The spikiness secret: can acupressure mats help with pain, stress and insomnia?

Used in healing practices for centuries, modern versions of these spiky mats are increasingly popular, and many people find them invaluable. Here’s what the science says

Ever since Keith, 39, from Kansas, was in a car accident in 2023, he has lived with “pretty much constant mid-back and shoulder pain”. Over-the-counter treatments didn’t touch the sides and he didn’t want to resort to opiates. “Having exhausted everything there was solid science for with no satisfaction, I delved into acupressure,” he says. He bought an acupressure mat made of lightly padded fabric, studded all over with tiny plastic spikes, to lay his back on, and was surprised to find that it actually helped.

Acupressure mats, also known as Shakti mats, are inspired by the beds of nails that Indian gurus used for meditation and healing more than 1,000 years ago. While today’s mats have the nonthreatening sheen of a luxury wellbeing product, the spikes are no joke. In fact, the internet serves up a plethora of images of flaming, dented backs after their use – although you’re unlikely to seriously injure yourself using them. While the mats have been widely available for more than a decade, there has been a recent surge in mainstream interest. You may have seen them heavily advertised on your social media feed, the most prominent brand being Shakti Mat, made in India and costing up to £99 for the premium model. But Amazon is full of acupressure mats and pillows – Lidl recently stocked a mat and pillow combo for a tenner. Yet there is still no compelling evidence that they relieve stress, pain and sleep problems, or help with any other unmet health needs.

Published: January 25, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘We cut through the online ocean of advice’: the rise of adult sleep coaching

As sleep hygiene becomes received wisdom, growing numbers turning to one-to-one consultants for support

Before he sought out an adult sleep coach, Thorsten had spent countless hours trawling online advice about sleep.

“I devoured advice and implemented it all,” he said. “From the moment I got out of bed, virtually everything I did was tailored towards getting a good night’s sleep the following night.”

Published: January 25, 2026, 8:00 am

‘I was probably just as lost as my callers’: my six months as a telephone psychic

I sat there in my pyjamas, headset against my ear, and knew I was not doing the right thing

I’m not psychic. During the six months I spent working as a telephone psychic, my only supernatural gift was the ability to sound fascinated by a stranger’s love life at 2.17am. Yet for hundreds of billable hours, I sat on my living room floor wearing plaid pyjamas and a telemarketing headset, charging callers by the minute for insights into their lives. Perhaps this made me a con artist, but I wasn’t a dangerous one.

When it started, I’d recently quit my job as an editor at a publishing company to write a novel while doing telemarketing shifts from my kitchen table. Instead of knocking off a bestseller, I found myself cold-calling strangers about energy bills while gripped by writer’s block and an inconvenient yearning to have a baby.

Published: January 25, 2026, 6:00 am

‘It’s such a complex little area’: how to really look after your wrists

The structure of wrists mean we have the capacity to do both handstands and neurosurgery. A lot can go wrong

• Read more summer essentials

It’s a bad time of year for wrists. Parents – and sometimes grandparents – full of enthusiasm and holiday cheer hop on their child’s new scooter or bike, keen to show said child how great the new toy is, and forget that gravity isn’t as kind to the body when we’re older. Falls happen, and wrists often take the brunt.

“It’s got its own name: ‘fall on an outstretched hand’,” says Brigette Evans, an occupational therapist at Bathurst Hand Therapy. As we fall, our instinct is to put our arms out in front of us to protect our body, face and head, and the wrist takes a lot of that force.

Published: January 24, 2026, 7:00 pm

Amsterdam prepares to ‘ban the fatbikes’ amid rise in serious accidents

Experts say souped-up e-bikes pose big risk for children aged from 12 to 15, who account for many A&E cases

On a busy lunchtime, thick-tyred electric bikes zoom through the leafy lanes of the Vondelpark in Amsterdam. But after a marked rise in accidents – particularly involving children – these vehicles the Dutch call “fatbikes” are to be banned in some parts of the Netherlands.

“It’s nonsense!” said Henk Hendrik Wolthers, 69, from the saddle of his wide-tyred, electric Mate bike. “I drive a car, I ride a motorbike, I’ve had a moped and now I ride a fatbike. This is the quickest means of transport in the city and you should be able to use it.”

Published: January 25, 2026, 4:29 pm

Meet ‘Amelia’: the AI-generated British schoolgirl who is a far-right social media star

The avatar, created to deter young people from extremism, has been subverted and is breaking out of niche online silos

In certain corners of the internet, on niche news feeds and algorithms, an AI-generated British schoolgirl has emerged as something of a phenomenon.

Her name is Amelia, a purple-haired “goth girl” who proudly carries a mini union flag and appears to have a penchant for racism.

Published: January 25, 2026, 9:00 am

Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries, study suggests

Exclusive: German research into responses to health queries raises fresh questions about summaries seen by 2bn people a month

• How the ‘confident authority’ of AI Overviews is putting public health at risk

Google’s search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.

The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are “reliable” and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic.

Published: January 24, 2026, 5:00 pm

Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal

Guardian found OpenAI’s platform cited Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers

The latest model of ChatGPT has begun to cite Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as a source on a wide range of queries, including on Iranian conglomerates and Holocaust deniers, raising concerns about misinformation on the platform.

In tests done by the Guardian, GPT-5.2 cited Grokipedia nine times in response to more than a dozen different questions. These included queries on political structures in Iran, such as salaries of the Basij paramilitary force and the ownership of the Mostazafan Foundation, and questions on the biography of Sir Richard Evans, a British historian and expert witness against Holocaust denier David Irving in his libel trial.

