Designers have come up with a running shoe for women which adapts shape to suit their hormone levels.

The trainers – available in white, gold and black – capitalise on research showing that changes in levels of oestrogen affect flexibility and the height of the foot’s arch.

When oestrogen is high, and a woman is at her most fertile, the arch drops. Later in the month, when she is menstruating, levels of the hormone are low but her arch is raised.

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Designed to flush the digestive system and fight stress, a yoga program left me energized, but not cleansed.

I should have been imagining a babbling brook or repeating my dedication to endangered leatherback turtles. Instead, as I struggled to twist my body into a position more complicated than a reef knot, all I could think about was how my internal organs were going to thank me for all the love I was giving them.

Because nothing says New Year like a detox, I spent four days last week wringing out my insides, purifying my breath and finding new energy during a “detox flow” yoga class at 889 Yonge, a yoga and wellness centre in Toronto.

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Madonna and controversy have never been parted long. Once it was her body of work that sparked both criticism and praise. In these less shockable, but no less critical days, it’s her body itself that draws comment.

Last year, the 52-year-old completed a year-long world tour. She played 85 shows in 32 countries, performing with the energy of a woman two decades her junior. Her fans watched with awe; her critics with grudging envy.

And each night in the wings, one petite blonde enjoyed the show, basking in the knowledge that she was the woman who built Madonna. Or, more accurately, the woman who rebuilt her.

Tracy Anderson is the most successful celebrity trainer around. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Hudson and Shakira are just some of her many devoted clients. But it is not a job description with which Tracy is entirely comfortable.

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Despite worries about the damaging effects of the digital age on brain development, surfing the internet can, in fact, increase IQ and boost memory in adults, scientists have found.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles compared the brains of middle-aged participants who rarely used the internet to experienced internet users, as they conducted web searches for an hour each day.

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Old age is a time most of us associate with increasing decrepitude and immobility. So when we challenged Stephanie Clarkson, 38, to compete against a septuagenarian in a workout, the results should have been a foregone conclusion…

As I arrive at a smart house in Hampstead, I’m feeling more curious than nervous. I’m here to work-out with Lee Janogly, a 70-year-old fitness and diet expert to see who is the fitter.

I’m overweight, but I ran the London Marathon six years ago, still run twice a week and, at 38, am 32 years her junior. I’m feeling pretty confident…

The door opens to reveal a woman with a body to rival Kylie Minogue. Were she several decades younger, one might describe her as ‘a pocket rocket’, but such a moniker seems inappropriate for a woman who’s just welcomed her seventh grandchild into the world.

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Broadcaster and writer Stephen Fry has said he is “switching off his connections with the outside world” to concentrate on his autobiography.

The QI host, who is one of the most popular celebrities on Twitter, said he had to deliver the second volume of his life story to publishers by April.

“Some people can write with ease in whatever circumstances they find themselves,” he wrote on his website.

“I need peace, absolute peace, an empty diary and zero distraction.”

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A father is claiming a Christmas miracle after his wife and newborn baby apparently came back from the dead.

Mike Hermanstorfer told how his wife Tracy went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing just after being wheeled into a hospital delivery room on Christmas Eve.

Doctors performed an emergency caesarean section to try to save the baby’s life but then had to give Mr Hermanstorfer the heartbreaking news that his son had not survived either.

But as the sobbing father held his tiny son in his hands, he felt the boy slowly begin to move.

And at the same time Mrs Hermanstorfer, 33, began to breathe again.

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David Tennant’s final outing as Doctor Who was watched by 10.4m viewers on New Year’s Day, according to early overnight figures.

At the climax of the episode, a total of 10.8m tuned in to see the Time Lord regenerate into his 11th incarnation, 27-year-old actor Matt Smith.

Tennant’s final words on the show were, “I don’t want to go”.

Smith, meanwhile, uttered the immortal line, “legs! I’ve got legs!” as he made his screen debut as The Doctor.

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Avatar has become the fastest movie ever to achieve $1bn (£625.6m) in ticket sales around the world.

Distributors 20th Century Fox say it has earned more than $350m (£217m) in the US and more than $670m (415m) in the rest of the world in only 17 days.

The 3D science fiction blockbuster was directed by James Cameron, who also made Titanic, the best selling movie of all time.

The latest figures make Avatar already the fourth-biggest film ever made.

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The husband of US actress Brittany Murphy has told a US TV show his wife was suffering from laryngitis in the days before she died.

An autopsy has been carried out but the cause of death will not be known until the results of toxicology and tissue tests come out in four to six weeks.

“My world was destroyed yesterday,” Simon Monjack told Access Hollywood. He also said Murphy had “been tired”.

Murphy collapsed at home in Los Angeles and died in hospital on Sunday.

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