Royal Health Secrets - Secrets Of The Royal  - British Documentary

Most famous people in the world, and ambassadors for our country across the globe. Keeping them fit and well is of paramount importance. In this revelatory hour, we reveal the royal health secrets. From royal birth. In fact, when she had Prince Charles, the Queen actually had a cesarean section. To royal death. For somebody who was very glamorous, it was a very sad ending to her life. From the secrets of Diana's bizarre health regime. She loved cupping. We used to do cupping on her at least once a week. To the Queen's life-saving emergency kit. There was always a Royal Navy surgeon travelling with them, as well as the matching blood. And the outrageous fertility bed of King George IV. And while you were using it, the bed started jolting. So the magnets and electricity had fused, giving this huge jolt of passion. No stone is left unturned. As we reveal the royal health secrets. From cradle to grave. The royal family lead lives of jaw-dropping luxury and glamour. In return for carrying out their duties. And there's one duty that's more important than any other. It can certainly be argued that the most important role of the royal family is to keep the royal family going. That means producing heirs and making sure that they produce heirs. Rejoicing is marked by a salute of guns. Her Royal Highness is the proud and happy mother of a prince. The first stop on our tour of royal health, birth. Prince Harry dozed, behaving impeccably. We're used to royal babies born in private hospital wings and paraded in front of global press. But it was a different story when the Queen gave birth to Prince Charles in 1948. Back then, all royals opted for home or palace births. The three boys were all born at Buckingham Palace. Princess Anne was born at Clarence House purely because the Queen and Prince Philip had moved out of Buckingham Palace. It was being renovated after damage incurred during the Second World War. In fact, when she had Prince Charles, the Queen actually had a cesarean section. She wasn't rushed to hospital. The royal doctors set up an operating theatre inside Buckingham Palace. Everything was sterilised and performed the operation so that she could have Prince Charles there and then. And if you thought her consort would have been there to support her, think again. Apparently, Prince Philip was swimming and playing squash when Prince Charles was born, which frankly is about as useful as a mancub of his youngest child. By that time, it's thought that the Queen put a lot of pressure on him and said modern fathers and modern husbands are at their wives' bedside during the birth now, so you jolly well can be too. The head obstetrician was Sir John Peel, Ingrid Seawood's godfather. Only one secret about the delivery ever escaped his lips. They converted the ballroom in Buckingham Palace into an operating theatre. Normally it's a guest suite for visiting heads of state, and it was all going a bit slowly and the faces were very long. And Prince Philip walked in, and so as it is Prince Philip's wont to make these kind of jokes, he said, and to think that last week, General de Gaulle was having a bath in here. And that sort of broke the ice and everybody laughed. In those days, there was no rush to display the baby. There are some very sweet pictures of the Queen in bed, cuddling the baby Prince Edward, and next to the bed are her older children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, and that group picture of the four of them shows that, I mean, Edward was at least a couple of days old by this point, but the Queen was still in bed, kind of in confinement. Things are very different today. Now instead of presenting a baby to dignitaries, the royal couple shows him or her off to the general public just hours after birth. And this is where it usually happens. The Lindo, a private wing of an NHS hospital close to Kensington Palace. One of the reasons that the royals have chosen the Lindo wing over other private maternity units in London is because it's aligned to St Mary's Paddington Hospital, so it also has all the facilities of a fully fledged hospital. The first royal baby to be delivered here was Princess Anne's son, Peter, in 1977. Princess Anne was driven to St Mary's Hospital in London for the birth of her child. And in 1982, a media circus as Princess Diana gave birth to William, the first heir to the throne to be born in a hospital. Prince, Princess and baby Prince emerged to the cheers of the crowd. It must have seemed only natural for William to return 31 years later for the birth of his own son, George. Well, he's got a good pair of lungs on him, that's for sure. He's a big boy, he's quite heavy, but we're still working on a name, so we'll have that As you might expect, the place where the royals give birth does not come cheap. The Lindo wing is very expensive. It's around £6,000 for their standard room a night. If you want the deluxe option, it's an extra £300. As this promotional video shows, the Lindo has all the facilities you'd expect. I had my daughter there. It wasn't very glamorous at all. And when Diana had William there, it wasn't glamorous. But now, it's quite smart and still got the knowledge that anything goes wrong, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be able to help you. So what's it like inside a hospital fit for the future king or queen? Catherine Filkins had her daughter Isla there in 2017, just months before Prince Louis's birth. It did feel a little bit like you were staying in a hotel in terms of the really nice toiletries that they provided for you in the bathrooms and you had, you know, a room with your own ensuite bathroom and your own private room. They had selection menus that you could choose lots