Science Archives - Page 2 of 29

We have been fleeing the heat for years to play sports. Science has discovered that we were losing a superpower

July 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Summer is coming, temperatures are rising and going for a run or cycling becomes an act of bravery. In this situation, common sense tells us that we should avoid the middle hours of the day, hydrate ourselves more and slow down, even though there is a possibility of falling into the sedentary lifestyle. This is why it is vital to adapt our exercise and rest to the high temperatures we are facing. The thermal shock. When we exercise, our muscles generate energy, but only 20-25% is translated into mechanical movement and the rest is released as heat. If we add to this a hot environment, the body faces a double thermoregulatory challenge. As detailed in an exhaustive review published in 2021Under heat stress, the body diverts a large flow of blood to the skin to dissipate heat through sweat. This means there is less blood available to working muscles and the heart. The result? The heart rate skyrockets to try to compensate and exhaustion comes much sooner. Acclimatization. The good news is that our body is an extraordinarily adaptable heat machine, and that is why if we expose ourselves to heat progressively, we activate what is known as acclimatization. Here, a study published in 2024 quantified this adaptation and it was seen that, after a period of repeated exposure to heat, the participants managed to reduce their core temperature at rest by 0.19 ºC and their heart rate by 6 beats per minute. That is, follow a process of adaptation 8 to 14 days Heat training consistently improves performance and thermoregulation. In fact, from the fifth day onwards, cardiac adaptations begin to be noticed. The physiology. Something that has been seen is that in the first week of heat training, the body retains more water and sodium in order to increase the blood volume that runs through the arteries and veins with the aim of improving cardiac output and the supply of oxygen to the muscles. The good thing is that if we maintain the thermal stimulus long term, the body responds by creating more hemoglobin, which is the protein that transports oxygen through the blood. This makes the system much more efficient when training, since the muscle will have a greater amount of oxygen. Train with heat. Just because the heat offers physiological advantages does not mean that we should go running at three in the afternoon during the heat wave in August, since there are serious complications such as heat stroke. Here the recommendation states that exposure to heat should be progressive, with short sessions at low intensity and increasing the duration over two weeks. Logically, hydration must be maintained according to physical activity, since dehydration of more than 2% of body weight nullifies many of the advantages of acclimatization and dangerously increases internal temperature. In short, training in the heat is hard but little by little it is possible to adapt as long as common sense prevails, changing the training schedule also to times with lower temperatures. Image | Unsplash In Xataka | Drink water right before going to sleep? Science has finally clarified whether it is a good idea or a terrible enemy of sleep

In 1611 Brueghel the Elder painted a baroque painting full of birds and bats. Without knowing it, he was 400 years ahead of modern science

