The truth about health patches: can they really treat stress, spots and lost libido?

For three weeks, I wore stickers on my skin supposed to address all sorts of conditions. Are they a panacea, problem or performance?

This morning, I woke up feeling a little groggy. My go-to remedy is usually a coffee and cold-water face plunge, followed by a compulsive phone scroll. But today called for something more, so I unpeeled a small, yellow “energy” patch the size of a walnut, popped it on to my upper arm and hoped for the best.

The patch (£12 for 30) contains – so the packaging says – vitamins B5, B3 and a “microdose” of caffeine. It is made by Kind Patches, which is one brand in an increasingly crowded market of wellness stickers that claim to treat everything from lack of sleep to period pains to pimples. They are coin-sized, and often come in TikTok-friendly shades of sunflower yellow and peachy orange: you may have seen a teenager sporting a star-shaped one on their face to treat spots, or influencers patting blue magnesium ones on their wrists before bed.

Published: January 20, 2026, 5:00 am

‘I was told I wouldn’t walk again. I proved the doctors wrong’: the bike-obsessed pensioner who broke his neck and started afresh

In 2021, Harold Price, now 82, broke a vertebra while cycling with a friend, leaving him barely able to use his legs. Then a chance recommendation changed his life

• ‘It took time to love my soft, larger shape’: the body-positive writer who recovered from an eating disorder

Before the accident, Harold Price, 82, loved being on two wheels. A retired engineer from Griffithstown in Wales, he cycled about 95 miles a week on his road bike. “Not bad for 78,” he says. On other days he’d be out on one of his restored motorbikes, as he was in June 2021, with a friend. They were riding at 10 miles an hour on a narrow road when his friend pulled out in front of him. “I had nowhere to go,” Price says. He remembers his head snapping back into his helmet before he blacked out.

Price spent months in hospital. He had broken the fifth vertebra in his neck, resulting in compression of his spinal cord. He was told he wouldn’t walk again. “That was a bit of a downer, obviously,” he says. He was determined to prove the doctors wrong. “My mind told me I could get up and walk out. But when I tried, I collapsed.”

Published: January 19, 2026, 1:00 pm

Is it true that … you lose most body heat from your head?

This 1970s notion is a bit of a myth – but it’s still a good idea to wear a hat if it’s cold out

‘Always keep your head covered. You can lose 40–45% of body heat from an unprotected head.” That’s the advice in a 1970s US Army Survival Manual, which is probably where this myth originated, says John Tregoning, a professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London.

The reality is that there is nothing special about your head. When you go out in the cold, you lose more body heat from any area you leave exposed than from those parts protected by clothing. Out in a snowsuit but no hat? You’re going to lose heat quickly from your face and head, while the suit slows down the cooling of your body.

Published: January 19, 2026, 8:00 am

‘I was bullied in school for being different. At 16, I hit a crashing point’: the awkward kid who became the world’s strongest man

As a boy, Tom Stoltman was diagnosed with autism and bullied at school. When he became depressed in his teens, his older brother, a bodybuilder, suggested a trip to the gym

• ‘I was told I wouldn’t walk again. I proved the doctors wrong’: the bike-obsessed pensioner who broke his neck and started afresh

Tom Stoltman was a skinny kid: 90kg, 6ft 8in, with glasses and sticking‑out teeth. Diagnosed with autism as a young child, he felt he didn’t fit in. “I was really shy,” he says. “I got bullied in school for being different.” Back then, the boy from Invergordon didn’t like what he saw in the mirror. He lived in baggy hoodies. “Hood up. That was my comfort.” He loved football but “I used to look at people on the pitch and think, ‘He’s tinier than me, but he’s pushing me off the ball.’”

By 16 he’d hit a “crashing point”. He went from football-obsessed to playing Xbox all day. He’d skip meals in favour of sweets. “Sometimes it was four or five, six bags.”

Published: January 19, 2026, 7:00 am

E.ON cancelled £13,000 bill it sent to my late mother, but still owes £3,360

A bereaved young customer was baffled by the wildly fluctuating balances the energy supplier claimed on a family’s account

When my mother died of cancer, my aunt adopted me. She, too, died of cancer in 2024. At 26, I am now alone and struggling to deal with enormous, nonsensical energy bills from E.ON Next.

In 2022, I discovered my aunt had been paying massively inflated bills for the flat I shared with her, so I had the account closed and a new one set up in my name. An E.ON agent took meter readings, a smart meter was installed, and a final bill sent showing the account was more than £6,000 in credit. E.ON wouldn’t let me have it in cash, so the credit was transferred to the new account and used to pay the bills for the next two years.

Published: January 19, 2026, 7:00 am

Ed Zitron on big tech, backlash, boom and bust: ‘AI has taught us that people are excited to replace human beings’

His blunt, brash scepticism has made the podcaster and writer something of a cult figure. But as concern over large language models builds, he’s no longer the outsider he once was

If some time in an entirely possible future they come to make a movie about “how the AI bubble burst”, Ed Zitron will doubtless be a main character. He’s the perfect outsider figure: the eccentric loner who saw all this coming and screamed from the sidelines that the sky was falling, but nobody would listen. Just as Christian Bale portrayed Michael Burry, the investor who predicted the 2008 financial crash, in The Big Short, you can well imagine Robert Pattinson fighting Paul Mescal, say, to portray Zitron, the animated, colourfully obnoxious but doggedly detail-oriented Brit, who’s become one of big tech’s noisiest critics.

This is not to say the AI bubble will burst, necessarily, but against a tidal wave of AI boosterism, Zitron’s blunt, brash scepticism has made him something of a cult figure. His tech newsletter, Where’s Your Ed At, now has more than 80,000 subscribers; his weekly podcast, Better Offline, is well within the Top 20 on the tech charts; he’s a regular dissenting voice in the media; and his subreddit has become a safe space for AI sceptics, including those within the tech industry itself – one user describes him as “a lighthouse in a storm of insane hypercapitalist bullshit”.

