Science

Drink water right before going to sleep? Science has finally clarified whether it is a good idea or a terrible enemy of sleep

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Before going to sleep, some people may have an almost standardized ritual in which they should drink one or two glasses of water, and also have a backup on the bedside table in case they get thirsty in the middle of the night. But there are also many questions about whether it is positive to drink water before sleeping for eight hours or if it is counterproductive by forcing us to get up in the middle of the night. And here science has something to say. It has benefits. What is clearly known is that during the night our body does not go into a total pause, but rather continues with an active metabolism even though it is attenuated. That is why we lose approximately half a liter of water simply due to evaporation when breathing and sweating, and to compensate for this, hydration can be the best ally. It is investigated. A Japanese studio published this same year analyzed a group of middle-aged men to conclude that drinking 280 ml of water just before going to bed significantly reduces morning depressive mood and improves well-being upon waking up. But it is not the only one, because a 2025 crossover trial with 15 healthy adults found a relationship between drinking fluids before sleeping and the duration and quality of sleep. REM phasewhich is what makes us truly rest. And it makes sense, because adequate hydration favors the release of vasopressin, a key hormone for regulating the biological clock and preventing tissue dehydration during deep sleep. And it is essential, because it can translate into less fatigue and headaches in the morning. He has problems. It will not always be beneficial to have this habit, since the main enemy of drinking water at night is nocturiawhich is the need to wake up to urinate during the night. And although the total time we spend awake is not drastically altered, because it is only a few minutes, there is an interruption in sleep. It depends on the quantity. Logically, drinking a glass of water is not the same as drinking a whole bottle before going to sleep. That is why when you go over half a liter of water there is a possibility that some pre-existing problems such as chronic insomnia will worsen or even increase the risk of falls when getting up in the dark. How to do it. There are a series of tips that we can follow to stay hydrated during sleep and they are summarized in the following points: You should limit yourself to drinking around a quarter of a liter of water in the final part of the day to avoid overfilling your bladder. The last glass of water should be drunk two hours before going to sleep. Maintain good hydration throughout the day to avoid reaching the end of the day with a major hydration problem. Images | krakenimages.com on Freepik In Xataka | There are people obsessed with magnesium as a supplement when the best way is to put it directly into your diet

They have kidnapped agents from Anthropic, Google and Microsoft for the sake of science. The three companies ended up paying

