Category Archives: Health & wellbeing

‘My life completely turned around’: is manifesting the key to happiness – or wishful thinking?

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The controversial concept of willing your goals into existence has leapt in popularity since Covid began. But how do you do it – and can it help you realise your dreams?

In the first months of the UK’s spring 2020 lockdown, Jennifer Doyle, a teacher and single mother, was at a low point. “I was in a bit of a hole, struggling to cope on my own and focusing only on the negatives of my life,” says the 39-year-old. “Then – during a Zoom quiz, of course – my friend said I should look into manifestation to help. I did – and my energy totally shifted. I started thinking about what I wanted from life, rather than what was wrong with it.”

Doyle was not alone. In early July 2020, Google Trends reported a peak in searches for “manifestation”, which is often described as a way of willing your goals into existence. In the past 22 months, the website Life Coach Directory has seen a 450% rise in potential clients searching for manifestation techniques. On TikTok, the hashtag #manifestation has 13.9bn views. It is part of the huge wellness market, which is worth about £1.1bn.

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The big idea: is going vegan enough to make you – and the planet – healthier?

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Simply avoiding meat and dairy isn’t going to cut it if you still turn to ultra-processed foods

Did you change what you ate or drank for January? The start of the year is an annual cue for a Pandora’s box of diet demons to be released; from meal replacements and super-keto diets to slimming teas. Alongside these trends live the regular and more ethical health-conscious messages of dry January and Veganuary, both of which have grown in popularity and have a much cleaner public image. Despite that, they are still not perfect. So this year I’d like to propose another idea that hopefully has longer staying power: call it the “real food revolution”.

The premise of Veganuary is simple: use the pivotal month of January to make a big change to your diet, your health and the planet’s health by cutting out animal products. Veganuary is a not-for-profit charitable company that provides recipes and motivational emails to help you give up meat and dairy products for just one month, with, ideally, positive effects on your waistline and your carbon footprint. Overall, they do a great job, and there is plenty of evidence to support the efficacy of reducing animal-based foods for our health and our planet’s survival. We now know that agriculture is responsible for about 25% of global heating and the single most important action we as individuals can do to help address the climate crisis is not to give up cars, but to eat less meat.

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Micromanagement, credit stealing, bullying: Are you a jerk at work?

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We’ve all been there: driven half mad by the colleague who micromanages, the boss who bullies, the co-worker asleep on the job… So how do we navigate the messy world of office politics?

Twenty years ago, the American psychologist Tessa West began arriving early to the department store at which she worked, so she could avoid the salespeople she spent most of her time with. Really, she was hoping to escape just one colleague – someone with whom she disagreed about shop-floor etiquette. (Her: don’t steal clients. The co-worker: why not?) In the early mornings, West could be sure they wouldn’t run into each other, saving her from stress and anxiety, which can lead to ill health. “It’s not that I thought anything bad was going to happen,” she recalls, via Zoom. “It was the not-knowing what would happen,” and “the increase in heart-rate” that comes with that uncertainty. Soon the situation became so preoccupying that West quit, not so much resolving the conflict as bypassing it altogether. “Did it work? Sure. But how much energy did that take up? A lot.”

West, who is now 40, is a professor of psychology at New York University, where she runs the West Interpersonal Perception Lab, a research unit that studies, broadly, how we deal with each other, and how those interactions affect our mental and physiological states. “I spent the first 10 years of my career doing basic science on how people communicate,” she says, which included “a lot of time in labs evoking horrible experiences to see what people do.” (One study involved West sitting participants in a chair and “being mean” to them, to measure their stress responses.) Before long, she noticed that a lot of what she was observing could be captured in the workplace: how individuals influence groups, how status affects persuasion and morale, how anxiety affects everyday relations. And the more she researched, the more she realised that, like her younger self, very few of us know how to resolve everyday conflict at work.

