The perfect way to beat the slump: how to tackle mid-afternoon energy dips

In the dead of winter, it can be hard to keep your alertness up when it gets darker. Here are a few good habits that will help you stay productive

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It is an all-too-familiar scenario: you reheat a bowl of last night’s noodles for lunch, devour it, then return to your desk and gradually droop over the course of the afternoon, to the point at which you are battling to keep your eyes open. Or perhaps you struggle with energy on waking up; or, after a busy start and strong coffee first thing, you begin to fade mid-morning. Or, like me, after dinner in the winter months, you are completely lethargic.

How common are such peaks and troughs in our energy levels? “If you’re having an active day, then you will naturally get tired because we are human, we’re not machines,” says Dr Linia Patel, a dietitian and nutritionist. “Getting tired at the end of the day, before you go to bed, is perfect. But getting tired at your desk is not great.” Chronic tiredness is something to see a doctor about, says Patel, as it could be a symptom of illness.

Published: January 1, 2026, 4:00 pm

The perfect day for parents: how to keep kids healthy and happy – without neglecting yourself

Having a routine but not overplanning, getting them involved with chores and making sure you have time just for you can all help you stop being overwhelmed

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My four-year-old is in the living room playing with a dinosaur, a pig and Jessie the cowgirl from Toy Story. I’m trying to cook dinner. “Mama, mama, pllleeease can you play with me?” I hear a pot lid rattle. The broccoli is starting to smell burned; I dash back to the kitchen. “Help! Quickly come! I’m falling!” I rush through. She’s dangling from the sofa pretending to fall off the side of a volcano. “HEEELP!” The broccoli is definitely burning. And there goes the door. “Muuuuuum, I need a poo!”

This wild ride of five minutes is one most parents will recognise. Getting through the day is to feel like you’re being pulled in a solar system’s worth of directions, and by turns defeated, happier than you’ve ever felt before, like a husk, in control and like you’re careening off a cliff. It throws up a need to get very good at planning, and prioritising what demands to acquiesce to, when to say no; when to sit down and play, when to say: “Sorry, I need to sit down, or go for a run.”

Published: January 1, 2026, 11:00 am

You be the judge: should my boyfriend change the way he showers?

Audrey thinks Noah doesn’t take bathing seriously enough. He says he’s a ‘quick-shower kind of guy’ but keeps himself clean. You decide whose argument scrubs up best
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Noah doesn’t wash himself thoroughly enough – he just rubs a bit of gel around his body

I smell nice and I’m not unclean, so why does showering have to be like a full military operation?

Published: January 1, 2026, 8:00 am

The first of my friends is having a baby and it makes me feel pressured. How do I reframe this?

Big life questions tend to squeeze us at this time of year, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but a baby is a person not a symbol

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I’m turning 29 soon and the first of my friends is having a baby in the new year. This news has prompted a lot of self reflection. I’m pretty ambivalent about having a child myself but also feel like it’s the next milestone. I feel a great deal of pressure to decide whether or not to have a child – but this is largely self-inflicted. Unlike others I don’t have family asking this question.

I know I have a few years to decide on this (and might not be lucky enough to be able to have a child in the event), so how can I reframe my thinking and be straightforwardly happy for my friend without feeling the pressure to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life?

Published: January 2, 2026, 12:31 am

‘They sowed chaos to no avail’: the lasting legacy of Elon Musk’s Doge

The billionaire – who had no government experience – left various federal agencies in disarray while overseeing an ‘efficiency’ drive across Washington

As Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, splurged more than $250m on Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, the US president commissioned his new ally to oversee a sweeping “efficiency” drive across the federal government.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss, who had no experience inside government, was tasked with eradicating waste and cutting spending as part of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – and was quick to stoke expectations.

Published: January 1, 2026, 2:00 pm

Apple reportedly cuts production of Vision Pro headset after poor sales

Company had hoped the virtual reality device would herald a new era in ‘spatial computing’

Poor sales have reportedly forced Apple to cut production of the Vision Pro headset that it had hoped would herald a new era in “spatial computing”.

The tech company also reduced marketing for Vision Pro by more than 95% last year, according to the market intelligence group Sensor Tower in figures first reported by the Financial Times.