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In some development teams it is already becoming common to rely on artificial intelligence agents to review incidents, analyze code changes and move through tasks that were previously left in human hands. The problem appears when these systems not only read information that may come from outside, but also operate in spaces where they coexist. sensitive keys, tokens and permissions. That is what recent research puts on the table: we are not simply facing a useful tool that can make mistakes, but rather an architecture that can also become dangerous if it is deployed without very clear limits. The alarm has been turned on Aonan Guan and Johns Hopkins researchers Zhengyu Liu and Gavin Zhong after demonstrating attacks against three agents deployed on the aforementioned platform: Claude Code Security Review, from Anthropic, Gemini CLI Action, from Google, and GitHub Copilot Agent, a GitHub tool under Microsoft. According to your documentation, The failures were communicated in a coordinated manner and ended in financial rewards paid by the companies, but what is relevant is that they point to a broader problem. This is how they managed to twist the agents from within The name that Guan gives to the discovery helps a lot to understand what this is all about: “Comment and Control.” The idea is simple to explain, although the substance is not so simple. Instead of setting up an external infrastructure to direct the attack, GitHub itself acts as an entry and exit channel: the attacker leave the instruction in a titlean incident or a comment, the agent processes it as if it were part of normal work and the result ends up reappearing within that same environment. Everything stays at home, and that is precisely the key to the problem. And that “everything stays at home” is not a minor detail, but the basis of what the research describes. The three agents share a very similar logic: they read normal content from GitHub, incorporate it as a work context, and from there, execute actions within automated flows. The clash appears because that same space not only contains text sent by third parties, but also tools, permissions and secrets that the agent needs to operate. The first case Guan details concerns Claude Code Security Review, an Anthropic GitHub action designed to review code changes and look for possible security flaws. Up to this point, everything is within what was expected. The problem, as the researcher explains, is that it was enough to introduce malicious instructions in the title of a pull requestwhich is the request that someone sends to propose changes to a project, so that the agent will execute commands and return the result as if it were part of your review. The team then managed to go a step further and demonstrate that it could also extract credentials from the environment. The interesting thing is that the same scheme also appeared in the other two services, although with nuances. At Google, Gemini CLI Action could be pushed to reveal the GEMINI_API_KEY from instructions snuck into an issue and its comments; In GitHub Copilot Agent, the variant was even more worrying, because the attack was hidden in an HTML comment that a person did not see on the screen, but the agent did process when another person assigned it to the case. In both scenarios, the background was the same again: apparently normal content that ended up twisting the behavior of the system until exposing credentials or sensitive information within GitHub itself. Guan assures that the pattern made it possible to leak API keys, GitHub tokens and other secrets exposed in the environment where the agent ran, that is, just the credentials that can later open the door to much more delicate actions. Who does this affect? Especially to repositories that run agents in GitHub Actions on content sent by untrustworthy collaborators and, in addition, give them access to secrets or powerful tools. The researcher himself clarifies that the risk depends a lot on the configuration: by default GitHub does not expose secrets to pull requests from forksbut there are deployments that open that door. And here another layer of the matter appears, less technical but just as important. As published by The RegisterAnthropic, Google, and GitHub ended up paying bounties for the findings, but none of the three had published public notices or assigned CVE at the time of that information. Guan was quite clear about this: he said he knew “for certain” that some users were still stuck on vulnerable versions and warned that, without visible communication, many may never know that they were exposed or even being attacked. So although there were mitigations and changes in documentation or in the internal treatment of reports, there was no equivalent public notice for all those potentially affected. Anthropic settled the case on November 25, 2025 and paid $100 Google rewarded the discovery on January 20, 2026 with $1,337 GitHub closed the case on March 9, 2026 with a payment of $500 What makes this case especially delicate is that GitHub does not seem like the end of the road, but rather the first visible showcase. Guan argues that the same pattern can probably be reproduced in other agents who work with tools and secrets within automatic flows, and there he mentions from Slack-connected bots to Jira agentsmail or deployment automation. The logic is the same again: if the system has to read external content to do its job and also has enough access to act, the field is fertile for someone to try to twist it from within. The conclusion that Guan reaches is not about selling a magic solution, but about returning to a fairly classic idea in security: giving each system only what is essential to do its job. If an agent reviews code, they shouldn’t have access to tools or secrets they don’t need; If you’re just summarizing issues, it wouldn’t make sense for you to write to GitHub or touch sensitive credentials. That … Read more

There are only 66 cases in the world and science is just beginning to understand it

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Night rest can be interrupt due to many factorssuch as the need to go to the bathroom constantly to drink water before going to sleep, but there are other cases, such as painful sleep erectionswhich right now is emerging from ignorance, and that is why every time you get to know more of this problem which, fortunately, is quite infrequent. What is it? Although you may think that this is a problem related to the penis, the truth is that it is classified as a parasomnia. And it is no wonder, because what happens to the man here is that he has multiple erections during the night while he is in the REM phase of sleep that are so painful that it makes you wake up with a jump out of bed. But the curious thing is that the problem does not lie in the penis tissue itself, but rather clinical reviews point out that this disease is closely linked to hypertonicity or contracture of the bulbocavernosus muscles of the penis and the pelvic floor. Added to this are alterations in the central nervous system, such as instability during REM sleep, a peak in activity of the sympathetic nervous system and abnormal processing of pain and hormonal stress signals. It’s a challenge. At the level of cases diagnosed with this problem, the reality is that we speak of a “phantom disease” since it barely there are 66 cases documented worldwide, and there are almost no articles in the medical literature. This is something that translates into a situation of underdiagnosis, since in daily practice specialists see very few cases throughout their career. As a result, patients suffer a medical journey that delays diagnosis for years, and in desperation, and in the absence of answers, many end up assuming erroneous self-diagnoses based on chronic stress or prostatitis. Science tries to advance. Historically, the lack of cases made it difficult to create treatment protocols with the steps that doctors had to follow to solve the patient’s problem. However, recent clinical research has shed light on highly effective therapeutic approaches. That is why right now the use of muscle relaxants such as baclofen has proven to be a turning point for patients, since by relaxing the muscles of the penis an improvement is achieved in patients with this problem. In addition, diseases that are below this problem should also be looked for, such as sleep apnea or insomnia in general, which may be related to this pathology. Although there is still much to be done to investigate this disease, which a priori is quite unknown. Images | gpointstudio on Freepik In Xataka | Before colonizing other planets, humanity must solve a problem: erections in space

