Recipe · 4 minute read

These are the pancakes for the brown bananas sitting on your bench. Everything goes in the blender, the batter’s ready in under ten minutes, and a scoop of protein powder turns a treat into a breakfast that should keep you going until morning tea.

You don’t need flour, a bowl or a recipe you have to read twice. The riper the bananas the better, because they bring all the sweetness, so the ones you were about to give up on are perfect. They come out soft in the middle and golden at the edges, a bit like banana bread. Kids tend to eat these without noticing there’s anything good for them inside.

Why it’s good for you

Toast and a coffee might get you to 9 o’clock, but they don’t give you much protein. If you’re training, about 20 to 40 g at a meal is a good target.

A 30 g scoop of plain whey concentrate has about 24 g of protein (check your tub, because flavours vary), so the two of you start on about 12 g each. Add the eggs and oats, spoon over some Greek yoghurt, and a plate of these gets you into that range. The oats and banana bring fibre as well.

If you’ve got a strength class on, these are a good thing to eat afterwards, or a couple of hours before if you like something in your stomach.

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 2 very ripe bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 scoop (30 g) vanilla or natural whey protein powder
• 1/4 cup milk of your choice
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• A pinch of salt
• A little butter or olive oil, for the pan
• Greek yoghurt, berries and a drizzle of maple syrup, to serve

Method

1. 1Blitz the batterPut everything except the butter and toppings in a blender and blitz until smooth. Leave it to sit for 5 minutes so the oats soak up the liquid. It should be thick but still pourable, so add a splash more milk if it isn’t.
2. 2Heat the panMelt a little butter in a non-stick frying pan over medium-low heat. Keep the heat lower than you would for ordinary pancakes, because protein powder and banana both brown fast.
3. 3Cook small roundsPour in about 2 tablespoons of batter per pancake and leave room between them. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until bubbles appear and the edges look set, then flip gently and give them another minute or so.
4. 4Stack and serveKeep the first batch warm on a plate under a tea towel while you cook the rest. Pile them up with yoghurt, berries and a little maple syrup.

Make it your own

• No protein powder: swap the scoop for another 1/4 cup of oats, and serve with extra yoghurt.
• Dairy-free: use a plant protein powder and plant milk, fry in olive oil, and swap the yoghurt for a plant-based one. Plant powders drink up more liquid, so add an extra splash of milk.
• Extras: stir blueberries or a spoonful of peanut butter through the batter after blending.
• Chocolate: use chocolate protein powder and scatter a few raspberries on top.

Book a class

Make it ahead

Cooked pancakes keep in the fridge for 2 to 3 days, or freeze them flat with baking paper between the layers. They go straight from the freezer into the toaster, which makes a busy Tuesday morning a lot easier.

The takeaway

Next time your bananas go brown, get the blender out. Freeze a few and you’ve got another morning sorted too.

Physio · 7 minute read

Somewhere around the third week of putting your jacket on one-armed, it occurs to you this might not be going away. Reaching for the seatbelt went first, and now the top shelf has become somebody else’s job. If your shoulder has slowly stopped doing what it’s told, it may be a frozen shoulder, and there’s more you can do about it than wait.

Frozen shoulder is an odd one because there’s usually no injury to blame. It just crept up on you, and the pain at night has become the worst of it.

It affects around 2% to 5% of people, peaks in the mid-50s and is rare before 35.

What’s happening inside your shoulder

Your shoulder joint sits inside a bag of tough tissue called the capsule. In a frozen shoulder the capsule becomes inflamed and thickened, and scar-like tissue forms, so it tightens around the joint and there’s less room to move. Think of a roomy jumper shrinking in the wash with your arm still inside it.

Diabetes is a well-known link: people with diabetes are about five times more likely to get it, and roughly 13% of them do. Ask your GP whether your blood sugar or thyroid needs checking.

Is it menopause?

You may have seen this one online, and it’s a fair question, since frozen shoulder peaks at the same time of life. We don’t know yet.

The big Taiwanese study doing the rounds was about calcific tendinitis, a different problem where calcium builds up in a tendon. A US pilot study of hormone therapy and frozen shoulder didn’t show a clear difference, and a small trial is under way in California. So if someone online says hormones will fix your shoulder, they’re ahead of the science.

