chronic

Stress was designed by evolution to save your life. Modern chronic stress is taking it away from you

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It is easy to hear in this society the phrase “I am very stressed” because we have more and more demands on us in the workplace or staffand the truth is that it is something that is gradually being used as a “crutch” to associate it with mental fatigue or lack of time. However, the reality is that the great effect that stress has on our body is generating very relevant physical problems that can alter us in the long term. Its effect. The immune system is a fundamental part of our body that defends us against microorganisms, but also against cells that do not follow a natural division and that, without this control, can continue ahead. generating cancer. That is why taking care of it is fundamentaland constant stress is one of your worst enemies by reducing your ability to act. There is no need to demonize. To understand the damage, we must first be fair with the stress, since logically there are situations where you have to have stress to be able to stay aliveand without that ‘stress’ our species would literally be extinct a long time ago. And to understand it, if we ‘travel’ thousands of years ago, if a lion chased a human, the body released adrenaline and cortisol, preparing the immune system for possible injuries and enhancing short-term defenses. The problem with modern life is that the “lion” is no longer a specific predator, but the mortgage, work or constant anxiety. But it is a problem. When stress becomes chronic, it becomes a poison for the body, since, according to different articles, the perpetual state of alert overstimulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous system. Here the result is a sustained elevation of cortisol that, paradoxically, ends up causing “glucocorticoid resistance,” which are the molecules that are naturally produced to reduce inflammation. The body is then flooded with stress hormones, but your cells stop responding properly to them to curb inflammation. And as we have seen on many occasions, long-term inflammation brings more problems than benefits. The defenses. The immune dysfunction caused by this chronic condition is perfectly documented. An example is in the classic Cohen study which already mapped out the physiological mechanisms that make us more vulnerable to infections, but experimental studies and reviews from 2025 give us an exact cellular x-ray of what we lose. Among the examples that stand out, we have a drastic reduction of NK cells which are our first line of defense against viruses and tumor cells. Furthermore, both T lymphocytes (which are fundamental cells of the immune system) such as B lymphocytes see their response capacity diminished, making them unable to ‘destroy’ microorganisms that enter our body. But if that were not enough, chronic stress ages the immune system before its time. In a loop. Perhaps the most fascinating discovery that science points to is the connection between the immune system and mental health through neuroinflammation. Here, chronic stress is literally wearing down the body by continually adapting, causing the immune system to skyrocket. proteins related to inflammation that can travel to the brain and activate microglia, which is the ‘defense’ system of the nervous system. The result? A neuroinflammatory environment that is directly linked to the development of depression and anxiety disorders. And logically, if we have anxiety, stress will continue to increase, causing more inflammatory proteins to be released that will continue to affect the brain. It’s not forever. Here science points out that the damage caused by stress is not perpetual, but can be reversed at any time through interventions psychological interventions focused on stress reduction, as well as regular physical exercise. This has shown that chronic inflammation can be reduced and normal immune system cell function restored. That is why now rest and mental health should not be seen as a luxury, but rather we must begin to see them as an important biological shield that can greatly extend our lives if we manage to keep it under control. Images | creativeart on Freepik In Xataka | We thought staying up late was just a bad habit: It’s your body complaining about stress, according to an anxiety expert

OpenAI’s big problem all these years has been a chronic lack of definition. Now he wants to solve it with a super app