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I reclaimed my birth name – and discovered why what we call ourselves really matters

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For the first 25 years of my life everyone called me Mandy – and it felt completely wrong

My name is Camilla, so why, for the first 25 years of my life, did everyone call me Mandy? My Jamaican mother loathed the name Camilla. She said my Nigerian father chose the name, but she thought Camilla sounded too damn serious and upper-class. And she was right. Growing up in Luton in the 70s and 80s, there weren’t too many Camillas knocking about the council estates of Bedfordshire. My friends’ names were plain and simple. They were called Debbie, Tracey, Jean. They were easy on the ear. Or their names were culturally appropriate – Jyoti, Shabana, Patience. But Camilla? It might have been the name written on my birth certificate, but my mother had other ideas. She had a plan. And it was hatched in the months after my birth – a new name.

But there were caveats. Unlike Camilla, the new name had to be popular, jolly and understated, with preferably two syllables. So, she drew up a list of potentials: Donna, Paula, Charmaine, Joanne. Then bingo, she came up with the name: Mandy. Not Amanda, but Mandy. Plain. Simple. Easy on the ear, Mandy. Camilla wasn’t changed by deed poll, instead, my unofficial “new name” seeped into everyday life. Mandy seamlessly embedded itself on to the register at primary and secondary school, university and around the water cooler. The name Camilla became a relic of the past, a family joke, dragged out at Christmas like eggnog.

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Cold baths, cherry juice and sleep: the secret to staying fit in your 40s

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Despite aching backs and stiff joints, a growing number of elite athletes – from Zlatan Ibrahimović to Serena Williams – are pushing the clock back. So why can’t you? We ask the experts how to do it


Six years ago it looked as if Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s footballing career was approaching the final whistle. After Sweden’s early exit from Euro 2016, the striker announced his retirement from international competition. At 34, he was getting on a bit for an elite athlete. Cut to November 2021 and, days after firing in a spectacular free-kick for his club, AC Milan, Sweden’s record goalscorer was helping keep alive his country’s hopes of making the next World Cup. The retirement chat was over. “I am trying to prove that 40 is just a number,” he said.

Ibrahimovic had joined what feels like a growing club: the quadragenarian athlete holding back the clock. In an era of ever more punishing professional sport, these twilight stars seem to challenge notions that youth trumps all else. Members include American football superstar Tom Brady (44), the tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams (41, 40), Roger Federer (40), and Oksana Chusovitina (46), the eight-time Olympic gymnast from Uzbekistan.

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Did I just pay someone to bash me up? The horror of a rough massage | Brigid Delaney

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She pulled my hair, attacked my ear lobes and pounded me with all her might. How was this helping my back?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an author who hands in her manuscript must be in want of a good physiotherapist.

After more than two years working on a book about Stoicism, my body had calcified around my laptop. My joints were always stiff and sore, sleep was unrefreshing and one shoulder had moved inches up towards my ear, as if I were perpetually holding a telephone receiver in the crook of my neck.

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Hedonism is overrated – to make the best of life there must be pain, says this Yale professor

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The most satisfying lives are those which involve challenge, fear and struggle, says psychologist Paul Bloom

The simplest theory of human nature is hedonism– – we pursue pleasure and comfort. Suffering and pain are, by their very nature, to be avoided. The spirit of this view is nicely captured in The Epic of Gilgamesh: “Let your belly be full, enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, dance and play day and night… For such is the destiny of men.” And also by the Canadian rock band Trooper: “We’re here for a good time / Not a long time / So have a good time / The sun can’t shine every day.”

Hedonists wouldn’t deny that life is full of voluntary suffering – we wake up in the middle of the night to feed the baby, take the 8.15 into the city, undergo painful medical procedures. But for the hedonist, these unpleasant acts are seen as the costs that must be paid to obtain greater pleasures in the future. Challenging and difficult work is the ticket to survival and status; boring exercise and unpleasant diets are what you have to go through for abs of steel and a vibrant old age, and so on.

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‘It’s mind-boggling’: the hidden cost of our obsession with fish oil pills

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The market in this prized commodity is worth billions – but are the supposed benefits worth the cost to global ecosystems?