July 11, 2026 by usatoday24

The god Apollo crosses the firmament aboard his chariot drawn by steeds, the muse Urania shows us an armillary sphere while resting on a cloud and, in the distance, we see a cloudy sky full of birds. The painting ‘Air’, painted in the 17th century by Jan Brueghel the Elder It shows a mythological scene that served the artist to make clear his ability with brushes and colors. Now a group of Spanish researchers has confirmed which is something more: a treatise on zoology that was 400 years ahead of modern science. It turns out that Brueghel the Elder was also a skilled chiropterologist. The value of details. Beyond its composition or technical quality, something must be recognized in ‘Aire’, a allegorical painting painted around 1611 by Jan Brueghel the Elder and preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon: it is full of details. It is something that is verified with the naked eye but is (re)confirmed by observing the study of detail published by the French institution. In it we see, in addition to Urania, the central figure of the painting, an enormous number of birds. The experts have counted 60 different species. There are specimens of ostrich, turkeys, swans, flamingos, cranes, owls, chickens… and a vast etcetera of winged creatures that either rest perched on the ground or branches or cross the sky. The latter also include three species of bats, including at least one Nyctalus lasiopterus or “giant noctule”, a large bat that can reach 46 cm wingspan. Much more than art. For the vast majority of people, pieces like ‘Aire’ are basically works of art. There are, however, those who have seen something more in them: valuable (and above all graphic) clues to study the fauna of centuries ago. That is the case of Pedro Romero-Vidalan ecologist at the Doñana Biological Station (EBD), who embarked on a project to identify animals in historical paintings. When he came to Brueghel the Elder’s 1611 work, he noticed a detail that activated his instinct: “I had never seen a similar scene in any of the many paintings I had examined.” admits to ScienceNews. But what the hell is that? What caught Romero-Vidal’s attention was a detail located in the upper right margin of the painting, almost at the edge of the composition. There the artist depicted a large bat flying away from the rest of the figures. The creature that came out of the brushes of Brueghel the Elder has been there, clearly visible, since the 17th century, but when the CSIC experts analyzed it they realized something: It doesn’t fly alone. In its jaws it carries a small bird. “Pedro saw the bats and it seemed that one of them was a noctule carrying a bird in its mouth,” explains to elDiario Miguel Clavero, researcher at the Doñana Biological Station and one of the authors who sign the article (just published in PNAS) in which they report their discovery. To understand its scope, one fact must be taken into account: science did not document until well into the 21st century how noctules hunt passerine birds and are able to devour them while they fly, which makes Brueghel the Elder ahead of his time. four centuries before. As recognize EBD-CSIC itself, the painting by Brueghel the Elder reveals that “the hunting of passerine birds by nocturnal bats was already known in the 17th century, 400 years before science was able to demonstrate it.” Zoologists obtained the first “solid evidence” that Nyctalus lasiopterus They fed on small passing birds several decades ago, observing their feces. However, we had to wait until 2025 to obtain a definitive study on its behavior. That confirmation did not arrive until October and it also did so at the hands of a scientific team led by the EBD-CSCI. “He managed to demonstrate that the great noctule, the largest bat in Europe, could hunt and consume birds in mid-flight,” points out the CSICwhich recalls that researchers captured for the first time the sound of a specimen preying on a European robin during flight in Doñana. “The first direct evidence of this behavior.” Or so they believed until someone noticed a painting from 1611. Pioneering scientist… with nuances. Of course, it is one thing to capture a scene observed in nature with brushes and another, very different, to document animal behavior with 100% scientific criteria. In fact, the CSIC itself clarifies that what Brueghel the Elder shows in his painting “does not exactly coincide” with what we know today about these animals and their strategies. “Carrying it in its mouth like a raptor is unfeasible. Bats at night are guided by sound and make calls,” Elena Tena clarifies to elDiarioone of the scientists who studied this habit. “To be realistic, the bat would be holding the bird with its hind legs and bringing them forward toward its mouth.” In any case, this does not detract from the painter’s merit or from the fact (confirmed by the CSIC) that art galleries can be valuable sources for zoologists. Images | Wikipedia and EBD-CSIC In Xataka | The mere existence of donkeys has been a mystery of natural history for decades. One we have solved

We have been putting bananas in red fruit smoothies for years. Science says it’s just what we shouldn’t do

