cure

We still don’t know how to cure blindness. So we’re going into space to try to solve it once and for all.

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We often wonder what space research is for. Is it worth investing huge amounts of money in exploring beyond our planet? Depending on who we talk to, they may give us a different answer, but if there is one thing that is clear, it is that part of the research that is done in space generates a return on Earth. For example, certain research conducted on the International Space Station (ISS) may help treat certain types of blindness on our planet. This research has been carried out over the last 10 years by the company LambdaVisionin collaboration with the commercial service provider of the ISS National Laboratory Tango Space. Basically, this company is dedicated to manufacturing artificial retinas to help restore vision to people with age-related macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa. The manufacture of artificial retinas is not new. It is something that has been investigated on Earth for some time, but there are some handicaps in the process that are resolved quite well in space. All advantages. In the last 9 years have been carried out 10 research missions to the ISS aimed at perfecting the development of artificial retinas in microgravity. In this time, they have managed to improve uniformity, optical performance and reproducibility. In addition, less material is needed, which is not only advantageous in economic terms. It also improves the biocompatibility of the final product. A microbial solution. Both age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa cause vision problems due to loss of photoreceptor cells in the retina. Under normal conditions, these cells are responsible for capturing the light that reaches the eye and converting it into electrical signals that are sent through the optic nerve to the brain, where they are interpreted and transformed into what we see. If they are damaged, signals are not sent correctly and vision is obscured or impeded. For this reason, research has been carried out for some time with bacteriorhodopsin, a protein used by some extremist bacteria to obtain energy from light. In a way, it is similar to what happens in the retina. Light is transformed into energy, which can be used to send signals to the brain. Therefore, artificial retinas can be made using this protein. Layers and more layers. Briefly, artificial retinas are made up of hundreds of layers of bacteriorhodopsin, arranged on top of each other. Although in reality the process is somewhat more complex. Typically, a substrate is used that is placed in a beaker in which bacteriorhodopsin, a polycationic polymer that helps assemble the layers on the substrate, and a washing solution are deposited. Thus, the layers that give rise to the definitive retina are arranged. The problem of gravity. Just as when you put sugar in coffee it goes to the bottom of the cup if we don’t stir it constantly, the same thing happens in the beaker. The denser molecules sink to the bottom. On the other hand, precisely because of this difference in densities, convection currents are created that cause an uneven coating. In short, the layers do not remain the same. This could affect vision, as the light is not distributed equally and the resulting signals are not uniform. Images would be generated, but they would be distorted. To prevent this from happening, the area in which the layers are most homogeneous is cut and the rest is discarded. This represents a huge waste of material and, at the same time, great difficulty in scaling the process so that it is profitable to carry it out in large quantities. CubeLab Content The solution is in space. All problems that lead to heterogeneous layer distribution are due to gravity. If we do not have that downward attraction, the sugar would not settle to the bottom of the cup. For this reason, LambdaVision partnered 4 years ago with Space Tango to use its CubeLab, a compact experimental module in which experiments can be carried out in an automated manner. To manufacture artificial retinas, instead of doing the substrate and beaker procedure, a bag with liquid and a chamber with the substrate are used, so that the solution is pumped into the chamber alternately. All advantages. In addition to the advantages that we have already seenranging from reproducibility to increased optical performance, this process has more benefits. To begin with, it is carried out automatically. Once it is launched, it does not require the intervention of any astronaut. In fact, if there is a problem, the process stops and a notice is sent to Earth, from where solutions can be searched and executed remotely. On the other hand, all the material and machinery are very compacted. The payload involved within the ISS is minimal, so many retinas can be obtained with a minimal footprint. And now what? By the end of this year, LambdaVision wants to launch a new mission, in which it is expected to look for ways to increase production volume and optimize processes. Thus, if all goes well, they will be able to begin preclinical trials by the end of 2027 or beginning of 2028. There is still a long way to go before these artificial retinas can be used to treat blindnessbut the investigation is going from strength to strength. Of course, there is research in space that is most useful here on Earth. Image |Magnific | Tango Space In Xataka | Hundreds of blind people received bionic implants to restore their sight. Now they are out of support

Aragon has the cure for the abandoned lands of the Pyrenees: cultivate medicinal herbs

