night

rural Spain is turning blue at night

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In 2023, data from the Chinese SDGSAT-1 satellite made it possible for the RALAN-Map EU project, of the Complutense University of Madrid and the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, to develop the first high resolution calibrated map of the Iberian Peninsula and the archipelagos of the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands and Madeira. Thanks to the level of detail of this cartographyyou can see how the artificial brightness changes and what type of light predominates in each region at night. And observing the color temperature of light sources has revealed something unexpected: hundreds of small towns have changed the warm tone of their traditional lighting for a bluish light. I have seen a light. The map reaches an unprecedented resolution in this type of study, 40 meters, which has made it possible to verify that while large cities maintain warm tones, municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants present colder and bluish lighting. The reason? A change in infrastructure: many municipalities in rural Spain have left behind the old lighting with LED streetlights to save energy, and this update translates into a different color, noticeable even from space. The RALAN-MAP 0 map of light pollution Why it is important. Both the UCM and the SINC Agency They agree that the map represents, in the words of the university itself, “a significant advance” to more accurately evaluate the environmental and health impact of light pollution, and opens new avenues for the management of lighting and the protection of the night sky. The reason is that blue light, in addition to looking different, has a wavelength that spreads further into the atmospherewhich increases nighttime glow and worsens sky visibility for astronomical observations, including summer classics like the Perseids. Besides, There are studies that support that this type of light interferes with the biological rhythms of species such as pollinating insects or migratory birdswhich orient themselves at night. Context. The SDGSAT-1 was launched in 2021 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a satellite designed to monitor the progress of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which gives it a nighttime detail capacity unprecedented until now. The RALAN-Map EU project is also part of a broader line of research on light pollution that astrophysicist Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel and his team have been developing for more than a decade, including Previous studies on the energy consumption of public lighting in Spain using satellite data. In detail. The map is publicly accessible and can be consulted online, allowing anyone, whether a city council, research or urban planning, to precisely identify where blue light predominates and prioritize changing streetlights there. The geographical pattern is clear: it is precisely small municipalities, many of them surrounded by protected natural spaces, that have renewed their lighting the most in recent years, prioritizing energy savings over the ecological or astronomical impact of the chosen color temperature. Thus, warm sodium lights have given way to white lights rich in blue components. In Xataka | NASA has looked at Torrevieja from space and has seen a huge mass of pink water essential to finding life on Mars In Xataka | Europe has been watching Colombia for a decade from space and what it has seen is a tragedy: the death of a glacier Cover | KEVIN CLYDE BERBANO

Your new 2K camera with night vision and this wireless peephole are now official

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Connected home security takes a leap in resolution without having to pay exorbitant prices. The Ring firm has made its latest two additions official in Spain: the Ring Outdoor Camera 2K (2nd generation) and the Ring Peephole Camera 2K. These are two proposals designed for completely different housing profiles, but they share a clear philosophy: installation within everyone’s reach, integration with Alexa system and high definition image quality. Ring Outdoor Camera 2K, Outdoor camera The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Ring Peephole Camera 2K (latest gen.) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Ring Outdoor Camera (2nd generation): versatility for perimeter surveillance This surveillance camera It is ideal for gardens, patios, terraces and main entrances. The second generation of Ring’s outdoor camera arrives with 2K resolution (Retinal) as a great asset, allowing a higher level of detail when identifying faces or distant objects thanks to its six-fold digital zoom. If there is something for which it stands out, it is for presenting a flexible feeding systemadapting to any need, since you can connect it via a rechargeable battery, power outlet or solar panel. The night vision has been improved in this new version and maintains color interpretation in low light situations and automatically switches to black and white in total darkness, so you don’t miss any details. It can also be noted that it incorporates active safety elements such as an integrated deterrent siren, zoned motion detection and two-way audio, so you can talk to whoever is on the other side. This model of outdoor surveillance camera is available for pre-sale and will be on the market next August 12 by 99.99 euros. Ring Outdoor Camera 2K, Outdoor camera The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Ring Peephole Camera 2K: the ideal connected peephole for rental apartments Designed for replace the traditional peephole In a matter of minutes, this Ring Peephole Camera 2K avoids the use of cables, construction or drilling, thus becoming a perfect option for apartments (both owned and rented). It has 2K resolution and adds a field of view in vertical format (to see the entire body of whoever is in front). Its installation is simple and fits directly into the existing peephole hole. It offers integration with Alexa, so you can see, in real time, who is at the door through a EchoShow or the brand’s app. In addition, it should also be noted that it works with a removable rechargeable battery easy maintenance. As for this extension for the home peephole, it will go on sale on August 19 and can now be pre-purchased for 99.99 euros. Ring Peephole Camera 2K (latest gen.) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links You may also be interested Ring Intercom Audio | Make your intercom smarter The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Ring Battery Video Doorbell (Latest Gen.) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Ring In Xataka | Security home automation for when you are not at home: cameras, sensors, kits and more to monitor and control your home on vacation In Xataka | I’m going to automate my entire house and the first step is very clear: goodbye Google Home, hello Alexa

