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Kykeon
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Kykeon retuiteado
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Wishing everyone a beautiful and blessed Summer Solstice ☀️
A video of a lovely sunrise over the river Great Ouse in Ely, at the Solstice four years ago. 🥰
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Black cumin (Nigella sativa), commonly known as black seed, stands out as one of the most potent natural anti-inflammatory agents.
Emerging research highlights the key role of its primary bioactive compound, thymoquinone (TQ), which exerts strong anti-inflammatory effects by directly suppressing pro-inflammatory mediators such as TNF-α and COX-2. This action closely mirrors the mechanism of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen, offering a natural alternative to reduce inflammation and associated discomfort.
TQ provides broad therapeutic benefits, helping alleviate symptoms in conditions like arthritis (reducing joint stiffness), asthma (easing airway inflammation), and allergies, while also supporting metabolic and cardiovascular health.
Although turmeric's curcumin has gained widespread attention for anti-inflammatory properties, evidence suggests black cumin and TQ may deliver comparable or superior effects in certain contexts. Combining these two remedies could yield synergistic benefits for enhanced relief. However, potency depends heavily on product quality—fresh black cumin oil outperforms aged versions due to higher TQ content.
As with any supplement, consult a healthcare provider before use to ensure safety, appropriate dosing, and suitability for individual health conditions.
[Amin B, Hosseinzadeh H. Black Cumin (Nigella sativa) and Its Active Constituent, Thymoquinone: An Overview on the Analgesic and Anti-inflammatory Effects. Planta Medica. 2016;82(1-2):8-16. doi:10.1055/s-0035-1557838]
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Quiero pediros un favor. Estamos en plena ola de calor. Ahora mismo a 35 °C en Vitoria-Gasteiz.
¿Qué temperatura tenéis en el lugar donde estáis?
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Breathtaking 300-year-old yew tree tunnel at Gormanston Castle in Ireland.
📹patricia.jonkers
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Where engineering precision meets boundless imagination,motion becomes a work of art.
kinetic sculptures by @ja_ko_modz8k
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🚨 ITALY IS ABOUT TO GENERATE ELECTRICITY FROM A FULL-SCALE NUCLEAR REACTOR THAT HAS ZERO NUCLEAR FUEL INSIDE IT.
At the ENEA Brasimone research center, Newcleo has installed a 155-ton reactor vessel filled with molten lead. Instead of uranium, it uses electric heaters to simulate the heat from fission. The lead will circulate, transfer heat to a steam generator, and spin a real turbine to produce electricity.
This is not a small lab experiment. The vessel is nearly the same size as the commercial 200 MW lead-cooled reactor Newcleo eventually wants to sell.
Why this matters:
• It’s one of the most complete non-nuclear demonstrations of a next-generation reactor ever attempted
• By proving the molten lead cooling system, heat exchangers, and power conversion loop work at scale before introducing nuclear fuel, Newcleo is trying to de-risk the hardest and most expensive parts of advanced nuclear development
• Lead-cooled fast reactors can operate at atmospheric pressure with high thermal margins and natural circulation decay heat removal
• The company has ambitious plans, including partnerships in the US (with Oklo) to use surplus weapons plutonium as fuel
The deeper implication:
Traditional nuclear development is extremely slow and expensive because you have to deal with radiation, fuel, and regulatory scrutiny from day one. Newcleo’s approach flips this: prove the entire non-nuclear “machine” works first at near-commercial scale, then add the nuclear part later. If successful, this could meaningfully shorten development timelines and reduce technical risk for lead-cooled reactors.
It’s still early the real fueled reactor isn’t expected until the early 2030s but this is one of the more serious and well-funded attempts to make a new type of advanced nuclear a commercial reality.
How important do you think non-nuclear full-scale testing like this will be for accelerating advanced reactor deployment?
Follow for more frontier nuclear technology and next-generation reactor development.
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@LittleKnownPL @Mike_Andreuzza This is true. They recommend not to switch on the air con as long as the temperature is not above 27C. What a joke! Nanny state and control freaks 😂
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When I was living in Spain, we had air conditioning in all rooms at my grandma's house from the early 2000s.
We used it whenever we wanted and set it as cold/warm as we wanted. Nobody ever came to tell us we couldn't use it or imposed any limits...
Where are these stories about Europeans not being allowed to use AC coming from...??
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Sean Connery reportedly filmed his King Richard cameo in just a couple of days, which makes it even funnier that it’s one of the first things people remember about ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES (1991). Some actors just have that kind of gravity.
cinesthetic.@TheCinesthetic
Name the best cameo you’ve ever seen in a movie.
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@PaulSutton66 @SeeDeeMcLeod @Sb65gt The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one they said woooaaaaaaaa
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@SeeDeeMcLeod @Sb65gt Oh, I don't know. Anyway, you've admitted that Jeff Wayne is not your favourite musician. This is a worth a listen: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Wayn…
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As we head for Miami, we want to say a heartfelt thank you to the city & people of Boston.
You’ve made us feel more than welcome in the time we’ve spent with you; you’ve made us feel part of your incredible city.
Thank you for your generosity and your wonderful hospitality.
💙
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I'm a cardiologist. I prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs every single day. They save lives. That science is settled and I will never tell you otherwise.
But I'm going to say something that will make a lot of my colleagues uncomfortable — because someone needs to say it, and your doctor probably won't.
Too many physicians make you feel crazy when you bring up statin side effects.
