reduces the risk of suffering from Alzheimer’s in the future by 65%

In the Nordic countries, the sauna is little less than a religion, since, more than a luxury, it is considered a necessity for daily well-being as it is attributed all kinds of healing properties. These spaces in Spain have little by little been gaining strength and there are now many gyms that include this service for their members and in spas it has also become one more. Its properties. Here common knowledge tells us that it is good to spend a few minutes in the sauna enduring humid heat, but the question we must ask ourselves is: does it really have healing properties? And the reality is that science supports the impact that thermotherapy has on our own brain. A Finnish study. When talking about the neurological benefits of the sauna, almost all roads lead to the same point, which is the KIHD cohort study carried out by the University of Eastern Finland. This is considered the “crown jewel” of thermotherapy and with good reason, since researchers followed 2,300 middle-aged Finnish men for 20 years to see the real impact of the sauna on their health. The results They pointed out that those who went to the sauna between 4 and 7 times a week had a 66% lower risk of developing dementia than those who only went once a week. But also, in the specific case of the disease Alzheimer’sthe risk was reduced by 65%. These data are not a simple statistical accident, since the researchers adjusted the results taking into account multiple risk factors, such as smoking or BMI. Furthermore, subsequent reviews have expanded on these findings, noting that the benefits of passive body warming remain independent of other risk factors and they are not exclusive to the male sex. Beyond memory. The impact of the sauna is not limited to neurodegenerative diseases, but we also have evidence that tells us that heat baths lead to improvements in depressive symptoms. And although the evidence here is more mixed and is based on observational studies and smaller trials, neurobiology offers us a fascinating explanation of why this happens. The most relevant thing in this case is that heat activates certain proteins in our body that are responsible for repairing other damaged proteins and protecting cells from stress. But in addition, the alternation between intense heat and subsequent cooling trains our “fight or flight” and “rest and digest” responses. If we go more recently, we know that depression has an important inflammatory component and the increase in body temperature paradoxically reduces these inflammatory markers in the long term. The small print. What these studies tell us right now is that taking saunas frequently makes the brain age more slowly, but it is not an absolute coincidence. That is to say, we cannot categorically affirm 100% that it is the heat itself that ‘stops’ dementia. The reason for this is that going to the sauna 4 or 5 times a week is usually associated with a particular lifestyle, since it can be accompanied by several exercise sessions in a gym. Even having the time and resources to do so is usually linked to lives with lower stress levels, greater social interaction and better habits that can have a lot to say in Alzheimer’s. Images | HUMM In Xataka | Dementia is devastating largely because it arrives without warning: some researchers already predict it seven years in the future

