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The Best Episodes of Body Shock

Every episode of Body Shock ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Body Shock!

The Best Episodes of Body Shock

Long-running documentary strand that investigates extraordinary and moving real-life stories about the extremes of the human body.

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  1. 7.4/10(8 votes)

    #1 - The Man Who Slept for 19 Years

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    S2:E1

    Twenty years ago Terry Wallis fell into a coma. Doctors said he would never wake up, but his devoted mother Angilee never gave up hope. Suddenly, after 19 years, Terry woke up. No one has ever emerged from a coma after so long. Terry is a medical miracle. But this is no Hollywood-style awakening; Terry's mind is stuck in the year of his accident, and he is unable to recognise that he can no longer use his limbs, or that his baby daughter is now grown up. The film also tells the story of British couple Clare and Roy King. Roy was unconscious for just ten minutes following a minor car crash, but the damage to his brain robbed him of the capacity to love his wife and child.

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  2. 7.2/10(14 votes)

    #2 - Age 8 and Wanting a Sex Change

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    S5:E4

    As experts consider a review of UK guidelines for treating transgender children, this film follows a number of children in the US who told their parents they were born in the wrong body. In America, children under 16 can be prescribed hormone 'blockers' to prevent the onset of puberty, with a view to then follow with hormone treatment to become their new gender. This film follows the American experience. Eight-year-old Josie was born a boy but has been living as a girl for two years since revealing the full extent of his feelings about his identity to his mother. Kyla is also eight. She was born a boy but loves anything pink and sparkly, has grown his hair, and is preparing to return for school after summer dressed as a girl for the first time. She says: 'If I had to wear boys' clothes and be a boy for the rest of my life, I'd probably die.' They have both been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Sixteen-year-old Chris, who was born a girl, started testosterone treatment at 14. He now has a deep voice and plentiful body hair, and shaves regularly. These children and their parents reveal what it is like to face life-changing questions, giving a frank insight into a subject most people never have to consider.

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  3. 7.0/10(83 votes)

    #3 - The Man Who Ate His Lover

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    S1:E5

    On 9 March 2001, Armin Meiwes, a computer engineer from the tiny village of Wüstefeld in Germany, cut off the penis of Bernd Brandes, a software designer from Berlin.

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  4. 6.6/10(30 votes)

    #4 - Wild Child

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    S1:E2

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  5. 6.2/10(59 votes)

    #5 - Half Ton Man

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    S3:E2

    Weighing the same as five baby elephants and a shade less than a Mini Cooper, Patrick Deuel is one of the heaviest men ever - and a medical miracle. His heart and other organs should have collapsed long before he reached his record-breaking weight of 76 stone 8lbs. Patrick has been lifted through a removed wall and taken to hospital in a reinforced ambulance, put on a diet and given a gastric bypass operation. Once home again, he must decide whether he wants to live - or to continue eating himself to death. Rosalie Bradford, who was once one of the world's fattest women, lost an incredible 900 pounds only after she realised that her food addiction was a reponse to childhood neglect. Bodyshock looks at both of these stories, and the growing number of people who appear to be eating themselves to death.

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  6. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #6 - The Boy Who Gave Birth to His Twin

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    S1:E1

    The incredible story of seven-year-old Alamjan from Kazakhstan who underwent surgery for a distended stomach that was making him look pregnant. What the doctors discovered inside was reported around the world - Alamjan's own twin was growing inside of him. Known literally as 'a baby inside a baby', the condition is very rare, but its examination leads to insight that a life and death struggle for survival takes place between all twins when they are in the womb.

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  7. Trending NowTRENDING NOW

    The 20 WORST Episodes of Body Shock

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  8. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #7 - Anatomy of a Shark Bite

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    S1:E3

    The chances of being bitten by a shark are 80 million to one. So what does that make the odds of it being caught on film?! This incredible documentary features and analyses not one but two such episodes, examining them forensically to show exactly what prompts such attacks and how, in the future, it may be possible to stop them. Eric, the shark expert behind this programme, is well placed to give his opinion - he filmed one of the bites himself. In fact, it was him that was bitten...