July 10, 2026 by usatoday24

Although it will always be a better option to eat whole fruit, smoothies and fruit shakes are a good way to eat healthyespecially in the heat of summer. When preparing them, it is time to experiment and try different mixtures and combinations of flavors. However, according to a study from the University of California Davisthere are combinations that are best avoided. In their case, they refer to bananas and red fruits. The key is in the flavanols. So much the banana like the red fruits They are very healthy. The first is especially rich in potassium, fiber and B vitamins. Forest fruits are rich in vitamin C and antioxidants such as flavanols. Precisely, it is with these that the problem arises. And, as these scientists saw in their study, bananas contain an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase that prevents the flavanols from red fruits from being absorbed. First experiment. These scientists carried out several experiments to reach these conclusions. In the first, 8 volunteers participated, who were given a red fruit smoothie or a capsule with flavanols. In both cases, when blood samples were taken, it was seen that the levels of flavanol metabolites had increased. This indicates that your body was metabolizing them to extract their benefits. However, when the process was repeated by adding banana to the smoothie, the results were very different, as the blood levels of flavanol metabolites were much lower. In search of the culprit. The guilt of polyphenol oxidase is not a suspicion. This was confirmed in a second experiment, in which a banana and red fruit smoothie was left at room temperature. After an hour, flavanol levels had greatly decreased. However, when the process was repeated with bananas that had this enzyme inhibited, they remained intact. Even separately. In another experiment, participants were given a smoothie made only of berries, followed by one made only with berries. banana. Again, the levels of flavanol metabolites decreased. It seems that polyphenol oxidase acts even when both fruits are put together in our stomach instead of in our blender. There are limitations to the study. This research took place in 2023 with only 8 participants. It’s a tiny sample size, so it can’t be considered very conclusive. Furthermore, all participants were men, so it is still not a representative sample of the entire population. The authors themselves indicated at the time that it would be necessary to carry out the study with more participants. At the moment, they have not done so. They have continued researching in the area of flavanols, but not in relation to the drawbacks of mixing banana and red fruits. Although they have focused on the need to properly choose the fruits we consume. For example, recently published an investigation which concluded that eating five pieces of fruit and vegetables is not enough to achieve the adequate dose of these antioxidants in one day. You would have to choose the best options. Don’t despair either. If you love the combination of banana and red fruits, don’t suffer. It’s not dangerous at all. Simply, according to this study, flavanols are not extracted in the best possible way. You can resort to other additional sources and the problem would be solved. In any case, if for you banana is a dispensable complement, it may be better not to consume it with red fruits. Both fruits are very healthy, but the best option, based on this research, would be to eat them at two different times of the day. Image | Magnificent Xataka | The Spanish cherry had been dreaming for years of a scenario that has just come true: opening the doors of China

We believed that stress was only psychological. Science shows that it also depends on the amount of water you drink

July 10, 2026 by usatoday24

We all know that facing a tight deadline, a job interview, or a heated argument trigger our stress levelsand it is nothing more than a basic evolutionary response. However, science is beginning to see that the intensity with which our body reacts to a stressor depends not only on our psychology, but on something as fundamental as the amount of water we drink throughout the day. It has been investigated. A recent study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology has put on the table the relationship that exists between the general state of hydration and the reactivity of cortisol to acute stress. In other words, a dehydrated body is a body that overreacts to the problems that may arise on a daily basis. Cortisol. To understand this finding, we must first look at the ‘place’ where our stress is regulated, which is the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. This system is activated when we face a psychosocial threat that culminates in the release of cortisol, which is our main stress-related hormone and can be easily measured through saliva. Logically, cortisol at normal levels is necessary for survival, but the problem arises when it remains high for a long time, which begins to generate many problems in our body and also confronts us with anxiety disorders. Hydration. This is where water comes into play, since dehydration, even mild, is not just having a dry mouth but biologically, it is a major stressor. When we do not drink enough water, our blood volume decreases and its concentration increases. The body perceives this as a threat to homeostasis and responds by releasing hormones to try to compensate for this lack of fluid, such as vasopressin, which causes us to urinate much less to avoid ‘wasting’ water. Threats. What science demonstrates here is that when we subject a person who is poorly hydrated to psychological stress, the body experiences a double threat. Here the nervous system is already dealing with the physiological stress of lack of water and, if we add to that an external stressor, such as a work problem, the cortisol response shoots up much more abruptly than in a well-hydrated person. But we are not facing something completely isolated, but rather there are many studies who have found a relationship between state anxiety and hydration. If we go to the purest physiology, it makes sense, since the brain is made up of 73% water and that is why it is extremely sensitive to a drop in the amount of liquid drunk throughout the day. It is not the same for everyone. Human biology is rarely a simple equation, as the salivary cortisol response to psychosocial stress has high variability between people. Age, sex, coffee consumption, smoking or steroid levels act as modulators of this hormone, for example. However, the state of hydration is now emerging as one of the most easily modified variables by ourselves. We can’t change our age or erase a family problem, but we can make sure that our fluid intake doesn’t make things more difficult for our nervous system. Images | engin akyurt In Xataka | The myth of “two liters of water a day” collapses: a mistake from 1945 that science is now trying to correct