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OpenAI spent much of 2025 announcing new features, not new models (that also), but new products. We saw him with his Sora 2 video generator or with ChatGPT Atlas browser. Now, the company recognizes that they were diversifying too much and their plan is… to launch another app. The super app. They have an exclusive Wall Street Journal that OpenAI is preparing a desktop tool that will unify the ChatGPT app, its Codex code platform and the Atlas browser. This super app will offer agentic capabilities, not only oriented to code, but also to productivity. This is aiming directly at the business field, a field in which its rival, Anthropic is quite ahead of him. Too many products. The company’s goal with this move is to simplify the experience and reduce fragmentation between products. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, a company spokesperson assures that it will allow them to unify the different teams, which will be able to focus their efforts on one product instead of several. In an internal note, OpenAI explicitly acknowledges that they were spreading their efforts across too many apps and needed to simplify them. The change will be led by Fidji Simo, the head of apps at OpenAI, who recently brought the employees together to give them a message: “We cannot waste this moment because we are distracted by parallel projects.” And diversifying consumes many resources, both economic and computing capacity, and OpenAI is not to be wasted none of them. Without direction. OpenAI has the most used chatbot in the world, but what they don’t have is a clear product strategy. They have wanted to be too many things at once without a clear strategyand in addition, half-abandoned products have been left along the way. The Atlas browser is the best example of this. I had all the potential to be a serious alternative to Chrome which had not yet integrated Gemini. The reality is that, five months after its launch, ChatGPT Atlas is still exclusive for Mac and also has lost functions. Something similar happened with Sora 2: they got the viral moment they were looking for, but today the app remains exclusive for users in the US and Canada. Competition where it hurts most. While OpenAI launched its video memes or its browser, the competition moved forward with a much less flashy, but better thought-out plan. According to a Menlo Ventures reportin 2023 OpenAI had a 50% share in the enterprise segment, while Anthropic had only 12. In 2025 the tables turned: Anthropic had 32% and ChatGPT 25%. If we focus only on programmers, 42% prefer Claude and only 21% ChatGPT. ChatGPT still has many more users, but the vast majority are for personal use. Financially, business users are much more valuable because they have no qualms about paying for subscriptions that often exceed $200 per month. Image crisis. In case Anthropic was not eating enough toast, the image crisis caused by the agreement with the Pentagon. ChatGPT began to lose users at a worrying ratewhile Claude was placed in the top of most downloaded applications. What they were missing. Image | Amparo Babiloni, Xataka In Xataka | There was a time when ChatGPT was a magical and free tool. That time is about to end

We have not understood for decades why chronic pain punishes women more. Finally we have the answer

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Historically, medicine has grappled with an undeniable gender gap in which women Women suffer chronic pain more frequently than men, and on top of that their pain flares for much longer. This is something that many doctors have considered ‘normal’ and has been dismissed with psychological biases. But now science has seen that an explanation should not be sought in the mind, but in the immune system. Against pain. This is the objective that medicine has right now, since it is undoubtedly a situation that for many people can be unbearable. That is why the magazine Science Immunology publish now a new study that offers a paradigm shift in our understanding of the biology of pain. The result of this is that he has managed to find the key to some types of white blood cells called monocytes and in its direct relationship with testosterone. What’s happening? When an injury is suffered, such as a blow, the body tries to defend itself with an inflammatory response. One of its components is pain, which is a necessary alarm signal to warn that something is wrong, but once the tissue begins to heal, it is logical that this alarm goes off. But this is where the body’s defense cells come in, monocytes, which act as ‘firefighters’ by releasing proteins called interleukin-10. Here the research team has been able to see that this interleukin-10, abbreviated as IL-10, acts directly on sensory neurons to “turn off” hypersensitivity and therefore pain. The problem, and here lies the importance between sexes, is that men resolve this inflammatory pain much faster because they produce a greater amount of this protein. The reason. Testosterone. This male sex hormone stimulates monocytes to produce higher levels of IL-10 after injury, and therefore pain can be better reduced. But in women this level of testosterone is much lower, and therefore the production of this natural ‘painkiller’ is lower, which causes the sensory neurons to take much longer to stop giving the signal that generates pain. Your demonstration. Beyond doing so in animal models, the research team has been able to validate the experiments with human data from the AURORA studiowhich is a project that evaluates patients who have suffered traffic accidents and severe trauma. Here the clinical data confirmed the laboratory’s suspicions, since they saw that the elimination or reduction of IL-10 activity in monocytes significantly delays the resolution of pain in both sexes, validating that this hormone-mediated immunological difference is exactly the same in humans. In the future. This discovery is not just another biological curiosity to close a historical debate, but it has important therapeutic implications. And right now the severe pain crisis has to be treated with opiates on many occasions, which have a long list of side effects. But upon discovering this cellular mechanism, the researchers tried administering Resolvin D1a compound that promotes the resolution of inflammation. Here it was clearly seen how pain was reduced equally in both sexes. This is why we are at the gateway to a new generation of non-opioid therapies that specifically modulate the immune system. But what is most important about this study is that it highlights the need to leave behind the “one size fits all” model in medicine to move towards more personalized medicine. Images | Redd Francisco In Xataka | Medicine has been using opioids to relieve pain for centuries. Science finally has an alternative