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If he rural abandonment In Spain it is a reality that has existed for decades, in high mountain areas even more so: if it is already difficult to live in a small town, when it is in the middle of nowhere and to get there there is only one road full of curves, staying there means spending your life in difficult mode. Leaving means abandoning everything, including those lands that were once more or less productive and that now become pasture for bushes, soil degradation and fires. The Aragonese Pyrenees has extensions of abandoned cultivated land and a solution to give way to that wasted land: cultivate aromatic and medicinal plants. Goodbye to the wastelands. This initiative of the Aragon Agri-Food Research and Technology Center is part of the project Pyrenees4Climate. The pilot plot is in Espierre (Biescas, Huesca), it has been abandoned for 60 years and is located between 1,250 and 1,600 meters of altitude. The crop for these first tests is fine lavender, which is used to obtain essential oils for the pharmaceutical and perfumery industries. Why choose such inhospitable terrain to plant lavender? Precisely because the altitude and type of soil, unfavorable for other plants, are ideal for lavender, according to two decades of CITA research. But growing crops in high mountain terrain is not an easy task: as explains researcher Juliana Navarrothe conditioning of these farms has posed a technical and logistical challenge: steep slope, deep-rooted weeds, intensive stone clearing and even old stone walls for retaining land on plots that had never been mechanized. Why is it important. Because rural areas have been losing population and agricultural activity for decades and this project wants to recover vacant lands with crops that have a real market. This project seeks to regenerate high-value products, establish a young population in rural areas, preserve traditional knowledge about local plants and improve biodiversity, since aromatic plants attract bees and other pollinators. On the other hand, and as we mentioned previously, lavender and lavender are plants that are especially resistant to cold and drought, which makes them ideal for a Pyrenees that increasingly has drier summers and more irregular winters. Context. If the rural exodus in Spain has been a reality since the mid-20th century, in the case of high mountain areas the phenomenon is even more intense and documented: The abandonment of farmland in the Central Pyrenees has accelerated especially since the 1960s. The forest area has gained ground at the expense of traditional agricultural and livestock uses, which offers ambivalent results: there is more vegetation coverbut also increased risk of fire and loss of biodiversity associated with grasslands and open habitats. The LIFE program is the main financial instrument of the European Union for the environment and climate action since its inception in 1992. European funds provide 60% of the financing of the total budget, which guarantees its materialization and monitoring. Aragon is the territory where they will run more pilot tests: 14 of the 33 designed for the next seven years. How are they going to do it?. The operation model combines CITA’s institutional research with local entrepreneurs such as Ignacio Guallart Balet, promoter of the project and businessman from Zaragoza, originally from the Tena Valley and with experience in ecological mobility and circular economy. This point is important because it solves one of the great problems of agricultural research: the application of its research. The project also includes the development of a manual of good practices for mountain crops adapted to climate change and has a European scope: the Alps or the Carpathians are potential candidates for its application. Yes, but. While it is true that these medicinal plants can be sold dry, for the distillation of essential oils or for cosmetics, the reality is that the European market already has consolidated producers. in the south of France and the center of europe. Without a seal indicating protected origin or organic certification, competing in the market will be an arduous task. Bottom line: the profitability of the project is unclear. On the other hand, growing lavender also has its difficulties: it is true that it tolerates drought well, but in its first years it needs irrigation and the Pyrenees are already experiencing worrying changes in their rainfall regime. And there is another actor to take into account: wildlife, whose pressure on crops in high mountains can be significant. In Xataka | There is a corner of Spain where global warming is wreaking havoc: the Pyrenees are becoming “Mediterraneanized” In Xataka | If we want to know how climate change will affect the Pyrenees, we do not have to look at the heat or the snow. You have to study the caves Cover | Dina Spencer and Luise and Nic

Influencers have made it fashionable to give yourself cramps in your vagus nerve to cure stress. Science has bad news

