believed

We believed that creatine was one of the most useful supplements to gain muscle mass. We are no longer so sure

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Creatine is an old acquaintance of people who exercise in order to increase muscle. Evaluate in our own meat the effectiveness of a supplement is useless, especially because we surely accompany it with a strict exercise regime that will prevent us from distinguishing its net impact. That is why, if we ask ourselves to what extent the creatine works, we need to study it rigorously. Not so effective. And the verdict of the last study that has tested this substance It has not been favorable. In a study that included a 12 -week training program and the consumption of 5 grams daily of creatine supplement were not observed relevant differences between those who took the substance and those who did not. “We have shown that taking five grams of creatine supplement per day does not make any difference in the amount of muscle mass that people earn when performing resistance training,” explained in a press release Mandy Hagstrom, co -author of the study. “The benefits of creatine could have been overestimated in the past due to methodological problems,” the researcher adds Creatine. Creatine, or α-methyl guanido-acetic acidit is a compound that can be found naturally in our body, especially in the muscles and cells of our nervous system; And also in some foods, such as red meat, fish and shellfish. Creatine molecules are formed from three amino acids and Stores phosphocreatinemainly in the muscles. There is used as a source of energy. That is why the creatine supplement is used to obtain better results when exercising and gaining muscle mass. 54 participants. The recommended maintenance dose of this supplement is between three and five grams per day. The 54 study participants, aged between 18 and 50, were divided into two groups, some would begin to take five grams Creatine Monohydrate (CRM) first and a week later they would start a 12 -week resistance program. The second group would also face this exercise program, but without the supplement. The food of both groups was monitored to verify that there were no relevant differences in their diet. Both groups increased their muscle mass, but they did it in a similar way, about two kilos won during the period. The details of the study were Published in an article In the magazine Nutrients. The problem is in the water. Part of the study key is in time: that the experimental group (the one who took the supplement) began this “treatment” before training allowed the team to test (and verify) a hypothesis, that a part of the muscle increase that we associate with creatine is due to a greater water retention. The team observed that, during this first week, indeed, the group (and especially women in this) began to gain muscle mass, a 0.5 kg difference that dissipated after starting training. Hagstrom pointed out, of course, that more studies are still necessary to understand the impact of water retention associated with the consumption of this supplement. Dose question? The study responsible for the study suggests that, in addition to water retention, the chosen dose could also have had effect on the results. The five grams daily represent the upper limit of the recommended daily maintenance dose, but those who consume This supplement They often resort to a “load phase” that implies consumption between 20 and 25 grams of the supplement per day. This possibility was discarded by the equipment since these consumption levels, they explain, can cause gastrointestinal problems and is not necessary to achieve saturation levels. However, they affect the need to carry out additional studies with intermediate doses, for example of 10 grams. They also point out that longer -term studies could help us better understand the impact of creatine supplements on the increase in muscle mass. In Xataka | The 17 best apps to exercise Image | Aleksander Saks / Victor Freitas

I believed that the LSD would have improved Microsoft designs

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Bill Gates and Steve Jobs They were great rivals In the field of new technologies, but they also maintained a friendly relationship. Gates confessed in An interview with the British The Independent That Steve Jobs said that Gates should have taken LSD to improve the design of Microsoft products. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates’ personal and professional relationship It was never simple and fluctuated influenced by the enormous competitiveness of both founders and their vision of how technology should be. However, the Technological and Financial Context Of both companies forced both millionaires to maintain the equivalent of a “Roman Pax” in their personal relationships. After all, as Jobs explained in A joint interview In Conference D5 of 2007, They were travel companions In his technological adventure. Jobs’s trick to imagine impossible designs Among the many anecdotes that Microsoft’s founder reveals in his latest autobiographical book ‘Code Source: My beginnings‘, Gates remembers his specific flirting with the Cannabis and the consumption of LSD. “Because my personality is quite optimistic and I am willing to take risks, I tried many things. But something else about my personality is that I like my mind to work and it is very logical. So I stopped consuming marijuana at the beginning of my 20 years simply because it became careless, either during that same day or the next day, “Gates explained The Independent. Ignoring the consumption of marijuana from Gates during his youth, Steve Jobs assured that give free rein to creativity Gates with LSD would have helped improve the design of Microsoft products. “Steve Jobs once said that he would have liked me to take acid because then perhaps he would have had more pleasure in the design of my products,” Gates recalled. Gates’s response was to accept that Jobs had an innate talent For design, but He had other skills to which he had given free rein. “My answer to that was to say: ‘Look, I had the wrong lot.’ It touched the coding lot and this guy touched the marketing design lot, so well for him!”, Gates told Gates to British newspaper. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Hallucinogenic technology Steve Jobs confessed to more than one occasion that LSD had consumed in his youth, and attributed part of his creative vision in the design of Apple’s products to these experiences. Under his supervision, Apple managed to resurface his ashes with such iconic designs Like the IMACiPod, iPad and iPhone. On the other hand, Gates was known for his most conservative and analytical approach, which possibly led Jobs to comment on the need for Expand Gates’ perspective regarding design. However, as Gates stood out, Your approach The aesthetics of its products was not, but in its software. Hence Microsoft has become one of the main companies In computing in The cloud and iaand the productivity software with applications like Word has dominated for decades or Excel. “His talents and mine, apart from being a kind of energetic leader and going beyond the limits, did not overlap much. He did not know what a line of code meant, and his ability to think about design and marketing and marketing Things like this … I envy those skills. Gates has always been very interested in the uses of psychotropic substances and the effects on the brain, declaring an absolute fan of the book on psychedelic drugs ”How to change your mind ‘ by Michael Pollan and the possible Therapeutic uses of these substances. “The idea that some of these drugs that affect the mind can help with depression or the TOC seem fascinating. Of course, we have to be careful, and that is very different from recreational use,” said the millionaire. In his biography, the technological tycoon remembers one of those Experiences with hallucinogenic substances of which I did not keep the best of memories: “Part of the trip was stimulating, but I took the drug without realizing that I would continue to feel its effects the next morning, when I arrived at the orthodontist office for dental surgery that I had programmed from A long time ago, “Gates wrote. The millionaire remembered that: “I stared at my mouth open my doctor’s face, while his drill continued working, without being sure if what he was seeing and feeling really was happening.” Gates says he swore that, if he ever took acid again, he would not do it alone, above all, that he would not when he had plans for the next day, especially a visit to the dentist. In Xataka | Bill Gates is clear about what would be 20 years old and start again: a 100% startup dedicated to AI Image | Flickr (Joi Ito)