How to tell it from other shoulder problems

The classic difference is what happens when somebody else moves your arm for you.

With a rotator cuff problem (the tendons around your shoulder), it’s usually painful or weak when you lift your arm, but a physio can often move it further for you. With a frozen shoulder, the joint itself has run out of room, so your arm stops at the same point when you move it and when someone else does.

You can get a rough idea at home. Tuck your elbows into your sides, bend them to 90 degrees and swing both forearms outwards, like opening a pair of saloon doors. If one side stops well short of the other, that’s a clue, so get someone to look at it.

Book a physio appointment

How it tends to go

You’ll hear about three stages: freezing, when pain builds and movement starts to go; frozen, when it’s stiff but often less sore; and thawing, when movement slowly returns. They overlap, the timing varies a lot, and without treatment it may take one to three years.

You might have been told it fixes itself, and that’s only half true. Left alone, you’ll usually get some movement back, mostly early on, but maybe not all of it (the research here isn’t great). In one long-term study, about 4 in 10 people still had some symptoms years later, nearly all of them mild.

What helps

A steroid injection, early on. If your shoulder has been sore for less than a year, an injection into the joint has given the best short-term results across 65 studies, and the benefit may last up to about six months. You’d do it alongside exercises at home. Talk it through with your GP or physio, particularly if you have diabetes, as steroids can affect blood sugar.

Exercise that matches where you’re at. When your shoulder is sore and cranky, you want gentle movement that doesn’t stir it up. In one small study of 77 people, those who did gentle exercises and let pain be their guide did better than those who pushed through intensive stretching.

Surgery is rarely the first step. A big UK trial of 503 people compared physio plus a steroid injection with two kinds of surgery. A year on, none had come out clearly ahead, and the keyhole surgery carried more risk.

How a physio can help, and when to book

First, a physio can check it really is a frozen shoulder, because other shoulder problems need different things. They’ll work out what stage you’re at and match your exercises to it: gentle while it’s sore, then building movement and strength as it settles. They’ll also show you easier ways to sleep and get dressed, and tell you if it’s worth asking your GP about an injection.

Sooner is better. Book in if your shoulder hasn’t settled after a couple of weeks, if it’s waking you at night, or if you’ve noticed you can’t reach as far as you could.

Getting through the day

Keep it moving, gently. Keeping it completely still can make the pain worse, so do a bit, several times a day.

Try two simple movements. Lean over a table and let your arm swing gently like a pendulum, or walk your fingers up a wall as far as is comfortable.

Use heat. A heat pack for up to 20 minutes can settle things before bed.

Support your arm at night. A pillow under your arm can take the strain off, whether you sleep on your back or your good side.

Change the small stuff. Do your bra up at the front and slide it around, put the sore arm into your sleeve first, and move the mugs to a lower shelf for now.

The takeaway

If your shoulder hurts and keeps losing movement, get it checked sooner rather than later. There’s plenty you can do in the meantime, starting with where you keep the mugs.

Mind · 7 minute read

All you wanted was the weather. Twenty minutes later you know a lot about a stranger’s kitchen renovation and still have no idea if you need a jacket. So a group of researchers took the internet off people’s phones for two weeks to see what would happen.

You can’t just chuck this thing in a drawer. The school app lives on it, so do the bank, the group chat and the photos of your kids. In Australia, 92% of adults use the internet on their phone every day, and we average nearly three hours a day online that way. You probably don’t need telling. You’ve seen your own screen time report and quickly closed it.

Plenty of research links heavy phone use with feeling worse, but nobody could tell which came first. Maybe the phone makes you miserable, or maybe miserable people scroll. The only way to find out is to take the phone away and see what happens.

What the experiment involved

The researchers randomly split 467 adults into two groups, then asked them to install an app on their iPhones that blocked all internet on the phone, wifi included. Calls and texts still worked, and laptops were fine. For two weeks they had, more or less, a phone from 2005 with a nicer camera.

One group did it straight away. The other carried on as usual for two weeks and then took their turn, which gave the researchers something to compare against. Everyone did surveys along the way, and an attention test where you have to keep pressing a button for five minutes without drifting off.