Demis Hassabis, Nobel Prize winner, warns of the risk of losing control of AI

Let’s think for a moment about how the technology market moved before November 2022. The artificial intelligence It was already present in search engines, cameras, recommendations and digital services, but it was not yet the label that brands tried to place on each product or the argument around which a good part of their presentations revolved. The industry had other visible priorities and distributed its attention among multiple fronts. Less than four years later, it’s hard to find a large manufacturer or platform that hasn’t reorganized part of its strategy around AI. You only have to look at where the money is flowing to understand the magnitude of this race. Big technology companies allocate huge investments to chips, servers and data centers that span different parts of the world, while seeking to ensure the energy necessary to keep them running. Governments are not just watching, either: the United States and China support the development of infrastructure and computing capacity as part of economic and strategic competition. In the midst of this acceleration, one of its main protagonists has warned that we are advancing faster than we understand. The warning from those who are on the front line of the race The message does not come from outside the sector. Demis Hassabis He is co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, one of the laboratories that promotes the development of the most advanced artificial intelligence systems. Under his direction, projects such as AlphaGo, who defeated a world Go championand AlphaFold, capable of predicting protein structures. In 2024, Hassabis and John Jumper jointly received half of Nobel Prize of Chemistry for his work on protein structure prediction. His words have weight precisely because of this double condition: he helps build this technology and, at the same time, he calls for mechanisms to contain its risks. Part of the text published by Demis Hassabis in X | Click to see the full message Hassabis starts from a conviction that helps understand the urgency of his proposal: he believes that general artificial intelligence (AGI), defined in its text as a system capable of exhibiting all the cognitive capabilities of the human brain, could arrive in just a few years. He does not present it as a certainty, but as a close possibility that would force us to prepare before technology reaches that point. Their concern covers cybersecurity, possible biological and nuclear risks and, later, increasingly autonomous systems, capable of acting with less supervision and improving their own capabilities. In an extensive article published in Xthe manager tries to hold two ideas at the same time. Artificial intelligence can become an extraordinary tool for science, medicine and the economy, but that potential does not eliminate the need for establish controls and oversight mechanisms. Nor does he propose waiting for a specific threat to appear to react, because then the measures could arrive too late. Before detailing which organization and what evaluations it considers necessary, it sets out the diagnosis that serves as the basis for its entire proposal: “We are currently locked in an extremely intense trade and geopolitical race unfolding at multiple levels. While these competitive dynamics are driving rapid advances and accelerating their extraordinary benefits, progress on the frontier of AI is outpacing our understanding of the technology. No one in the world knows for sure what will happen next, and not even the experts agree. When there is such a high degree of uncertainty and so much at stake, moving forward with cautious optimism is the sensible and correct strategy.” The answer he proposes is to create in the United States a specialized organization in evaluating the most advanced artificial intelligence models. Their proposal takes as reference a public-private partnership or a self-regulatory entity with federal supervision, led by a board that would also include independent specialists and representatives of the open source ecosystem. This institution would define what thresholds make a system a frontier model and design assessments on cybersecurity, biological threats and other high-risk areas, as well as tests to detect attempts to circumvent safeguards or signs of deception. In a first stage, laboratories would voluntarily share their models up to 30 days before launching them. Initial cooperation could later become a mandatory requirement. Once the protocol is validated, any model considered frontier would have to pass the evaluation before reaching the United States market. Tests would be periodically reviewed to replace outdated ones and measure new capabilities, while independent auditors would help expand the control system. The approach goes even further: if the severity of the risks justified it, the framework could be used to coordinate a slowdown in development between major laboratories. The concern is not exclusive to Hassabis. Geoffrey Hinton has recognized that we do not know if we will be able to retain control of systems more intelligent than us, while Joshua Bengio calls for more research and specific mechanisms to monitor them. In 2023, Elon Musk also signed an open letter what he asked for pause for at least six months the training of more powerful AI systems than GPT-4although a few months later it announced xAI and began to compete directly in this market. Many of these voices agree in calling for caution, but there is no consensus on the probability that we will lose control. The history of artificial intelligence still does not have a written outcome, although its first effects have already changed our relationship with technology and the decisions of those who develop it. It remains to be seen whether the body proposed by Hassabis would have a place, whether its evaluations would be truly effective, and whether laboratories and governments would agree to submit to them when they conflicted with their own interests. It may also happen that some of the risks it poses are oversized or do not materialize. For now, his proposal adds a concrete roadmap to a discussion in which there are still more unknowns than certainties. Images | Google In Xataka | Claude has a space … Read more

The El Niño numbers are so strong that they are beginning to make half the world nervous. We have to be able to differentiate risk from hysteria