In the Mediterranean it no longer makes sense to talk about a “tropical night” because almost all of them are.

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On June 21, the thermometer at Almería airport did not drop below 30.8ºC throughout the night. In fact, at seven in the morning the temperature was exactly the same as it would have been on an August afternoon twenty years ago. It seems like an isolated event (after all, it is the first time that we have encountered a minimum like this in the Mediterranean in June), but it is not. Just a handful of days later, the AEMET experts made it quite clear: it no longer makes much sense to talk about “tropical nights” in the Mediterranean because almost all summer nights already are. That is, almost no drops below 20 degrees. The June heat wave was (quite) exceptional. Not only because the 22nd and 23rd were the warmest June in the country since at least 1950; nor because the average peninsular anomaly was 7.1 ºC. The most striking exceptionality occurred in the early morning: according to the same AEMET24 of its 86 main stations marked the highest minimum in the historical series. That was the symptom. But the problem is another. A problem that has to do with an indicator that jumps so much that it has stopped meaning something just when we need it most. Or, at least, when we are most aware of the lack of it. In 2025, A CSIC research team published a work in Environment International in which he analyzed 178 cities, separating the effect of warm nights from that of warm days. Their conclusions indicate that nocturnal heat is associated with an increase in mortality of up to 3% and that this effect is independent of daytime heat. The mechanism is also dramatically simple: if the early morning does not ease, the body does not recover, sleep is degraded and cardiovascular or respiratory pathologies worsen rapidly. Why should we care? Because southern Europe is among the regions hardest hit by temperature changes. But there is something else: the same CESIC studyexcess mortality due to nocturnal heat in Spain is concentrated in the interior (Granada, 3.56%; Madrid, 3.45%; or Córdoba, 3.44%) while the Mediterranean coast is holding up much better (Barcelona, ​​0.56%; Alicante, 0.55%; or Almería 0.46%). That is, the problem is adaptability to these types of phenomena. Something in which the coast wins because it has been suffering from it (to a lesser extent, but suffering from it) for many years. The future we are going to. AEMET projects to go from the current 22 heat wave days per year to 47 at the end of the century with intermediate emissions. Preparing is no longer an option if we don’t want to. paint the windows of half the country with chalk or white yogurt. Image | Christian Van Der Henst In Xataka | Beyond gazpacho and salmorejo: Spain’s hidden summer dishes that are crying out to become popular

“Leaving the air conditioning on all night can cost around a euro in electricity”