of delicious gourmet-style food each day. They had the afternoon tea options. You could have wine and champagne if you decided I didn't do that, but if you wanted to or your partner wanted to, they could partake in that. And really, apart from the amenities, it was much like a normal hospital. Neither, it turns out, did Prince William at the birth of Prince George. William and Kate eventually arrive. They were sort of nervous. The whole room had been sealed off for weeks beforehand, so once it had been security cleared. And William pops his head out of the room whilst Kate is in labour and says, oh, could I possibly have a drink? And everyone's like, yes, of course, of course you can. He's like, oh, just a glass of water. And they were like, of course! Cold is room temperature. And I think they were surprised, obviously, how sort of low-key Kate and William were. And after the birth, one can relax in style, as Catherine can attest. We had booked a standard room, and when we got to our room, we were in a deluxe suite and we were led to believe that it was the room where the royals were, and it was huge. The immaculately presented Kate has helped make the Lindo Wing Photocall a modern-day institution. Any parent, I think, would probably sort of know what this feeling feels like. Very special. But these photocalls are controversial. Many think they pressure other women to pretend childbirth is easy and neglect their recovery. There was a lot of talk about, did she really have to put tights on? We know that there's this etiquette that royals aren't seen without tights, but seriously, after giving birth, wriggling into a pair of tights must have been quite something. I don't think a civilised nation should be expecting women of any standing in life, whether they are birthing an heir to the throne or not, to do something like that. It was just disgusting. To those people who criticised Kate's appearance, especially with Prince George, what would you want her to look like? Do you want her to look, the future Queen of England, as if she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards? These pictures, particularly the pictures of the birth and the presentation of Prince George, are iconic. It's the birth of a new monarch, and I think we want them to look... Coming up, the secrets of George IV's outrageous fertility bed. The bed started jolting, so the magnets and electricity had fused, giving this huge jolt of passion. And how the Queen's health is protected wherever she goes. There is always a Royal Navy surgeon travelling with them, as well as the matching blood. The modern royals seem to have no problems in the fertility department. However, back in 1779, King George IV sought some help from an upmarket fertility aide for Celestial Bed. In 1781, James Graham, a sex doctor, a quack, a health doctor, he opened the Temple of Hymen in the Strand, and he sold time on the Celestial Electrical Throne, he sold electrical pills, electrical cream, and he also sold a knight on the Celestial Electrical Bed, for the huge sum of £50. That's over £4,300 in today's money, to enhance your reproductive health. You got on the bed, and these servants were dancing around it, playing on their harps, glamour girls. And while you were using it, the bed started jolting, so that the magnets and electricity had fused, giving this huge jolt of passion. Now, this was supposed to be for fertility and to create a child, but I'm afraid to say that lots of people used it just to have fun, including the future George IV, the Prince of Wales, who apparently went on there with his mistresses for a while time. From fertility to vitality, far from the quack doctors behind George's celestial bed, the modern royals have constant medical attention of the highest quality, and doctors at their beck and call. The medical care that the Queen receives is different from ours. She has the best doctors in the land, and she doesn't just have one doctor. There'll be three who consider her problems and come to an agreement about how best to treat it, whatever it might be. The royal doctors accompany the Queen wherever she goes. When the Queen travels, there is always a Royal Navy surgeon travelling with them, a defibrillator, as well as the matching blood. With some of the places they go to, there's never any guarantee that there is going to be the right blood, and they prefer to carry their own. But the Queen's constitution isn't just down to her doctors. Her active and outdoorsy lifestyle has played a part. Isn't the Queen amazing? 93, still incredibly as fit as a fiddle, and on her feet for hours. A fiery stallion. She rides these fell pennies who are very broad and very comfortable, a little bit armchair, because she injured her knee, and of course, she says she's a fair weather rider now, but you can't blame her for that. Many of us without the Queen's willpower need a little help to get fit. That's where personal trainer Nadia Fairweather comes in. In 2009, Princess Beatrice called in Nadia to take a 360 degree look at her diet and exercise. Beatrice came to me because she had some unfortunate photos taken of her on the beach when she was a teenager, and they were quite unflattering, and they made her feel really badly about herself. I think the pressure on the princess is really hard because they're in the public eye all of the time. You can never have an off day. The royal can face different barriers to staying fit than we do. Firstly, there's those huge banquets that Beatrice would have to attend. Our little trick was that she would eat before she left, so she had a full stomach before she arrived so that she wasn't eating everything on offer when she got there. Then there's the paparazzi and the public. Beatrice and I used to train really early in the