We have been believing for years that women live longer because of their lifestyle. Science has a much deeper explanation

July 9, 2026 by usatoday24

If we take a look at the World Bank’s global statistics, there is an unbreakable pattern that repeats itself in practically every country in the world: Women live longer than men. Conventional wisdom often dismisses this phenomenon with a quick response based on lifestyle or “men take more risks.” And although there is some truth in this, the scientific reality is much more complex. Because? To understand female longevity, We must focus on the DNA that we have in all our cells. Something very basic is that women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. A fundamental difference, because that second X chromosome in women acts as a kind of backup. This means that if a gene on one X chromosome suffers a mutation or is damaged, the female body can turn to the healthy copy on the other chromosome. Men, however, play a single card, since if their only X chromosome has a defect, there is no plan B. In addition, this chromosome is vital because it houses a large number of genes related to the immune system, which gives women a more robust response to infections. It goes further. Genetics is not everything here, but the body has an ace up its sleeve, which are the mitochondria, which are nothing more than the “power plants” of our cells. These organelles are inherited only maternally and, as proposed in 2007sexual differentiation has a direct biological cost for men, translating into lower mitochondrial function and, therefore, greater cellular oxidative stress that accelerates aging. The hormones. Beyond genetics and mitochondria, we must mention sex hormones, which are in very different proportions between sexes. Estrogens, for example, are the main female sex hormones that, in addition to regulating the reproductive cycle, act as a powerful antioxidant shield. Among its effects stands out maintaining the flexibility of blood vessels, reducing “bad” cholesterol and preventing inflammation. This largely explains why the incidence of cardiovascular disease in women is significantly lower before menopause. In the man. On the other side of the coin we have testosterone. Although it is crucial for the development of muscle and bone mass, high levels of this hormone in men are historically associated with increased cardiovascular risk at an early age and long-term depression of the immune system. The evolution. Someone may fall into the idea that this system is something exclusive to humans, but evolutionary biology shows us otherwise. Here, a 2025 study analyzed 1,176 species and the results revealed that in mammals, females live on average 13% longer than males. The reason lies in reproductive strategies and the biological wear and tear derived from male sexual competition, such as fights over territory or mating. However, it was seen that andIn birds, males live 5% longer; since in the avian world, males usually have two identical sex chromosomes (ZZ) and females have different sex chromosomes (ZW). Furthermore, in many bird species, parental care is shared or falls to the male, which reduces their risk behaviors. Human behavior. Of course, biology does not operate in a vacuum and genetic and hormonal factors must be added. the behavioral gap and social. For example, the consumption of toxic substances has a greater prevalence in men, being associated with cancer, cirrhosis or respiratory diseases. But, as we have said before, testosterone is also linked to a greater propensity to take risks, which translates into higher mortality rates from traffic accidents or cases of violence. On the other hand, women suffer from “invulnerability syndrome” which causes them to seek preventive medical services much more frequently. Men tend to postpone visits to the doctor until diseases are in more advanced stages, making treatment difficult. In addition, women tend to build stronger social and emotional support networks, a factor directly linked to greater survival in old age. Images | Age Cymru In Xataka | 5 minutes of sleep, 2 of exercise and half a serving of vegetables: the macro study that supports a great longevity ‘hack’