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The torrid nights with thermometers that refuse to drop below 25 degrees are already here with us, with several heat waves that we have suffered in a chained way. At these moments you may think about the possibility of using the air conditioning at night, but the fear of the amount that will arrive on the electricity bill is always there. But the reality is that there are situations where this expense is not so exorbitant. Exorbitant consumption. Leaving the air on for eight hours of sleep can cost us around one euro. This is how Carlos Llull, air conditioning technician, explains it. who points out thatin an average scenario with modern equipment, the economic impact is much less than we usually imagine. Through a publication On his Instagram account, which has gone viral, he pointed out that “leaving the air conditioning on for 8 hours at night can cost around one euro in electricity.” And there are more voices. Beyond this phrase that can give us peace of mind in our pockets, Álex Bermúdez, energy expert, reduces This figure is even further stated by stating that, depending on the programmed degrees and the thermal characteristics of the room, the cost of an entire night can be barely around 0.45 euros. But with these gurus announcing this, the question is obvious: How is it possible if a domestic air conditioner usually has an installed power of between 1,000 and 2,000 W? And the answer is in the inverter systems of the most modern equipment. The mathematics. If we use logic, it is quite simple to calculate the consumption of an air conditioner, since it ‘simply’ multiplies the maximum power of the device by the eight hours that it can be kept on during the night. And this would only be correct if you literally lived in an oven without windows and the equipment had to work at its maximum constantly, something that does not happen in most cases. Modern inverter compressors do not work with an obsolete binary on/off system, but their motor is capable of self-regulation when starting at high power to reach the desired temperature, but once achieved, it modulates its work and drastically reduces the revolutions to simply maintain the environment. This means that, during most of the early morning hours, and helped by the fact that the outside temperature also drops, the equipment barely consumes a minimal fraction of its maximum capacity. It depends on several factors. Of course, that euro per night is not a guaranteed flat rate, but rather a measurement that depends on a delicate thermodynamic balance in your home. The first of them is the set temperature, since, as the IDAE runsthe ideal temperature in summer should be between 23 and 26 ºC. Each degree lowered will mean an increase of between 6 and 8% in energy consumption. Insulation is also essential, since a room with thermal leaks, as can occur with old windows, will lose cold quickly, forcing the compressor to exit its maintenance mode and work at higher power throughout the night. The energy rate. This is a fundamental factor, since the final cost of using the air at night will vary depending on whether the rate is in the regulated marketwhere early morning prices can be very low, or if you have a free market rate with an agreed kWh price. Optimize consumption. As the OCU points outit is important not to turn on the air at the minimum temperature to “cool quickly”, since it is inefficient, and that is why it should always be programmed from the beginning to the desired temperature. But in addition, you must take advantage of the ‘ECO’ or ‘Sleep’ mode that many air conditioners already include so that the temperature is gradually adjusted throughout the early morning. Images | Zulfugar Karimov In Xataka | What is energy efficiency and why is it a saving that matters more than ever?

“Eating banana, grapes, mango or pineapple at night could interfere with rest”

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The Internet and social networks are fertile ground for nutritional myths, and the latest to gain strength has a name and surname. Recently, some statements attributed to cardiologist Aurelio Rojas they suggested that consuming fruits such as bananas, grapes, mango or pineapple at night could directly interfere with our rest, fragment sleep and cause us to wake up exhausted. But the truth is that the available evidence does not agree with this information. The late-night carb debate. The main argument for discouraging tropical or sweeter fruits at night is usually based on the glycemic response. It is true that our body does not metabolize macronutrients exactly the same at eight in the morning as at ten at night, and it is something that is studied a lot and even has its own name: chrononutrition. Studied. A recent meta-analysis published in it Journal of the American Nutrition Association addressed precisely this question and their results concluded that, indeed, eating carbohydrates at night produces higher post-meal glucose values ​​than if they are consumed in the morning. However, the study found no clear differences in insulin response. In this way, the fact that a banana or some grapes raise glucose slightly more at night does not prove, by itself, that they will worsen the quality of our sleep. At the extremes. Another thing is that we go, as always, towards the extremes and we are faced with a case of a person who gorges on fruit at night where logically they will have heavy digestion and a more fragmented sleep. Because here precisely one of the tips that experts always give to deal with insomnia problems is to have a light dinner and not immediately before going to bed. But logically we are not faced with this situation, but with the pretext of eating a little fruit in the evening, which is quite positive. Fruit is not an enemy. Far from being a big problem for our night’s rest, fruits could be great allies for our pillow. Here, an article published in 2025 in Sleep Health analyzed The relationship between the consumption of these foods and rest patterns, and experts found that a higher intake of fruits and vegetables during the day was, in fact, associated with less sleep fragmentation during the following night. Specifically, it was estimated that consuming around 5 cups of fruits and vegetables daily is related to a 16% improvement in overall sleep quality. The advice. In this way we can see that suggesting that anyone should stop eating fruit because of sleep fragmentation has no basis. Another thing is that there is some type of digestive problem or even diabetes that may discourage eating this type of food, but for the vast majority of the population this problem should not exist. In Xataka | “A random selection may be insufficient”: Choosing your 5 daily fruits and vegetables also matters

Experts agree that opening windows at night and closing them during the day is no longer the best strategy against heat.