We believed that the price of coffee could not rise much more. The diplomatic “war” between Colombia and the US thinks otherwise

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Of the tens of thousands of words that make up the English lexicon, Donald Trump has one that he especially likes and for which he has declared his love in some or other interview: tariff (tariff). This weekend he reminded the Colombian president of this in a quite practical way, threatening to impose 25% rates (or even 50%) if he did not give in to the aggressive immigration policy which is promoted from the White House. Everything indicates that it will remain that way, a threat, but it serves to warm up a market that has been facing strong shocks for months. turbulence: the one with coffee. Yes 2025 It looked complicated For lovers of morning espressos, your outlook has just become more complicated. What has happened? That Trump has shown that, indeed, he feels a special weakness for the word “tariff.” Over the last few weeks it has announced more or less clearly that it will apply taxes on imports of China, Mexico, Canada, Europe, Denmark and even Spainalthough it is still not entirely clear whether the latter was said deliberately or as a result of a geographical ‘slip’. Curiously, it has been another country that has been on the verge of suffering tariff fury from the republican: Colombia. Screenshot of Trump’s announcement on Truth Social. Why’s that? For something that actually has little to do with the international market, trade balances and tax policy. The trigger has been migration. And a political fight between Washington and Bogotá. Basically, yesterday the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, refused to allow two planes from the US loaded with deported Colombians to land in his country. What’s more, he threatened not to welcome them until Trump adopts protocols that guarantee treatment. “with dignity and respect” for immigrants. The response of the Republican, who has managed to return to the White House after an electoral campaign that largely pivoted on a hardening of immigration policy, it did not take long to wait: through its platform Truth Social advertisement a 25% rate for the import of Colombian merchandise that would rise to 50% in a matter of days. Petro responded after a few hours with the same currencyordering a sudden increase (25%) in the tariffs that Bogotá applies to US goods. How did the crash end? In dispatches and without reaching customs. At least for now. Despite its initial reaction, the Petro Executive ended up giving in to Washington’s demands and agreed to receive the planes with deportees. Enough so that Trump has not yet signed the economic sanctions, which have already been drafted and will be activated if his southern neighbor “does not comply” with the agreement. “The Government of Colombia has accepted all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returning from the US,” they boast from the White House, which reminds that Bogotá will also receive them “without limitations or delay.” Click on the image to go to the tweet. What does it have to do with coffee? Simple. The announcement of Trump’s tariffs and the fight between the White House and the Nariño Palace did more than shake up American diplomacy. He also put on guard various sectors Colombians who have important interests in the United States, such as oil, floriculture (which is preparing for the millionaire campaign Valentine’s Day) and coffee. Of all of them, the one more expectation generatesdue to the state of its market and price driftis the latter. At the end of the day, Colombia is not just any country on the international coffee map. And the United States is not just another market for Colombian producers either. This double condition means that everything that affects the relationship between the two, including of course the threats of 25% tariffs or even 50%, interest (and quite a bit) to the market. But… What does the data say? To begin with, Colombia is one of the main coffee powers on the planet. The own tables The US Department of Agriculture places it as the third largest producer, only behind Brazil and Vietnam. Other observatories leave the same drawing, like Statista. A 2024 reportThe USDA office, linked to the US Government, estimated that during the 2024/2025 campaign, Colombian coffee exports would total around 12 million GBE bags. Colombia matters on the global coffee map. And its relationship with the United States is also important, something that is better understood with the help of a couple of figures. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), in 2022 Colombia exported 15.6 billion dollars to the US, of which almost 1.8 billion corresponded to coffee. This data makes it the second largest exported commodity in terms of value, only behind crude oil. The footprint of Colombia in the flow of coffee that reaches the US is also considerable. Click on the image to go to the tweet. But the rate would affect the US, right? The US tariff policy is that, the US tariff policy, and as warned The New York Times Yesterday, basically imposing 25% taxes on Colombian goods would mean that Americans would have to dig deeper into their pockets to buy flowers and coffee. However, if we talk about grain, what happens on the other side of the Atlantic interests us. And the reason is very simple: shocks like the one on Sunday put even more tension on a market that is already go through turbulence. “If the US imposes a 25% tariff on all Colombian exports, the already red-hot coffee market will heat up even more. Colombia is the third largest coffee producer in the world (and a key source of rabi beans). premium)”, I was reflecting yesterday in X Javier Blas, Bloomberg columnist. In the same tweet he included a column written by himself a few days ago in which he warned of the complex panorama facing the coffee market. And what situation is that? In Xataka we have talked already several times her. And it is summed up … Read more