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After a marathon day, what if the report doesn’t arrive, feed the kids, walk the dog, go to that Pilates class… And your brain refuses to turn off. You open TikTok or Instagram looking for a distraction and, between dances and recipes, a influencer. Wear a minimalist design device around your neck or clipped to your ear. It promises that with the push of a button and a few small electrical pulses, your anxiety will disappear, you’ll sleep like a baby, and your “brain fog” will lift. they call it “the great reset of the nervous system”. For centuries, the vagus nerve has functioned in complete anatomical obscurity, but today it has achieved an almost mythical status in the wellness ecosystem. According to The New York Timesthere are billions of social media impressions about this nerve. Celebrities like Kelly Ripa and podcasters like Andrew Huberman They praise their virtues. “A lot of this is being driven by influencers saying, ‘Just do this to stimulate your vagus nerve, and all the problems in your life will be solved,’” explains Dr. Kevin Tracey, a neurosurgeon and president of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. It sounds like science fiction, but forecasts suggest that the stimulation of this nerve will generate a billion-dollar industry by 2030. The inevitable question that arises is: can we really “hack” our stress with neck cramps, or are we facing the umpteenth expensive internet placebo? To understand the phenomenon, you must first understand the biology. As explained by the Cleveland Clinicthe vagus nerve (whose name comes from the Latin “wanderer”) is the tenth of the twelve cranial nerves and the longest of all. It arises in the brain stem and winds through the neck, chest, and abdomen, connecting the brain to the heart, lungs, and digestive system. It is the main highway of our parasympathetic nervous system, the one in charge of the “rest and digest” function. Basically, it is the body’s handbrake. When we get stressed, the sympathetic system (the “fight or flight” response) is activated; When the danger passes, the vagus nerve should come into action to calm the pulse and relax the body. But why are people obsessed with electrocuting him? According to the magazine Women’s Healthwe live in an epidemic of chronic stress. The flood of emails, traffic jams and daily pressures cause what is known as “vagal dysfunction.” Our body gets stuck in survival mode and loses the ability to calm down.. The promise of a quick fix has led to the emergence of commercial devices. When faced with the idea of ​​using home electricity, it is normal to wonder if this is dangerous. Generally, the physical answer is no. According to Dr. Michael Kilgard, director of the Texas Biomedical Device Center, interviewed by The New York Timesthe batteries in these commercial devices are too small to burn the skin. The most you feel is tingling. However, the real danger is psychological and medical. “The strangeness of the sensations is annoying enough that people feel like the devices are doing something,” Kilgard warns. In most cases, these gadgets are “probably little more than a placebo disguised as neuroscience“. The risk lies in false hope: patients who spend hundreds of euros on devices that do nothing, delaying medical treatments that have been proven to be effective. To understand the true impact of this false hope, it is vital to separate the wheat from the chaff and define where scientific rigor ends. The line between medicine and marketing wellness The science of Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) is real, fascinating and very complex, but it is light years away from what the marketers sell. influencers. There are real medical devices, but as a comprehensive review article published highlights in the scientific journal Comprehensive Physiologyinvasive stimulation (iVNS) “remains the gold standard with well-documented efficacy.” That is, we are talking about small devices similar to pacemakers that are surgically implanted under the skin of the chest, with cables threaded directly to the nerve. According to Cleveland Clinicthe FDA (the US drug agency) has approved these severe implants to treat cases of resistant epilepsy and severe clinical depression. Medical research continues to advance. A pivotal clinical trial published recently in Nature Medicine (the RESET-RA trial), demonstrated that an implanted neuromodulator system targeting the vagus nerve significantly reduced inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis who were unresponsive to conventional medications. On the other hand, as a review points out from the magazine Exploratory Research and Hypothesis in Medicinethe use of non-invasive stimulators (in the ear or neck) is being intensively studied in clinical settings for rehabilitation after stroke or to slow cognitive decline. But what about the devices that anyone can buy online to “de-stress”? The experts are blunt. Dr. Kristl Vonck, neurologist at Ghent University, warns that consumer devices They are “lightly regulated and do not have to prove to the FDA that they actually work.” Many companies hide behind vague claims about “wellness” to avoid medical controls and use the language of real clinical trials as a mere marketing tactic. Furthermore, as a clinical researcher explains in The Conversationmanipulating the vagus nerve is not a panacea and does not work the same for everyone. Some people in clinical trials experience headaches, worsening migraines, or even a drop in mood when receiving stimulation. “Most diseases involve multiple biological and psychological factors, and no single nerve explains or solves all of them,” he says. Misinformation is not limited to devices; It also covers home diagnostics. The magazine Bustle recently echoed a viral trend on TikTok: the “three drinks” test. Content creators claimed that if you are unable to swallow saliva three times in a row and quickly, your vagus nerve is seriously deregulated due to chronic stress. The therapists had to intervene. Chloë Bean, an expert somatic trauma therapist, clarified that swallowing does involve this nerve, but not being able to do it three times in a row “does not automatically mean that your vagus nerve is stuck.” It … Read more

The cure against hyperconnection is to go “slow”