science is in the middle

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In the crowded nutrition and supplements market, the collagen Hydrolyzed has emerged as one of the products that many people take daily with the thought that it will improve their joints and bones so that they become rejuvenated again. And it is no wonder, because there are promises of unbreakable articulations, eternally young skin and fracture-proof bones flooding social networks. But science has a lot to say here. Some statements. Skepticism can be maximum when taking these supplements that are sold to us as almost a miracle for health. In this way, there are some voices like that of Santiago Segura that they point to speeches of disappointment: “I was taking collagen for my bones, but I read that it’s like eating a computer to be smarter.” But… Are you right in saying that it is useless? The science here is quite clear: it is not a miracle, but it is not something harmless that we take every day. Collagen in the body. At a purely biological level, type I collagen functions as the main protein of the structural matrix of bone tissue, that is, as if they were the scaffolding for later bricks. Once we took this into account, science wanted to see how its construction works. The supplement problem. Within scientific logic, when we swallow a collagen pill and it reaches the stomach, it is literally broken down by stomach acids. In this way, when it is decomposed, it loses its main function, since it has to be absorbed into small amino acids that make up proteins such as collagen. The problem here is that the body does not know that we have taken collagen, but instead it detects that there are a series of amino acids that are like its bricks for future proteins. In this way, very varied proteins can be built in the blood, but it may not end up forming this collagen that we want to go to the bone or cartilage. And this is what explains why some are big detractors of taking collagen. What does science say? Here the studies have not been so catastrophic in pointing out that the body is capable of absorbing protein peptides in the intestine and they can act in target areas. Here the difference is that peptides are a small protein fragment of several amino acids, which does not resemble collagen, which is the complete protein, but it does something. We have an example in a meta-analysis published in 2025 which concluded that supplementation with hydrolyzed collagen significantly increases bone mineral density in critical areas such as the spine and neck of the femur. In the case of postmenopausal women. an acquaintance 2018 clinical trial showed that a dose of 5 grams per day of specific collagen peptides for 12 months managed to increase bone mineral density and improve biomarkers compared to a placebo group. This is something fundamental, because we are talking about a group of people who are very prone to bone problems. Furthermore, a 4-year follow-up published in 2021 confirmed these long-term effects in this same demographic group with osteopenia or osteoporosis. More evidence. A 2026 large systematic review on musculoskeletal health group tests pointing to consistent and clinically relevant benefits for both bone and muscle, although it warns that the level of evidence is intermediate. And once again we see that it is not at all a miracle for everyone, nor does it replace good treatment for bone problems. The small print. Despite these positive data, science also puts a handbrake on the excessive expectations that they sometimes try to sell us. In this case, many of the studies carried out to date are relatively small, of short duration or have a very heterogeneous design without focusing on a similar population. In addition to all this, we must remember that we are not dealing with a drug, but rather a dietary supplement. For health problems, once again we must remember that you should consult a doctor who will evaluate the medical treatments currently approved for osteoporosis, such as bisphosphonates. But ‘take for the sake of taking’ is not the best strategy, as with other supplements. A winning combo. If you are going to take collagen expecting real benefits in your bones, science indicates that it is not enough to take an isolated pill and wait for a miracle. In this case, it must be taken into account that the best collagen is the one that is specifically hydrolyzed, and its composition is also validated and supported. Patience is also essential here, since it has to be taken for several months and the positive effects are much more relevant when collagen is combined with a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D, added to physical exercise. Images | GRANAT In Xataka | There are people obsessed with magnesium as a supplement when the best way is to put it directly into your diet

They promised us that 20 minutes of sparking was equivalent to 4 hours in the gym. Science says it’s more complicated

