The patches, which contain the drug fentanyl and are applied to Bob Rees' arm every two days, release opioid painkillers through the skin. ‘They have taken over my life. I’m constantly watching the clock to check when I can have my next dose,’ he says.

On New Year’s Eve a suitable donor organ for a heart transplant became available and Will Pope underwent a life-saving operation. Two years ago, a virus had attacked his heart; his condition worsened last year and by Christmas he’d become desperately ill. However, a suitable donor organ could not be found.

As life-changing drug Xolair is declared not 'cost-effective' by the NHS watchdog, one mother makes an urgent plea. Jack Law is one of 250,000 people in the UK with severe allergic asthma. Six years ago, doctors told his parents that he wouldn’t live past the age of 12. He is now 14.

In some cases, there may be an underlying medical reason as to why you are twitching. Here, the experts discuss common causes of shakes and twitches, and what to do about them.

After revealing her washboard stomach in the diving show Splash!, the 51-year-old was snapped up by a lingerie company for an advertising campaign. So how has the interior designer maintained her bikini body?

Marie Mace, 30, from King's Lynn, said her relationships never lasted long because of her wobbly waistline. But she said once she started losing weight old boyfriends begged her to take them back. But newly svelte Marie snubbed her shallow ex-partners and has now found love with Jamie, 32.

June Scott, 62, from County Durham, spent three weeks in hospital and was attached to an intravenous drip after the disposable lens began burning her eyeball. But despite three operations and a string of eight-hour sessions to flush the infection from her body, surgeons were forced to cut away her cornea.

Women give up diets after an average of five weeks, two days and 43 minutes, according to new research out today. While one in seven (13 per cent) women in Britain stick to a diet for 13 weeks or more, nearly one in four (19 per cent) succumb to their favourite food cravings after a month. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly one in ten women (8 per cent) lose the willpower to carry on dieting after just one week and 16 per cent give up after a fortnight.

Sneaky tricks manufacturers use to pull the wool over our eyes include labelling salt as sodium, hiding the sugar content of fizzy drinks as carbohydrate and peel-back labels, which most of us don’t bother to look at. These are some of the guilty brands.