• Revealed: many common omega-3 fish oil supplements are ‘rancid’

Scanning the shelves and internet for fish oil is a dizzying task. There are dozens of brands available and, although the typical consideration for the popular supplement is that quality matters most, it is not the only factor.

These prized products travel a long way before being labelled as “pure” and “fresh” – starting with the industrial-scale grinding down of a tiny fish that is crucial for healthy ocean and food systems.

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Global heating linked to early birth and damage to babies’ health, scientists find

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Exclusive: Studies show high temperatures and air pollution during pregnancy can cause lifelong health effects

The climate crisis is damaging the health of foetuses, babies and infants across the world, six new studies have found.

Scientists discovered increased heat was linked to fast weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity in later life. Higher temperatures were also linked to premature birth, which can have lifelong health effects, and to increased hospital admissions of young children.

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Panting, moaning and ‘pussy-gazing’: the couple who podcast their ‘elevated sex’ sessions

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Lacey Haynes and Flynn Talbot want to improve the world’s love life – starting by doing it live on air in every episode

Lacey Haynes is a women’s “intuitive healer”, and guides couples in yoga-informed “elevated sex”. When she opens her front door, the first thing I notice about the Canadian podcaster is her fashionable faux fur slippers and chic blunt fringe. Where is the western wellness guru uniform of linen tunic, elephant-print trousers and culturally inappropriate head jewellery, I wonder?

Inside the living room, I spot the hot-pink sofa that Haynes’ Australian husband, Flynn Talbot, a men’s life coach and fellow elevated sex practitioner, calls “love island”. Fans of their podcast – Lacey and Flynn Have Sex – will know it as one of many locations around their house where they take the title literally, recording themselves having sex in the bedroom, on the kitchen barstool, and beyond.

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A moment that changed me: I was crippled by negative thoughts – then I bought a silver bracelet

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My self-esteem was at rock bottom, but on a break from my academic job I found myself in Paris. As I wandered through the city, an impulse buy gave me hope I could value myself again

A couple of years ago, after a bad academic year, I’d thought things would get better over the summer. They didn’t. I kept walking out of shops without buying what I’d gone in for, because it felt wrong to be taking up space and expecting attention. I couldn’t buy train tickets, even at the machine, because other people deserved to go first and, as soon as there was someone behind me, I gave up mid-transaction. I wasn’t eating much – food was for other people – but at the same time I was travelling and appearing at literary events and festivals, confident on stage as I’d been confident in the classroom all year. It seemed to me that my low estimation of myself off stage was correct and so I didn’t think to seek help any more than I’d seek help for believing that rain is wet.

One day in September (kids at school, students still on summer vacation, a time when work can be done from a train or hotel), I was in Paris, changing trains, really, but still with enough sense to know that a person arriving at night and leaving the next day might as well leave late the next day and give herself a day in Paris. I wasn’t sure it would work, knew myself perfectly capable of walking the streets hour after hour telling myself that any competent person would be enjoying museums and shops and cafes and what kind of privileged neurotic steals a day from her work and her family and then doesn’t even have the guts to buy a croissant, days off are wasted on me and I don’t deserve … I knew the city, a bit, from teenaged (mis)adventures, and I set off into the Marais, hungry from missed meals the day before and carrying a backpack too heavy with books. Sunlight through plane trees, the streets still quiet. Old stone, balconies, geraniums, city squares with those perfectly geometric arrangements of trees and municipal planting that we don’t do in England.

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I interviewed hundreds of people in search of the perfect routine. I realised there isn’t one

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In our pursuit of improvement, we’re often told consistency is key. But obsessing over productivity means ignoring how our days vary – and how we vary within them

In our culture that places productivity on a pedestal, an optimised routine has been sold as the salve to all kinds of dilemmas. Lost your job? Stick to your routine. Experiencing anxiety, depression, or grief? Find a routine. Living through a pandemic? Get a new routine.