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You’ve spent two hours, or maybe three, in an impossible position looking at your phone in the middle of a kind of trance. A notification made you unlock the screen and, after jumping from one application to another, you fell into the black hole of the scroll infinite. You could hardly tell what you have seen. What perverse mechanism has hijacked your attention? Technology has “hacked” our psychology based on experiments with laboratory rats that psychologist BF Skinner conducted in the 1940s. Just as rodents became obsessed with a lever that sometimes gave them food and sometimes not, we are victims of intermittent booster. We slide our finger across the screen looking for an unpredictable reward (a likea funny video or an outrageous news story), which generates a highly addictive spike. It is no coincidence that addiction expert Dr. Anna Lembke describes smartphones as “modern-day hypodermic needles“. The problem of living on this digital merry-go-round lays it out clearly psychiatrist Evita Singh: short, frequent bursts of dopamine end up overstimulating us. As the months go by, brain pathways lose sensitivity and what previously gave us gratification stops doing so, opening the door to depression, anxiety and lack of concentration. The great myth of dopamine fasting To solve this short circuit, Silicon Valley popularized the concept of “dopamine fasting,” created by psychiatrist Cameron Sepah. However, this term has generated enormous confusion. Dr. Peter Grinspoon warns in a publication for Harvard that the name should not be taken literally. Biologically speaking, it is impossible to “fast” from a natural brain chemical. In fact, Dr. Singh clarifies that the goal of reducing screen time is not to rid the body of dopamine, but reset the sensitivity of our nerve cells so that they react to normal stimuli again. Faced with the frenzy of scrollthere is a trend that has appeared strongly: slow dopamine (slow dopamine). It is an approach that advocates pleasures stretched over time, almost meditative, where intensity gives way to nuance. In practice, it is retraining the brain in delayed gratification: accepting that the reward requires patience and prior effort, as occurs when preparing a meal from scratch, reading a book for hours, or tending a garden. This is in stark contrast to fast dopamine, which offers an instantaneous spike followed by a sharp drop (the scrollsugar, shopping on-line). The science of speed The difference between something addictive and something constructive often lies, purely and simply, in speed. A study published in the scientific journal Neuropsychopharmacology showed that the rewarding effects of stimulants in the brain depend crucially on how quickly they raise dopamine. Through brain scans, researchers observed that rapid increases in dopamine activate neural networks linked specifically to the subjective experience of the “high” or intense reward. In contrast, slow increases generate radically different and opposite patterns of global connectivity in the brain. Furthermore, it is vital to understand that we have trivialized this molecule. Dopamine is not only the “pleasure hormone”, but it is a fundamental neurotransmitter that acts on our movement, memory, attention and sleep. Its imbalance not only generates addictions, but is linked to diseases such as Parkinson’s, schizophrenia or ADHD. Breaking this circuit is not solved in a weekend, restoring these brain pathways and forming new habits can take up to 90 days. From addiction to isolation Misunderstanding neuroscience can be dangerous. Journalist Kirsty Grant, of the BBCunderwent a radical 24-hour dopamine fast: no screens, no music, no interaction, and barely any water. His conclusion was revealing: Instead of achieving enlightenment and concentration, he experienced a level of overwhelming boredom, intense hunger, and felt like he was punishing his body. Dr. Grinspoon in harvard criticizes precisely these extreme drifts, where people deprive themselves of speaking or interacting socially based on bad science. The medical literature supports this concern: an investigation published in the magazine Cureus concludes that intense dopamine fasts, which include extreme isolation or crash diets, can harm both physical and mental health. These types of radical practices cause feelings of loneliness, anxiety and malnutrition. Instead, the studies propose exploring a comprehensive approach that includes mindfulness. Practices such as meditation or yoga offer real and positive effects on the regulation of dopamine, allowing us to disconnect from digital distractions in a healthy way. The antidote to doomscrolling and mental exhaustion does not involve locking ourselves in a cave without stimulation. Science and psychology point towards gentle re-education. It is re-teaching our mind that sustained effort is also a reward. “Slow dopamine” invites us to regain control of our time and attention, transforming pleasure into something deeper and less volatile. Ultimately, it is about ensuring that technology once again becomes a useful tool at our service, and stops being a slot machine permanently installed in our pocket. Image | Photo by Borna Hržina on Unsplash Xataka | The science of “doomscrolling”: how technology hacked psychology so we can’t let go of our phones

It doesn’t cure anything and your business is diluted in Spain

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The homeopathy has received a hard blow today from the Spanish health authorities, and more specifically the AEMPS itself, by pointing out in a devastating report that homeopathy has no effectiveness proven when it comes to treating different ailments, despite the fact that they promise something completely different. Something that can mean a great fall for a business that has invoiced millions of euros and all thanks to the scientific evidence that is increasingly clear regarding the null effects that these ‘treatments’ have. A lot of weight behind. The history of homeopathy in Spain has been written for years based on regulatory purges, but the latest Health analysis leaves no room for doubt. Based on 64 systematic reviews From scientific studies published since 2009, the national body has ruled that these products They provide no real benefitdifferent diseases such as, for example, depression, autoimmune diseases or even dermatological diseases. And as we see, it is not something new, since the scientific community has been warning for years that the supposed improvements reported by some patients with homeopathy are explained by three factors: the placebo effect, the evolution of the disease itself and the unreliability of the studies on which its operation was based. A tug of war. In fact, science tells us that, when clinical trials are carried out with great rigor and with the appropriate research methods, the difference between administering a homeopathic product and a simple sugar cube is statistically null. But the mental effect of taking a pill that promises an almost miraculous effect when it comes to curing an illness plays an important role in making us think that it really improves us. The real danger. A priori, taking a homeopathic product does not have too many dangers for the patient, since they do almost nothing in the body. But the problem is that the use of homeopathy encourages the abandonment or delay of medical treatments with proven evidence, such as, for example, an antidepressant in major depression. Failure to follow the most appropriate treatment has fatal consequences, especially if we are talking about serious diseases where time is a super important factor. Furthermore, the AEMPS and various medical reviews have documented very serious adverse effects due to this lack of real medical care, such as abortions or deaths. Although the most serious may be in the field of oncology, where the use of these alternative therapies such as seawater has been shown to directly increase the risk of mortality as patients reject conventional chemotherapy or radiotherapy. A free fall. Today, this market moves around 30 million euros annually in our country, representing 0.5% of total pharmaceutical sales. Here the great giant of the sector is Boiron, which controls 90% of the market and is seeing its empire falter, since, although its products are still present in thousands of pharmacies, sales they haven’t stopped fallinggoing from billing 20.6 million euros in 2016 to only 14.6 million in 2024. Recalls from the market. The purge in pharmacies has been relentless, since following EU directives that require efficiency tests to authorize medications, the AEMPS has already withdrawn 66 injectable products in 2019 and another 314 in 2024. But as of today the Ministry of Health has recalled more than 1,000 homeopathic products. The 976 that have managed to survive and remain registered have done so under a “simplified registry.” This is an ‘escape system’ in the law, since here they are considered harmless products, but they are strictly prohibited from including any therapeutic indication or promise of cure on their packaging. In this way, no homeopathic product can have the promise of curing a disease in Spain. In Xataka | Millions of Spaniards consume benzodiazepines to sleep at night. They don’t know it’s poisoned candy

