A sharp, throbbing, continuous headache. The Royal National Academy of Medicine (RANM) defines migraine as a disease of unknown cause, with familial predisposition and female predominance.. For almost 120,000 Spaniards it is the suffering of a pain that cannot be seen and for which there is no cure..

That 4% of the Spanish population suffers from some type of chronic primary headache and experiences this headache more than 15 days a month.. They coexist, as the RANM points out, with a disease characterized by attacks of pulsating headache, unilateral or bilateral, lasting several hours..

But this process is not limited to pain, but is also accompanied by hypersensitivity to stimuli (smells, noises, light), nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, pale skin and great general discomfort.. How does it originate? At the moment there are many exogenous or environmental factors and other endogenous factors that act as triggers of migraine and modify its frequency and intensity..

Regarding how to anticipate and know when a migraine is going to appear, a group of US researchers have analyzed the data of 477 people who, through a mobile application, recorded their moods, energy levels and the appearance of migraines four times a day. day for two weeks.

Morning seizures were associated with poorer self-rated sleep quality and less energy the day before.. Stress and high-energy states were linked to afternoon headaches, adds the study, which is published in the journal Neurology..

Address migraines and their triggers

Migraine is often underdiagnosed and untreated, and even when treated, it can be difficult to treat in time and find strategies to prevent attacks.. This new work looks at ways to more accurately predict when a migraine will occur by using mobile apps to track sleep, energy, emotions and stress to improve the ability to prevent attacks..

For Jesús Porta-Etessam, president of the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN), it is “another study to be able to collect data” that serve in the consultation to know more and better when and why patients suffer seizures..

The study published in the scientific journal has some limitations, such as the small number of patients and the “subjectivity” in the recording of data by the patients.. “More data are needed, including more patients and with a longer follow-up to be able to conclude that these findings are similar in all patients with migraine,” Pablo Irimia, a neurologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of headaches at the Clinic, told SMC. university of Navarra.

Despite this, both Irimia and Porta-Etessam find it useful for patients in predicting the onset of attacks and learning to manage their migraine.. “Knowing the triggers prepares them so that they can take preventive measures and thus avoid the crisis or start treatment for the episode much earlier,” says Irimia..

How do stress or lack of sleep influence the onset of migraine?

The study found that perceived poor sleep quality, as well as lower-than-usual sleep quality the night before, were associated with an increased risk of migraine the next morning.. A lower-than-usual energy level the previous day was also associated with headache the next morning..

Those factors did not lead to an increased risk of migraine in the afternoon or at night. The only predictors of an afternoon or evening headache were higher stress levels or having above-average energy the previous day.

“These different predictive patterns of morning and later headaches highlight the role of circadian rhythms in headache,” says study author Kathleen R.. Merikangas, of the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. “The findings may give us insight into the processes underlying migraine and help us improve treatment and prevention”.

477 people between 7 and 84 years old participated in the study, including 291 women. Using a mobile app, participants were asked to rate their mood, energy, stress, and headaches four times a day for two weeks.. They also rated their sleep quality once a day and used a sleep and physical activity monitor.. Almost half of the participants had a history of migraine and 59% had at least one morning headache attack during the study.

People with a poorer perception of sleep quality were, on average, 22% more likely to suffer a headache attack the next morning. A decrease in self-reported usual sleep quality was also associated with an 18% increase in the likelihood of experiencing a headache attack the next morning.

Likewise, a reduction in the usual energy level the previous day was associated with a 16% greater chance of having a headache the next morning. Higher average stress and higher-than-usual energy the previous day were associated with a 17% greater chance of experiencing a headache the following afternoon or evening. After accounting for sleep, energy, and stress, neither anxious nor depressed mood was associated with headache attacks.

The number of euphemisms we use to mention a concept is often directly related to the degree of obscurantism surrounding that issue.. We use veiled formulas to refer to what we do not want to name, what is intimate, what is secret, what is offensive or what is hidden.. We do it, for example, with menstruation.

Try to compile all the ways we have in Spanish to talk about periods. “I'm sick”, “I'm unwell”, “in those days”, “my cousin has come”, “with the woman in red”, “the communist tenant”… The countless list, similar to what can be made in other languages, shows the taboo that continues to surround a phenomenon that, on the other hand, is very everyday.. Half the population bleeds once a month for about half their lives.. But tampons are still quietly requested from the colleague next door at work.

This invisibility of the period also affects the eyes of science and medicine, which have barely focused on the characteristics and anomalies of the menstrual cycle.. “It is an ignored phenomenon despite the great impact it has on millions of women,” denounce journalists María Zuil and Antonio Villarreal, authors of The Half That Bleeds (KO Books), a work that reviews how and why we have historically ignored the menstruation.