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Since humans became aware of the existence of electric current, they have tried to apply that power to their own body. As detailed in a report by The Wall Street Journalthis fascination goes back a long way: from the ancient Roman belief in the healing impact of torpedo fish, to the famous vibrating belt machines that promised to sculpt silhouettes in the 1950s. Today, the industry fitness has taken it a step further with whole body muscle electrostimulation (WB-EMS). The concept itself seems straight out of a science fiction movie: users don a wet suit covered in electrodes that delivers simultaneous shocks to major muscle groups for about 20 minutes. The marketing hook is irresistible, as these strength and bodyweight training sessions are sold as the ultimate shortcut to replacing hours of sweat in the gym. On social networks, dozens of influencers They upload videos doing squats and arm lifts while wearing this bionic suit. But, beyond the aesthetics and the promise of a toned body with little effort, what is true in all this? From the clinic to global fashion The technology behind electrostimulation is not a recent invention nor was it born in a trendy gym. Initially, it was used in hospitals and rehabilitation settings for a strictly medical purpose: to relieve pain, prevent muscle atrophy in bedridden patients, and improve circulation. However, in recent years, it has experienced explosive growth as a business model. fitness. The data is there. On the ClassPass platform, the number of centers offering EMS training worldwide increased more than 16% between 2023 and 2025. International franchises such as the French Iron Bodyfit plan to open more than 50 studios in the United States in the next three years, while the Californian company Body20 has gone from 46 to 67 locations nationwide since 2023. All this despite the fact that it is not an economic activity: classes cost between $40 and $100 per session. To understand the phenomenon, you have to understand how the experience works. The wet suit—water is necessary to conduct electricity effectively—sends electrical impulses directly to the muscle. This forces a greater percentage of muscle fibers to contract simultaneously involuntarily. As described by journalist Ellen Gamerman in The Wall Street Journalthe physical sensation is similar to that of receiving a call on a mobile phone in vibrate mode, with the difference that, in this case, “you are the phone.” Combined with core exercises, the level of muscle contraction makes the effort feel as intense as a high-intensity interval (HIIT) class. If you extend one arm without bending it slightly, the current can cause it to lock up completely until the trainer lowers the intensity of the machine. But who is attracted to this technology? Helge Guetzlaff, business development director of the German brand Miha Bodytec, joked in the American newspaper claiming that it attracts “a lot of lazy people.” However, Sabine Padar, owner of the exclusive Body Alchemist NYC studio, points out that she often has to convince her clients that spending more hours in the gym is not the only way to gain muscle. She insists that EMS sessions aren’t necessarily easier than traditional training, they’re just faster. The user profile is varied: from women concerned about losing strength during menopause to fashion professionals, such as Max Auth, a director of the Wolford brand who confesses to spending about $300 a month on these sessions to maintain his figure with a minimal investment of time. The reality bath Faced with marketing claims that “20 minutes are equivalent to 4 hours in the gym”, the scientific community has decided to take action on the matter. Cedric X. Bryant, executive director of the American Council on Exercise, points in WSJ that these claims are hyperbolic and that what one should expect from these workouts is being greatly exaggerated, while acknowledging that they may offer mild to moderate improvements. To shed light on the matter, various studies have analyzed the real impact of WB-EMS on different population groups: In older and sedentary adults: A research published in Clinical Interventions in Aging demonstrated the effectiveness of this technology in sedentary and thin older women, at risk of sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass) and abdominal obesity. After subjecting a group of 23 women to 18 minutes of WB-EMS (three sessions every 14 days) for 12 months, the results showed significant and positive differences in appendicular muscle mass and a reduction in abdominal fat mass compared to the control group. The study concluded that, given the good acceptance of the technology, WB-EMS is a valid and less daunting alternative for subjects who do not want or cannot do conventional exercise. In recreational athletes: Another essay published in Frontiers in Physiology analyzed the effects of WB-EMS in male recreational runners. For 6 weeks, participants reduced their running training to a single day per week and added a weekly WB-EMS session. The results indicated that the electrostimulation group improved their maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max), their ventilatory thresholds, their running economy and their vertical jump. This suggests that WB-EMS may be an effective stimulus to maintain and even improve performance in periods where resistance training volume is reduced. The definitive comparison (The WB-EMS is not a miracle): To check whether electrostimulation is really superior to classic sweating, the FIT-AGEING project evaluated 89 sedentary middle-aged adults. A rigorous study also published in Frontiers in Physiology divided the subjects into three 12-week programs: traditional concurrent training (recommended by WHO), high intensity interval training (HIIT), and HIIT added to WB-EMS. Finally, all types of exercise induced similar increases in cardiorespiratory fitness and muscle strength. In fact, the scientists explicitly concluded that the changes observed in the WB-EMS group were not superior to those of the other conventional exercise programs. The suit does not provide any extra decisive advantage compared to sweating the shirt in a traditional way. The silent danger of overexertion Despite the obvious benefits, WB-EMS is not a toy and carries risks if not properly supervised. As he … Read more

We have been sending pregnant women to bed for decades as a precaution. Science has just proven that it is a big mistake