science confirms the exact dosage of strength training

July 9, 2026 by usatoday24

For decades, when we thought about exercise for health, the image that came to mind was that of someone running or pedaling. Cardio exercise was the undisputed king of medical recommendations, but now a growing number of sports and medical professionals are raising their voices to give prominence to strength training as something practically mandatory if you want to reach an advanced age with a good quality of life. There is still evidence. It is not a gym exaggeration, but in recent years, scientific literature has taken a spectacular turn, demonstrating that lifting weights, using resistance bands or training with our own body weight is not just an aesthetic issue, but the true protective shield against aging and mortality. The tests. Until recently, we knew that being strong was good for preventing falls in old age, but current data goes much further. Muscle is a living endocrine organ that regulates our metabolism, and exercising it has a direct impact on the main causes of death worldwide. Without going any further, a review published in 2022 associated muscle-strengthening activities with a lower risk of all-cause mortality, but also with specific drops in the incidence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and various types of cancer. That same year, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine put precise numbers on the table by pointing out that any amount of strength training is associated with a 15% reduction in all-cause mortality, a 19% lower cardiovascular risk, and a 14% lower cancer risk. The most recent. If we go to this same year, a Harvard megastudy has finished closing the debate after following 147,000 adults for 30 years. Their findings are an instruction manual for longevity, discovering that performing between 90 and 119 minutes of strength training per week was associated with a 13% lower risk of all-cause mortality and a dramatic 27% reduction in mortality from neurological diseases. The quantity. One of the big myths of strength training is believing that to get medical benefits, you have to train like a bodybuilder or lift extreme loads every day. Science shows that the dose-response relationship is not linear, but rather that most of the benefits are concentrated in surprisingly moderate training volumes. Specifically, the optimal range is found in this study between 30 and 120 minutes a week. That is why going from zero to 45 minutes a week represents a brutal improvement in life expectancy. However, doing 5 hours of weight training per week does not multiply those benefits by five; In fact, the data suggests that a plateau occurs where the additional benefit is minor, and even exaggeratedly high volumes may not be optimal for overall longevity. The combination. If strength training is incredible on its own, when combined with aerobic exercise, the results skyrocket. Already in 2019, the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology reported that combining both types of training produced an additive effect, reducing general mortality by up to 40%. But the recent Harvard megastudy has raised that figure and points out that people who combine an aerobic routine with their optimal minutes of strength manage to reduce their risk of mortality between 45% and 58%. Images | Anastase Maragos In Xataka | Experts agree: “People who lift weights 2 hours a week and walk daily live longer”

If you are going to see the eclipse on August 12, science needs you

July 6, 2026 by usatoday24

The Generalitat of Catalonia, the Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC) and the Vall d’Hebron Institut de Recerca (VHIR) have just announced a citizen science initiative aimed at analyzing how a total solar eclipse affects the health and physiology of human beings. There is enough data on how they affect these astronomical phenomena to other animals, but there is hardly any information about humans. For this reason, these institutions have launched the Solaris application, with which they hope to gather around 5,000 people to participate in a study whose results will be known at the end of September. The requirements. To participate in this citizen science project A series of requirements must be met. First of all, you need to download the Solaris application and have a smartwatch or any similar activity device that measures, at a minimum, heart rate. Data must be taken for five consecutive days: the two days before the solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, the day of the eclipse and the two days after. It is important that the recordings have time references and, also, that intense exercise is not practiced during the measurements. What you want to measure. Mainly, those responsible for this research are interested in knowing how experiencing a solar eclipse affects heart rate and respiratory rate. Two important factors coincide in this type of event. On the one hand, the excitement of seeing something newwhich on many occasions has never been witnessed. And, on the other, the incoherence of a short dusk in the middle of the day. The fact that light disappears when it is not appropriate and then appears again a few minutes later can affect the mechanisms involved in circadian rhythms. It is true that it is something very specific, but it would be interesting to see if detectable effects actually occur at a physiological level. The results. The total solar eclipse will take place on August 12. Once the application is synchronized with the smart watch, the data reaches the researchers directly, thanks to OneCareAI technology, which allows data to be collected safely and anonymously. Once all the data has been collected, it will be processed to carry out a first draft of the study, which will be made public at the end of September. It won’t take long for participants to know the results. And what about the animals? There is a lot of information documented on how a total solar eclipse affects animals. For example, it has been seen that birds sing a lot, dogs bark and cattle go to the stables, only to return to the pasture again. Activity has also been detected in nocturnal animals, such as bats or some birds. When daylight comes, they return to their hiding places, clearly confused. It has even been documented how eclipses affect some plants, which normally tend to open their flowers at night. Although it is not yet time, we often see how the flowers are seen ahead of time due to the darkness. Beyond all this, we have no idea how the solar eclipse will affect ourselves. Thanks to this Catalan study, we will have information for the first time. Nothing like it has ever been done in the entire world. Do you dare to participate? Image | Magnificent In Xataka | A third of Spain will be completely dark for a minute or two. The astronomical event of the century is approaching