What changed

Among the people in the blocked group who sent in their screen time, it dropped from 314 minutes a day to 161. That’s about two and a half hours handed back to you, every single day. Once the block ended it crept back up to 265.

Over the fortnight, 75% of the blocked group felt better about their lives. So did 47% of the people who changed nothing, because some of that is just life. The gap between them is the real result.

Attention improved too, though not clearly more than in the group who hadn’t started. People reckoned they slept about 17 minutes longer a night, and most of us would take that. When the internet came back they slipped a bit, but still felt better than when they’d started.

What people did with the time

People drifted towards the good stuff. They saw friends in person, exercised, got outside, picked up hobbies and read books, and that seems to be part of why they felt better.

So maybe the phone’s biggest crime is what it pushes out. An evening on the couch with your thumb moving isn’t terrible in itself. You’ve just missed the walk, the phone call to your sister and the early night you could have had instead.

Most people couldn’t stick to it

Only about a quarter of people kept the block going for at least 10 of the 14 days. Plenty never got it set up at all, which will sound familiar to anyone who’s ever downloaded a meditation app. The results still count the ones who gave up, as long as they finished the surveys, and the people who kept going did a little better again.

There are a few more reasons not to get carried away. These were volunteers, mostly keen to cut back, with an average age of 32. They knew what was being tested, so hoping to feel better could explain part of it. We also don’t know what it’d look like for a mum of three who needs the school app at 3 o’clock.

It also seems to matter how you do it. Taking a week or so off social media made no difference to people’s mood on average across 10 studies, so blocking the whole phone may work differently from a short break from your feed.

How to try a smaller version

The researchers think a gentler version might be enough, so pick one of these for a fortnight and see how you feel.

Get your notifications in batches. Three batches a day improved attention and mood in a two-week trial of 237 people, and iPhones have a Scheduled Summary setting that does it for you. Let calls and messages from the people you care about through, though. The group who turned everything off felt more anxious, and you’ll want to know if your mum rings.

Make the first few seconds harder. Move your most-opened apps off the home screen, or log out after you’ve used them. In one study of 280 users, an app that paused them for 10 seconds and offered a way out before opening apps they’d chosen cut openings by 57%. There was no comparison group and one of the authors made the app, so take that number lightly, but a small pause is an easy thing to try.

Put it down before bed. Thirty minutes without your phone before lights out helped students with poor sleep drop off about 12 minutes faster in one small study. A cheap alarm clock solves the problem if waking you up is the phone’s only excuse for being in the bedroom.

Have something else to reach for. Since part of the benefit seems to come from what fills the gap, set that up first. Leave a book on the couch, keep your walking shoes by the door, or make a standing plan with a friend. An empty hour gets filled with the phone.

The takeaway

More people felt better when they blocked mobile internet for two weeks than when they changed nothing, and what they did instead seems to be part of why. You don’t have to go that far. Pick one small rule for a fortnight, and put something you like in the space it opens up.

Physio · 8 minute read

You bent down for the washing basket and something in your lower back grabbed. Now you’re stuck halfway, breathing through your teeth and working out how you’ll ever reach the couch. It feels catastrophic, and it almost never is.

Your back rarely goes during something impressive. You’d at least have a story if it happened on a ski slope. It goes while you’re picking up a sock, lifting a toddler out of the car seat or reaching for the dog’s bowl, and then you lie on the floor wondering how a sock did this to you.

You’ve got company on that floor. About 8 in 10 Australian adults have had low back pain at some point. The first thing most people want to know is whether they’ve done something terrible. Usually they haven’t.

Why it hurts so much

The muscles around your back can spasm, which is why you can feel locked in place, and the pain can feel far bigger than the problem. It’s real pain, and it’s also a poor guide to how much damage there is, because a sharp flare during a movement doesn’t mean you’ve hurt anything new.

Of 1,172 people in Sydney who saw a health professional for new back pain, just 0.9% had something serious.

Your back is more likely to go when you’re tired, distracted, in an awkward position or holding something heavy, and mornings are the worst. That comes from a study of 999 people in Sydney. So if you were rushing the school bags out the door on four hours’ sleep, your back may have had a point.