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In the face of a potentially risky pregnancy, the prescription that was administered was very clear: absolute bed rest to avoid any fall or inappropriate movement that could cause an abortion. But this is something that today is no longer the norm, since staying still during pregnancy not only does not prevent the premature birth of a baby, but it can be very harmful. You have to move. Here, institutions as important as the Mayo Clinic are quite blunt in their guidelines by noting that there is no evidence that bed rest is effective in treating preterm labor. To reach this conclusion, they logically resort to different clinical studies inside the Cochrane Library In this case, they point out, for example, that in singleton pregnancies, routine bed rest does not prevent premature births and, in fact, the adverse effects of being immobilized outweigh the supposed benefits. In the situation of being in a multiple pregnancy, hospitalization and strict rest do not reduce perinatal risks and, ironically, an increased risk of spontaneous birth has been observed. What dangers does it have? Lying in bed may be something that a priori is seen as completely harmless, but the reality is that science advises against it for different reasons. The first of them is that immobility increases the risk of venous thromboembolism if one is not properly anticoagulated. In addition, it causes bone demineralization, where an estimated loss of bone mass is 2% to 3% per month, muscle atrophy and weakness, orthostatic hypotension, and is also associated with low neonatal birth weight and a higher rate of cesarean sections. Beyond the physical. Having complete rest isolates the pregnant woman in a bed watching television all day, and this only causes increased emotional stress, anxiety, and can lead to depression. In studies, this is something that currently affects 20% of pregnant women subjected to this isolation in countries like the United States. What is recommended. The objective of the different international guidelines to treat these pregnant women has taken a great turn in recent years. The SEGO guide of Spain, for example, recommends these women with aerobic activity for 3-5 days a week, avoiding routine rest. If we cross the ocean, in the United States it is recommended 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week, also to reduce the rate of cesarean sections and gestational diabetes. There are exceptions. Generalizations are never good, and that is why you cannot ask all pregnant women for absolute rest, but neither for a lot of activity. Here the most current guidelines establish that there are very specific and documented cases, such as premature rupture of membranes, where this rest is necessary. But these cases are very few. What we must stay with here is that immobility during pregnancy is not the best, and we must stay active as much as possible with activities logically adapted to the pregnancy situation. Images | Anna Hecker In Xataka | There are couples who couldn’t have children. Now AI has managed to give them hope

We have turned WhatsApp into an “emotional pacifier”. And science warns that it is making us more fragile

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A message sent, a double check blue and, suddenly, silence. In that period of time, which can last minutes or days, the stomach shrinks. The immediate reaction for many is instinctive: unlock the screen of the smartphoneimmersing yourself in social media, sending looping messages seeking solace. We have turned our devices into an “emotional pacifier” to calm the anxiety of “not knowing.” In an era where hyperconnection promises us instant answers, science and psychology issue a clear warning: our inability to tolerate uncertainty is making us increasingly fragile. The brain in the face of chaos. To understand what happens to us, we have to look at our biology. As psychologist Regina López Riego explainsour brain is evolutionarily designed to look for patterns and make sense of everything around us. “This was key to our survival as a species: identifying threats and anticipating dangers,” he says. However, in today’s world, that need for certainty translates into constant suffering. The problem is that we live in a universe governed by entropy. From the team of Nalu Psychology remember thatbased on chaos theory and thermodynamics, systems tend toward disorder. “The future is uncertain and, one way or another, we deal with it as best we can,” they explain. When changes threaten, fear takes center stage, alerting us to possible danger. To mitigate that fear, we resort to a patch: control. However, it is a trap. The brain processes the symptoms of anxiety in the same way that it relates to uncertainty, releasing large amounts of norepinephrine that affect our nervous system. The more we try to tie down the future, the more discomfort we generate. The trap of overthinking. When the mind has no data, it invents it. The psychologist Marta Valle In his blog he explains that overthinking not as a lack of intelligence, but as a failed protection mechanism born of fear of error and low tolerance for uncertainty. It manifests itself in two ways: ruminating on the past or worrying in anticipation about the future. “You think that if you think about it enough, you will avoid a problem,” he details, but the end result is paralysis, insomnia and disconnection from the present. Experts from Harvard Mental Health Services (CAMHS) They have a name for this phenomenon: “toxic time travel.” Dr. Rue Wilson, a psychologist at this institution, describes how we try to feel in control by imagining different outcomes. “We get stuck ruminating, overwhelmed by ‘what ifs,’ and disconnected from the present, which is where we really have the most certainty.” Feed a bigger monster. This loop ends in what psychologist Laura Marín defines as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)where concern is constant and fueled by overestimating the risks. Marín illustrates this with a clear example: two women, Alicia and Brenda, undergo a medical test. While Alicia asks whatever is necessary and continues with her daily life, Brenda compulsively searches for information on the Internet and needs her partner to continually reassure her. It is the so-called “reinsurance search”. Checking emails, postponing decisions or constantly asking for opinions are strategies that give false relief in the short term, but in the long run make us unable to tolerate the slightest doubt. The cell phone as an escape route. The need to escape from uncertainty has found in smartphones your best ally, but at a high cost for mental health. Rigorous research supports this claim. In a couple of published studies in the scientific journal Science Direct (led by Jon D. Elhai and colleagues in 2017), it was demonstrated through systematic reviews that the severity of depression and anxiety are strongly linked to problematic mobile phone use. One of the most revealing findings of Elhai’s research differentiates between “social” use of the phone (messaging, networks) and “process” use (consumption of news, entertainment, scroll passive). The study found that anxiety is much more related to process use than social use. That is, people with anxiety use the non-social functions of their devices as an avoidance mechanism (such as doomscrolling or addictive consumption of news) to avoid facing stress, this “use of process” being the direct bridge to mobile addiction. In fact, Dr. Leigh W. Jerome warns precisely about this habit. In the face of global chaos, doomscrolling It does not prepare us for the future, but “can cause headaches, muscle tension, high blood pressure, and difficulty sleeping.” Leon Garber, mental health counselor, adds a vital reflection on compulsive doubt avoidance: “Avoidance, in and of itself, is not negative (…) but imagine how many missed opportunities for growth or connection, over time, add up to a lost relationship.” Garber points out that even therapy has a limit if the patient is only seeking definitive answers. “We have to learn to live with uncertainty. Fundamentally, we have to learn to live,” he says. The trap of the hyperconnected world. The desire for certainties not only affects the individual, but shapes our society. An analysis published in The Conversation reminds us thatAccording to Maslow’s pyramid, security is a primary need. However, the obsession with eliminating all risks has a dark side. “There are desires that should not be fulfilled and that of radical security is a desire that can never and should never be satisfied,” the article underlines. Trying to control everything, whether through algorithms, surveillance cameras or the transfer of freedoms, strips us of our humanity and leads us to voluntary servitude. Instead of delegating control to technology to avoid panic, experts advocate a “pedagogy of responsibility”, appealing to the values ​​of Kant and Rousseau, where we assume that zero risk does not exist. How to inhabit the void. Since uncertainty is inevitable, the solution is not to find all the answers, but to change our relationship with the questions. According to institutions such as Harvard CAMHS and diverse psychology professionalsthere are four keys to navigate the uncontrollable: Focus on what you control: challenge the illusion of absolute certainty. If you lose your job, you can’t control when you’ll be hired, but you … Read more