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  9. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #8 - Riddle of the Elephant Man

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    S1:E4

    China's 'Elephant Man', Huang Chuncai, tells his own shocking story as he undergoes surgery to remove life-threatening tumours weighing 20kg that have caused him a lifetime of suffering. As a small child, Huang developed a small facial swelling. Now 31, his features have been destroyed and his body wracked by the tumours, which make up half his body weight. Bodyshock follows Huang as he travels to one of China's leading cancer hospitals for the surgery that he hopes will allow him to live a normal life, but which also carries terrible risks.

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  10. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #9 - Episode 6

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    S1:E6

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  11. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #10 - Kill Me to Cure Me

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  12. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #11 - Orgasmatron

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  13. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #12 - The Girl with X-Ray Eyes

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  14. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #13 - Megatumour

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    In the Romanian province of Transylvania, Lucica Bunghez is being eaten alive, consumed by an 11-stone tumour growing out of her back. Eventually, it will kill her. Lucica suffers from neurofibromatosis (Nf), a genetic disorder that makes the body spontaneously produce benign tumours, and doctors don't dare operate on a tumour that has reached this size. Only one man can help her. Dr McKay McKinnon, at the University of Chicago Hospital, is a world expert at removing large tumours, and Lucica has sent a desperate plea for him to see if he can save her.

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  15. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #14 - When Anaesthesia Fails

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  16. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #15 - The Curse of the Mermaid

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    S3:E1

    With her legs fused together like a tail, Milagros Cerron has one of the rarest birth abnormalities in the world: sirenomelia, or 'mermaid syndrome'. Can an operation by charismatic but controversial plastic surgeon Dr Luis Rubio, to be broadcast live on national television, save this little Peruvian girl? The story of the operation and the attendant media circus is a revealing look at what happens when medicine, politics, religion and superstition collide in a poor and struggling country.

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  17. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #16 - The 80-Year-Old Children

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    S3:E3

    A Swiss doctor discovered these tiny, fragile children in a remote Indian village in 2003. Their bones were dissolving and their hair thining and he diagnosed them with progeria, a rare disease that uncontrollably accelerates its sufferers into old age. Even relative to what is already known about the disease, the children remain a medical mystery. One mother had given birth to five children who had been affected, despite an established average of one sufferer in every 4 million births.

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  18. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #17 - Born with Two Heads

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    S3:E4

    Manar Maged was born with two heads. The second has a brain, but no body. Despite this, the second head shows signs of independent consciousness - blinking, smiling, crying. It even tries to suckle. Worringly, Manar's second head is also a parasite and is slowly killing her. This condition, called craniopagus parasiticus, has only been recorded 10 times in medical history. Neurosurgeon Professor Lotvi has pioneered a technique to prevent the bleeding common in surgery on twins conjoined at the head. Bodyshock details the operation needed to save Manar's life.

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  19. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #18 - The Boy in the Bubble

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  20. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #19 - Half man, half tree

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  21. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #20 - World's Biggest Boy

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    S4:E3

    At just seven years old Dzhambulat Khatokhov ('Jambik' for short) is four foot three inches tall and weighs 16 stone - as much as a baby elephant. He dwarfs his older brother who is twice his age and less than half his weight. Nobody knows why Jambik is so big, or what this means for his long-term health. But Dr Campbell - one of the world's leading experts on obesity - is determined to find out. Travelling over 2000 miles to the Caucasus Mountains in Southern Russia, Campbell meets the 'biggest boy in the world' to see what, if anything, can be done for him...