“More than 1.80 degrees, 3.46 standard deviations“These two figures simply summarize the enormous El Niño problem that is upon us. And yet, they say much more than they seem. Because, while social networks are filled with phrases like «2026 will be the year when we look back and say: “there, that was when the relatively stable climate system that we have had for 10,000 years really broke down”», are just the data that two of the largest agencies in the world have just retired. Let’s start with what we are clear about. The El Niño of 2026 is real and is coming (very) strong. After an almost testimonial Niña and as we have been counting these months, the Pacific has stepped on the accelerator and on June 11 it made an appearance. The CPC The NOAA estimates that the event is “very strong” between November and January at 63%, the highest since 1950. So, anyway, the figures cannot surprise anyone either. The problem is that they are inflated. That +1.80 with which the text began is the traditional Niño 3.4 index, the absolute. In short: it is the index that measures how far the Central Pacific is from its historical average. And it’s the index we’ve been using all these years. The problem is that there was one small detail that clouded the data and that, sooner or later, we had to address: climate change. In an ocean that warms with each passing day, both La Niña and El Niño start from different places than in previous decades. We were inflating Los Niño and deflating Las Niñas without meaning to. For this reason, in 2026, NOAA adopted the RONI, a relative index that discounted the effect of climate change. And, in this sense, the data circulating on the internet is true and worrying, yes; but incomplete. And does the photo change much from the ONI to the RONI? Since we don’t have updated data, let’s go to April: according to NOAAthe ONI marked +0.23 °C, while the RONI was at −0.24 °C. That is to say, the difference is considerable, but the situation is much less critical. So… the system isn’t broken? The reaction to the runaway ONI hits the mark, but misses the mark. Evidently, El Niño has not gone crazy: it is a mechanism with thousands of years behind it that works on a relatively new world. We could see an obvious example this June: the warmest observed in the global ocean, one in which marine heat waves covered 82% of its surface. And now…. what? In the short term, an increasingly stronger El Niño. It is true that in Spain we are relatively safe from what happens in the Pacific; but, sooner or later, we are going to notice it. As half the world is already noticing. Image | BenBaso In Xataka | We are already seeing the first most destructive effect of El Niño in living memory: rising sea levels

“A sedentary lifestyle is an independent risk factor and it is not enough to ‘compensate’ for it with specific exercise”

There are many people passing by much of her day glued to a chairin many cases because they are working, traveling by car or resting on the couch, with a sedentary lifestyle being a true routine in the lives of many people. Until now we knew that it was harmful, but now science has put exact numbers on how an uninterrupted sedentary lifestyle influences our health, and the most important thing is that it has been seen that it does not help to compensate for it. With a watch. A new study published in PLOS analyzed data from 91,292 people from the UK Bank, and unlike other epidemiological studies that rely on questionnaires filled out by the participants themselves, here they used accelerometry. That is, for years they have monitored the physical movement of all these people thanks to activity sensors on the wrist. After an average follow-up of 12.38 years, the researchers not only measured total inactivity time, but how it was distributed throughout the day. And that’s where the real enemy to our health comes in, which are blocks of uninterrupted time. You have to get up. The central finding of the study does not penalize the simple act of sitting so much, but rather doing it continuously. The researchers concluded that each additional hour of prolonged sedentary behavior, understood as periods of 30 minutes or more without getting up at any time, is associated with a 10% increase in the risk of cancer mortality. That is to say, spending long work days without moving at all is not free in the long term. The solution. Fortunately, the results also show that the human body is incredibly grateful when we break that stasis. Using statistical time substitution models, the study calculated what happens when we swap prolonged periods in the chair for different “doses” of daily physical activity. To give an example, replacing one hour a day of prolonged sedentary lifestyle with low-intensity activities such as walking at a normal pace or doing housework reduces the risk by 12%. But if we go further, changing just 30 minutes of uninterrupted sedentary lifestyle for moderate physical activity reduces the risk by 8%. The most important thing. The most efficient substitution has been found to require very little time, as swapping sedentary time for just five minutes a day of vigorous physical activity reduces the risk of cancer mortality by a staggering 22%. The golden rule. As is usual when analyzing medical literature, and as the authors and independent experts themselves emphasize, we must read the fine print. As it is an observational study, the data show a strong statistical association, but the design itself cannot demonstrate strict and absolute causality, leaving it exposed to certain biases, such as the UK Biobank volunteers usually having a healthier baseline profile than the population average. However, this research does not arrive in a vacuum since it is tremendously consistent with previous scientific evidence and gives robustness to what we already suspected. In 2022, a meta-analysis and umbrella review already warned about the strength of the relationship between a sedentary lifestyle and oncological risk. And at a closer level, a study by the Carlos III Health Institute in 2024 confirmed in the Spanish population that replacing just one hour a week of sitting time with physical activity managed to reduce general mortality. The experts. Nabil Djouder, head of the Group of Growth Factors, Nutrients and Cancer of the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in statement to SMC pointed out that this study “reinforces the idea that sedentary behavior is an independent risk factor and that it is not enough to ‘compensate’ for it with specific exercise.” Images | Vitaly Gariev In Xataka | Spending hours sitting in front of the screen is not only destroying your body, it is also changing your personality