science points to something that disappears when you roast it

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The world of nutrition and supplements is full of dizzying promises, with products that make miraculous promisesand few have made as much noise in the last decade as green coffee. Often marketed as the definitive panacea for weight loss, this product has flooded herbalists, pharmacies and supermarkets, making it available to anyone who wants to finally achieve weight loss without much effort. However, behind the intense marketing, there is hidden a biochemical reality that goes far beyond advertising slogans and that justifies part of their effect. Although a priori, when we talk about coffee to lose weight, we can go with the idea of ​​the extreme thermogenic effect or the extreme dose of caffeine that activates our metabolism, the reality is different. Here science has a clear answer about its real benefits, pointing to a specific compound that we sacrifice every morning in favor of flavor: chlorogenic acid. What is green coffee? To understand green coffee you do not have to travel to exotic plantations looking for a rare species that produces this product, since green coffee is purely and simply the coffee seed in its natural state, before being subjected to the roasting process which gives it its characteristic black color. Of course, we normally talk about the varieties Arabica coffee either Coffea canephora. If we put ourselves in the ‘normal’ situation, when we roast the coffee beans At temperatures around 200 degrees, Maillard reactions occur. A thermal process that is responsible for generating the characteristic intoxicating aroma, dark color and deep flavor that we can appreciate so much in the morning cup. However, these high temperatures produce a large destruction of bioactive compounds that can help us a lot in our daily lives. That is why logic prevails above all else here: if roasting degrades the healthiest compounds, then we eat it without roasting. And specifically, the element that is most important to us to preserve here is called chlorogenic acid, a powerful antioxidant ester, which is something that we want to preserve above all to reduce the hated oxidative stress that destroys our cells and accelerates aging. In this way, green coffee preserves the three characteristics of this compound intact, becoming an exceptional vehicle for introducing a series of phytochemicals into the body that gives it very interesting properties to achieve the benefits that we will see later. Properties of green coffee As we have said, the chemical composition of green coffee is a gold mine for pharmacognosy. By not being subjected to the thermal stress of roasting, it preserves certain components intact that make it a product with high functional potential. It has a lower amount of caffeine. Contrary to what intuition dictates, green coffee generally contains less than half the caffeine than a cup of conventional black coffee. This means that its stimulating effects on the central nervous system are much milder, which can be very interesting for those who are more sensitive to caffeine. In this way, by not generating such an aggressive alert peak, your consumers rarely need to apply the 90 minute rule after waking up to have your first cup and avoid cortisol shock. Chlorogenic acid. As we have mentioned before, it is the real star of the metabolic function of green coffee, since this compound formed by caffeic acid and quinic acid has led science to classify it into three main classes and that in green coffee it has a maximum concentration. High antioxidant capacity. Various analyzes of beans from different producing regions, including exhaustive studies on Mexican varieties, have confirmed that green coffee has a significantly higher amount of total phenols and a higher antioxidant capacity compared to its roasted counterpart. Presence of trigonelline. An alkaloid that is also better preserved in its raw state and that, according to various tests, collaborates in the regulation of glucose metabolism. What the science says about green coffee Scientific scrutiny on this product has been intense, especially after the proliferation of low-quality studies in the early 2010s, some of which, highly publicized, ended up being retracted by scientific journals due to methodological flaws. Today, the evidence is much more solid, mature and, above all, realistic. The most comprehensive systematic reviews, such as the one led by Tajik in 2017 that analyzed Nearly a hundred studies, both in vivo and in vitro, agree on a clear verdict: the chlorogenic acid present in green coffee is a powerful bioactive agent with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects. But logically here science puts a brake on marketing campaigns, since green coffee does not produce a drastic transformation nor does it magically “melt” fat or rejuvenate in a snap, but it does improve different biomarkers of our metabolic health. In this way, we are not talking about something miraculous, but we are talking about something protective. Benefits of green coffee From all the scientific evidence, a compilation can be made of what this green coffee is used for on a daily basis and if it is really proven, since these are the benefits that enter our eyes and that they try to sell us to finally pay for green coffee. weight loss It is one of the most popular benefits that allows many people to take the step to start taking it, but the question we must ask ourselves here is: is green coffee really useful for losing weight? Here a study published in 2023 shed light on this issue by evaluating green coffee extract, providing at least 500 mg of chlorogenic acid daily to patients. The conclusion they drew was simply visual, as these patients had a significant, but modest, reduction of approximately 1.3 kg in the participants’ body weight. Another important piece of information was given to us in 2019. a second study which stated that the supplements had no measurable effect if consumed for less than four weeks. However, in long-term clinical trials using extracts with 70% CGA and less than 1% caffeine, reductions in body weight of up to 6% were documented, … Read more

