PostHole
Compose
Login
The painless heart
Dr Mitch Lomax is a sports scientist at the University of Portsmouth. She helps actual Olympic swimmers get faster. She explains how most of the muscles attached to our skeletons work: Tiny fibres use small-scale cellular energy, which, when all these fibres work in concert, turns into visible muscular movement. Mitch also explains how the dreaded Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS, can hit, taking a stair-wincing 48-72 hours to peak after exercise.
But skeletal muscles turn out to be quite different to heart muscles, as consultant cardiologist Dr Rohin Francis explains. Heart cells are more efficient and don't get fatigued like skeletal muscle cells. They are extremely energetic and 'just want to beat'. He also explains that the sensory feedback from the heart muscles is different too. They have a different sort of nerve supply, with fewer sensory nerves, so that there is less chance of pain signals being sent to the brain.
However, heart cells' incredible abilities are counterbalanced by one Achilles-like flaw: They cannot easily heal. Professor Sanjay Sinha is a British Heart Foundation (BHF) Senior Research Fellow and a Professor in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the University of Cambridge. His job is to fix broken hearts and he explains to Adam how new research into stem cells could be used to fix normally irreparable heart cells.
Producer - Jennifer Whyntie and Fiona Roberts
Presenters - Hannah Fry and Adam Rutherford
Accessibility links
BBC World Service
Discovery
- Discovery Home
- Episodes
- Galleries
- Podcast
- Join us on Facebook
Main content
Listen now
The painless heart
Discovery
Why does my heart not ache after exercise? asks listener Keith. Rutherford and Fry explore how and why heart muscle cells are special.
Dr Mitch Lomax is a sports scientist at the University of Portsmouth. She helps actual Olympic swimmers get faster. She explains how most of the muscles attached to our skeletons work: Tiny fibres use small-scale cellular energy, which, when all these fibres work in concert, turns into visible muscular movement. Mitch also explains how the dreaded Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS, can hit, taking a stair-wincing 48-72 hours to peak after exercise.
But skeletal muscles turn out to be quite different to heart muscles, as consultant cardiologist Dr Rohin Francis explains. Heart cells are more efficient and don't get fatigued like skeletal muscle cells. They are extremely energetic and 'just want to beat'. He also explains that the sensory feedback from the heart muscles is different too. They have a different sort of nerve supply, with fewer sensory nerves, so that there is less chance of pain signals being sent to the brain.
However, heart cells' incredible abilities are counterbalanced by one Achilles-like flaw: They cannot easily heal. Professor Sanjay Sinha is a British Heart Foundation (BHF) Senior Research Fellow and a Professor in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the University of Cambridge. His job is to fix broken hearts and he explains to Adam how new research into stem cells could be used to fix normally irreparable heart cells.
Producer - Jennifer Whyntie and Fiona Roberts
Presenters - Hannah Fry and Adam Rutherford
###
####
Higher quality (128kbps)
Lower quality (64kbps)
Available now
27 minutes
Last on
Mon 17 Jan 2022
01:32GMT
BBC World Service except Americas and the Caribbean
More episodes
Previous
The weirdness of water, Part 2 of 2
Next
See all episodes from Discovery
Broadcasts
Mon 10 Jan 2022
20:32GMT
BBC World Service Online, Americas and the Caribbean, UK DAB/Freeview & Europe and the Middle East only
Mon 10 Jan 2022
21:32GMT
BBC World Service Australasia, South Asia, News Internet & East Asia only
Tue 11 Jan 2022
02:32GMT
BBC World Service
Space
The eclipses, spacecraft and astronauts changing our view of the Universe
The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry
[The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry]
A pair of scientific sleuths answer your perplexing questions. Ask them anything!
Podcast
Discovery
Explorations in the world of science.
Similar programmes
By genre:
- Factual > Science & Nature
By format:
Magazines & Reviews
[BBC World Service homepage]
News in more than 40 languages