The doctor who gave up drugs. 1/2.

To begin, presenter Dr Chris van Tulleken discusses the average number of pills a British citizen is likely to take at various stages over the course of their life, using bags of prescription pills as a visual aid. He also discusses the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, and suggests alternative methods of medicating and pain killing. Van Tulleken then announces his plan to the staff at Churchill Medical Centre, Chingford, to set up a clinic within the practice that stops patients current prescriptions and offers alternative therapy. He shadows Dr Kam Seehras patient consultations. Next, van Tulleken and former Chief Knowledge Officer, NHS, Muir Gray discuss how national-level over-prescription of pharmaceutical drugs may have occurred. He then consults his first patient, Wendy, to discover the different types of medications she takes, and how these prescriptions have evolved over time. Following this, van Tulleken discusses the rise of antibiotic resistant infection due to the over-prescription of anti-infective medicines. He then visits his next patient, Sarah, who suffers from depression and wants to detox from her regular medication, citalopram. Van Tulleken conducts an experiment involving placebo drugs to find out how much Wendys painkillers actually relieve her pain. Professor Mike Tipton at The University of Portsmouth demonstrates on van Tulleken a cold shock response, which has been found to help relieve the symptoms of anxiety and depression. He then takes Sarah wild swimming with practiced cold water swimmers, Mark and Heather. Van Tulleken revisits Wendy, to discover the results of her painkiller experiment. Finally, he conducts a triage at Churchill Medical Centre using a machine that measures inflammation markers in the blood to find out if this is a possible solution for the over-prescription of antibiotics.