To locate the pilot lost in Iran, the US used two tools. One was given by Boeing, the other is science fiction

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The call quantum magnetometry has promised to measure magnetic fields so weak that they border on detectability, using microscopic defects in synthetic diamonds capable of registering imperceptible variations. In the laboratory, these techniques already allow biological signals to be observed at surprising scales, but always in environments controlled and at very short distances. Outside of these ideal conditions, between noise, interference and distance, the great unknown remains the same: how far that sensitivity really goes. The United States claims to have the answer, and it is very difficult to believe. Two tools to find a missing person. Washington has counted that the operation to rescue to the airman shot down in Iran was based on a very specific combination of technologies that, together, made the difference between finding a man or losing him in an immense terrain. On the one hand, the pilot had a standard and well-known system available as Boeing’s CSELa communications device that allows send encrypted signals via satellite and guide rescue teams with relative precision. This type of tool, widely distributed in the armed forces, was key to confirming that he was still alive and limiting his initial position in an extremely hostile environment. The other tool that borders on the implausible. The second element of the rescue is the one that has generated the most interest (and doubts), since different information supported by a exclusive to the New York Post point to the use of a system called “Ghost Murmur” capable of detecting the human heartbeat at long distance using quantum magnetometry combined with artificial intelligence. On paper, the idea is extraordinary in a movie, but apparently also in the real world: identify the electromagnetic signature of a living body in the middle of the desert, isolate it from noise and convert it into an operational coordinate. It happens that the unknowns also begin here, because these types of signals are extremely weak and, until now, they could only be measured at a very short distance in controlled environments, which raises serious doubts about its real range in combat conditions. Between the plausible and the inflated. The context of the rescue itself suggests that, rather than replacing the classic system, this technology would have acted as a complement under very specific conditions: an environment with low electromagnetic interference, few human signatures or signals, and a target forced to briefly expose itself to activate its beacon. That is, not so much an omniscient tool as a very limited capacityuseful in ideal scenarios but difficult to extrapolate to more complex situations. The narrative of “finding someone by their heartbeat from miles away” fits well as a concept or in a Nolan film, but until now it clashed with known physical limitations. The “Venezuelan” precedent. Many skeptical analysts have gone for the jugular of these claims, speaking reverse engineering of another futuristic weapon to achieve the “Ghost Murmur”. Because skepticism does not arise in a vacuum, but in a recent context where technologies wrapped in an almost fantastic halo have already been presented, such as the supposed “discombobulator” mentioned by Trump in the operation against Nicolás Maduro. In that case, experts pointed out that it was probably a mix of capabilities real (electronic warfare, acoustic weapons or directed energy systems) presented as a single almost magical device. The pattern is recognizable: existing technologies reinterpreted or exaggerated in the public narrative. The war is also fought in the technological story. If you also want, as a whole, the rescue reveals something deeper than a simple military operation: the growing importance of technological narrative in modern conflicts. The United States used a tangible tooleffective and proven to locate the pilot, no more no less than a GPSbut he also hinted at another capacity that, real or not in the terms described, projects a image of superiority almost total. And possibly there, between what is technically possible and what is communicated, there is a space where perception matters as much as reality, and where sometimes the border between advanced technology and science fiction becomes deliberately blurred. The rescue movie, of course, has already been practically written. Image | US Air Force In Xataka | The rescue of a fallen US pilot in Iran seems like a science fiction story. And there are elements to think that it is In Xataka | Iran has found a hole in Israel’s shield: turning a missile into an explosive “storm” in full descent