What to do in the first 48 hours

1. 1Get comfortable firstSome people find it easier lying on their side with a pillow between the knees, or on their back with pillows under the knees.
2. 2Then get up, little and oftenWalk to the kitchen and back, then do it again a bit later. You don’t need to wait for all the pain to go before you move, and staying active is the best way to recover.
3. 3Try some heatA heat pack or wheat bag can take the edge off for a while. Wrap it in a towel so you don’t burn your skin.
4. 4Keep your day as normal as you canGo to work if you’re able to and do the school run. It’s fine to swap out the things that hurt most for a few days, like heavy lifting.
5. 5Ask your pharmacist about pain reliefThe point of medicine here is to turn the pain down enough to keep moving. Paracetamol on its own did no better than a dummy tablet for new back pain in a big Australian trial of 1,652 people. Anti-inflammatories help only a little. Opioids aren’t usually recommended. A pharmacist or GP can tell you what’s safe for you.
6. 6See a physio early if you canYou don’t have to wait it out. A physio can check for warning signs, explain what’s going on and show you which movements to start with, which makes the first few days a lot less frightening.

Book a physio appointment

Do you need a scan?

Most people don’t. Without warning signs, a scan done early doesn’t help people get better any sooner.

When researchers pooled the scans of 3,110 people with no back pain at all, 30% of 20-year-olds had a disc bulge, and by 80 it was 84%. Think of them as grey hairs on the inside. A physio or GP can examine you and work out whether you need a scan.

Why you can stop being scared of bending

Lots of us grew up being told to lift with a straight back, and after one bad episode it’s easy to start moving like you’re made of glass. There isn’t much behind that rule. People with and without back pain bend much the same way when they lift, at least in 9 of 11 studies. They weren’t great studies, so we can’t be certain, but a rounded back at the washing basket looks a lot less dangerous than we were taught. The exception is osteoporosis or a past spinal fracture, where loaded forward bending isn’t recommended, so ask your physio what suits you.

How to make it less likely to come back

Once the pain goes, life rushes back in and you forget about your back until it goes again. In one study, 69% of people had it happen again within a year, and for 40% it was bad enough to limit what they could do.

Keep moving after it stops hurting. Exercise has the best record of anything at keeping back pain away.

Walk. Of 701 Australians who’d just recovered, most of them women with an average age of 54, those on a physio-guided walking and education program typically went 208 days before back pain next got in the way of their day, against 112 days without it.

Build some strength. Doing some strength work two or three times a week, with a bit of stretching or cardio mixed in, seems to mean fewer flare-ups.

Get a plan from a physio. Once the pain has settled, a physio can look at how you move, work out what might be setting it off and build you a program that fits your week.

The takeaway

Give yourself a few minutes on the floor, then get moving a little at a time, even if it’s only as far as the kettle. Your back is almost certainly less damaged than it feels, and gentle movement is what helps most.

Health · 8 minute read

You bought the SPF 50, you put it on the kids, and then you read that some bottles had tested at less than half the number on the label. So do you trust what’s in the bathroom cupboard? Keep using it, and put on a lot more of it.

Sunscreen is about the most Australian thing we own. We grew up with zinc stripes and the Slip Slop Slap seagull. So finding out that a bottle promising SPF 50 might not deliver felt a bit like learning the school crossing lady had been making up the road rules.

What’s been going on with sunscreen testing

In 2025, CHOICE sent 20 sunscreens to a lab and reported that 16 failed their SPF claims. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which regulates sunscreen, counted 18. One tested at SPF 4, which is basically moisturiser, and it was recalled along with a string of products made on the same base formula. By June 2026 the TGA was still investigating the other 15 CHOICE had flagged, which isn’t much comfort in the chemist aisle.

Then in the same week of late October 2026, the TGA announced tighter rules and Consumer NZ released its own test, where 7 of 10 sunscreens missed their label. Six of those seven still came in at SPF 30 or above, and one claiming SPF 50 tested at SPF 14. The cheapest sunscreen in that test met its claims, so the budget bottle isn’t automatically the weak one.

The plan is for accredited labs, repeat tests on finished products and results sent to the TGA. Some of that may need new laws, so you won’t see it on the shelf yet. For now, makers don’t have to show the TGA their SPF results unless they’re asked.