Sometimes we do need the support of a schedule. Routines are beneficial – they appear solid, they promise order, they seem reliable. They can be comforting, providing a sense of certainty and control in a world that offers neither. For some, a routine is crucial to reduce decision fatigue and simply get through the day, but for others the constant vigilance is exhausting.

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‘I’ve been expecting things to fall apart at any moment’: Dan Smith on 10 years of body dysmorphia, burnout and Bastille

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He has found critical and commercial success, while behind the scenes the frontman has battled with his self-confidence and severe stage fright. He explains why he still loves being in the band

Dan Smith doesn’t know how to switch off. In the decade or so that he has been the creative heart, and frontman, of the band Bastille, he has thought about music constantly. There was a two-week period over Christmas and new year where he thought he had managed not to. Then he went to a double bill at the cinema.

“I got the whole way through the first film and three-quarters of the way through the second film before I had to leave, sing into my phone in the corridor awkwardly, and then come back in,” he says. “If I have a song idea that pops into my head, I have to get it down. It will eat away at me if I forget it, or it’s just on loop in my head.”

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‘Don’t plan it, just go!’: how to be spontaneous – and grab some unexpected fun

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The pandemic has left our best-laid plans in disarray, but we can still have spur-of-the-moment adventures

Back in the wild old days, my best buddy and I used to call going out “looking for trouble”. We weren’t hoping for a punch-up or a little light robbery, but a spontaneous adventure involving music, strangers or just the city at night. All that spur-of-the-moment fun has taken quite a beating since the pandemic began, for many millions of us. First came the lockdowns, social distancing and closed venues, then the cautious reopening when even a trip to the pub or an art gallery had to be booked weeks in advance. And now, just when it seemed the world was finally getting back to normal, Omicron has come wielding its everything’s-off-again sledgehammer, crushing all those dreams of nights out, holidays and raucous parties. Not only does it seem foolish to plan anything, but after two years of frustration and self-restraint, it’s hard to summon up the enthusiasm to do anything off the cuff.

And that’s quite a loss. While we often think anticipation is half the fun, in 2016 researchers from two US universities found that people enjoyed activities more when they were impromptu. Scheduling a coffee break or a movie, for instance, made them feel “less free-flowing and more work-like”, wrote the authors. As Jane Austen put it 200 years ago in Emma: “Why not seize the pleasure at once? – How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”

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How to move: with osteoporosis

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The benefits of exercise for those with osteoporosis are great, and many exercises may be safe – so long as you avoid the risk of falling

Ageing brings with it inevitable physical declines, including loss in bone density which can lead to osteoporosis. This condition affects 3.8% of Australians, although many people don’t know they have it until they have a bone fracture. Importantly, it can be prevented and managed through lifestyle factors including exercise.

“Physical activity is one of the most effective tools to counter age-related health conditions,” including osteoporosis and osteoarthritis (which impacts the joints), says accredited exercise physiologist Richelle Street.

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How to learn the trick of confidence

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Can ‘confidence-whisperer’ Nate Zinsser help Jamie Waters boost his wavering self-belief?

Dr Nate Zinsser, a top US army psychologist renowned for helping lieutenants and officers build their confidence, is giving me a talking-to. We’ve been discussing highly disciplined writers who sit at their desks at 9am each day, no matter the circumstances, and assertively punch out stories. “I definitely don’t do that,” I say, remarking that I envy their confidence to sit and deliver. An aggressive perfectionist streak combined with niggling impostor syndrome insecurities mean I need conditions to be just-so in order to have faith that I’ll produce anything decent. Zinsser blanches.

“The statement ‘I don’t do that’ is a decision you’re making about yourself,” he says, speaking over video call from his office at the US Military Academy in upstate New York; behind him there’s a whiteboard, ornamental Japanese swords and photos of athletes he’s counselled, including the Olympic-medal-winning US men’s bobsled team. “A constructive shift in your thinking would be the idea that, ‘Whether or not I got the right amount of sleep the night before or had a good breakfast, once 9 o’clock strikes, I am at my desk, lights on, ready to go – and I’m producing good stuff,’” he says. “That’s a belief about yourself that you can de-li-be-rate-ly cultivate,” he adds, stretching out each syllable in “deliberately” so there can be no question that in this matter, as in all self-confidence-related issues, change lies with me.