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For decades, long before air conditioners and the fans will take Every corner of its geography, Spain knew how to handle the heat: during the day, everything was closed tight; at night, everything open and ventilate. It sounds rudimentary, but in 2026 that is still the strategy we recommends the Ministry of Health. And yet, there is a problem. The Spain of the blinds game did not sleep in cities at 26 degrees at four in the morning. Not 26, not 28, not more than 30, as has been happening these days in Almería. The arrival of the ‘hellish nights’ challenges everything we thought we knew about domestic heat management. Therefore, we have asked ourselves… and now what? What we were doing until now. That popular knowledge I was talking about goes viral every time the heat makes an appearance. And, like I say, it makes sense. In a world where it cools down at night, the winning strategy is night cooling and daytime insulation. What he says Health Plan against high temperatures. The central issue here is that that world has ceased to exist. Because the key is not the time, it is the thermometer. In reality, what we are looking for is to open when it is cool and close when it is hot. It’s usually cool at night, but… What if he stops doing it? Summer has stretched on for five weeks and Spain is about two degrees warmer than at the beginning of the eighties. The torrid nights (with minimums of 25 degrees or more) have multiplied by ten since 1984 in the ten most populated capitals and, according to AEMET data, this affects about nine million people. Even the tropical ones (minimums of 20 or more) today add a dozen more a year than decades ago. We can’t sleep… although researchers have not agreed on the ideal temperature for sleeping (some point which is about 18.3ºC, but there is no consensus), they have done so on a fundamental idea: sleeping in the heat is objectively a bad idea. For whatever reason, it is true that our temperature changes between wakefulness and sleep. In fact, “thermal regulation is a significant factor” in sleep control, explained the teacher Cameron Van Den Heuvelfrom the University of Adelaide. “About an hour to thirty minutes before sleep, the body begins to lose body heat. This increases feelings of tiredness in normal healthy adults.” People with insomnia, without going any further, “show that they have a higher basal temperature just before sleeping than people who do not have sleep problems.” Ambient heat does not help this thermal reduction and it seems to be proven that when the temperature is very high, it is more difficult to fall asleep and, when it is achieved, it is of very poor quality. And then what do we do? In the interior of the peninsula, as the thermal amplitude remains high, opening at dawn works. There is nothing to change. The problem is for those who live on the coast or in the big city. When the night exceeds 20 degrees, the strategy is reversed. Ventilating at night is no longer the main technique and the battle is won during the day: you have to seal the house as soon as the street heats up, squeeze out the thermal inertia and use the air conditioning wisely. However, as the nights get warmer the household tricks come to an end. If the trend is confirmed, we will have to assume that the housing stock must be transformed: sun protection, rehabilitation and climate shelters will be the buzzwords in a few years. Image | Fernando Rosado In Xataka | ENT doctors agree: “Sleeping with air conditioning forces the nose to work excessively”