You walk into your appointment and say "my muscles ache constantly" — and you're told it's in your head. You say "I'm exhausted all the time" — and you're told it's your age. You say "my sex drive disappeared" — and you get an awkward silence followed by a subject change. You say "I don't feel like myself anymore" — and you're told the benefits outweigh the risks, take the pill, stop reading the internet.
I've watched it happen in my own field for twenty years. The conversation gets shut down. The patient gets dismissed. And then they do the one thing we should be most afraid of — they stop the medication entirely, without telling us, and lose the cardiovascular protection that's keeping them alive.
That is the real cost of not being honest. Not the side effects themselves — the silence that drives patients away from treatment.
In my practice, I see statin-related complications in at least 25% of my patients. Muscle pain. Fatigue that doesn't resolve with sleep. Reduced sexual drive. Brain fog. Cramping. Joint stiffness. Weakness that makes exercise — the very thing we tell them to do — feel impossible.
Some of these improve with CoQ10 supplementation and optimizing vitamin D. Many do not.
I wrote about the diabetes risk of statins in a New York Times op-ed in 2012. The backlash from the cardiology establishment was immediate. I was told I was undermining trust in a life-saving drug class. Fourteen years later, every major guideline acknowledges the risk I warned about. It's in the prescribing information. The physicians who attacked me for saying it now teach it to their residents.
The truth doesn't care about professional comfort. It never has.
Now a paper published this week in Science Advances has finally explained the mechanism behind statin myopathy — and the finding validates what millions of patients have been telling their doctors for years.
Researchers discovered that statins activate the NLRP3 inflammasome in muscle cells — triggering an inflammatory cascade that causes muscle cell death, activates atrophy pathways, and disrupts muscle metabolism. This is entirely independent of the drug's cholesterol-lowering effect.
The muscle damage isn't caused by lowering cholesterol. It's caused by a completely separate pharmacological action through a different pathway.
The critical implication: the side effect can potentially be separated from the benefit.
Blocking NLRP3 or restoring isoprenoids prevented muscle cell death without interfering with cholesterol reduction. Future therapies could preserve the cardiovascular protection while eliminating the muscle toxicity.
Even more striking — the researchers found that background systemic inflammation significantly lowered the statin dose needed to trigger muscle damage. Patients with chronic inflammation, gut dysbiosis, or metabolic syndrome may be experiencing myopathy at doses their doctors consider "too low to cause problems." They're not imagining it. Their inflammatory state is priming the pathway.
The muscle pain was never in their heads. It was in their NLRP3 inflammasome. And we finally have the molecular proof.
Here's what I actually do in my practice — because I refuse to choose between protecting the heart and respecting the patient.
Whenever possible, I avoid statins as my first-line approach for eligible patients by using alternatives that lower LDL through entirely different mechanisms with no muscle toxicity:
PCSK9 inhibitors — Repatha and Praluent. Injections every 2-4 weeks that dramatically lower LDL without touching muscle tissue. No myopathy. No fatigue. No brain fog. For patients who can access them, these are transformative.
Inclisiran — Leqvio. An siRNA injection I administer twice a year in my office. It silences the PCSK9 gene in the liver. Two shots a year. LDL drops roughly 50%. No muscle side effects. No daily pills. Now approved as first-line monotherapy. This is the future of lipid management and I use it aggressively.
When statins ARE clinically necessary — and sometimes they are, especially post-heart attack or in combination therapy — I choose hydrophilic statins like rosuvastatin or pravastatin. These do not easily cross the blood-brain barrier. The cognitive complaints — the fog, the memory issues, the feeling of "not being yourself" — are substantially less common with these formulations because the drug stays out of the central nervous system.
I never prescribe a statin without CoQ10. 100-300mg daily. Statins deplete the cellular energy molecule your muscles and heart depend on. Replenishing it reduces muscle symptoms in many patients. It should be standard practice. The fact that it isn't is a failure of our field.
I check vitamin D and optimize it aggressively. Low vitamin D — which is epidemic — worsens muscle symptoms independently and compounds whatever the statin is doing. Target 50-80 ng/mL, not the bare minimum of 30.
Bempedoic acid — Nexletol — for patients who can't tolerate any statin. Works upstream in the cholesterol pathway and is not active in muscle tissue. Specifically designed to avoid myopathy.
Ezetimibe added to a lower statin dose. Cut the statin intensity, add ezetimibe to maintain the LDL reduction, and halve the muscle exposure.
There is no excuse in 2026 for telling a patient "just deal with the muscle pain." The toolbox is deep. The alternatives exist. The only barrier is a physician's willingness to listen and adapt.
I want to speak directly to every patient who has been dismissed.
Your muscle pain is real. Your fatigue is real. Your cognitive changes are real. Your loss of drive — in every sense of the word — is real. A paper in Science Advances just proved the mechanism. You were never crazy. You were experiencing a documented inflammatory response in your muscle tissue that your doctor didn't have the science to explain — until this week.
And I want to speak directly to my colleagues.
We have to be honest. Not just about the benefits — which are enormous and undeniable — but about the side effects, the mechanism, and the alternatives. Patients who feel heard stay on treatment. Patients who feel dismissed stop their medications in silence — and die from the heart attacks we could have prevented if we'd simply been willing to have an honest conversation and switch the approach.
The cardiologist who tells you statins are flawless is not protecting you. The wellness influencer who tells you statins are poison is not protecting you either. The truth lives in the middle — where it always has.
Statins save lives. The side effects are real. The mechanism is now proven. The alternatives exist. And you deserve a doctor who holds all four of those truths at the same time.
Both things can be true. They always could.
Now we have the science to prove it.
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