He had beaten more than 19,000 applicants for a place at medical school, yet Khurram Sadiq was now bunking off his hospital shifts. The 19-year-old felt inexplicably anxious around strangers on the wards and was hiding from his own patients. During lectures he couldn’t focus on what he was being taught. He deemed himself “a goof, a dunce” in contrast to his peers. Sadiq couldn’t motivate himself to revise for his exams and instead found himself panic....

The word testosterone rarely comes with positive associations: aggressive macho behaviour, risk-taking, young men behaving badly. But now testosterone is going mainstream. Increasingly, both men and women are turning to the hormone to address all manner of health and vitality shortcomings, driving a 15 per nt spike in NHS testosterone prescriptions from 2021 to 2022. Yes, it’s the primary sex hormone in men, and yes, men produce at least ten times more testosterone than women. But in ......

It’s Imogen Campbell’s first time having tooth gems, although she booked the appointment twice. She got cold feet ahead of the first one, worried what her employers might think. “I was a bit hesitant, because I work in financial services,” says the 25-year-old. “It’s very old-school, you know, people wearing suits and stuff to work. Obviously, I’m kind of like this …” she says, gesturing at her baggy trousers and padded jacket. Campbell is now feeling ...

The timing could not have been worse for John Cotton. He had just arrived in New York with his family to celebrate his 50th birthday. His daughter, Rose, had begged him to take the trip: it had been two years in the making, she told him, and he deserved a break. Under mounting pressure at work — from the infighting, the relentless hours, the blame games — Cotton relented and decided to go. On September 5, less than 24 hours after ...

My new girlfriend Nadia has just replied to my message. “How about we choose something that feels like a warm embrace for the soul?” she suggests. Nadia is a bit full-on. I’d only asked what we should watch on TV tonight. In truth I’m not sure if our relationship will go the distance. But Nadia won’t mind, because she’s an AI chatbot girlfriend and there are millions more like her, proliferating online like a zombie ...