“A sedentary lifestyle is an independent risk factor and it is not enough to ‘compensate’ for it with specific exercise”

There are many people passing by much of her day glued to a chairin many cases because they are working, traveling by car or resting on the couch, with a sedentary lifestyle being a true routine in the lives of many people. Until now we knew that it was harmful, but now science has put exact numbers on how an uninterrupted sedentary lifestyle influences our health, and the most important thing is that it has been seen that it does not help to compensate for it. With a watch. A new study published in PLOS analyzed data from 91,292 people from the UK Bank, and unlike other epidemiological studies that rely on questionnaires filled out by the participants themselves, here they used accelerometry. That is, for years they have monitored the physical movement of all these people thanks to activity sensors on the wrist. After an average follow-up of 12.38 years, the researchers not only measured total inactivity time, but how it was distributed throughout the day. And that’s where the real enemy to our health comes in, which are blocks of uninterrupted time. You have to get up. The central finding of the study does not penalize the simple act of sitting so much, but rather doing it continuously. The researchers concluded that each additional hour of prolonged sedentary behavior, understood as periods of 30 minutes or more without getting up at any time, is associated with a 10% increase in the risk of cancer mortality. That is to say, spending long work days without moving at all is not free in the long term. The solution. Fortunately, the results also show that the human body is incredibly grateful when we break that stasis. Using statistical time substitution models, the study calculated what happens when we swap prolonged periods in the chair for different “doses” of daily physical activity. To give an example, replacing one hour a day of prolonged sedentary lifestyle with low-intensity activities such as walking at a normal pace or doing housework reduces the risk by 12%. But if we go further, changing just 30 minutes of uninterrupted sedentary lifestyle for moderate physical activity reduces the risk by 8%. The most important thing. The most efficient substitution has been found to require very little time, as swapping sedentary time for just five minutes a day of vigorous physical activity reduces the risk of cancer mortality by a staggering 22%. The golden rule. As is usual when analyzing medical literature, and as the authors and independent experts themselves emphasize, we must read the fine print. As it is an observational study, the data show a strong statistical association, but the design itself cannot demonstrate strict and absolute causality, leaving it exposed to certain biases, such as the UK Biobank volunteers usually having a healthier baseline profile than the population average. However, this research does not arrive in a vacuum since it is tremendously consistent with previous scientific evidence and gives robustness to what we already suspected. In 2022, a meta-analysis and umbrella review already warned about the strength of the relationship between a sedentary lifestyle and oncological risk. And at a closer level, a study by the Carlos III Health Institute in 2024 confirmed in the Spanish population that replacing just one hour a week of sitting time with physical activity managed to reduce general mortality. The experts. Nabil Djouder, head of the Group of Growth Factors, Nutrients and Cancer of the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in statement to SMC pointed out that this study “reinforces the idea that sedentary behavior is an independent risk factor and that it is not enough to ‘compensate’ for it with specific exercise.” Images | Vitaly Gariev In Xataka | Spending hours sitting in front of the screen is not only destroying your body, it is also changing your personality

It turns out that in France there is a road that the Atlantic floods twice a day. By crossing it, you risk a ransom