Today “a masterpiece that will go down in history” arrives on Netflix, thanks to an original approach to a unique science fiction story

July 6, 2026 by usatoday24

Netflix just released ‘Glimpses of tomorrow’the first series that Kyoto Animation produces exclusively for the platform, and it does so with a certainly tragic background: almost eight years have passed since the studio confirmed the adaptation. A year after the announcement, a man entered the studio offices with gasoline and set the building on fire. 36 people died and another 32 were injured. The author was sentenced to death in 2024, and the attack destroyed much of the studio’s materials and equipment, and with them, any progress that existed on the project. In any case, the series has survived the tragedy, and it imagines a Kyoto of 1907 where electricity was never developed and steam became the dominant technology, leaving the city permanently covered in smoke. As a child, the protagonist invented projects that he captured in a notebook called the Electrical Catalog of the 20th Century, together with his older brother. He took that notebook to the war and never returned. The protagonist, now an adult and in the company of a young woman who is trying to escape an arranged marriage, will embark on a search for the treasure of his childhood. Minoru Ōta directs the series in his first project as a director. He had previously worked as a key animator on ‘Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!’ and ‘Liz and the Blue Bird’, and as episode director on ‘Kobayashi-san’s Dragon Maid’. It is he himself who said that “‘Flashes of Tomorrow’ is a work that will remain engraved in the history of anime“. An unusual statement coming from someone directing his first project. But the truth is that the series is raising expectations: before reaching Netflix, a tour of cinema screenings was held in Japan, the United Kingdom, Thailand and North America that started on June 14, in addition to a screening at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. All of this is part of the effort that Netflix is making to include more anime in its programming: it has announced eight series and three movies for 2026 in Japan. In Xataka | Today the best science fiction series of the moment returns, with a twist in its story that has given it a perfect score

