Swallowing tapeworm cysts cut out of the tongue of a dead cow in the hope they'll grow inside you sounds bonkers. To BBC presenter Michael Mosley, it's all in a day's work.
Mosley has pioneered a style of journalism that involves him experimenting on his own body. It's an extension of gonzo journalism, inspired by his medical training and motivated by a desire to sort fact from fiction. His program Trust Me I'm a Doctor is like a medical version of MythBusters.
BBC television presenter Michael Mosley at Kisume in Melbourne.Credit: Pat Scala
More recently, he ingested a camera for a doco – appropriately named Inside Michael Mosley – about the human body. A tiny camera the size of a large pill travelled through his small intestine and then his large to record what his innards looked like.
There was a hiccup just after he'd swallowed the device – it got stuck towards the bottom of his oesophagus and he had to jump up and down to release it. While he wondered if he might need surgery, the gastroenterologist on hand assured him it was perfectly normal.
The 12-piece sashimi platter at Kisume.Credit: Pat Scala
He sounds relaxed about it now but admits there are moments. "In the middle of doing these things you can think, 'What the hell am I doing' but of course then it's a bit too late."
Thankfully, all this talk of parasites has not put us off our lunch. We're dining at Kisume in Flinders Lane and, while Mosley confesses he's not an expert in Japanese food, he's happy to take up my suggestion that he order for both of us. First up, it's sashimi, followed by grilled sardines and an eggplant and miso dish.
"I once did a five-day fast, living on nothing but miso soup – about five calories a day – so I do feel an affection for miso."
He has brought the pill camera to our meeting, holding it up while assuring me, "it has been cleaned, I promise!" The footage revealed a dark and murky place that Mosley describes as "a cavernous, alien landscape, throbbing with movement ... it reminded me of the surface of Mars, except slimier".
Michael Mosley: "Often, things I do, they can be quite unpleasant and painful but they're not actually dangerous."Credit: Pat Scala
There are some upsides to having tapeworm, as revealed in his latest book, The Clever Guts Diet. The relevant section is called "old friends" and it reveals there are some positives to having worms and other parasites.
Gut parasites have evolved with us over millions of years, apparently, and play an important role in controlling and educating our immune system. Hookworm, for example, has helped sufferers of irritable bowel syndrome, not that professionals would recommend infecting yourself to do so. More benign parasites, such as whipworm, have been trialled to treat IBD, with some positive results. It's early days in this type of research but encouraging results suggest there is scope to use parasites as a tool in medicine.
Receipt for lunch at Kisume with BBC presenter Michael Mosley.
Given he's been on a whistle-stop tour of the country for the past week, I wonder what Mosley makes of the Australian diet? Thus far he's impressed: "There's a segment of the population that are eating very well and are very on message but that may be atypical."
Statistics from the 2014-15 national health survey, conducted by the Bureau of Statistics, show just under 30 per cent of Australians over the age of 18 were obese, with about 35 per cent overweight. These figures and his experience suggest there are two very different realities at play in this country.
Having originally trained to become a psychologist, Mosley quit university and worked as a banker for two years, went back to study medicine, and then was accepted to a trainee producers program run by the BBC.
For 20 years he worked as a director and an executive producer, during which time he made films with David Attenborough, a few dramas, and a number of documentaries including a volcano series ("I went to Japan ... and came back full of a love for volcanoes") and Pompeii: The Last Day, the highest rating history show the BBC has ever shown.
The first full-length documentary Mosley presented was for the science show, Horizons. It featured the groundbreaking study by two Australians, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, who discovered ulcers were caused by bacteria. (Marshall infected himself with the bacteria and healed himself with antibiotics to prove his point.) For many years, the medical fraternity remained sceptical of the findings but the two were later awarded the Nobel prize in medicine for their research.
To this day, people thank Mosley for featuring that research. Many say it saved them, or a relative, who had suffered terribly with ulcers and had been told they needed to have radical surgery to treat them (often the advice was to have their stomach removed). In fact, they could be treated with antibiotics.
"It's done in the spirit of Barry Marshall and also all the other self-experimenters who've gone before," he says. "Because the history of medicine is littered with self-experimenters – sometimes with their corpses."
So inspired was he that he wrote a book proposal around the idea: "The history of medicine through medical mavericks, self-experimenters." He went on to pitch that idea to pretty much every channel for the next 20 years. "These things take their time. I was talking to the guy who came up with Who Do You Think You Are and he said he pitched that for 18 years before it was accepted."
So, what does his wife Clare, a GP, think about his work?
"She kind of vetoes all of it. I always discuss what I am about to do with her ... the deal was I would get rid of the tapeworm before they grew full length because when they're full length they start to shed segments, which crawl around looking for a new host. She was not keen to share our bed with any segments which might have come out of me during the night.
"Often, things I do, they can be quite unpleasant and painful but they're not actually dangerous."
It's compelling television, as you can see first-hand the results of whatever research Mosley is undertaking. It's also educational and there is a voyeurism involved too, a fascination with his scientific yet crazy brave approach. He shed nine kilograms in 12 weeks and eradicated his type 2 diabetes in the research which culminated in his book, Eat, Fast and Live Longer. Given the BBC is under the same pressures as the ABC here, it's great to see it supports his work.
"It's also quite unpredictable, because you don't know how it's going to turn out," Mosley says. "When I did the Horizon which led to the Five:two diet, I had absolutely no idea how it was going to pan out. With drama, you have a script and you know how it's going to run out. With science docos, similarly, you have a script beforehand and it unfolds, you know pretty much exactly how it's going to turn out.
"When I did that, we didn't know until the very end whether it would go disastrously wrong."
High on his current hit list of issues to explore are vitamins, probiotics and sleep. He reckons he has found a fibre that helps encourage a good night's sleep – surely gold if correct – and earlier this year asked anyone interested to help out with a research trial. Participants were asked to try a range of approaches, including mindfulness, a warm bath or shower before bed, and even eating two kiwifruit an hour before bed. They would then record their experiences on the BBC Sleep website. Universities like to team up with Mosley for research as he brings massive numbers of participants to research programs.
In recent times, he has espoused the benefits of fasting via the five:two diet, in which you fast for two days and eat for five. If this sounds a tad difficult, there are benefits to be gained simply by eating later in the morning and earlier at night – thankfully, not eating overnight counts.
"You're still going to get a lot of the metabolic benefits," Mosley says. "The thing about fasting is it has to be a little bit painful. A lot of the benefit comes from the stress, basically your body being challenged."
He muses that in his talk this month he might list his top 10 myths of dieting, based on science and the worst diets of all time.
"The interesting thing about dietary myths is that many of them are perpetuated by doctors and dieticians," Mosley says. "One of them is that it's better to lose weight slowly than quickly – it's better to lose it quickly, as long as you do it properly."
Contrary to common wisdom, he rejects the idea that it's good to eat lots of small meals a day. To Mosley, it's "the world's stupidest advice ever".
"Grazing is a really bad idea – you need these periods where your body is not processing food. If you are constantly grazing, you're at greater risk of dementia … because you are keeping your blood sugar topped up all the time.
"We're told to do a lot of things in moderation. I'm against that – moderation is stupid. I think quite the reverse – you don't get much benefit from anything by doing it moderately."
Michael Mosley is at QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane, September 6; State Theatre, Sydney, September 8; and the Palais Theatre, Melbourne, September 10. livenation.com.au
cleverguts.com
The bill, please.
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