an old trick to know what time of night wild boars appear

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In the Middle Ages, tracking a wild boar was such a valuable skill that some nobles they spent whole days to interpret footprints, disturbed mud and almost invisible signs to find out where the animal had spent the night. In fact, the great wild boar hunts depended much more than reading the terrain than force or weapons, a tradition that survived for centuries even after the emergence of more advanced technologies. The trick that hunters of yesteryear used. Long before camera traps or drones existed, hunters resorted to simple and ingenious solutions to find out what time wild boars appeared. One of the most curious methods consisted of connect an alarm clock to a fishing line placed next to a bait station. When the animal moved a stone or touched the line while eating, the battery jumped and the clock stopped, recording the exact time of visit. The system had limitations and could fail due to rain, other animals or simple mechanical errors, but it reflects the extent to which knowing the habits of the wild boar has always been valuable information for those who lived with this species. A very adaptable animal. The obsession with understanding the wild boar has a simple explanation: it is one of the mammals most adaptable in Europe. Its varied diet, intelligence and high reproductive capacity allow it to thrive in forests, crops, marshes and even environments close to cities. This ease of taking advantage of any available resource has driven the growth of their populations during the last decades and has turned the species into a constant challenge for wildlife managers, farmers, conservationists and hunters. When population control disappears. The increase in specimens is especially visible in some protected areas where hunting activity was eliminated or significantly reduced. The ban on hunting in national parks was presented as a victory for conservation, but the passage of time has revealed that the absence of regulatory mechanisms also can cause problems. The debate, therefore, no longer revolves solely around the protection of animals, but about how to prevent a particularly successful species from altering the balance of the ecosystem. The alarm in Doñana. He most striking case is occurring in the Doñana National Park in Spain. Organizations such as Ecologistas en Acción and SEO/BirdLife have alerted that nest predation by wild boars is affecting the reproductive success of protected species such as the common blackbird and purple heron. The situation is especially striking because some of the groups that defended the elimination of hunting in these spaces are now those who warn of the effects of an increasingly abundant wild boar population. No nests and threatened species. The damage does not only affect those birds. In various areas of the marsh, wild boars have entered colonies of breeding and have destroyed eggs and chicks of species such as the slender-billed gull, the black-winged stilt, the white-faced vent or the pratincole. The ability of the wild boar to locate food and taking advantage of any opportunity makes these nesting areas especially vulnerable targets. Images of severely damaged colonies have reopened a debate that seemed closed about how to manage certain wildlife populations. Nature does not understand ideologies. Beyond the crossed accusations between conservationists and representatives of the hunting world, the Doñana episode has put an uncomfortable question on the table: managing wildlife requires practical decisions in addition to conservation principles. Hence the old alarm clock connected to a fishing line symbolized the effort to understand an animal that is difficult to observe. Today the tools are much more sophisticatedbut the challenge remains the same. The better we know the wild boar, the more evident it becomes that its extraordinary ability to thrive can become a problem when the mechanisms capable of maintaining balance with the rest of the ecosystem disappear. Image | PXHereRichard Bartz In Xataka | Neither drones nor snipers: wild boar hunters in Barcelona have a simpler natural and home remedy In Xataka | The technological war that we see in Ukraine has an unexpected replica in Barcelona: this time the enemy is thousands of wild boars

The biggest mistake you can make the night before the Selectivity exam is not leaving a topic unlooked at: it is not sleeping

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When we think of a student during exam time or of a candidate who is preparing very intensely for an exam that will offer him job stability, we automatically think of the classic image of being up early in the morning studying hundreds of underlined pages. Here it seems that sleeping becomes a minor issue due to the fact of studying and cramming hundreds of pages. But the reality is that study without sleeping It’s like wasting time, even though it may seem otherwise. The science. Here the science has a lot to sayand a robust body of evidence suggests that putting aside studying and getting into bed for 7 or 8 hours of sleep is by far the smartest decision you can make before an exam or during preparation. And something they don’t teach us is that studying is only half of the learning and memorization process that occurs in our brain, since the other half occurs while we are asleep in order to ingrain knowledge. In the brain. To understand why sleep is non-negotiable for students, we have to look at what happens inside our heads when we sleep. At these moments we may think that the brain is in a state of lethargy or shutdown, but the truth is that it is a period of frenetic activity at the neuronal level. We found one of the proofs in a published article in Neuron which suggests that the sleeping brain is biologically optimized for memory consolidation. Something very important, because during the day the brain acts like a true sponge, capturing a large amount of information quickly but volatile, which far exceeds the limit of its capacity to retain it. Transferring it to the hard drive. All this knowledge that we try to acquire in one afternoon has to be consolidated so that we can later remember it in the exam. This is where sleep comes in, which is where a hippocampal-cortical transferwhich allows the information acquired during wakefulness to be reactivated and transferred to the cerebral cortex, which is where the information is stored long-term. In Nature We found a fascinating article that detailed how neurons repeat at full speed the information learned during the first phase of sleep. This phase prepares the ground so that, during REM sleep, in the second half of sleep, synaptic connections are stabilized and strengthened to integrate all the information. But if we skip hours of sleep, or reduce it to 3-4 hours to be more efficient, this process is interrupted. The disaster of sleep deprivation. The penalty for not sleeping is severe, since if you decide to spend the night sleepless to review “a couple more topics”, you should know that the price you have to pay is a 40% reduction in learning capacity, in addition to an increase in memory losses and a plummet in concentration. And what these losses ultimately generate are temporary memory gaps, which is the typical situation in which we remain “blank” looking at the exam sheet without knowing what to write, although you remember having read it hours before. This is why a student with few hours of sleep shows much slower response times, is confused when making decisions, and suffers a radical worsening of attention. In surveys. In 2023, a study carried out with 640 students of the Autonomous University of Madrid during their exam period pointed out that 61.3% of those surveyed already sensed that their performance would improve if they slept more. From here, the researchers confirmed a direct and positive association between sleep quality and academic performance. Furthermore, they discovered that the “sleep debt” accumulated during the week took a very high toll, being associated with worse performance perceived by the students themselves. The perfect dose. Here the recommendation that we must keep in mind is that of the WHO or the National Sleep Foundation, which suggests that young adults should sleep between 7 and 8 hours a day, and even increase to 9 hours for students with great cognitive stress, such as opponents. Images | Ministry of Health In Xataka | If you wake up tired on a regular basis, your rest is fragmented. The good news is that science knows how to fix it