We believed that what we learned from the coronavirus would help us better resist other epidemics. The flu shows us that

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Five years have passed since the beginning of the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, the Covid-19 virus. In those first months, some wondered what lessons we could learn of past epidemics, such as the “Spanish flu” of 1919 that we could apply to the new epidemic. The question now is another, the opposite, we could say: what can we learn from the pandemic that will help us with epidemics such as the seasonal flu. And above all, why It seems that we have not learned these lessons still. Although the fight against Covid brought with it extreme measures such as confinement, measures that are neither necessary nor implementable in epidemics like the one we see every winter associated with any of the flu viruses, it is possible to look back to find measures that we can put into practice, especially if we present symptoms associated with the flu or a cold. Perhaps the first lesson that Covid taught us regarding the flu is that it is possible to stop the transmission of this virus: the winter between 2020 and 2021 was the winter without flu: the measures to keep the spread of the coronavirus at bay made the incidence of the flu would fade away. This had another impact: the disappearance of a strain of the virus, the one called B/Yamagata. The extinction of this influenza B lineage It is still shrouded in a certain mystery, but what we do know is that since 2020 there has been no news about this strain. But the pandemic too he left us lessons that we can apply, if not in our daily winter life, at least when we notice the appearance of symptoms that we associate with flu or colds (similar but not identical), such as general malaise, runny nose, irritation of the respiratory tract or fever . The pandemic encouraged the study of the transmission of respiratory viruses, of how aerosols containing these pathogens travel through the air. Some of this knowledge can be useful to experts, being extrapolated to other similar viruses, such as the coronaviruses that cause some of the typical colds of these dates and the flu itself. Keeping distance is one of the advice that health authorities give to those who present these symptoms, something that can undoubtedly remind us of social distancing of the pandemic. The transmission of respiratory viruses is usually similar, and in these cases, keeping a certain distance from the other person can be helpful in preventing contagion. Another recommendation that we can find in the guides is to properly ventilate the spaces. Whether in our home, offices or on public transport, adequate ventilation can also hold the key to avoiding new infections. Of course, masks provide a physical barrier to the spread of the virus. Although health authorities recommend resting and avoiding going outside when we suffer from diseases such as the flu, masks can be of great help in cases where that option is not available. Another useful lesson is in testing. Rapid Coronavirus tests were of great help in keeping the spread of the virus at bay and some tests soon incorporated the possibility of looking for the presence of other pathogens, such as the flu. During the pandemic we became familiar with this type of rapid tests, now a lot cheaper and more affordable that five years ago. However, its current use may not be as widespread as might be expected in the context of seasonal influenza epidemics. Similarly, the pandemic enabled new advances in vaccine development, but also laid the foundation for more efficient vaccination campaigns. Also what has been learned by scientists and authorities may be of help when dealing with annual flu outbreaks. Forgetting what was learned And why do we forget these lessons? Forget it’s part of our natureit may even make sense in many contexts, including Covid. Forgetting can make work easier of our brain, but it is also important for our mental health. The process of forgetting is very visual: we associate the Covid era with images such as masks or empty streets. The memory of masks (or forgetting them) may be especially relevant precisely because it is an element that can make it difficult to spread the flu and other diseases of the respiratory system. The lessons not only can they be valid when considering strategies to deal with seasonal flu. In recent years we have witnessed various bird flu outbreakswith the active outbreak in the United States among the most worrying. The virus has reached numerous people and, although so far no infections have been detected among humans, a few weeks ago the first person died as a result of the outbreak. The ramifications of this outbreak have been significant. The outbreak has not only affected wild and poultry birds, it has also affected cattle and cases have even been detected in the country’s pigs. In recent weeks we saw that the virus was circulating again among poultry in Europe, so the possibility of this zoonosis continuing to spread is not negligible. In Xataka | Thousands of people have survived without suffering from Covid. Now they are helping us learn more about the disease Image | Anna Shvets / CDC

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