For decades, research has looked the other way when it comes to the menstrual cycle and, although there has been some progress in recent years, we still have not resolved such basic questions as why women, unlike other primates, discard your endometrium every four weeks; why some suffer terrible pain and others barely realize it or why the first period sometimes arrives at eight years old and on other occasions at 15.

A matter of life or death?

“These are questions that do not yet have a clear answer, and the worst thing is that we are still far from having one,” write the authors.. “A common reasoning is that periods, no matter how annoying or painful, are not fatal and that funding should be invested in those life-and-death areas, such as cancer.”. However, male baldness does not threaten the lives of its patients either and the funding allocated to this area of medicine multiplies not only that allocated to research on menstruation, but also that dedicated to alleviating malaria,” María Zuil recalls. and Antonio Villarreal.

The idea to address this lack of interest from science and medicine in everything related to menstruation arose in 2021. The journalists decided to collaborate from their different areas of specialization (scientific-medical Villarreal and social and data focus Zuil) first in a report that was published in 'El Confidencial' and had a lot of impact and, later, through this book for the who have counted on the testimony of 915 women, have reviewed the scientific literature and spoken with the main experts in the field.

“One of the reasons for starting to work on this issue was that as a result of the administration of the first doses of the Covid vaccine, many women began to indicate that they noticed changes in their periods,” recalls Zuil.. Science, at first, ignored those testimonies, in a “paradigmatic example of the bias that medicine has towards the female population and menstruation.”. And although, subsequently, the accumulated evidence on the side effects of the Covid vaccine became quite solid, it did not serve to change the clinical guidelines and start asking women what phase of the cycle they are in to try to administer the vaccine in a moment in the cycle that does not cause alterations.

“The problem is not only that there is hardly any research on menstruation, but there is also a disconnection between what is studied and what later reaches clinical practice, as has happened in this case,” says Zuil..

The danger of downplaying pain

This indifference of science towards everything related to menstruation has also had an impact “on women's perception of what is or is not normal with respect to periods,” says Villarreal.

We find an example with pain. «Considering it as normal is often a learning that has been inherited. Often the only references that women have are the experiences of their mothers, grandmothers or their closest circle, which what they convey is that they have endured it all their lives.. It is seen as something that must be endured, when it is not.. What the experts say is that it is not a symptom that should be normalized, but rather that we must investigate the possible causes of this pain and find a solution.

Unfortunately, on the other side of the consultation, menstrual pain is also often trivialized, which creates a dangerous cocktail.. The normalized perception of pain, together with the little attention that has traditionally been given to the symptom in the healthcare environment, has contributed to the fact that problems such as endometriosis continue to be disorders that are often diagnosed late and poorly, journalists point out.

Lack of knowledge about what constitutes a normal period or how the menstrual cycle occurs also contributes to the perpetuation of false beliefs and myths about periods.. In the book, Villarreal and Zuil review the historical roots of prejudices and hoaxes, some of which survive today.

«Perhaps in our environment some ideas such as that a woman who has her period cannot make mayonnaise because she cuts herself or that she should not shower or wash her hair are no longer so widespread.. Fortunately that is already disappearing,” says Zuil.. “But in Spain many false beliefs are still widespread, such as the one that says that you should not have sexual relations during menstruation.”

The myth that the period is synchronized in women who spend a lot of time together or that it is directly linked to the phases of the moon is also very popular.

The latter is a very widespread myth, “although there is no evidence to support that lunar cycles influence menstruation,” says Villarreal.. «An effect is attributed, however, to the number of hours of sunlight that a woman receives. The literature identifies two specific components: calcium and vitamin D3, which are not acquired through diet, but rather through exposure to the sun or through supplements,” the journalist clarifies.

Another mantra well established in popular knowledge refers to its duration: many people are convinced that the menstrual cycle has exactly 28 days.. But several recent investigations have revealed not only that cycles are much more variable than previously thought, but that the average duration is not exactly four weeks, but 29.3 days.

These are not the only hoaxes that circulate about the rule nor the most dangerous. We must not forget, both remember, that in some places in the world girls and women continue to be isolated during menstruation or that today some religions consider women who are on their period “impure.”. “That taboo remains there,” they emphasize.

«In The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner defined menstruation as the delicate balance of periodic impurity suspended between two moons. The purpose of this book is to make you see that it is neither delicate, nor in balance, nor periodic, nor impure, nor suspended between two moons,” summarize Zuil and Villarreal in this work that, remember, is not only aimed at those menstruate. “We know that the majority of people interested will be those who bleed every month, but we did not want to fall into the idea that menstruation only concerns those who have it,” emphasizes Villarreal.. “We also want them to talk about periods and know what it means and how it affects those who do not menstruate so that it stops being a silenced and forgotten topic,” agrees Zuil.. «There is no law that prohibits talking about your period, but in a conversation, premenstrual syndrome is not discussed with the same naturalness with which flu symptoms are discussed. There is something that continues to keep menstruation in a circle of intimacy, modesty and darkness. And this silence continues to hinder medical research around menstruation,” they conclude.