late night cafes for crying babies

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Japan may have few babies (of course many fewer than the authorities would like), but that does not mean that caring for them is easy. Especially for families for whom conciliation is difficult. To solve it in some locations in the country, an idea has begun to take shape: the yonakigoya or “cry night cafes”, places where parents (basically mothers) can go when their babies won’t let up and make them spend a sleepless night crying and lonely. In the yonakigoya Not only do they find places to sing lullabies without disturbing other family members who will have to get up early to face exhausting days of work. The idea is that they also serve as support networks and reach places where administrations do not. “Crying coffees”? Exact. They sound like science fiction. And it makes perfect sense that this is the case because the concept came from a manga published in 2023a work that talks about a place called Yonakigoya (‘House of Night Cry’) that serves as a refuge for mothers who are overwhelmed by the crying of their little ones. Straits Times assures that the author was speaking from her own experience and that she shared the idea for the first time online in 2017. The reception there was so good that she decided to reserve a place for it in her work. Something more than fiction. Beyond when, how and where the idea arose, what is undeniable is that the concept of yonakigoya It has penetrated Japanese society enough to make the leap from fiction to reality. It has revealed Kyodo Newsone of the most popular news agencies in the country. A few days ago, its reporter Maki Shinozaki published a report on how the phenomenon of late-night “cry coffees” is expanding throughout the country. The piece has been echoed by media around the world, from newspapers the Sanyo News either Sankei Shimbum to the british The Times. Between toast and books. The yonakigoya They seem to have more of a support network than places that seek to make money from the cries of babies and the anguish of their parents. In fact, in Hokkaido The service is provided in a cafeteria specializing in French toast that has decided to open certain nights a month to help mothers, in Tokushima there is another support center that organizes “coffees for crying children” every month and in Aichi a bookstore has decided to join the bandwagon by organizing evenings for babies. In the first case (the cafeteria) the premises open for free between 9:00 p.m. on Sunday and 6:00 a.m. on Monday and in the latter (the bookstore) the service is provided with the help of volunteers such as teachers or midwives from 8:30 p.m. to 12:00 p.m. Although Kiodo News and the Japanese media report only certain specific cases (which suggests that it is not a mass phenomenon), a quick search on Google shows that the concept generates interest and expands. For babies… and adults. At the French toast cafe in Hokkaido they have installed mats for babies to crawl and (hopefully) sleep, as well as spaces reserved for breastfeeding and diaper changes. However, usually yonakigoya They only look after the children. They also do it for the adults who arrive with them. The idea is that they serve as support for parents, mainly women, who are those who use them the mostespecially during their maternity leaves, while their husbands sleep before facing long days of work. Although the country has taken steps towards a labor model that allow conciliationat the end of 2024 the Government published a report which revealed that 10.1% of men and 4.2% of women work more than 60 hours per week. In the country it has even become sadly popular ‘karoshi’ conceptdeath from overwork. “A refuge”. Madoko Nozawa, owner of the toast cafe that is converted into yonakigoya Sunday mornings, has explained to Kyodo who decided to embark on the project inspired by her own experience. She is also a mother and in her day, she remembers, she spent sleepless nights because her baby wouldn’t stop crying and her husband had to get up early the next day. “I want this to be a refuge where people can feel like they are not alone in their struggles,” share. “While I was trying to put my children to sleep, I couldn’t move and felt totally overwhelmed,” points out another mother to whom the newspaper Chunichi Shimbun interviewed in the bookstore-yonakigoya from Aichi Prefecture. “I still don’t have many people I can talk to naturally about parenting. A place like this is a source of support.” A critical note. Although the yonakigoya They demonstrate Japan’s ability to create support networks, their success also leaves some critical readings. To begin with, the fact that those who use them are mostly women reveals that parenting still falls largely on them. It’s nothing new. In 2022 the Association of Medical Colleges of Japan published a study on childcare among doctors that revealed a significant gender gap: 31.8% of female doctors with children acknowledged that they shouldered 100% of the childcare and 55.2% estimated that they assumed more than 80% of the tasks. Among men, these percentages were respectively 8.4 and 14.5%. In the middle of the crisis. Another critical observation brings it Kaori Ichikawa, professor at the Tokyo University of Information Sciences, who points out the paradox that in the midst of demographic crisis and despite the huge amount of resources that the Government is allocating to promoting births, it must be the private and community initiative that cares for mothers at night. “Government support is often limited at night, weekends and holidays, so the public and private sectors must work together to create places like late-night cafes, where they can seek help when they need it,” claims. Images | Pema G. Lama (Unsplash), Kishor (Unsplash) In Xataka | In 1966, a superstition left a dent in the Japanese population pyramid. 60 years later, history threatens to … Read more