On the Cantabrian coast in the summer it is relatively common for a tourist’s vehicle to end up taking a dip when they park where they shouldn’t, but in the Passage du Gois In France there is no surprise factor: the road sinks when the tide rises, something that happens twice a day. Given the risk, it would be worth considering closing that route and using the alternative Noirmoutier bridgebut there are many people here who have come to play: in 2021 exactly 387,823 vehicles passed by, according to data from the Noirmoutier Tourist Office. If you’re one of those people who ventures out, the landscape is already iconic: the Tour de France has started there on several occasions. Now there is a road, now there is not. The Passage du Gois is 4,125 kilometers long and runs through Bourgneuf Bay, literally in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. On one side is the island of Noirmoutier and the connection with the rest of the continent takes place in Beauvoir-sur-Mer, near Nantes. This infrastructure belongs to the D948 network of the Vendée department. The passage or not is determined by the tides: according to the tidal coefficient That day, the road is covered by between 1.30 and 4 meters of water at each high tide. The Passage du Gois on Google Maps To pass or not to pass, that is the question. Step recommendations from the local tourist office are enough to make you think twice before crossing: if the tide coefficient is high, you have 90 minutes before and after low tide. When the coefficient is low, the margin is reduced so much that it is recommended to cross only at the exact moment of low tide. If you measure wrong, you’re risking it: four kilometers can be fatal. The good news is that Since the 19th century there have been nine safety beacons where you can leave the car and wait for the tide to go out or the emergency services to arrive. Spoiler: every year there are cars that end badly. Everything is signposted, but the authorities They have encountered another enemy unexpected: the GPS, which does not indicate low tides or weather conditions. Be very careful if you are one of those people who follows what Google Maps says to the letter. The movements of the tides in the Passage du Gois. Marine Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service Why build a road there?. Short answer: because nature put it there. Not so short answer: the origin of the Passage du Gois is geological: it was formed by the convergence of two opposite currents, one from the northwest influenced by the Loire estuary and another from the south influenced by the Atlantic. Both are found on the island and slow down there, producing a phenomenon known as wantijthat is, the deposition of particles at that point of collision of the currents, which causes the seabed to rise until it forms that natural back on which the roadway was planted. Building it was not easy or fast. Paving the road lasted five yearsfrom 1935 to 1939, which sounds truly outrageous even though it is almost a century old. The reason is that the works had to be carried out during low tide, which greatly limited the daily work time to two daily periods in a period of about two hours. From then on, the road was passable for vehicles on its already characteristic cement slabs. Since then, several sections have been subject to different paving tests that have never come to fruition. A future that looks very blue black. The Passage du Gois floodable road is neither the first nor the longest, but it is one of the first candidates to disappear in the immediate future. Considering sea level rise projections provided by the IPCC of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will be between 0.38 and 0.77 meters by 2100, with different emissions scenarios starting in 2050. This implies that roads like this will see their safe operating window progressively reduced, making it increasingly unviable and dangerous. In Xataka | “We have six kilometers that have melted due to the heat”: in the face of extreme temperatures, France needs to Spanishize its roads In Xataka | If we already feared about the state of our roads, we have one more reason to worry: the price of asphalt is skyrocketing Cover | Pinpin and Florian Pepellin

The Government says Palantir is a risk to national security. NATO, of which Spain is a member, has put it in charge of its own

Moncloa has begun to ask public companies not to sign new contracts with Palantir, according to Agustín Marco has advanced in The Confidential. The order is not official nor is it in writing, but an agreement has already been reached with the Civil Guard and another with Navantia. The panoramic. Spain joins France, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands in distrust towards the company of Peter Thiel and Alex Karp. The unofficial argument is the usual one: not to risk sensitive information in the hands of an American company with close ties to the Trump White House. The veto affects Telefónica, Indra, Correos and Navantia, all of them under the umbrella of SEPI. There is no statement, no press conference, no official note. They are indications transferred internally to boards of directors. In detail. The contract that really matters still stands. Defense signed with Palantir in 2023 a 16.5 million euro agreement for the Armed Forces Intelligence Center, and that contract expires in November of this year. According to The Confidentialthe chiefs of the General Staff have pressured Margarita Robles to renew it because there is no comparable alternative. Either Palantir or nobody. The decision remains unmade. The contrast. While Moncloa slides the veto inside, NATO announced this week that Palantir’s Maven Smart System becomes its operating system for military data management. Spain is a partner of the Alliance and has had to approve this decision, like all allies. So he voted yes in Brussels but has chosen the opposite direction behind closed doors. Why is it important. The veto does not touch the only thing that really counts: the Defense contract. Everything else (the Civil Guard and Navantia) were negotiations in progress, but not consolidated relationships. Cutting them costs little. Touching the CIFAS contract (Intelligence Center of the Armed Forces), on the other hand, would require replacing a tool that, according to sources in the military sector itself, has no rival in the market. Again: either Palantir or nobody. Yes, but. The gesture has a clear recipient: the US government. Pedro Sánchez has not received the US ambassador in Madrid, Benjamín León Jr., for months and Its Executive has invested 115 million euros in Openchip and another 5,000 million in a chip gigafactory as a commitment to European technological sovereignty. The Palantir veto fits that narrative. What doesn’t fit so well is that this same story coexists with a Defense contract that no one dares to cancel. And now what. The end of the current contract in November will test whether this was signaling or conviction: If the CIFAS contract is renewed without making much noise, the veto will have been a diplomatic gesture. If it is dropped without an equivalent replacement, Spain will be left without the tool its own military considers irreplaceable. The middle way, replacing it with European or national technology, does not yet exist. In Xataka | AI is crucial for the US military. So he’s naming OpenAI and Palantir leaders as lieutenant generals Featured image | Palantir, Wikimedia Commons