Published: January 1, 2026, 3:07 pm

‘I need to help’: Barnsley woman’s rabies death inspires dog-vaccinating mission

Robyn Thomson immunised thousands of animals in Cambodia after shocking death of her mother this summer

It was just a scratch. Among all the feelings and thoughts that she has had to wrestle with since the summer, disbelief is the emotion that Robyn Thomson still struggles with the most. “You never think it would happen to you,” said Robyn. “You don’t really think it happens to anyone.”

Robyn’s mother, Yvonne Ford, had shown no signs of illness in the months after returning from her holiday in Morocco in February. She had spoken highly of the country and its people, and recommended it for future getaways. She had not realised that a seemingly harmless interaction with a puppy while sitting in the sun would cause so much damage.

Published: January 2, 2026, 8:00 am

Winter blooming of hundreds of plants in UK ‘visible signal’ of climate breakdown

New year plant hunt shows rising temperatures are shifting natural cycles of wildflowers such as daisies

Daisies and dandelions are among hundreds of native plant species blooming in the UK, in what scientists have called a “visible signal” of climate breakdown disrupting the natural world.

A Met Office analysis of data from the annual new year’s plant hunt over the past nine years found an extra 2.5 species in bloom during the new year period for every 1C rise in temperature at a given location during the previous November and December. This year’s hunt started on Thursday and runs until Sunday.

Published: January 2, 2026, 5:00 am

Call for routine high blood pressure testing of UK children as cases almost double

Exclusive: Identifying teenagers at risk could help prevent organ damage, strokes and heart attacks in early adulthood, doctors say

Leading doctors have called for a national UK programme to monitor schoolchildren for high blood pressure amid concerns that rising rates in adolescents will increase cases of organ damage, strokes and heart attacks.

Rates of high blood pressure have nearly doubled among children in the past 20 years, but no routine testing is performed in the UK, leaving doctors in the dark about the extent of the problem and which children need most help.

Published: January 1, 2026, 3:00 pm

The Guardian view on mRNA vaccines: they are the future – with or without Donald Trump | Editorial

Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we examine how the White House’s war on vaccines has left the future of a key technology uncertain and up for grabs

The late scientist and thinker Donald Braben argued that 20th-century breakthroughs arose from scientists being free to pursue bold ideas without pressure for quick results or rigid peer review. The rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines seemed to validate his claim: emergency conditions sped up trials, relaxed regulatory sequencing and encouraged scientists to share findings before peer review. Out of that sprang one of the great scientific success stories of our age: mRNA vaccines. These use synthetic genetic code to train the immune system to defend itself against viruses. Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, whose work enabled the mRNA Covid vaccine, went on to win the Nobel prize. Their breakthrough suggests that loosening traditional constraints could accelerate major scientific advances.

The extensive scientific and logistic infrastructure built during that period is now occupied with turning the technology towards other diseases: flu, HIV and even cancer. Until very recently, the US, which put more than $10bn into mRNA development, appeared primed to reap the scientific and commercial rewards. Despite the deregulatory zeal that birthed mRNA, the second Trump administration has rejected it. Instead, it has been remarkably steady in its commitment to the radical anti-science and anti-vaccine agenda of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr. He has spent the past year undermining and outright sabotaging the US’s own success. Over the summer, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced a “coordinated wind-down” of federal funding for mRNA research, cancelling an additional $500m in funding for 22 projects.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Published: January 1, 2026, 5:30 pm

The reason for Italy’s ‘demographic winter’ | Letters

Peter Foreshaw Brookes says worry about falling sperm counts is misplaced

The Italian “demographic winter” has a number of causes, but rising male biological infertility is not one (A child is born: Italians celebrate village’s first baby in 30 years, 26 December).

A lot of worry about falling sperm counts has been generated by some studies, but a more recent meta‑analysis found, through inclusion of regional controls, an increase in US sperm counts between 1970 and 2018. Sperm counts may be falling in places like the Chinese province of Henan, which has substantial air and water pollution, but there is limited evidence that sperm counts are falling in the developed world.

Published: January 1, 2026, 5:07 pm