We have been searching for a cure for HIV for decades. The tenth cured patient in the world gives us a starting point

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Receiving an HIV diagnosis several decades ago was practically a death sentence for many patients who saw that there was no possible treatment to eradicate this virus and that sooner or later would develop the disease. But little by little, treatments for prophylaxisof attenuation, reaching an undetectable viral load, and now we are seeing the first cases of complete eradication. There are several cases. We are facing a new historical milestone in medicine, and it is no wonder, since an international consortium of researchers has documented the tenth case in the world of a person who has managed to be cured of HIV, or rather, who has managed to eliminate the virus from their body so as not to develop the disease. The latter is known as the ‘Oslo patient’. A 62-year-old man who has not taken antiretroviral treatment for four years and has no trace of the virus, which has led to a published article in Nature where a great research process is recounted, something that has been possible thanks to the work of the international consortium IciStem 2.0, led by the Oslo University Hospital and with a fundamental participation of Spanish science through the center IrsiCaixa. His story. The clinical history of the ‘Oslo patient’ follows a pattern that is increasingly familiar to scientists, similar to that of the famous ‘Berlin patient’ in 2009. Diagnosed with HIV at the age of 44, the patient developed severe hematological cancer in 2020, for which he had to receive a stem cell transplant with the aim of regaining normal blood cell genesis. But here the key to success was that the donor of these stem cells was his own brother, who had a rare and coveted genetic alteration known as the CCR5-delta32 mutation. Because. When we see the term ‘mutation’ we automatically go to the negative meaning and all the diseases that having a mutation in the DNA can cause. But the reality here is that the CCR5-delta32 mutation acts as a cellular “shield” by modifying the receptors of a type of defense cell, T lymphocytes, so that HIV be unable to anchor to them and infect them causing its destruction. In this way, by replacing the patient’s immune system with his brother’s cells, doctors not only treated the cancer, but “rebooted” their defenses, making them immune to the virus. From here, HIV could not access its defensive cells, which is the mechanism it uses to become chronic and become ‘undetectable’ to the immune system. What happened next? As the researchers report, two years after performing the transplant, the medical team decided to withdraw antiretroviral therapy under strict monitoring, since it is a truly critical moment for patients. From here, and several analyzes later, it was seen that there was no sign that the virus was multiplying again. In the end, viral DNA was not detected either in peripheral blood tests or in biopsies of intestinal tissue, which usually acts as a “reservoir” where the virus hides. And this is where the Spanish group, through IrsiCaixa, has had a lot to say, since its research teams are currently monitoring 40 participants in similar conditions. What does it mean? Although it seems that we have achieved the definitive cure, the reality is that this is not the case. Right now we must understand that hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a very high-risk and extremely clinically aggressive procedure that initially leaves the patient without any defenses and then they trust that the transplant will work and they will not reject it. All of this makes its mortality rate very high, so it is only ethically and medically justified in patients suffering from a potentially fatal blood cancer, not as a standard therapy for people living with HIV, who today can lead a normal and healthy life thanks to daily antiretroviral treatments. It’s the way. Although it is not the definitive therapy, it does open the way to developing genetic therapies such as CRISPR or cellular treatments such as therapies CAR-T that manage to imitate this immunity in the patient’s own body in a safe, scalable way and without the need to undergo a transplant from an external donor. Although to get here there is still a long way to go for science. Images | National Institute of Allergy In Xataka | The HIV epidemic never left Africa. Now a new treatment wants to make a difference