This Thursday, January 25, the first of the 12 full moons of 2024 takes place, among which we will find four “supermoons” and two eclipses. As in 2024, on January 25 of the year 2043, 2062 and 2396 there will also be a full moon, here we explain why.

Full Moons

The full moon occurs when the Earth is in a straight line between the Sun and the Moon.. At this moment, the lunar disk appears completely illuminated and with a very intense shine.. This practically vertical illumination makes it easy to locate the main features of the visible side of the moon, such as the seas and the largest craters.

On the night of the full moon, sunrise occurs at sunset and lunar sunset at sunrise. Although the full moon happens at a precise moment, we can see the lunar disk completely illuminated and very round throughout that night.

2024 lunar calendar

The average time between two full moons is called a “lunation” and, on average, is 29.53 days.. Therefore, a year (comprising 365 or, like this, 366 days) consists of 12.37 lunations. Some years (as happened in 2023) may have 13 full moons, but the most common thing is that a year contains twelve full moons, one in each month of the year.. That's what happens in 2024 and these are the dates of the full moons in each season:

• Winter: January 25, February 24,
• Spring: March 25, April 24, May 23
• Summer: June 22, July 21, August 19, September 18
• Fall: October 17, November 15, December 15

Two supermoons and two eclipses

In its elliptical orbit around the Earth, the distance of our satellite changes, reaching almost 407,000 kilometers at the times when it is furthest away (the apogee).. In its closest positions, its distance can drop to less than 357,000 kilometers (the perigee) and, therefore, on these occasions the Moon appears to us with a larger apparent size.

Although they are not official names in astronomy, we usually speak of a “supermoon” when the Moon is less than 360,000 kilometers from the Earth.. Similarly, a “minimoon” occurs when its distance from Earth exceeds 405,000 kilometers.

It must be taken into account that there is not a huge difference between a supermoon and a minimoon: it is, at most, a 14% difference in the apparent diameter of the lunar disk. Don't expect a supermoon to fill half the sky or anything like that.. However, it is an appreciable difference, and the supermoons have become a pretext to draw attention to our beautiful satellite.

During 2024, we will be able to enjoy two supermoons: the one on September 18 and the one on October 17. The ones on February 24 and March 25 will be minimoons.

During the full moon phase, lunar eclipses can occur.. In 2024, we will have two of them, but neither very spectacular. The first very subtle one (prenumbral type) will occur during the full moon on March 25. The second lunar eclipse of the year, which will be partial and very weak, will take place on September 18; only this will be visible from Spain.

Christian celebrations

The first full moon of spring is of great importance for Christians, as it sets the date of Easter Sunday.. As this year the full moon will take place on Monday, March 25, Easter Sunday will be on the 31st of this same month.. Therefore, March 29 will be Good Friday, a national holiday.

In fact, that first spring full moon determines the dates of Lent. Thus, the beginning of Lent, Ash Wednesday, is celebrated six and a half weeks before Easter Sunday; In 2024 it will therefore be February 14, coincidentally coinciding with Valentine's Day. And the six Sundays of Lent will be those that follow this Wednesday before Easter Sunday.

lunar cycles

Except February, each month of the year is longer than one lunation and each year has 12.37 lunations. Therefore, the dates of the lunar phases change from month to month and from year to year.. However, there are large cycles during which the dates of the lunar phases repeat. The most famous of these cycles is the one found by the Greek astronomer Meton (born around 260 BC).. This is a cycle with a period of 19 years, a value that is a common approximate multiple of the orbital periods of the Earth and the Moon and is equivalent to 235 lunations (with a difference of only about two hours).

If we start from a date, for example, the full moon on January 25, 2024 and follow this cycle, after exactly 19 years almost exactly 235 lunations will have passed and the full moon that makes the number 236 (the first of the following cycle, 19 years later) must also fall on the same date of the year. That is why there will be a full moon on January 25 in the years 2043, 2062, 2081, etc.

However, due to the small difference between the duration of 19 years and 235 lunations, there may sometimes be a difference of one day between the date of a lunar phase and the same after a period.

Naturally the Meto cycle is also a cycle of eclipses. There are other similar cycles that have been used throughout history, although less precise. Thus the octaeteris of 8 years (approximately 99 lunations) or the tritos of 11 years (approximately 136 lunations). Somewhat more precise is the 372-year cycle that provides the long-term recurrence of lunar phases.. Thus, we know that on January 25, 2396, the full moon will shine again.

Rafael Bachiller is director of the National Astronomical Observatory (National Geographic Institute) and academic of the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain.