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Skateboarding in middle age: ‘It helps me switch off’

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It’s good for mental health, a study found, but what’s it like being an older person at the skatepark?

Skateboarding in middle age can help people feel empowered and reduce the chance of mental health issues such as depression, according to a study.

Dr Paul O’Connor, 46, who published the research and is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Exeter, said he wanted to look at the phenomenon of ageing within a subculture.

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How to move: with chronic back pain

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Exercise is critical for the millions of people who live with chronic back pain. But how can you do it safely and effectively?

Back pain is the most common form of chronic pain, with about 4 million people living with it in Australia. The most effective way to manage chronic back pain is with a multidisciplinary approach, of which exercise is a key component.

“Any single treatment in low back pain is never enough by itself,” says Associate Prof Michael Vagg, a pain medicine physician and dean of the faculty of pain medicine at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. “But exercise is a fundamental part of recovering from low back pain and managing it if it becomes persistent.”

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We often fail to keep resolutions – but writing in a notebook brings great rewards

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Scribbling down our thoughts is a great way to make sense of things – and very satisfying

In 1989, when I was 16, I moved into a pub with my parents and my younger brother, Matty. It was highly exciting. I took to barwork as I liked the chat, and also enjoyed the opportunities offered for eavesdropping. I was curious about the adult world and up until then had learned most of what I knew from books. Now I had all these real lives to study. I should write some of this down, I thought, and would scribble into my diary before bed.

We couldn’t believe how busy it was that first Christmas, culminating on New Year’s Eve, when everyone piled out into the main street at midnight and exchanged drunken embraces and warm wishes for 1990. After the pub had emptied and the mammoth job of clearing up was done, we gathered with our staff for a few drinks and the chat turned to resolutions. All the women wanted to lose weight. A couple of people wanted to stop smoking. I announced very firmly that I wanted to write a novel.

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Covid clinics: hope and high prices on the long road to recovery

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Yoga, mud baths and liver compresses… Welcome to the world of luxury wellness and long Covid. Amelia Tait reports on the extreme wealth divide in the search for a cure

Underneath the shadow of the snow-topped Austrian Alps, in front of a forest of thick green trees and behind a pure azure lake, sits a sprawling chalet that has seen everyone from Kate Moss to Michael Gove pass through its wide glass doors. The VivaMayr health resort in Altaussee, Austria, has long been the picturesque home of celebrity detoxes – strict bans on caffeine and alcohol, combined with stricter rules about the number of times you need to chew your food (40, naturally) have helped numerous celebrity clientele lose weight. The detoxing might sound harsh, but tranquillity oozes through the resort’s Instagram page, where enchanting mists tickle thick evergreen trees and women pose with mugs in sleek, pine interiors. It’s not the image that comes to mind when you think “long-Covid clinic”, but it is one. For £2,700 a week (excluding accommodation), sufferers can attend VivaMayr’s post-Covid medical programme, which promises a “better quality of life”.

There is currently no cure for long Covid – the condition in which individuals continue to suffer Covid-19 symptoms for months after first being infected – but there are plenty of treatments. There is an entire network of specialist NHS long-Covid clinics across the United Kingdom – here, patients can undergo rehabilitative programmes to help them improve their stamina, breathing and cognitive functions (for many, long Covid is characterised by fatigue, breathlessness, and concentration problems). Yet in September, the Office for National Statistics estimated that 1.1 million people in the UK currently suffer with long Covid, while between July and August, only 5,737 people were referred to specialist NHS clinics. With the Omicron variant threatening more lives, there’s a gap in the market for long-Covid care, and plenty of private practitioners are happy to fill it – for a price.

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