morning to avoid people recognize her, and they would often interrupt our session, they'd get right in her face, not even ask, they'd just take a photograph of her. Someone who doesn't need help to motivate herself is the Duchess of Sussex. With Meghan, the royal family has gained a real fitness fanatic. We all know that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is a yoga aficionado. Her mother is a yoga instructor, so she's been doing it all her life, and we know has even introduced Harry to the delights of yoga and has been getting him to do an early morning yoga session. She likes doing it in the dark with hip-hop blaring, maybe a few candles. Meanwhile, Meghan's husband, Prince Harry, is a member of the swanky Kix Gym in Chelsea. Kix Gym, K-X-Chelsea, is so exclusive. It's £600 a month. Yes, it does have gym equipment in there, but it also has a restaurant, it has a spa. Prince Philip, on the other hand, has followed a more no-thrills approach. When he was first married to Princess Elizabeth, he used to put on sweaters and run round the garden until he got a real sweater. The Queen thought he was mad. His tailor says that he's never actually had to take out any of his clothes, he still fits into all the uniforms he's had his entire life, which for a man pushing 100 is extremely impressive. The answer for everyone should be keep fit and stay alive. The secret to Philip's success is the Five Basic Exercises Programme, or 5BX, an 11-minute routine developed for the Royal Canadian Air Force. The advantage of the 5BX is that you don't need any equipment, it doesn't take up a lot of space or a lot of time. All the major muscles in the body have been used, so you see that it is balanced. For some Royals, keeping fit and healthy isn't enough. They like to take matters into their own hands, using alternative therapies to treat themselves. The Royal family for many, many generations have been fascinated by homeopathy, by alternative therapies, by the occult. Prince Charles is a passionate advocate of homeopathy and in 2019, controversially, became patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy. He's absolutely devoted to it and it's one of the weaknesses that people see in his critical thinking. Homeopathy is based on the principle that a substance that causes a symptom can also cure that symptom. Britain's most senior doctor, Dame Sally Davis, said she was perpetually surprised homeopathy was provided on the NHS and branded it as rubbish. In 2017, NHS England stated that no GP or prescriber should be providing it at all. However, the British Homeopathic Association maintains that a growing body of published research in good quality peer-reviewed journals shows that homeopathy has a positive effect. Prince Charles should be using his absolutely huge profile and platform to be promoting something that has evidence behind it, something that is going to actually help genuinely his nation. Famously, the biggest advocate of alternative therapies in the royal family was Princess Diana. Dr Lily Howe is an acupuncturist who treated Diana for stress and anxiety from 1996 until her death. She come one week, at least about six months. And after that, you know, even after one month, and she keep telling me, she said, Dr Lily, I never feel as good as now physically. Acupuncture really can help her to calm her down, to give her more energy. And also, she said before, when she face problem, she easily to break the tear and then lose her temper. And now, she just face it. Princess Diana always said, if it can help me, it, of course, can help other people with similar problem like me. But Princess Diana didn't stop at pins. In his Malabon clinic, Nish Joshi is practicing an Eastern therapy called cupping. She loved cupping. We used to do cupping on her at least once a week. What you're trying to do is you're improving the flow of blood into a tissue by creating a vacuum to therefore allow detoxification. At the time of her separation from Charles, Nish took her holistic health in hand from cupping, osteopathy and nutritional advice to cognitive behavioral therapy. Visualization exercises, starting to get her to sort of understand how to meditate, how to start creating a more positive attitude as well. I remember once going into her bathroom and around her mirror, she had post-it stickers with little positive messages on there. And I just thought that was really amazing that, you know, she herself used a lot of positive affirmations to motivate herself on a daily basis. Nish's relationship with Diana was more than that between most therapists and patients. I mean, sometimes on a Sunday, she would just come over and we would just cook lunch together and just flop and, you know, watch TV. And it was fun. While many people thought Diana pursued fads, Nish thinks she was simply ahead of her time. Diane was really a sort of a trendsetter, was exploring more natural approaches to her own well-being. Alternative therapies weren't just for modern royals. From Henry VIII's gammy leg to Queen Anne after she had a fit, bloodletting was a favourite medical treatment for 2,000 years. Royalty would be bled at home, but the public might come here. The old Thomas Hospital, London, now a museum. Bloodletting was used for pretty much everything from acne, cholera, cancer, smallpox, tuberculosis, herpes, insanity, the plague. Bloodletting was also used for kind of severe hemorrhaging, so maybe everything from a nosebleed to extreme menstruation. And in childbirth and before surgery, people would be often bled to reduce inflammation. For much of history, leeches were the method of choice to get rid of all the bad blood, royal or otherwise. This leech is a European medicine leech. It has three jaws in the shape of a Y, and each jaw has about 