. This Is What Happened To His HeartMedlife Crisis2021-09-13 | A danger of drinking excessive energy drinks.
Watch @chubbyemu's counterpart video to this one, about another rare complication of energy drinks youtu.be/tAtaIZD0Ebs
I use (or attempt to use) humour in my videos in order to educate, with the butt of jokes being either myself or abstract subjects; never patients.
Many thanks to Dr Andrew D'Silva for talking to me about the case he published with his team, available here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33858880
00:00 Acaffoscaff RS 01:43 Intro 02:47 21 years old & seriously unwell 05:50 Cardiology conference 06:34 Interview with case author 08:52 Advice to energy drink fans 10:20 Patient perspective 11:29 CloseExplorers Discovered Nutrition The HARD WayMedlife Crisis2021-08-31 | An incredible tale of how starving explorers accidentally taught us the A, B, C of nutrition; told with facial hair and rhyme. AS ALL GREAT STORIES SHOULD BE.
This was my first video made with help from someone who knows what they’re doing! Many thanks to @DomBurgess and Standard Studios for transforming my flat into these exotic locations.
Sign up for my free monthly(ish) newsletter at http://www.medlifecrisis.co.uk to stay up to date with other projects I'm working on but also for some longer form writing on topics that might or might not find a home on YouTube.
Thank you to everyone at Royal Papworth Hospital who made this video possible. It was originally shot for the British Society for Heart Failure's annual meeting and then re-edited for YouTube.
For more information about heart failure and what you can do to help, start at bsh.org.uk/.
00:00 Intro 03:00 Pre-modern Pioneers 09:38 Blue Babies 26:56 Transplant and the Death Debate 41:48 Balloons and Bacteria 53:26 Conclusion
This was recorded as a talk in a single take so is a bit more natural in terms of delivery than a standard youtube video. Hope you can carve out a little while to give it a watch to appreciate the fascinating history of this organ and field, and why I love them so much. Cheers!
Get A FULL YEAR of CuriosityStream and Nebula for under $15 at curiositystream.com/medlife with code 'medlife'. Signing up to get thousands of amazing titles at both sites gives you something brilliant for a cheap price, but also helps me continue making videos on this channel.
I've applied for astronaut selection to the European Space Agency. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity and I have absolutely no chance. But that won't stop me making a video about it.
A huge thank you to the amazing, awe-inspiring space doctors who explained their analogue space missions: Squadron Leader Dr Bonnie Posselt twitter.com/Bonposselt Dr Beth Healey twitter.com/Bethahealey
Watch the full interviews with them both here: https://nebula.app/videos/medlife-crisis-analog-astronauts-interview-with-2-space-doctors-bonus
Watch this vid ad-free: https://nebula.app/videos/medlife-crisis-im-applying-to-become-an-astronaut-not-the-billionaire-type
This is 100% genuine archive footage from the Old England Journal of Medicine circa 1901, concerning Dr August Bier's infamous study examining cocaine as a spinal anaesthetic. Do not try this at home.
I can actually do a better German accent, which is basically just me doing a Werner Herzog impression, but I really tried hard to make this one appropriate for the period. Unfortunately I think it's just come out really stilted and monotonous but hey ho. Special thanks to Leon from @neoexplains who kindly recorded an old school German accent for me, and @SabineHossenfelder for her tips. If you're not a fan of me hamfisting accents, or facial topiary, you might want to skip another video coming soon.
The backgrounds are the Royal College of Physicians in London, and the Jesuit Library in Cologne.
Rejected titles: A fine crack, That time doctors tested cocaine on themselves, That time a German doctor injected cocaine into his subordinate and beat the living sh*t out of him.
What happened, and is this common?
What could’ve caused it and why are athletes' hearts special?
Why wasn’t this picked up in screening? Is this anything to do with COVID or the vaccine?
What can you do if something like this happens to someone you know?
I do really want to make some non-COVID, more produced videos. But I keep finding myself making these sh*tty looking basic low-effort ones to respond to something topical. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
4. Sandhya Ramesh is a superb science writer in India, and always a good starting point for understanding issues affecting India. This is a very useful article about what works and what doesn’t - one to circulate to friends and relatives https://theprint.in/health/dexamethasone-remdesivir-plasma-doxycycline-which-works-for-covid-and-which-doesnt/645982/
00:00 Intro 01:25 Contents 02:20 Email from the frontline 03:31 Summary of current situation 08:15 Why does this matter to the world? 09:37 Where did it go wrong? 11:28 Magical thinking 14:56 Opened up too soon? 16:04 A scientific temper 17:35 Let them inject cake 18:12 Slow vaccination 19:18 Interview with a junior doctor 25:19 Collateral damage 25:35 Censorship 26:22 What's next for Indians? 28:19 HOW YOU CAN HELP 30:18 What can we all learn from India?
If you want to see that extra interview with Jeff, check out this video on Nebula. To sign up, visit curiositystream.com/medlife and use the code 'medlife' to get a year of Nebula and CuriosityStream for only $15. This video is not sponsored, but that's still the cheapest way for you to get both.
This is one of the most requested topics I get, and while not the most exciting, it's an important one. So I hope it helps at least one person make a decision.
