Doctor Reacts To Cells At Work: Code Black Ep #1

- "Cells at Work!" season one told us how the body works.

"Cells at Work!" season two CODE BLACK tells us

what we do to our bodies and how we hurt them, peewoop!

Episode 1: Smoking, Bacteria, and the Beginning of the End.

I hope it's not the beginning of the end.

(speaking in foreign language)

(student yawns)

This is so funny because not only is this very accurate

in that an immature red blood cells and erythroblasts

and now that they become red blood cells,

they are fully matured.

They are also presenting this

like a true med school situation where some people

in the classroom are sleepy and yawning, me.

Some people are taking notes and being very aggressive.

What do we know about red blood cells?

Main job is to carry oxygen throughout the body

and deliver it to its vital tissues:

brain, the lungs, the heart, kidneys.

These are vital organs that keep us going.

In fact, if blood vessels,

the little tunnels that red blood cells travel through,

are ever blocked, that's when you have a problem.

If one of those arteries

or blood vessels starts to get blocked in the heart,

you have a heart attack.

One of them gets blocked in the brain, you have a stroke.

It's all about maintaining good plumbing

and allowing these red blood cells to do their job.

So I hope they're paying attention.

(speaking in foreign language)

(laughs) Oxygen/O2.

(speaking in foreign language)

Aw.

Red blood cells, unfortunately,

all they do is circulate throughout the body

no matter what time of day it is, day/night.

When a person's sleeping, you're still circulating blood.

You got to feed the brain,

you got to recover the muscles, all that good stuff.

Now that being said,

red blood cells are only around approximately 120 days.

And throughout that time,

they're constantly getting refreshed

and new ones are being made.

(speaking in foreign language)

Basically when the aortic valve opens, the heart beats

and all the red blood cells starts shooting out to the body.

Whether they go to the top of the body in the brain

or to the bottom of the body

to the kidneys and legs, et cetera.

The goal is to get as much oxygen quickly

to that part of the body

and then to bring back the red blood cells

that are now deoxygenated

and need to be refreshed by the lungs

back through the venous system.

Now I know a lot of times

in textbooks we draw the arterial system is red

and the venous system is blue.

If you cut someone's veins,

I promise the blood is still gonna be red.

It's just simply about the tint of the blood

when it's below your skin, but in reality,

it is still red, I promise.

(speaking in foreign language)

(dramatic music)

Platelets.

Oh, does this person have an ulcer?

An ulcer is an opening inside the stomach

from the gastric acid or perhaps an infection

and as a result, bleeding can occur.

(speaking in foreign language)

(magma bubbling)

I would make a small correction there.

It's not the first stage of digestion

because the first stage of digestion

is a funny word known as mastication.

Mastication is when you chew,

that is the chemical breakdown of food,

that is where digestion begins.

In fact, you have salivary amylase which is an enzyme

that starts breaking down sugars inside the food

that you're eating immediately in your mouth.

In your mouth. That's right.

So digestion is happening here first.

That's the first step of digestion not in the stomach.

(speaking in foreign language)

Oh, wow. Angry stomach.

(suspenseful music)

Can you imagine if every time

you didn't take care of your body,

you underslept, you overworked, overate, underate,

ate something unhealthy, overdrank, smoked a cigarette,

did something wrong in general

that your body's cells actually went on strike

and got mad at you?

Imagine your stomach was like, "I'm mad.

Stop working.

Agh.

(pipe explodes) (both gasp)

Oh no!

(man coughing)

Oh no!

(man gasping)

(speaking in foreign language)

Oh no, carbon monoxide poisoning.

(suspenseful music)

This is a very accurate description

of how carbon monoxide poisoning actually happens.

Because it has a higher affinity,

meaning it's more likely to bind with this red blood cell,

it actually blocks the ability to carry oxygen.

So what happens if you have a slow leak

of carbon monoxide into a small area,

like a garage or a home, you actually start getting sleepy,

you get a little nauseous, a headache starts developing,

and what's really dangerous is

if you do end up falling asleep, you could die.

Also, knowing that the treatment

for carbon monoxide poisoning,

if you get to the hospital,

is getting a full blast of O2 in your face.

Why?