We believed that loneliness was just an emotional problem. Science points out that it is a risk factor for dozens of diseases.

Loneliness is undoubtedly a scourge that is integrated into our society and that on many occasions goes unnoticed, especially affecting older people who are practically confined to being at home and with little social contact. And although this is something that a priori can remain in the psychological fieldthe reality is that loneliness emerges as a major public health threat as it is related to very serious diseases. A big risk. When we talk about risk factors in the field of medicine, we immediately think about nutrition or lack of exercise that are related to very serious diseases. But loneliness must also be added to this entire list, since numerous studies have found a direct association with cardiovascular, neurological and metabolic pathologies, although unraveling the exact cause continues to be one of the great challenges of current medical literature. The problem. In 2023, the United States Surgeon General public a devastating report pointing out that we were facing an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” And it was not a mere poetic metaphor, since the WHO has been warning that social disconnection not only affects us emotionally, but also alters our body to the point of increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke, depression, dementia and premature death. A measurable impact. When we talk about disease risk, cardiovascular health is the first to suffer. Here, a scientific statement from the American Heart Association, published in it Journal of the American Heart Associationconcluded bluntly that loneliness and social isolation are independent risk factors for poorer heart and brain health. And the percentages are not anecdotal, since a meta-analysis pointed out that loneliness or social isolation is associated with a 29% increase in the risk of suffering from coronary heart disease and a 32% increase in the risk of stroke. It goes further. A massive analysis led by the Autonomous University of Madrid in 2026, after following more than 400,000 peopleconfirmed a strong association between isolation and multimorbidity, highlighting that physical social isolation is a relevant risk factor even if the person does not subjectively perceive that loneliness. The case of dementia. Among dementias, the most important disease is undoubtedly Alzheimer’s and the data are clear in pointing out that unwanted loneliness is an important risk factor for all dementias. Among the reasons that exist, the Alzheimer Center of Barcelona points out in a recent note as follows: “The relationship between isolation and cognitive decline is supported by research showing how a lack of social interaction impoverishes vocabulary, reduces cognitive flexibility, and accelerates brain decline.” Here the advice given to be less likely to suffer from this disease when you reach a risk age is to participate in group activities, take advantage of technology to maintain contact or create a social routine. In mental health. In addition to the organic section, if we move on to mental illnesses, the fact that there is no adequate social support network also leads to an increase in the probability of illnesses as important as depression or even the schizophrenia. Many causes can influence here, such as genetic factors, but in the end a cluster of situations can generate the final trigger for the disease. The great nuance. The question we must ask ourselves here is the following: do we get sick because of the biological impact of disconnection, or because loneliness is accompanied by other conditions? And here the science suggests that isolated people tend to do less physical activity, have poorer diets and have a greater propensity for smoking or alcoholism. Factors that can trigger a whole battery of serious diseases. Even with these factors in the equation, loneliness demonstrates surprising predictive strength. For example, recent research in patients with diabetes revealed that loneliness was associated with a greater probability of suffering from coronary heart disease, even outweighing several classic risk factors. Images | Anthony Tran In Xataka | Generation Z is both the most connected and the loneliest in history. And there is nothing casual about it