Science explains why the cure can be worse than the disease

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At the time of want to lose a few kilos The truth is that many different strategies emerge, such as eliminate sweetsstart exercising more or eat much more protein. But, on the other hand, there are strategies that are really extravagant and that are spread by influencers of our society that do not have any solid foundation. The last one arrives from actor Matt Damon who claims to have lost a few kilos thanks to leaving gluten out of his diet. A discrepancy. And the reality is that science has a lot to say about this decision. Since the ‘gluten-free’ foods that now flood supermarkets were born as a medical necessity for 1% of the population. But now it has become a holy grail of weight loss following the following logic: ‘if I cut out bread and pasta, I lose weight. Ergo, gluten makes you fat.’ There is no evidence. Nutritional science has bad news for these peopleincluding the actor, since eliminating gluten does not have a specific slimming effect. In fact, if you do not have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity diagnosed, eliminating it can even be counterproductive for cardiovascular and metabolic health. It’s a calorie deficit. The first myth to debunk is that gluten, per sebe a metabolic villain that makes us accumulate fat. According to a systematic review published in International Journal of Cardiovascular Sciencesgluten-free diets are not associated with greater weight loss compared to normal gluten-containing diets in healthy adults. So… why do some people swear they lost weight by giving up gluten? The answer lies in the changes that accompany this diet, but not in gluten. And when you give up gluten, you automatically stop eating calorie-dense ultra-processed foods such as industrial pastries, cookies, refined pasta… In this way, you eat fewer total calories and this is what causes you to lose weight and not the absence of gluten. The effect of water. In addition to this caloric deficit, a pilot study in athletes noted that the rapid weight loss after six weeks without gluten was primarily due to loss of fluid and glycogen stores, not an actual metabolic advantage. Fewer refined carbohydrates mean less water retention. But if there was any doubt, another clinical trial in patients with a metabolic problem in their history detected reductions in waist circumference and triglyceridesbut without changes in weight. In this way, the researchers suggest that this is due more to better food selection and glycemic control than to a “fat-removing effect” of gluten. A flat stomach. Another of the great thoughts that can be heard in this sense is that people who do not eat wheat feel much less bloated. And this is real, but the culprit is not gluten, but from the fructans of wheatwhich is basically a type of fermentable carbohydrate that produces a lot of gas and bloating. In this way, the abdomen looks much flatter, but not because of a loss of fat. The cardiovascular paradox. But although gluten is seen as a demon, the reality is that it has several intrinsically good things. For example, gluten is often accompanied by whole grains, and whole grains are cardioprotective. This is evidenced in a study published in the BMJ with more than 100,000 participants who were followed for 26 years. This concludes that gluten consumption does not increase the risk of coronary heart disease. What’s more, when the data was adjusted, a higher gluten intake was associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease. That is why the authors warned: promoting gluten-free diets in healthy people can reduce the consumption of whole grains and, therefore, negatively affect cardiovascular health. And in diabetes. In this case they were three large studies that showed an inverse relationship: Those who ate the most gluten had a 13% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who ate the least. The why? Again, the fiber and micronutrients associated with the cereal that contains gluten. The problem of the accused. When we see that something is ‘gluten free’ we may think that we are looking at something much healthier. But the reality is that sometimes, to compensate for the lack of elasticity and texture that gluten provides, The food industry often reformulates products by adding more saturated fat, more sugar and reducing the protein it contains. Furthermore, gluten-free diets in non-celiac people have also been associated with a lower intake of fiber, B vitamins and a worse long-term cardiometabolic profile. Who should give up gluten? Science is quite clear in this case: who needs it, that is, the 1% of the population with celiac disease. And logically also people with non-celiac gluten sensitivity who may have major digestive problems. For the rest of the population, eliminating gluten offers no clear nutritional benefits. On the contrary: there is a risk of spending more money on products with a worse nutritional profile, reducing the consumption of cardioprotective fiber and attributing to gluten a success that, in reality, simply belongs to eating less ultra-processed foods. Images | Wesual Click Towfiqu barbhuiya In Xataka | Food has been filled with contradictory messages: a sports nutritionist helps us understand what’s behind it

Working in a nuclear power plant is not the best way to avoid cancer. Now it turns out that its waste also serves to cure it