Because if you overload the amount

of oxygen you're getting,

hopefully that will create enough competition

that your red blood cells will actually get

some of this oxygen as opposed to the carbon monoxide.

Does that make sense?

(foot thuds)

(speaking in foreign language)

Oh pneumococci!

(bacteria growling)

So this is why whenever a patient is diagnosed

with bacterial pneumonia, one of the first things we do

is institute antibacterial treatment with antibiotics.

The invention of antibiotics has really gone a long way

in extending life and preventing unnecessary death.

However, now we're kind of in this state

where we're overusing antibiotics

and are not only killing healthy bacteria

in our bodies by mistake that we need to live,

but also you can create resistance,

where if you don't take antibiotics

for a long enough period of time,

or let's say you take them

and you eradicate 99% of the bacteria,

you leave the 1% that are genetically resistant to it.

And as a result, when they reproduce,

each time you take the antibiotics,

your body bacteria actually start building up a resistance

to those antibiotics.

Why does that become problematic? Well, guess what?

A patient comes in with a pneumonia,

let's say a sepsis where the bacteria is now in the blood,

and then you realize for all the antibiotic options

that you have, which we don't have millions of,

you actually have no choices on what to give that patient

because all the bacteria is resistant

and you've created a superbug.

This thing looks like a superbug

but I hope antibiotics will still work in this case.

(dramatic music)

(speaking in foreign language)

(metal clangs)

(bodies thud)

(speaking in foreign language)

Oh!

That white blood cell got some moves.

Reminds of Michonne from "Walking Dead."

Who's a "Walking Dead" fan here?

(speaking in foreign language)

It's funny that they're going to the carotid artery,

there was some plaque there visible.

This does happen, and in fact,

one of the causes or potential causes of strokes is

when you have such a bad occlusion of the carotid arteries,

you actually impede blood flow to that area.

So imagine if you have a lot of plaque, it's blocked off,

you can't get blood to the brain, boom, stroke happens.

Now you do have two carotid arteries

which makes it a little bit better.

So you wanna keep your carotid arteries as patent

and as open as possible, and how do you do that?

Living a healthy lifestyle,

going for preventive screenings,

making sure your cholesterol is under control,

and know that just because your cholesterol is high

or the LDL cholesterol,

the bad cholesterol is high, it doesn't mean

that you might necessarily be doing something wrong

because there are cases where genetics play a huge role

so much so that your cholesterol is so high

that you could never even get it that high with a bad diet

as a result of your genetics.

This is known as familial hypercholesterolemia.

There are specific medications

that are recently been released called PCSK9 inhibitors.

Again, we don't like jumping to medications

but if you have such a dangerous LDL

that it's causing you a risk

to have a premature heart attack at a young age,

maybe it's worth being on that medication.

(speaking in foreign language)

(ominous music)

Smoking is bad for you.

I don't feel like I need to say that but at the same time,

I'm gonna because I want you to know

that smoking increases risk of not only cancers,

not just lung cancer, all cancers,

like so many cancers throughout your body,

other lung diseases like COPD,

chronic bronchitis, emphysema.

increases in heart disease, strokes.

Just by smoking,

we lose approximately half a million lives

due to smoking in the United States every year.

We in the medical community know

that cigarettes contain over 600 ingredients

and when you light them on fire and burn them,

that creates over 7,000 chemicals

that you're inhaling into your body.

And while nicotine may make you feel good temporarily,

it goes away and it's highly, highly addictive.

It's one of the most addictive things out there.

That's why it's so dangerous.

(speaking in foreign language)

(ominous music)

I hope this episode helps you quit smoking if you do.

If you're not gonna do it for yourself,

do it for these little red blood cells.

They don't deserve the stress that we're putting on them.

Quit smoking and if you need help, talk to your doctor

'cause we actually have so many options of helping you quit.

Not only from a behavioral therapy perspective,

we have some medications that can help,

group counseling, et cetera.

Talk to your doctor.

If you have that motivation,

share it with us and we'll be happy to help you out.

This is a great medical show.

These are bad medical games,

like really bad, embarrassingly bad one-star games.

Click that to check me playing them.

Checking me playing them? Check me out playing them.

And as always, stay happy and healthy.

(upbeat music)