125 teeth in each jaw. And it actually soars its way in as opposed to a very sharp bite. Carl picks a leech similar to ones which have been used for centuries, on the likes of Henry VIII, and George III. This little leech will probably take between one and three mils of blood. You can actually just feel the jaws working a little bit, and then when it drops off, the anticoagulant will carry on working for the ten hours, and so it'll just slowly drip in blood. Carl is lucky the leech is just on his leg. Rumours abound of sexually transmitted infections running rife in royal circles. There's also a case of a gentleman coming into this hospital with gonorrhoea. One of the consequences was that it caused one of his testicles, they don't say which one, to swell up to the size of a tennis ball. And it was the overall application of 120 leeches, not all at the same time, placed on that part of the body to reduce the swelling. Until recently, if a royal queen needed an operation, they didn't go to hospital. The hospital came to them. In the past, most wealthy people would have been treated in their homes. They would have given birth in their homes. They would have died in their homes. And the idea of going to a hospital was absolutely anathema, because that's where the poor went. And instead, in this case, the doctors would come to them. And that was the case in 1951, when the queen's father, George VI, underwent a serious operation. It took place in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace, the same place Elizabeth II would deliver three of her children. At the Association of Anaesthetists, they have the equipment used in this high-profile and risky operation. This is an ECG machine, or electrocardiogram, and it's designed to monitor the heartbeat. It's the quickest way to see if your patient's doing OK or if they're in trouble. In the 1950s, very few hospitals would have had such sophisticated equipment. So the king really did get treated like a king. The king had lung cancer at the time. He was a very heavy smoker. And the operation was to remove one of his lungs. It was a very serious operation. The assistant anaesthetist on the day was Dr Cyril Scurr. Many years later, he explained how public interest in his health affected George. The most touching thing was that when we went to put him to sleep in the morning, he had all the Sunday papers round him, and they all had grisly details of the operation that he was likely to have. He was very apprehensive of the operation. It must have made him feel a great deal worse. I think they should have kept those papers away from him. Having a pneumonectomy or having one of your lungs removed is a very big operation. It was performed successfully, and the king did come around and survive afterwards. But unfortunately, he did pass away within the year. The queen's father was treated at home. But that is a thing of the past. Coming up, we reveal the secrets of the royal hospital. It's like a posh hotel, really, with kind of operating theatres. And the family medical secrets they kept hidden. His brother, the future Edward VIII, said, he was more of an animal than anything else. He's a royal family. Dirty little secret. For many centuries, the health of the monarch was seen to reflect the health of the nation. If you think about when the king or queen was the head of this country in all ways constitutionally, if there was even a rumour or a suggestion that they were unfit to reign, it had huge ramifications for the security of the country. Even today, if you're a royal and you catch a sniffle, expect everyone to be talking about it. Their bodies aren't really their own. Any kind of minor health ailment, let alone a major health ailment, particularly when it comes to the monarch, our present-day queen, is not just over, but kind of we worry about as a nation. It's a massive story. So it's important that our royal highnesses get the best care. And instead of the palace, nowadays, royal health gets dealt with here. The exclusive King Edward VII Hospital. It has 56 beds. I think it has something like four members of staff to one patient. It's very small hospitals, but it's like a posh hotel, really, with kind of operating theatres. For Margaret Tyler, it's a place of pilgrimage. I decided one day I wanted to come down and see the hospital here. It wasn't actually really like a normal hospital. The rooms were lovely, sort of panelled and that sort of thing. It just felt like a normal large house. Charming. I would say the word is charming. One frequent patient was the Queen Mother, who, despite living to the grand age of 101, was plagued at the end of her life with multiple broken bones. They might be the royal family, but they cannot stop time. They are going to get old. And with age, even though they're so positive and so well looked after, they are still going to be afflicted by things that happen when we're old, falls, stumbles. She had two hip operations, both done at the King Edward VII, both done by the same person that did Prince Philip's hip operation and Andy Murray's hip operation. Her daughter, the Queen, has better luck with her health, but isn't immune to all illness. In 2013, the Queen had her first hospital stay in a decade, when, at the age of 86, she was struck down with gastroenteritis. Gastroenteritis is mainly vomiting and diarrhoea. You can also get other symptoms like stomach cramps, fevers, muscle aches, loss of appetite. For most people, it goes away in a few days without any treatment. But in the elderly, it can be severe and it can be bad enough to get them hospitalised. When the Queen was hospitalised in 2013, it did cause a big shock because she's so famous for being in good health and not giving in to anything and certainly not cancelling any