The problem with eating chocolate at 11 at night is not the calories, it is what it does to your sleep

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There are people who follow authentic rituals before going to sleep, such as a good shower to release all the tension of the day, but also take a little black chocolate so you can sweeten your mouth before going to sleep. A practice that for many is something that is an aberration, but to know if it is really a bad idea to do it, we have to turn to science and the studies that exist about chocolate. A principle against. For the detractors of nighttime chocolate, the enemy is not sugar as such, but the chocolate itself and how rich it is in the methylxanthineswhich are alkaloids that stimulate the central nervous system. And here are two that stand out above others, such as the caffeinewhich is quite well known, and theobromine, which is the main stimulant in dark chocolate. Here the scientific reviews they point that these substances act by blocking the receptors where adenosine binds to act. And it is no wonder, because adenosine is the molecule that it accumulates in our brain throughout the day to generate “sleep pressure.” But if methylxanthines block the point where they have to bind to act, the brain does not receive the signal that it is tired. Your problem. Although it is true that theobromine is “milder” than caffeine, its half-life in the body is long. This means that that 11pm chocolate could still be blocking your desire to sleep at 2am, increasing sleep latency and causing more nighttime awakenings. The importance of time. Science has now stopped looking only at calories to focus on chrononutrition, since it is suggested that chocolate influences circadian rhythms depending on the time at which it is taken. Here the studies they point Because chocolate can be a great ally to resynchronize the biological clock if it is consumed during the active phase in the morning, but taking it outside of this phase, when the body is preparing for rest, makes it difficult to synchronize our peripheral clocks. In short, we are sending contradictory signals to the body. Not everything is negative. In science there are not only extremes, but we can find a great spectrum of grays in the middle. This is because there is also evidence that qualifies the message that chocolate causes insomnia, because in animal models cocoa can improve certain sleep disorders induced by chronic stress. This suggests that, in high-stress contexts, the antioxidant and neuroprotective components of cocoa could help adjust the sleep-wake rhythm. However, researchers warn that this benefit is observed when cocoa is part of the general diet, not necessarily when it is consumed as a “bomb” of sugar and stimulants just before turning off the light. It is not universal. The effect of chocolate does not occur in everyone in the same way, meaning that each person can experience it differently, depending on the amount of chocolate consumed and also on sensitization. We must keep in mind that each person metabolizes at a different rate, so there will be people who can eat a lot of chocolate and these molecules will not affect them at all. Images | freepik In Xataka | Something strange is happening with the chocolate crisis in Spain: households consume less, but business improves

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