Published: January 24, 2026, 2:00 pm

Blurry rats and coyotes with mange: the oddly thrilling subreddit dedicated to identifying wildlife

The most popular posts on r/animalid are exotic lizards and rare birds – but it’s the haziest trail cam screenshots that feel the most dangerous, the most spectacular

• Read more in the Internet wormhole series

I spent the first decade of my life in Vancouver Island, Canada, in an area rich with parks, lakes and forests. Deer would occasionally wander into our neighbourhood and nibble on the blossoms in our front yard. In that neck of the (literal) woods, mountains and deer also mean cougars.

My sister and I would play at a local park, then walk home along a track parallel to a dense forest. My older sister, being three and a half years ahead of me in life and therefore lightyears ahead of me in wisdom, would helpfully declare that if we encountered a cougar it would attack me, not her, as I’m the smaller prey.

Published: January 25, 2026, 2:00 pm

Sam Altman’s make-or-break year: can the OpenAI CEO cash in his bet on the future?

Altman’s campaigning for his company coincides with its use of enormous present resources to serve an imagined future

Sam Altman has claimed over the years that the advancement of AI could solve climate change, cure cancer, create a benevolent superintelligence beyond human comprehension, provide a tutor for every student, take over nearly half of the tasks in the economy and create what he calls “universal extreme wealth”.

In order to bring about his utopian future, Altman is demanding enormous resources from the present. As CEO of OpenAI, the world’s most valuable privately owned company, he has in recent months announced plans for $1tn of investment into datacenters and struck multibillion-dollar deals with several chipmakers. If completed, the datacenters are expected to use more power than entire European nations. OpenAI is pushing an aggressive expansion – encroaching on industries like e-commerce, healthcare and entertainment – while increasingly integrating its products into government, universities, and the US military and making a play to turn ChatGPT into the new default homepage for millions.

Published: January 25, 2026, 1:00 pm

How the ‘confident authority’ of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk

Experts say tool can give ‘completely wrong’ medical advice which could put users at risk of serious harm

• AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site, study suggests

Do I have the flu or Covid? Why do I wake up feeling tired? What is causing the pain in my chest? For more than two decades, typing medical questions into the world’s most popular search engine has served up a list of links to websites with the answers. Google those health queries today and the response will likely be written by artificial intelligence.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, first set out the company’s plans to enmesh AI into its search engine at its annual conference in Mountain View, California, in May 2024. Starting that month, he said, US users would see a new feature, AI Overviews, which would provide information summaries above traditional search results. The change marked the biggest shake-up of Google’s core product in a quarter of a century. By July 2025, the technology had expanded to more than 200 countries in 40 languages, with 2 billion people served AI Overviews each month.

Published: January 24, 2026, 5:00 pm

The influencer World Cup: Fifa and the TikTok deal targeting an avalanche of posts

Partnership with tech giant speaks to push to engage younger fans but also has wider strategic goals in mind

In this World Cup year, Fifa has come out of the blocks quickly. In the past few weeks any number of initiatives have been announced or activated, from a data partnership with Opta to facilitate more betting, to the Fifa Pass for speeding up visa applications for the US this summer, to the unveiling of the official Lego World Cup trophy. Among the ever-expanding list is an intriguing deal with TikTok, a partnership that will give digital creators front-row seats at the 104-match tournament.

In Fifa language its partnership with the short-form video platform will make “the most inclusive event in football history … even more accessible”. According to TikTok’s global head of content, James Stafford, it will bring fans “closer to the action in ways they can’t get anywhere else”. It plans to do so by granting an unspecified number of online personalities behind-the-scenes access, giving them archive and highlights footage to use in their content and, in return, requesting an avalanche of posts that will make the World Cup inescapable for TikTok users.

Published: January 24, 2026, 8:00 am

AI needs to augment rather than replace humans or the workplace is doomed | Heather Stewart

Tech could lose its social acceptance unless it makes people’s lives better – and trade unions want an urgent conversation

“Who wouldn’t want a robot to watch over your kids?” Elon Musk asked Davos delegates last week, as he looked forward with enthusiasm to a world with “more robots than people”.

Not me, thanks: children need the human connection – the love – that gives life meaning.

Published: January 25, 2026, 11:24 am

Lajuana is 89, with the body and mind of someone decades younger. What are the secrets of the superagers?

Why do some people age better than others? Five extraordinary individuals – who scientists are studying – share their tips

Lajuana Weathers is determined to be the healthiest version of herself. She starts each day with a celery juice, is always trying to increase her step count, and meditates daily. Weathers is also 89 years old. And she has no plans to slow down. “I wake up in the morning and feel blessed that I have another chance at a day of life,” says the grandmother of six, and great‑grandmother of six more, who lives in Illinois in an independent living facility for seniors. “I look at my life as a holistic entity, and in that life is my physical, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. I have to take care of all of those. That’s what I like about the ageing process. All the clutter of raising children is out and I can concentrate on the wellness of me.”

Weathers is a superager. This isn’t a self-proclaimed label, but one backed up by science – she is part of the SuperAging Research Initiative at the University of Chicago. To qualify for the study, you have to be over 80 years old and have memory performance that’s at least as good as the average 50- to 60-year-old. There are about 400 superagers enrolled across North America.

Published: January 24, 2026, 6:00 am

Astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg named Australian of the Year for 2026

Bennell-Pegg tells ceremony in Canberra she hopes to use award to inspire young people to chase their dreams

• Cathy Freeman leads Australia Day 2026 honours list

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As a girl, Katherine Bennell-Pegg would lie on the dry grass in her backyard, gazing up at the stars and dreaming about one day reaching them.

While she’s yet to enter space, the now-41-year-old is closer than most could ever hope for.

Published: January 25, 2026, 11:21 am