What the number on the bottle means

An SPF test typically uses 10 to 20 volunteers and reports their average, and someone judges the redness on their skin by eye, so results can move around from lab to lab. One bad result doesn’t mean the bottle in your cupboard has stopped protecting you.

The scale also flattens out near the top. SPF 30 filters about 97% of UVB, the rays that burn you, and SPF 50 about 98%. So a sunscreen labelled 50 that tests at 35 is a fair thing to be cross about, but it’s still doing a good job. The bottles to worry about are the ones that land far lower, like that SPF 4.

The TGA says to choose SPF 30 or higher, and Cancer Council recommends SPF 50 or 50+. We’d go with the higher number. It gives you room for a label that’s a bit generous, and for the fact that you’re probably not putting on enough.

You’re probably not using enough

The lab puts on a thick, even coat, much thicker than anyone does at the beach. When a Queensland study measured real people, they used less than half that, and Cancer Council says going light can knock your real SPF down by 50 to 80%.

You want about 7 teaspoons (35 mL) for a full-body coat on an average adult, which will feel like far too much the first time. That’s at least a teaspoon each for:

• each arm
• each leg
• your front
• your back
• your face, neck and ears

Put it on 20 minutes before you go out. Reapply every two hours, and after swimming, sweating or towelling off. If a bottle lasts you all summer, you’re not using enough of it.

How to pick one and look after it

1. 1Look for an AUST numberIt’s on the front label, and it means the product is on the Australian register and legally sold here. It doesn’t mean the TGA tested it before it reached the shelf. Be wary of anything without one, including products from overseas sites.
2. 2Go for SPF 50 or 50+, broad spectrum and water resistantBroad spectrum means it covers the rays that age your skin as well as the ones that burn it.
3. 3Check the date and where it’s been livingOut-of-date sunscreen is unlikely to work, and most last two to three years. Keep it below 30 degrees, which rules out the glove box and the beach bag in the boot.
4. 4Skip the aerosolA breeze can blow a big share of it away before it reaches you, which is why Cancer Council strongly advises against them.
5. 5Treat SPF makeup as a bonusMost makeup with SPF won’t give you enough on its own, so put your sunscreen on first.

When you need it in Melbourne

You can’t feel UV, so you can burn on a chilly, overcast Saturday on the sideline at junior netball. Protect your skin whenever the UV Index reaches 3, which in Victoria is usually from mid-August until the end of April. Melbourne’s average peak in November is about 8, which is already very high, and January’s average goes past 10.

The free SunSmart app shows the times you need protection each day. And don’t lean on sunscreen alone, because it’s the one form of protection that wears off. A shirt with sleeves, a hat with a wide brim, some shade and a decent pair of sunglasses don’t need reapplying.

Does wearing it every day make a difference?

Yes, and the best evidence comes from Queensland. In the town of Nambour, 1,621 adults were split into two groups: one put sunscreen on every day, the other used it whenever they normally would. Years later, the daily group had about half as many melanomas, although at 11 against 22 that’s a promising sign more than a sure thing. They also had nearly 40% fewer squamous cell cancers, one of the common skin cancers, though no clear drop in basal cell cancers. And the under 55s who were measured were 24% less likely to show more skin ageing, which, if we’re honest, is the number that’ll get most of us reaching for the tube.

The sunscreen in that trial was only SPF 15+, on the head and arms. So if you’ve been agonising in the chemist over the number, the bigger win is putting some on most mornings.

Keep an eye on your skin as well

Two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer in their lifetime, and most melanomas are found by the person who has them, or their partner. If you need a nudge, National Skin Cancer Action Week comes around each November.

Have a look over your skin every three months, from your scalp to the soles of your feet, and get someone else to check your back. You’re looking for new spots, and for anything that has changed in size, shape or colour.

Not everyone needs a yearly full-body check, so ask your GP what makes sense for you, particularly if you have fair skin that burns easily, a lot of unusual moles or a close relative who has had melanoma.

The takeaway

Keep the sunscreen, and use more of it. Pick an SPF 50 or 50+ with an AUST number, put on a teaspoon per body part, and add a hat.