why the next great revolution against cancer is to make it chronic

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If we ask someone what the goal of cancer medicine is, the answer is almost automatic: cure itmake it disappear or win the war against this devastating disease. However, in molecular biology laboratories and advanced oncology consultations, the verb is changing, since we no longer speak of “eradicating” at all costs, but to contain. An idea that may be quite shocking, but which is proposed as the future of medicine. The idea. Douglas Hanahan, one of the most influential figures in modern biology and one of the great responsible of the hallmarks of cancerwhich are the hallmarks that define a tumor, has put this idea on the table. In this case, it points to a concept that clashes with our intuition, but fits with scientific data: cancer without disease. The idea is provocative, since it suggests that histologically malignant tumors are possible living off of us without killing us or affecting our quality of life. The objective is no longer the total elimination of the enemy and becomes something more pragmatic: keeping it under biological and clinical control so that the patient dies with the cancer, but not from the cancer. There is no cure. In a recent interview and in your updates of the Hallmarks of Cancer 2022, Hanahan insists that the complexity of cancer makes a universal cure unlikely. Instead, it proposes to understand what specific capacities sustain the tumor, such as evasion of the immune system, inflammation, replicative immortality… to selectively block them. In this way, it is not about destroying the entire tissue, but about converting a lethal process into an indolent one. This is what Hanahan calls “adaptive resistance”, since we assume that the tumor will try to look for new escape routes, and we will change the therapeutic strategy to block them, maintaining the tumor ecosystem within safety margins. It already happens. All of this is not a futuristic theory, but rather it is already happening on two very different fronts: the tumors that we decide not to touch and the aggressive tumors that we have learned to stop. Not trying is sometimes the best. The most literal example of “cancer without disease” is found in the prostate and thyroid. Here, diagnostic technology has advanced so much that we detect tumors that, biologically, would never have caused problems. In the case of prostate canceralmost half of low-risk tumors now enter active surveillance protocols. In this way, instead of operating or radiating (with the risk of impotence and incontinence that entails), doctors begin to monitor the mass. And the data, after 20 years of follow-up in large groups of people, are quite clear: cancer-specific mortality in these well-selected groups is less than 1%. In the clinic. With all this, the idea is that it is better to live with a controlled cancer than to pay the physical price of curing it, although logically, if it goes too far out of containment, the most correct thing is to try to eradicate it with the tools we have. In the case of papillary thyroid cancer We also have this same situation, since overdiagnosis has led to stopping aggressive surgery in favor of observing tumors that the body keeps at bay on its own. The new chronicity. Where the paradigm changes most dramatically is in advanced or metastatic cancer. Twenty years ago, a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer or metastatic melanoma was almost invariably a short-term terminal sentence. Today, thanks to immunotherapy and targeted therapies, a new category of patient has been born: the “treatable but not curable.” With this strategy there are already different organizations, like the British NCRIwhich describe growing cohorts of patients living for years with the disease. In this case they have metastases, but they live a normal life with their jobs and trips while receiving chronic or intermittent treatments to contain the disease. But without staying on the road. Changing the rules. This new paradigm within oncology has forced changing the rules of the game in clinical trialssince the aim is no longer just for the tumor to disappear, but for prolonged stabilization. With regard to toxicity, the logic of “maximum tolerated dose” in chemotherapy (give medication until the patient can tolerate it) does not work if you are going to treat the patient for five years, since their quality of life with very aggressive chemotherapy will decrease each time. Right now, quality of life and low toxicity are prioritized with ‘milder’ medications to allow long-term treatment without major side effects. This is why cancer is beginning to resemble, in its management, diabetes or HIV: a chronic condition that requires lifelong medication, but that does not necessarily dictate the date of your death. Psychological problems. Logically, this model of ‘chronic cancer’ has its shadows. Medical literature warns, for example, that living with “dormant” or controlled cancer places an enormous mental burden on patients. Studies on active surveillance show that, for some patients, the anxiety of having a “ticking time bomb” inside worsens their quality of life more than the surgery itself. And each review consultation can mean a world to know if it has gone more or less. And more problems. In addition to this, you must know that not all of these diseases can become chronic, such as glioblastoma or pancreatic cancer, which continue to have an aggressive biology that, today, escapes this lazy control. But also, turning cancer into chronic is great news for the patient, but a titanic challenge for public health, since it implies treating more people, for more years, with very high-cost biological drugs. The summary. Hanahan’s “cancer without disease” is not giving up. It is accepting that, if we cannot eliminate the enemy, victory lies in keeping it at bay long enough for life to continue its course and even allow science to continue advancing. As mortality statistics suggest: more and more people are dying with cancer, but fewer people of cancer. And in that nuance lies an entire medical revolution. Images | National Cancer … Read more