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  22. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #21 - Half Ton Son

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    S5:E1

    Nineteen-year-old Billy Robbins weighs 60 stone and is reported to be the world's heaviest teenager. He has spent the past three years living in a chair as his mother cooks for, cleans and feeds him. But Billy has made the decision to turn his life around in the hope that one day he may be able to move out of his mother's home. Billy realises that after being fed up to 8,000 calories a day, he has to change his diet not only in order to gain his own independence from his mother, but if he is to live into his twenties. The seriousness of his condition is confirmed by Billy's doctor, Dr Nowzaradan, who tells him that the strain on Billy's heart is now critical. He must begin the slow and torturous route to a target weight of just over 14 stone - undergoing a possible seven operations in the process. This astonishing story also revolves around Billy's relationship with his mother and the co-dependency that seems to exist between them.

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  23. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #22 - Half Ton Mum

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    S5:E2

    Half Ton Mum tells the story of the world's heaviest woman, Renee Williams, a 64-stone, 29-year-old mother of two who, in a desperate bid to lose enough weight to save her life, undergoes life-threatening surgery. Renee, who has realised she wants to be around long enough to see her two daughters grow up, hopes her story will help change the lives of the estimated 2 million Americans who weigh more than 40 stone.

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  24. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #23 - Two Foot Tall Teen

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    S5:E3

    In her home town of Nagpur in India, 16-year-old Jyoti Amge is a normal teenager in many ways: she enjoys going to school and socialising with friends, and dreams of dancing in Bollywood movies. But Jyoti is only one foot and eleven inches tall, and will never grow any taller, crippled by brittle bones. This Bodyshock special meets this extraordinary girl to discover her story and explore what her future holds. When Jyoti's mother, Ranjana, who had four healthy children already, became pregnant, she instinctively knew that something was wrong, and even up until the full nine months, baby Jyoti could not be seen on the medical scans. Doctors were in shock when she was finally delivered at 10 months, weighing just over three pounds. The Amge family, devout Hindus, saw Jyoti's birth and survival as a miracle that deepened their faith. Ranjana, and Jyoti's father, Kishanji, meet with senior orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ram Soni, who believes he can mend her fractured legs and help her walk without pain. He is also keen to be the first to diagnose Jyoti's probable condition for certain as pituitary dwarfism, where the body severely lacks the necessary growth hormones from the pituitary gland. The only solution is a high-risk operation to realign her bones and insert metal rods to hold them in place. Jyoti's parents understand that this could change her life, but are extremely concerned about the shock to her body and how much she would suffer. The family turn to their faith to help battle their fears, taking Jyoti to a highly revered guru and also to a renowned healer, in hope of spiritual guidance and an alternative solution. Torn between the desire to repair Jyoti's legs and also avoid further damage to her, can they move forward with the modern treatment offered by Dr Soni?

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  25. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #24 - Half Ton Dad

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    S5:E5

    Forty-year-old American father of four Kenneth Brumley weighed 73 stone when he was cut free from his house. Even bigger than Half Ton Mum, Renee, from the Bodyshock documentary of that name, Kenneth's last chance was to undergo the same weight-loss surgery that she had. Sadly, it did not work for Renee - would things be more successful for Kenneth? Half Ton Dad is the story of a father, his family and a country which currently has 15 million morbidly obese citizens.

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  26. NaN/10(0 votes)

    #25 - Girl Who Cries Blood

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    S6:E1

    This Bodyshock Special features 13-year-old Twinkle Dwivedi who, for nearly two years, has inexplicably cried tears of blood. The spontaneous bleeding, which happens almost daily, also comes from her head, hands and feet. The programme follows Twinkle and her mother as they travel from their home in northern India to explore the cause of her extraordinary condition, visiting a Catholic Bishop to ask whether her bleeding is stigmata, bathing in the Ganges and visiting an alternative medicine centre. But when a world expert on blood disorders flies in to examine her, Twinkle's journey of discovery edges closer to some uncomfortable possibilities.

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Best Episodes Summary

"The Man Who Slept for 19 Years" is the best rated episode of "Body Shock". It scored 7.4/10 based on 8 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 1/31/2005. This episode scored 0.2 points higher than the second highest rated, "Age 8 and Wanting a Sex Change".