trips. She had to cancel not only some domestic trips, but a trip to Rome in Italy as well. That the Queen is so rarely ill and that she recovers so quickly, to me, is testament to her baseline health. It's so impressive that she just bounces back as well as she does. Prince Philip is another famously robust member of the royal family. But by the time he reached his 90s, even his health was beginning to fail. For about four hours in a good old English drizzle in the middle of the River Thames, he was taken to hospital with a bladder infection and it was widely believed that this is because he had spent four hours tying a knot in it and holding it in. It's not good for anybody, but especially not when you're 90. And while getting sick isn't often a matter of choice, dangerous hobbies sure are. The royal family's love of horse riding is well known, but it can come at a cost, as Princess Anne found in 1976. The first many people knew about the accident was when Captain Mark Phillips galloped off to his wife's side. The princess, unconscious, was covered over with blankets as officials anxiously summoned an ambulance. Princess Anne was taken to hospital but got lucky escaping major injury. Later learnt that Princess Anne had cracked a vertebra. But her daughter, Zara Phillips, has not been so fortunate. She was also knocked unconscious after a fall in 2004 and broke her collarbone in 2008. Every year, unfortunately, people do die and have serious injuries as a result of horse riding, including paralysis. There are so many other sports that are much safer. Royals might as well be bungee jumping for all the safety procedures and that that they follow and the risks that they run. Bungee jumping in a car park above concrete with a really rubbish elastic band. To correct her spine, Princess Eugenie underwent major back surgery. In 2018, she decided to break royal protocol with her wedding dress to send a dramatic message. When Princess Eugenie got married, it was one of those moments where the royal family, the younger royals in particular, actually did a wonderful, good thing for everybody else. She decided that one of the main features of her wedding dress should be quite low back and she wouldn't wear a veil. It was a major break from tradition that meant everyone could see a long scar on her back from her childhood operation. Scoliosis is when you get a curvature and a twist to the spine. It can be severe and does need surgery and physiotherapy. In Princess Eugenie's case, she had two metal rods, one either side of her spine, put in and fixed in place with screws. She made an effort to design a dress with a big, deep V at the back to show her spinal scar so that she could show every other boy and girl in the world and in the country that if you have something like a curvature of the spine, A, it can be fixed, and B, your scars are what make you and there's no need to be perfect. And I thought it was wonderful. I was almost in tears watching that. Eugenie proudly showed her scars off to the world. But back in 1902, the royal family were busy hiding away what they saw as a medical embarrassment. He wasn't developing as fast as the children. He wasn't learning as fast. He had epileptic fits. He may have had autism. And they really started to try and hide him away. He did not go to his father's coronation and in the First World War. Very brave decision that she was going to talk about it publicly. Anorexia, bulimia. Show how an individual can turn the nourishment of the body into a painful attack on themselves. She told me that when she gave the interview to Panorama and talked about bulimia, she said she had so many letters saying, I'm so glad you talked about it so openly because, you know, we talk about all these things very, very openly now, but go back, you know, 25 years and people didn't. Unsurprisingly, Princess Diana's untimely death in 1997 had a major impact on the mental well-being of her children. I think Prince William and Prince Harry, suffering mental stress and mental anguish really came as a result of her death. Harry was 12, William was 15. All around them, people were weeping and wailing while they were maintaining the royal family mantra, you do not show private grief on a public sleeve. They were talking to people, they were shaking hands, they were smiling. They were looking at the inscriptions on the floor of tributes. They're probably burning up inside, screaming inside. What happened on the 20th anniversary of Diana's death is that William and Harry started to talk about it. All I can hear is her laugh in my head and that sort of crazy laugh of where there was just pure happiness shown on her face. They started to say how affected they'd been and how gut-wrenchingly awful it was. And how someone, you know, in his late 20s, he kind of tried to bottle it all up and suddenly he realised, I've got to get help. In 2016, the princes set up a mental health charity, Heads Together, and revealed their secret torment. Too many people stayed quiet about their mental health challenges. And we saw that this fear of even talking about a problem often meant that issues could quickly escalate out of hand. Whenever a high-profile person comes out to speak about their own mental health illnesses and problems, it does a lot for mental health because it encourages other people to do the same. In the 18th century, mental health problems weren't treated so sympathetically. George III famously suffered four bouts of madness during his reign, now thought to be mania caused by bipolar disorder. He would talk incessantly, he would hallucinate, he experienced aches and pains all over his body and he sometimes became very violent. Desperate to cure him, George's doctors detailed his treatments in daily letters to the government.