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If there is a terrifying and mainstream disease, it is cancer: after all, according to the WHOone in five people will develop it at some point in their life. Although in some cases the risk factors vary depending on the type of cancer, working in a nuclear power plant poses some riskas long as there is greater exposure to ionizing radiation, even if there are no accidents or more intense exposure through maintenance work. Paradoxically, the activity of nuclear power plants, which can cause cancer, also serves to generate the basis of the medicine to cure it. And we are not talking about a potentially distant study, but rather something that can already be materialized. In fact, the United Kingdom has already taken a step forward to transform some of its radioactive waste into anti-cancer medication. The world’s first lead-212 radiopharmaceutical ecosystem. Because in the UK they have closed an agreement between the public body Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the biotechnology company Bicycle Therapeutics for which the latter will have 400 tons of reprocessed uranium to extract the valuable (for the medical industry) lead – 212 for 15 years. Behind Bicycle is Sir Greg Winter, co-founder of the company and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018. This will provide them with the infrastructure to create the world’s first end-to-end lead-212 radiopharmaceutical ecosystem, from discovery to commercial supply. So explains it Mike Hannay, Chief Product and Supply Chain Officer at Bicycle Therapeutics. The benefits of lead – 212. Lead – 212 is an isotope used in therapeutic contexts thanks to its particular decay properties, so that it emits both alpha and beta particles. While the former provide high-energy, short-range cytotoxicity, the latter have a more extended range, targeting micro-metastasis. In a simplified way, this medically applicable isotope is essential for precision treatments against tumors resistant to other therapies. Thus, it carries radiation and acts directly on cancer cells to destroy tumors, minimizing the damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. This type of technique offers promising results in prostate cancers and neuroendocrine tumors of organs such as the intestine or pancreas. Extracting lead-212 is an arduous task. Converting the waste from nuclear power plants into cancer treatments seems like a fantastic idea for two reasons: because of the cure for cancer itself and the problem of dealing with radioactive waste, one of the great challenges faced by these energy industries, which have also explored other avenues such as take advantage of the remaining energy. But getting here has not been easy: the extraction process of this isotope has been carried out by the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory (UKNNL) with a complex chemical process that requires the isolation of scandalously small quantities of the precursor material from the used nuclear fuel. Thus, first the Thorium-228 is extracted from the reprocessed uranium to later process it into Radium-224. It is then loaded into a lead-212 generator that has been custom-made for Bicycle Therapeutics’ needs by US company SpectronRx. This is a continuous regeneration, producing enough lead-212 to deliver tens of thousands of doses of precision therapy per year. The laboratory explains that the critical part is in the beginning: “The initial precursor material extracted is comparable to finding a single drop of water in an Olympic swimming pool.” From that minute amount, an even smaller fraction of lead-212 is separated. First discover the universe, then cure cancer. In addition to this unexpected use of nuclear power plant waste, in recent weeks a group of researchers from the University of York have evidenced in a study that the intense radiation captured in the beam absorbers of particle accelerators could be reused to produce materials used in cancer therapies. Those particle accelerators They are used, among other things, in experiments to discover the matter of which the universe is composed. In Xataka | The rarest element on Earth aims to cure cancer. And Europe is already accelerating its production In Xataka | We have been believing that bacteria are a weapon against tumors for 150 years. And finally we have discovered how Cover | Jakub Zerdzicki and Ivan S

In 1962, a remote village in Tanzania suffered an epidemic of laughter. To this day we still have not been able to cure it.

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If you are one of those who are easily infected by other people’s laughter, you probably would not have survived what happened to a town of Tanganyika on January 30, 1962. This is what two doctors say who compiled the facts: at a girls’ missionary school in the town of Kashasha, on the coast of what we currently know as Lake Victoria (Tanzania), three students began to joke. His laugh mutated from normal to nervous, ceasing to be both a manifestation of humor and something more disturbing. The girls couldn’t stop laughing hysterically. Laughter, that traditional escape valve, was now a terrifying reaction. Without knowing very well how, the rest of the school began to be infected with this effect, and within a few hours 95 of the 159 attendees at school were also laughing for hours, 16 hours in a row in the most serious cases. These were the facts that caught the attention of the doctors: on the one hand, the Kashasha school also operated as a residence. The girls slept in communal rooms, dividing themselves into rooms with girls of various ages. Those affected were not located in specific points of the residence, there were no rooms where everyone suffered from hysteria at the same time, but instead They were distributed throughout the center. None of the two Europeans and three Africans who worked as teachers suffered any uncontrollable panic attacks. Trying to put a stop to the phenomenon, the residence and school were closed for a month. The girls went home, but instead of stopping it, they extended it much further: after ten days, cases of uncontrollable laughter were observed 80 kilometers from the school. Five months later the final count in this area of ​​10,000 people was 217 people treated and around 1,000 affected. Boys and girls suffered from it indiscriminately, children but also some young people, and mostly illiterate kids with modest finances. Each patient’s attacks lasted an average of four to eight hours, with a known case of 16 consecutive daysand after the attack subsided they usually suffered one or two more. No one had more than four attacks. Although we imagine these abductions as something comical, comedy was the last of the predominant feelings during those episodes: to the laughter was added crying, respiratory problems, a general restlessness of the subject, manifestation of violence towards others and, in some specific cases, paranoia, with girls commenting that there were demonic subjects chasing them. Would the corn flour have been contaminated? Maybe a new virus? Maybe a supernatural curse? The blood samples that were sent to the laboratories came back with a NAD, “Nothing Abnormal Detected”. There are even those who suspected that everything could have been distorted or invented. This hypothesis lost strength over the years. For a very simple reason: because other outbreaks of sudden, very strange social epidemics were observed. The dance, the fainting, the dream In 1983in the area of ​​the West Bank occupied by the Israeli army, it was seen that at least 400 Arab girls and a teacher had spontaneously suffered nausea, nervousness and dizziness, ending in fainting and loss of consciousness. Over time, some Israeli female soldiers would also disappear. In Virginia, United States, some high school students suffered a mass hysteria of laughter equal to that of Tanganyika in the 60s. Any new drugs? Anyone put laughing gas through the vents? “The school is still safe”said the authorities, who at the end of the cycle attributed the circumstance to a “unusual stress” that students might be suffering. In 2017 a strange local Swedish phenomenon was published in the press for the first time that has been going on for decades. There have not been many cases between the 90s and 2010, but only between 2015 and 2016 there were almost 200 cases at once. Only the children of refugees who have requested asylum suffer from it. As soon as the parents know that permission has been denied, some of these children enter a kind of coma: they remain completely passive, do not speak, eat or drink, lose control of their sphincters and do not know how to react to pain. Swedish doctors say they do not know what to do, since the investigation of the event causes the epidemic to spread with new cases. They do not doubt the veracity of the phenomenon: although attempts at fraud have been discovered, with parents simulating the effect on their children to stay longer in the host country, most cases have been authenticated. Psychologists have named the ailment as Resignation Syndromealthough the hypothesis of studying it as another case of “epidemic hysteria” was considered. The academic term for epidemic hysteria is “mass psychogenic illness”or MPI, as it appears abbreviated in psychiatry manuals. To say that there are few certainties is to exceed the medical achievements achieved to determine what these attacks consist of. They are episodes so specific and so little controllable that, as they come, they go. Among the common aspects that have been seen are: a) that there is no plausible organic basis; b) that there is previously excessive anxiety in the affected group; and c) that spreads through sight, sound or oral communication. Although the effects are physical, it seems that it is a disease closely linked to the psychological. Although it has not been possible to study it correctly due to its lack of data, some historical cases of hysteria have subsequently been read as examples of the MPI. There they were dance epidemics in medieval Europein which the local population danced or held obscene orgies for hours or days, leading some to death. In search of answers The priests who were going to exorcise the novices of the cloistered convents Sometimes they noted that several of these newcomers suffered from it at the same time. Perhaps in response to the excessive discipline and poverty of the lives that awaited them, many of them began to meow, insult and seduce their companions. Although it … Read more