We have been obsessed with measuring deep sleep with a watch for years. Science says what matters is dreaming vividly

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The reality is that waking up feeling like you’ve fallen asleep like a dormouse is one of the greatest pleasures in life, since it makes you start the day in a very different way. Until now, sleep science has told us that to achieve that feeling of rest we had to maximize deep sleepbut now the rarity and the intensity of dreams They are also gaining a starring role here. A new study. A recent published research in the prestigious magazine PLOS Biology by an Italian team has revealed that vivid and immersive dreams are directly related to a greater subjective sense of deep sleep. And most fascinating: this occurs even when the brain’s electrical activity tells us that we are in a phase of light sleep. How they have done it. To reach this conclusion, the researchers did not settle for morning surveys, but rather They took 44 adults healthy people to a sleep laboratory for four consecutive nights. Here they simply had to be connected to a high-density electroencephalogram to monitor their brain activity in real time. The methodology used was quite methodical, since all of them were awakened repeatedly, reaching the figure of 1,900 awakenings in total throughout the entire study. But they were not waking them up at any time, but rather sleep phase N2 which is what belongs to non-REM sleep and is what is considered relatively light sleep, where the biological need to sleep usually decreases as the night progresses. But the important thing is that, after each awakening, the participants had to describe their previous mental experiences and rate, from 1 to 10, how deep they felt their sleep had been just before opening their eyes. The result. By crossing the data from the dream stories with the EEG activity and the subjective perception of the participants, the scientists found a pattern that indicated that when the participants reported vivid, strange dreams, with high emotional intensity or very visually rich, they reported having been immersed in a very deep sleep. In contrast, if the mental activity before waking up was abstract, vague, or the participants had “meta-awareness,” which is thinking about real problems or being aware that they were sleeping, they felt that their sleep had been very superficial. A change. In this way, this sensation of dreamlike depth challenged the electroencephalograms themselves. And the fact is that, although the EEG showed that the participant’s brain activity was dangerously close to wakefulness, if he was immersed in an intense dream plot, his brain interpreted that he was resting peacefully. Memory doesn’t matter. One of the most interesting details of the study points to a situation that can be frustrating: waking up knowing that you had an incredible dream, but unable to remember the entire plot. Here the scientific study demonstrates that narrative memory is not necessary for rest, since the participants continued to rate their sleep as deep and restorative despite not remembering it. In this way, the simple fact that the brain has been “disconnected” from the physical environment and immersed in its own virtual world seems to be enough to preserve the subjective perception of rest. What does it mean? This discovery opens the door to new treatments for sleep disorders, since, in the case of insomnia, the problem could not only be in the clinical architecture of sleep, but in an alteration of dream activity or a lack of mental disconnection from the environment. And this is precisely where science has to begin to investigate. Images | iam_os In Xataka | Waking up at 3 in the morning is totally normal: sleeping straight through is a modern invention, not an evolution

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