I wanted to keep it short to ensure people actually watched - an in-depth lecture would of course have offered the chance to really dive into the details but my objective here is to help as many people as possible.
If you find statins confusing, you're not alone! Cardiologists and GPs probably prescribe these more often than anyone else and yet even I took a long time to really understand the enormous mass of data and coverage (which of course is impossible to read in its entirety). I want to specifically credit Professor Darrel Francis from Imperial College in London for helping me see statins in the kind of reference frame that I present in the video. Prior to that, my understanding was that kind of vague "oh this will help you, probably. I think." that you might get if you just read guidelines, which of course exist to maximise health for a whole population.
Visit curiositystream.com/medlife & sign up for both CuriosityStream and Nebula, where you'll find the full uncut interviews with Drs Poerio and Gill. You can help me make more videos and get yourself access to all the 1000s of titles on both platforms by signing up using the code ‘medlife’. Only £11 for a year! Serious tingles!
One day I was looking up medical videos and before I knew it I was tumbling down a tingly rabbit hole into the fascinating world of ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). Huge thanks to Dr Giulia Poerio of the University of Essex and @DrJamesGill, GP and Warwick Medical School Lecturer.
Giulia is looking for volunteers! Do you want to help ASMR research? Full website coming soon, but some info about it here: https://crowd.science/campaigns/asmrnet-establishing-a-global-research-network-and-prioritised-agenda-for-asmr/. If you're interested and think you have something to offer, drop Giulia an email (address at the end of the vid in the link).
00:00 Intro 01:17 What is ASMR? 02:32 I'm a gopher at a Furry convention 04:06 The problem with a loose definition for ASMR 05:30 Dr Giulia Poerio Q1 Is ASMR real? 06:16 Q2 Why do only some people get it? 08:20 Q3 The role of personal care 09:57 Q4 ASMR in the era of loneliness 11:51 Q5 Therapeutic uses and medical ASMR 14:02 Long winded set up for a bad joke 15:09 Wishy washy science 15:45 The man, the myth, the legend, the Gill 17:30 Q2 When did you learn of your ASMR legacy 18:14 Q3 What ASMR can teach doctors 20:00 What I've learnt from ASMR/close 21:54 Watch this bit or I starve 24:10 Diagnosis: TERMINAL TINGLITISDoes Cupping Work? Doc vs The Rock - Pseudoscience Royal Rumble!Medlife Crisis2021-03-05 | Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson went a'cuppin. Does this alternative medicine technique actually work? But more importantly, let's go through some ways to think about unproven therapies so that you can try, or avoid things, with an informed decision.
The five lessons:
1. Who should prove what 2. Placebo ain't a dirty word, but... 3. Old doesn't mean good 4. Celebs need to watch what they're promoting 5. Special bonus surprise
Hijama, the traditional Islamic medicine practice sometimes called ‘wet cupping’ because it causes bleeding bbc.co.uk/news/health-32653971
An open-minded article from Harvard Health Blog https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-exactly-is-cupping-2016093010402
Scientific meta-analyses (ie combining the results of hundreds of studies into one mega-study) ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3289625 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000376 jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(20)30003-1/fulltextDoctor Asks: Should We Really Be Opening Schools?Medlife Crisis2021-02-25 | This is a really complex but immensely important topic. Written and shot on 25th Feb with the most up to date evidence I can find. As a parent and as a doctor treating COVID inpatients, I've been keeping close tabs on this subject for a while and it has become increasingly fractious and polarised. I have attempted to take as neutral and as evidence-based a view as possible, but there are no black and white clear answers.
Apologies for the basic nature of the video, I spent what time I had today researching and filming, meaning there was none left to make it look fancy and you are stuck with my bookshelf as a backdrop, and a zip in my washing machine as the soundtrack.
Reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic: governments must balance the uncertainty and risks of reopening schools against the clear harms associated with prolonged closure (Ara Darzi's team) - adc.bmj.com/content/106/2/111.long
European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Executive Summary - https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/COVID-19-schools-transmission-August%202020.pdf
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control school reopening review - https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/children-and-school-settings-covid-19-transmission
WHO review (staff spread is more important than staff-student spread) - https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/risk-comms-updates/epi-win-update40-overview-of-the-pandemic.pdf?sfvrsn=8d355bcd_4,%20https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.29.20220426v1
I will continue to update this, I just need to go to sleep now! Worked last nightshift to cover a colleague that came down with COVID - we're still a way off being out of this.
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More Medlife Crisis:
http://www.medlifecrisis.co.uk twitter.com/medcrisis watchnebula.com/medlifecrisis instagram.com/medcrisis facebook.com/MedlifecrisisDoctor Explains the Latest Vegan vs Keto Head to Head StudyMedlife Crisis2021-02-17 | A new study published in January pitted a ketogenic, low carb, animal-based diet against a plant-based, low fat diet in a fully controlled environment. A lot of dietary studies are simply not even worth reading, but this one merited a quickie video to share the interesting result as it was done well. The carbohydrate-insulin obesity hypothesis has been widely accepted but not tested. Thankfully non-COVID research is starting to make up more and more of medical news once again.
Argh, this is what happens when you try to write/record/edit/upload on the same day. Typo at 00:07:14 - should read "this does *not* imply it is the ONLY option..."