The rarest element on Earth aims to cure cancer. And Europe is already accelerating its production

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In the fight against cancer there are many ‘weapons’ that we have at our disposalsuch as chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The problem is that these are assimilated like bombing a city to destroy a single house: it is achieved, but with a lot of collateral damage. But this can be solved if We attack only what interests usin this case a tumor cell, and science points to one of the rarest elements on the planet as a candidate to achieve this. Where are we now. The goal of science is to find the most specific therapies possible so that they attack a tumor cell and not a healthy cell with the aim of reducing the adverse effects of the treatment and also being more effective. For this there are different options such as immunotherapy or the use of very specific antibodies, but there is still a long way to go. A particle. He astatinewhose name comes from the Greek astats (“unstable”), lives up to its name. It is the rarest natural element on Earth and disappears almost as soon as it is formed and that is very interesting to us. Especially a ‘version’ of this element which is At-211 which has a half-life of only 7.2 hours. But this instability is part of its magic. At-211 is what Texas A&M scientists call a “Goldilocks” isotope: perfect for the job. Its advantages. Currently, heto traditional radiation used in cancer treatments have a great impact on the body when traveling over long distances. But At-211 emits alpha particles, which is a heavy, slow-moving helium nucleus, which when emitted releases an enormous amount of energy, but can only travel a tiny distance, just the thickness of a few cells. This is crucial. Targeted Alpha Therapy involves “gluing” an atom of At-211 to a molecule (such as an antibody) designed to specifically seek out and bind to cancer cells. At-211 travels through the body, ignoring healthy cells, and when it finds its target, it anchors to the tumor and releases its alpha particle. The result is a localized and devastating explosion of energy, which irreversibly destroys the DNA of the cancer cell. But since the particle cannot travel any further, the healthy cell next to it will not be affected, making this an almost perfect killer. Your problem. At first glance everything seems great, but… Why don’t we use it? The answer lies in its availability, since it is impossible to mine astatine, since with a life of 7.2 hours the clock is running against it. The only way to obtain it is to create it artificially in a cyclotron, a particle accelerator. The process basically involves firing a beam of alpha particles at a Bismuth-209 target. Now the advance that has been achieved is to create a fully automated system to produce and ship the AT-211 as quickly as possible so that it can be used. In Europe. With this advance, which has been made in Texas, processing time is reduced and the safety of technicians who do not have to handle this substance increases. And while Texas A&M resolves supply in the US, Europe is making a move. The project Accelerate.EUfunded by the European Union, was launched at the end of 2024 with a clear objective: to create a robust and sustainable manufacturing and treatment infrastructure for At-211 throughout Europe. The project focuses on especially difficult-to-treat cancers, such as pancreas, breast and brain tumors (glioblastomas), demonstrating that this therapy is a global strategic priority. The future therefore lies in the possibility of using one isotope to illuminate the tumor and then using another to kill it, inaugurating authentic personalized nuclear medicine. Images | freepik In Xataka | The most unexpected treatment against cancer is LED light, and it is giving good results

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