the risk of death from cancer does not decrease

Over the last few years, the electronic cigarette or ‘vaper‘has been positioned in the collective imagination as ‘the lesser sea’ that has been sold as a transition tool, supposedly cleanerfor those smokers who were looking to get away from tobacco. However, science has been narrowing the gap on the long-term effects of electronic cigarettes for some time. A new study. Here the last blow has been dealt by a study published in Nature that It is considered the largest made to dateand which concludes that the use of electronic cigarettes after giving up traditional tobacco does not have any type of benefit when it comes to reducing the chances of having lung cancer. Unprecedented. To understand the magnitude of the finding, you have to look at the scale, since historically, one of the big problems when investigating vaping has been the lack of temporal perspective due to not having been on the market for too long and, above all, the size of the study population. This has been resolved with this new study that has analyzed data from between 4.3 and 4.5 million people in South Korea, with exhaustive follow-up until December 2021. Many of these might think that changing smoke for steam neutralized the oncological risk, but in the end it is quite the opposite. Your results. When analyzing incidence and mortality rates, researchers found that former smokers who switched to vaping had worse prognoses than those who quit smoking completely. Specifically, the relative risk of suffering from lung cancer increases by 56% compared to those who abandon any type of inhaled product. In addition, the probability of death from lung cancer is double when giving up tobacco and taking an electronic cigarette instead of giving up any type of inhaled consumption. Regarding time. Ex-smokers who had only been smoking for five years and switched to vaping instead of quitting had a 23% higher incidence of cancer and a 71% higher risk of death. But if we talk about established ex-smokers who spent more than five years smoking, their risk of death becomes 2.7 times higher. In the case of ex-smokers who had been smoking for 20 years or more, switching to vaping led to a 65% increase in incidence and multiplied the risk of mortality by 4.5 times. Because. These epidemiological data are not an isolated case, but rather confirm what toxicology has been warning for years in laboratories, since although vaping eliminates the tar and direct combustion of tobacco, the aerosols are far from being harmless. A study published in 2026 pointed out that electronic cigarettes with nicotine are, with a high probability, carcinogenic to humans. And the answer is in the carcinogenic substances such as nitrosnornicotine, heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and aldehydes such as formaldehyde. In Xataka | It’s never too late to quit smoking: the lungs have an incredible capacity to regenerate

Science confirms how many minutes of weight training per week reduce the risk of mortality

For decades, when we thought about doing physical exercise, our minds almost automatically went to get older. cardiovascular activity. Running, swimming or cycling have been star recommendations to keep the heart healthy and extend life expectancy. Or at least live with a better quality of life. However, little by little we are normalizing the need to prioritize strength exercises at any age. How long. This is one of the big questions that anyone who needs to quantify the amount of exercise they do per day can ask themselves. There are clear recommendations, such as walk one hour a day at a brisk pacebut in strength we were quite orphaned. Now a new and monumental analysis has come to put exact figures on what until now were general recommendations, establishing a precise time window to maximize our years of life. What has been seen. The finding comes from a large observational study which has had 147,374 participants and exhaustive follow-up that has extended up to 30 years. Its good results have been published in the magazine British Journal of Sports Medicine. And when it comes to lifting weights or doing resistance exercises, intuition could dictate that “the more, the better”, but human physiology provides more limited metrics. The study data found that spending between 90 and 119 minutes weekly in resistance training routines was directly associated with lower overall mortality. In other words, spending between an hour and a half and two hours a week working our muscles is linked to a lower risk of dying from any cause. We have to be adjusted. What is truly revealing about this study lies in what happens when those 120 minutes are exceeded of weekly exercise. Anyone might think that the longer the time, the less likely you are to develop a major disease, but the reality is that above this time the benefits seem to stagnate. This shows that maximum efficiency is achieved in that limited period of time, demystifying the need to spend endless days in the weight room to obtain many more protective advantages at the metabolic level that allow us to extend our life a little more or make it of a higher quality. You have to combine it. Although strength training shines in this study, abandoning cardiovascular exercises would be a profound mistake. Here the research group itself pointed out that combining strength exercises with aerobic activity offered the best possible results, since this duality confirms that a hybrid approach dramatically maximizes long-term survival benefits. It’s backed up. In the past there were reviews that explored the relationship between training and mortality, this being one more that gives it much more strength so that it ultimately continues to be recommended for consultation to anyone, regardless of age. Because exercise here does not understand age, and strength exercise can be for the youngest, but also for the elderly who need to preserve their muscle to have a better quality of life in their last years of life. Images | Anastase Maragos In Xataka | In the fever to train strength, the gym has faced competition: more and more people train on the street

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