I’ve been struck down with yet another cold (one of the perils of living with small children) and tonight find myself wrapped in a blanket and reaching for the comfort food: soup, lots of tea, chocolate and some iced gems from the back of the cupboard.

But is seems that a hot curry would have been a better choice.

My other half has always sworn by a hot curry and a couple of glasses of red wine to ward off the beginnings of a cold, and by all accounts it seems to work.

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How many times have you woken up late and wished you could wash your hair quickly without having the ordeal of another 20 minutes spent drying it?

Ever since my friends and I started rubbing talcum powder in our hair as a way to avoid washing it in the shower after double PE, I’ve been looking for a way to give myself the occasional break from washing and drying my hair.

I remember the epiphany when I found out about dry shampoo for the first time at the tender age of 15, but the smell and the unflattering grey residue didn’t make it onto my list of grooming staples back then.

So now that I have grown up and find myself long of hair and short of time, I am a prime candidate for a new and improved version.

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We all know it’s good for healthy bones and teeth, and in recent years it has been linked with weight loss and hailed as a great way to rehydrate after a workout, but did you know that milk has also been shown to lower blood pressure?

A recent study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that increasing your consumption of milk, milk products and other low-fat dairy products can reduce your risk of developing hypertension (high blood pressure), which is a key risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

The investigators defined low-fat dairy products as all milk products with a fat content less than 2.0 g/100 g or cheese products with a fat content less than 20 g/100 g.

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Celebrity diets – who can keep up? From the high-fashion (Beyonce’s alleged maple syrup diet anyone?) to the low carb (Atkins, The Zone) and low GI (such as the South Beach Diet), rarely does a celeb diet work purely on the old adage of ‘calories in versus calories out’.

From food-combining to metabolism-boosting, more often than not there is science behind the madness.

Not to be outdone, Weight Watchers has recently updated its range of weight-loss programmes with the new ProPoints plan. Instead of obsessing about fat and calories, ProPoints encourages us to think more about the types of food we eat and the way they are processed by the body.

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Tired? Struggling to remember things? Lacking concentration?

If you’re feeling a little lacklustre, but are otherwise healthy, you could be dehydrated. One way to tell is by looking at your urine, which should be pale yellow, or ‘straw-coloured’.

If you see something that looks more like strong tea when you pass water, you are probably dehydrated.

Another (easier!) way to check whether you are dehydrated is to pinch the skin on the back of your hand: if you are fully hydrated, it should snap back into place, but if it seems to take a long time, you probably need to drink more water.

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