A massive study links it with a higher risk of chronic pain in adult

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During generations, the message has been the same: menstrual pain is normal, a “girls” to endure. But the reality is that a pain of great draft never It is something that should have been normalized. Now, a Longitudinal study Published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe comes to disassemble this myth and to give an alarm voice: Have painful periods In adolescence it is linked to health problems in the future. A public health problem. The methodology of this study has been based on the monitoring of more than a thousand participants in the United Kingdom for decades. In this way, not only has it been confirmed, it has been concluded that the more severe the menstrual pain at age 15, the greater the probability of developing chronic pain a decade later, at 26. In this way, menstrual pain goes from being normalized to a serious public health problem. A methodology with long -term views. To get to this conclusion, the researchers They used data of the Longitudinal Avon Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), An ambitious project that has followed the lives of thousands of people since birth in the 90s. They analyzed the information of 1,157 participants, evaluating the severity of their menstrual pain at 15 years classified as null, mild, moderate or severe. Subsequently, once these participants were already 26 years old, an analysis of their health status was carried out by asking if They suffered some kind of chronic pain. Something that was defined as a pain that lasted at least three months. Worrying figures. After adjusting the data to rule out the influence of other factors such as BMIthe socioeconomic level or previous mental health problems, the results were clear. The first of all, is that adolescents with moderate dysmenorrhea, that is, with strong enough pain to not be able to ignore it, they had an extra 65% probability of suffering chronic pain in the adult stage compared to those without menstrual pain. In the case of the most severe dysmenorrhea, which prevent normal activities, the risk is triggered up to 76% of suffering chronic pain in the future. These data translate into an increase in absolute risk of 12.7 and 16.2 percentage points, respectively. It is a difference too big to be ignored. The study also revealed how common this problem is: almost 60% of adolescents in the sample reported moderate to severe menstrual pain. A problem that extends through the body. One of the most interesting findings in the study is that the association is not limited to the classic abdominal or lumbar pain, which could be considered an extension menstrual pain. What happens in this case is that adolescents with severe dysmenorrhea show a greater risk of chronic head pain, back, knees, dolls, hips and thighs. Because? The authors of the study suggest that behind all this is a central sensitivity. To understand it, we must bear in mind that in adolescence there is a great neuroplasticity, where the nervous system is especially moldable. The repeated experience of intense and poorly managed pain, such as dysmenorrhea, can “train” the nervous system so that it becomes hypersensitive. In essence, the brain and spinal cord learns to be in a constant alert state, which increases vulnerability to develop other types of pain in the future, even in those areas that are not at all related. For Dr. Rachel Reid-McCann, principal researcher, “It is possible that the experience of moderate or severe menstrual pain can alter the structure of the brain and how it works in response to painful stimuli, making chronic pain more likely in the future.”. It is not a purely psychological. In the study itself, researchers have seen a relationship between dysmenorrhea and a subsequent increased symptoms related to anxiety and depression. But these factors only explained a small part of the connection with chronic pain and this reinforces the idea that the main cause is a physiological mechanism, and not simply that “pain is in the head.” You have to stop normalizing pain. The conclusion of the study is a call to action for father, educators and, above all, for the health system. Normalize menstrual pain and dispatch it as “is normal” has great long -term consequences. And that will go to the health system. The researchers point out that menstrual stigma and the lack of education on menstrual health cause many young people not to seek help, or that when they do, their complaints are minimized. In this way, it is believed that early identification and good control of dysmenorrhea can be key to improving the immediate well -being of adolescents and preventing the appearance of serious health problems in the future. Images | Saranya7 In Xataka | A baby, three parents (biological): a promising fertilization technique that, for now, we will not see in Spain

We have detected the gene that acts as a ‘switch’ of chronic pain. It is the principle of the analgesics revolution

