- "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.
Episode one,
"Smoking, Bacteria, And The Beginning Of The End".
I hope it's not the beginning of the end.
(speaks in foreign language)
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, they have blood vessels, 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.
All about maintaining good plumbing,
and allowing these red blood cells to do their job.
So I hope you're paying attention.
(speaking foreign language)
(laughs) Oxygen, O2.
(speaking in foreign language)
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 gotta feed the brain, you gotta 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.
(speaks in foreign language) (machine buzzing)
Basically when they 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 and 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,
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)
(yells in foreign language)
Platelets.
(speaks in foreign language)
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)
I would make a small correction there,
is not the first stage of digestion,
because the first stage of digestion,
is a funny word known as mastication.
So 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 mouff.
That's right, so digestion is happening here first,
that's the first step of digestion.
Not in the stomach.
(yells in foreign language)
Oh wow, angry stomach.
(speaking in foreign language)
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 cells actually went on strike
and got mad at you.
Like, imagine your stomach was like,
(doctor mumbling)
(guy groaning) Oh, no.
(yells in foreign language)
Oh no, carbon monoxide poisoning.
(speaking in foreign language)
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?
(huge leg lashes)
(speaking in foreign language)
Oh, pneumococci.
(yells in foreign language)
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 the 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.
(speaks in foreign language)
(sword swooshes)
(speaking in foreign language)
Whoa! That white blood cell got some moves.
(speaks in foreign language)
Reminds me 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 want to keep your carotid arteries
as (mumbles), 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)
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 and 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)
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, 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.
"Check me playing them?"
Check me out playing them.
And as always stay happy and healthy.
(upbeat music)