Michael Mosley — Just One Thing (BBC 1)
Playfully daft and fearlessly inquisitive as always in pursuit of better health, Dr Michael Mosley was immersed to the neck in the world’s smallest, chilliest garden hot tub.
An inflatable barrel the size of a milk churn, it brimmed with water from the outdoor hose and a bucket of ice cubes thrown in for good measure.
His wife, Clare, looked on in bemusement as Michael tackled yet another of his counter-intuitive experiments, in his final series Just One Thing, filmed shortly before his death on holiday on the Greek island of Symi in June.
This one, aimed at bringing down blood pressure while raising feel-good hormones, might have been less wacky than some of his enthusiasms — infesting himself with tapeworms, for example, or sewing a tennis ball into the back of his pyjamas.
But though merely watching the ordeal could bring on an attack of the shivers, it’s possible that Michael has achieved his greatest cure of all . . . fixing the British economy.
Michael Mosley: Just One Thing. Dr Michael Mosley was immersed to the neck in the world’s smallest, chilliest garden hot tub
Michael Mosley: Just One Thing – cold shower. ‘Cold water immersion, he remarked, can have extraordinary health benefits’
Dr Michael Mosley, at home in Buckinghamshire. He was reported missing whilst out walking on the Greek Island of Symi
Cold water immersion, he remarked, can have extraordinary health benefits. One study showed that people who take a freezing shower for 30 seconds every morning are absent for 29 per cent fewer sick days.
Apply that across the whole of the workforce and the ‘black hole’ in Labour’s budget figures will be filled within months.
According to the Office for National Statistics, an average of 33 million working days are lost annually to minor ailments such as coughs and colds, with mental health conditions accounting for another 18 million days.
The typical worker takes six or seven sick days every year. The annual cost to business is £103 billion, up by £30bn since 2018, prior to lockdown.
If those figures can be slashed by 29 per cent simply by obliging everyone to take a daily cold shower, Britain’s productivity will be straight back to pre-pandemic levels.
And there could be other benefits — immigration is bound to dip, when word spreads that new arrivals are expected to stand under a blast of icy water every morning.
Michael’s guinea pigs endured a good deal more than that.
Jayne, a single mum in North Wales, roped in three friends to go wild swimming in a lake, and rafting down rapids on inflatable tubes.
The potential benefits are impressive — not only a blast of endorphins and a boost to the immune system, but also a reduction in inflammation.
Some scientists even believe regular cold water swimming can help to reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, thanks to something called ‘cold shock proteins’.
Jayne, who described herself as ‘the girl that has the electric blanket on all year round’, had to grit her teeth.
With the cameras lurking outside her bathroom door, we heard a shout of ‘Jeez Louise!’ as she turned the temperature down.
But there was no such reticence from Michael.
From his shower cubicle, he serenaded the camera crew with There’s A Hole In My Bucket.
What a one-off he was.