the proposal of science against solar superstorms

July 5, 2026 by usatoday24

Our civilization is addicted to electricity and satellites, and this dependence has given us unprecedented technological progress, but it has also left us exposed to a silent and colossal enemy such as the Sun itself. Now, a team of scientists has put on the table a plan worthy of science fiction to protect us from a global blackout that focuses on deploying an immense “airbag” of plasma in Earth’s orbit to cushion the impact of solar storms. The proposal baptized like StormWallis not the script of a Hollywood movie, but has just been published in the prestigious magazine Space Weather. Our problem. To understand why we need a space airbag, we must first understand the threat, because when the Sun experiences coronal mass ejections, spews billions of tons of magnetized plasma into space. If that cloud points towards us, it collides with the Earth’s magnetic field, causing geomagnetic storms. This is where our magnetosphere comes in, which is nothing more than an excellent natural shield, but it has a limit. For example, when we have had extreme solar storms like the famous Carrington event of 1859 or the Quebec blackout of 1989, solar particles can overload power grids, destroy transformers, fry entire satellite constellations, and disrupt global communications. The StormWall project. The physics behind StormWall is based on altering what astrophysicists call magnetic reconnection, which is nothing more than the process by which energy from the solar wind is transferred to the Earth’s magnetic field. The plan proposed by Walsh and Welling consists of placing a fleet of six satellites in orbit geostationary. With all this, when early warning systems detect that a lethal coronal mass ejection is heading towards Earth, for which we have a couple of hours of margin, these satellites would go into action. How would it be done? The maneuver would consist of releasing around 400 tons of ionizable gases directly into space. And the good thing is that the candidate elements for this space dust are lithium, barium, sodium or, in an even cheaper alternative, simply salt water. Upon release, this material would be rapidly ionized by solar radiation, creating a dense cloud of artificial cold plasma as if it were an orbital “airbag.” According to the authors’ computational simulations, this plasma injection would modify the dynamics of magnetic reconnection, reducing the intensity of a severe geomagnetic storm by more than 60%. It would be the difference between a technological extinction event and a simple anecdote with beautiful northern lights. For researchers It is not technical madness and neither is it for the scientific community. Here independent experts who have not participated in the study view the viability of the project favorably. For example, Allison Jaynes, a space physicist at the University of Iowa, and Gurudas Ganguli of the US Naval Research Laboratory, have described the idea as “highly innovative and feasible in the near term.” But also, it is not the first time this has been experimented with. In early 2026, the US Naval Research Laboratory itself carried out experiments injecting barium with sounding rockets into the upper layers of the atmosphere to study radiation cleanup. Images | freepik In Xataka | China has a spaceship of which there are barely any photos. Another unidentified object has just been released into orbit

Science confirms that movement literally ignites your creativity

July 4, 2026 by usatoday24

Being in front of a screen or a piece of paper and needing ideas to emerge is something that for many people is an urgent need, but the problem here is that sometimes it is completely impossible. But the reality here is that we have a wonderful way of get these ideas to come to mind through a simple walk. Science has studied it. For decades, experts have been looking for a way to unblock our brain in this situation, and here a study published in 2014 had a lot to say, since the researchers demonstrated through four experiments that walking has a positive effect on the creative thinking that is often lacking. However, his greatest contribution was the dissection of what type of creativity benefits from movement. Specifically, they saw a drastic improvement in the divergent thinkingwhich is nothing more than the ability to generate multiple new and original ideas from a stimulus, but a null or even slightly detrimental effect on the convergent thinkingwhich is the ability to arrive at a single correct or logical answer. The best. With all this we come to the conclusion that walking is an extraordinarily powerful tool for brainstorming or starting a project from scratch, but it is not the best strategy if what we need is to solve a complex mathematical equation or find the exact answer to a test. In the real world. This study laid the foundation in a controlled environment where, in fact, part of the experiments showed that the effect persisted when walking on a treadmill in front of a blank wall, ruling out that the visual stimulus in the environment was the only one responsible. But when we leave here, the logical thing we think is that everything can end up changing. And to answer this, a study published in 2024 in American Psychologist took research out of the lab thanks to sensors and real-time evaluations in 157 young adults and analyzed daily steps in an everyday context. Your results confirmed that both acute walking episodes and the regular habit of going for a walk are directly associated with greater performance in verbal creative ideation. That is, the effect was not a laboratory anomaly, but rather translated perfectly to the real world. And it is confirmed again. This same year, a systematic review published in the journal PLOS ONE analyzed 23 independent studies where 1,036 participants were grouped together. Their conclusions indicated that there is a large and statistically significant effect between walking and having better divergent thinking. But there is still no evidence regarding convergent thinking. Images | Emma Simpson In Xataka | Psychology knows that feeling pleasure in the misfortune of others is not a psychopath: it is a very “human” reaction.

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