Published: January 19, 2026, 5:00 am

I tested the best US pizza makers costing $129 to $2,800. Here's what was worth the price

I spent weeks testing popular at-home pizza tools. Here’s what I found was worth the money, no matter your budget

• Far from ‘upcharged grape juice’: the 13 best nonalcoholic wines in the US

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

It’s never been easier to make pizza at home. And today’s pizza-making gear is more capable and approachable than you might think.

The price range for at-home pizza gear is as wide as the topping choices. On the simple, affordable end, there is the humble carbon-steel slab that slides into the oven you already own – it’s like a basic cheese pie.

Best budget pizza maker:
Baking Steel’s Baking Steel Original

Published: January 19, 2026, 4:00 pm

‘Disgustingly educated’: will this trend make you cleverer?

Social media is filling up with influencers telling us how to become much more intellectual. A great, enriching idea – or just another cue to show off?

Name: Disgustingly educated.

Age: About 18 months.

Published: January 19, 2026, 1:56 pm

A beginner’s guide to Arc Raiders: what it is and how you start playing

Embark Studios’ multiplayer extraction shooter game has already sold 12m copies in just three months. Will it capture you too?

Released last October Arc Raiders has swiftly become one of the most successful online shooters in the world, shifting 12m copies in barely three months and attracting as many players as established mega hits such as Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends. So what is it about this sci-fi blaster that’s captured so many people – and how can you get involved?

So what is Arc Raiders?

Published: January 19, 2026, 3:35 pm

Positive thinking could boost immune response to vaccines, say scientists

People picturing positive experiences found to produce more antibodies, hinting at future clinical potential

Positive thoughts may boost the immune system according to research that points to a connection between the mind and our body’s natural defences.

Scientists have found people who used positive thinking to boost activity in the brain’s reward system responded better to vaccination, with their immune systems producing more antibodies than others after having the shot.

Published: January 19, 2026, 4:08 pm

Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows

Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees

Scientists have been forced to rethink the intelligence of cattle after an Austrian cow named Veronika displayed an impressive – and until now undocumented – knack for tool use.

Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker from a small town in Carinthia near the Italian border, keeps Veronika as a pet and noticed that she occasionally played with sticks and used them to scratch her body.

Published: January 19, 2026, 4:00 pm

Scientists warn of ‘regime shift’ as seaweed blooms expand worldwide

Study links rapid growth of ocean macroalgae to global heating and nutrient pollution

Scientists have warned of a potential “regime shift” in the oceans, as the rapid growth of huge mats of seaweed appears to be driven by global heating and excessive enrichment of waters from farming runoff and other pollutants.

Over the past two decades, seaweed blooms have expanded by a staggering 13.4% a year in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific, with the most dramatic increases occurring after 2008, according to researchers at the University of South Florida.

Published: January 19, 2026, 10:00 am

15 years after Fukushima, Japan prepares to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant

A return to nuclear power is at the heart of Japan’s energy policy but, in the wake of the 2011 disaster, residents’ fears about tsunamis, earthquakes and evacuation plans remain

The activity around the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is reaching its peak: workers remove earth to expand the width of a main road, while lorries arrive at its heavily guarded entrance. A long perimeter fence is lined with countless coils of razor wire, and in a layby, a police patrol car monitors visitors to the beach – one of the few locations with a clear view of the reactors, framed by a snowy Mount Yoneyama.

When all seven of its reactors are working, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa generates 8.2 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power millions of households. Occupying 4.2 sq km of land in Niigata prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, it is the biggest nuclear power plant in the world.

Published: January 19, 2026, 1:46 am

Starwatch: Watch the crescent moon pass Saturn as dusk gathers

Earth’s satellite will be visible in conjunction with the ringed planet as twilight gives way to darkness

A slender crescent moon slides past Saturn this week, offering a rewarding conjunction. It will be the perfect way to start your evening, a little quiet contemplation of the night sky as the evening twilight gives way to full darkness.

The chart shows the view looking south-west from London at 18:00 GMT, although the pair will have been visible from the moment dusk begins to gather.

Published: January 19, 2026, 6:00 am

Intense geomagnetic storms could make auroras visible in southern US

Major disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field may make northern lights visible far more south than usual

The aurora could be visible across Canada and much of the northern tier of US states on Monday night, and possibly even further south, following a major disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field, a forecast shows.

The forecast, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather prediction center, comes amid intense geomagnetic and solar radiation storms, said Shawn Dahl, service coordinator at the center.

Published: January 20, 2026, 12:51 am

Nasa boldly goes as far away as possible | Brief letters

Alien lifeforms | Power of prayer | Corned beef | Remembering birthdays | Celebrity old-age home

Your article (Nasa moon rocket creeps to its launchpad in preparation for astronaut flight, 18 January) quotes the crew commander of Artemis II, Reid Wiseman: “They are so fired up that we are headed back to the moon. They just want to see humans as far away from Earth as possible.” I imagine that most of Earth’s lifeforms would agree.
Pete Stockwell
St Buryan, Cornwall

• Ravi Holy’s thought-provoking article on the power and purpose of prayer (19 January) reminded me of a favourite cartoon. Two monks are sitting on either side of a chess board and about to start a new game, with one of them saying: “Right, this time praying’s cheating.”
Matthew Newman
Leeds

Published: January 19, 2026, 5:53 pm

Did you solve it? Are you cut out for these puzzling slices?

The answers to today’s puzzles

Earlier today, I set you these three geometrical puzzles. Here they are again with solutions.

1. Bonnie Tiler

Published: January 19, 2026, 5:00 pm