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Chronic pain is one of the worst convictions of modern medicine. Affects one in five peopleis the main cause of world dependence And to top it off, Current treatments They are insufficient or come with devastating side effects such as Opioid addiction as fentanyl. But now, A great investigation Posted in the prestigious magazine Nature It has opened a door that could change everything. A gene as responsible for chronic pain. An international team of scientists has identified a gene, the SLC45A4as a key actor in the perception of pain by the human. And it is not another gene on the list. They are the necessary instructions to manufacture a protein that acts as a “guardian” of the membrane of Our sensory neuronscontrolling the passage of mysterious molecules called polyamines. When manipulating this protein, researchers have reduced the intensity of certain pain without affecting other sensations such as The touch. The finding not only solves an old biological enigma, but also opens the door to a new generation of analgesics for patients with pains that are not controlled with current therapies. Following the track in the DNA of 130,000 people. Find a small gene Inside the human genome It is not something simple, taking into account the large amount of information that can be found In a sequencing. That is why researchers have resorted to brute force with the processing of a large amount of data. To do this, they analyzed the genetic information and pain questionnaires of more than 132,000 people from the UK Biobankone of the world’s greatest repositories of medical and genetic information. Looking for patterns in all data. Using a Complete genome association study (GWAS), which is like crossing thousands of data to find patterns, researchers discovered that certain variants of the SLC45A4 gene were significantly associated with the intensity of chronic pain that people reported. Something that could also explain the different pain thresholds that each person has. To ensure that it was not a coincidence, they replied the finding in two other gigantic databases such as the Million Veteran Program from the United States and Finngen of Finland. The result in both was similar, so the evidence began to clarify. But once you have the name of the gene, the question is: what exactly does this gene do to modulate pain? The guardian of the polyamines: solving a neuronal enigma. This is where history becomes very interesting. It was known that the SLC45A4 manufactured a conveyor protein, a kind of rotating door on the surface of the cells. But nobody knew what he transported. The investigation revealed that its load is the Polyaminessmall molecules that, despite being crucial for almost everything in the cell (From the reading of the DNA to growth), they had a role that was not known in pain. What was known is that during a pain situation polyamines increased, but the mechanism of action was a mystery. The reason for the mystery is that the effect was different depending on whether they were outside or inside the neuron, but the ‘door’ was not known through which they could enter or leave. Until now. The SLC45A4 protein is that door. Using advanced verification techniques. Before announcing a discovery like this, it is important to be verified with different techniques. In this case the Electronic Creomicroscopy To obtain a 3D map at the atomic level of the protein. In this way, they saw their structure with an amazing detail. But seeing it is not just to have a very beautiful photograph hanging in the office, but it could be understood how it was able to recognize polyamines and even a Modulable domain That the protein itself uses to inhibit itself, as an integrated key in its own lock. And this is something that opens many doors to future research related to chronic pain. Mice with the lowest pain threshold. The fire test came with the experiments in animals. The team created genetically modified mice so that they did not have the SLC45A4 gene. These mice were, in appearance, completely normal. However, when they were subjected to pain proof, the results were amazing. Specifically, mice were subjected to different tests, such as being on a hot plate or receiving a formalin injection, which is a chemical that Causes pain at high doses. Here it is as they showed a much greater resistance to chronic pain. But when they were given a quick puncture (acute pain) the answer was identical to that of normal mice. A pain regulator. And this difference is crucial in the investigation. It means that SLC45A4 is not a switch that when we go out ‘we stop feeling any type of pain, but is a fine regulator for persistent and deaf pain, precisely the type that characterizes chronic pain. Because living completely without pain is not a good idea. The pain in the end is an organism alert system that something is not doing well, for example, that we have appendicitis. If we ‘turn off’ acute pain are many emergency situations that we would literally stop attending until it was too late. And reason is known. The absence of the protein made a specific type of pain receptors, the so -called Polymodal nociceptors C or fibers C (Those that detect chemical or thermal pain), were much less excitable. That is, it was necessary to expose the receiver to a much stronger stimulus so that the neurons ‘trigger’ an action potential that reached the brain and gave the feeling of pain. Literally, the threshold potential was much lower and, therefore, resisted from great magnitude pain. A new hope for millions of people. This discovery is more than a simple scientific curiosity. By identifying this protein as the polyamine transporter in neurons related to nociception, a completely new window for drug design opens. And it is that current analgesics act on receptors or block (such as the case of ibuprofen with COX-2). Now, the drugs designed to modulate the activity of … Read more

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