At first glance, the Antechinus (Antechinus) or toothed marsupial mouse, does not seem like a great seducer.. It barely reaches 20 centimeters, has black eyes, a pointed nose and ears, and a tail that is close to the size of its body.. Their hair is usually grayish, cream, cinnamon or copper. And he is based between Australia and Tasmania, where scientists have just discovered that, by having more sex, he stops sleeping.

“All animals need sleep. When humans or animals do not get enough sleep, it can lead to attention problems, irritability, and other harmful effects.. However, this small marsupial is capable of sacrificing hours of sleep to have more sexual relations during the mating season,” concludes a study just published in the journal Current Biology.

The animal kingdom is plagued by extreme sexual practices. From the 30-minute orgasms of the pig to the 50 daily intercourses of the lion, passing through the explosion of the sexual organs of the drones, which ends their lives. Now, the Australian marsupial mouse slips through the front door into the history of reproductive biology by staging a three-week orgy with 14-hour days passing from female to female.

The multi-year Current Biology study is the first to demonstrate direct evidence of sleep restriction in a land mammal, driven by a strong sexual desire, to a level that would qualify as addiction or intoxication.

“We showed that males stop being sleepy during the breeding season, and that they sleep half as much,” explains researcher Erika Zaid, a zoologist at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.. “In humans and other animals, restricting the normal amount of sleep leads to worse performance while we are awake, and the effect worsens day after day. However, the antechinus did just that: they slept three hours less each night for three weeks.”

This type of extreme sexual practice means that the life expectancy of males is only one year, and they carry it out only once in their short life.. In fact, having sex is the last thing they do.

In addition to giving up sleep, the animal also gives up food, despite needing to eat 60% of its weight every day.. This, together with sexual stress, and the fact that they have to physically compete with other males for access to as many females as possible to maximize their reproductive success, causes their immune system to collapse, be invaded by blood and intestinal parasites, suffer infections, and die. before the pups are born.

Females, however, live for two years.. Something that has been proven that a male can also achieve if he is separated from the females just before the mating season; Which, if they were rational animals, would open a debate between a long monastic life, or a very short but sexually hyperactive one.

Their unusual history is what attracted researchers led by zoology professor John Lesku, also from La Trobe University, to study them: “We first discovered that male dusky antechinas, but not females, became restless during their only season Of reproduction”. They then used accelerometry to track their movements, and electrophysiology and metabolic measures to quantify exactly how much sleep they missed.

The findings suggest that antechinus may have some mechanism to stay active with less sleep during this period.. Another possibility is that they accept all the disadvantages and harms of staying awake to improve their chances of having sex, the study reflects.

“It's actually a little surprising that these animals don't sacrifice even more sleep during the breeding season, since they will die soon anyway,” says Zaid.. In fact, the fact that they still decide to get some sleep “reveals the essential functions that sleep performs,” he points out.

Researchers do not believe that the main reason for the lowering of defenses that leads to death is this lack of sleep.. Partly because the males who saw less sleep were not exactly the ones with the worst conditions.. Researchers now want to learn more about how antechinus are able to manage this sleep loss from a biological point of view, and without losing their capabilities.

Nobody would say it but a tiny, big-headed ant is challenging the king of the jungle himself.. This is the ant lion (Pheidole megacephala), a voracious invasive species that is altering the vegetation cover of the African savannah, making it difficult for lions to hunt zebras, their favorite prey.

Despite its harmless appearance, this ant is included in the ranking of the 100 most harmful invasive alien species in the world, a list prepared by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).. So it is already registered by scientists who monitor the havoc caused by the arrival of these voracious species in areas where they did not live before, as is the case of East Africa.

As ecologist Todd Palmer, professor of Biology at the University of Florida and author of this research, recalls, about 15 years ago they began to detect the impacts of the ant lion, known in English as the big-headed ant, although it had already been colonizing new areas for some time. territories: “Previously, none of us noticed their presence because they are not aggressive towards large animals, including people. Now we see that they are transforming landscapes in very subtle ways but with devastating effects,” he warns.

The study that this Thursday reveals in Science magazine how it is complicating the life of Africa's most emblematic hunter is the result of three decades of observations and a good example of how complex and fragile an ecosystem is, as it illustrates the network of interactions that there are ants, trees, lions, zebras, buffaloes and elephants. “These tiny invaders are pulling at the ties that bind an African ecosystem, determining who gets eaten and where,” Palmer says.

To carry out the research, they combined in situ observations with technologies such as camera traps, collars placed on the lions to follow their steps via satellite, or statistical models.. Thus, researchers discovered that the invasion of big-headed ants in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a wildlife area located in central Kenya, has indirectly caused lions to be less effective at killing zebras, their main prey. .

This is because these invasive insects kill the native ants that protect the acacias by preventing their leaves from being eaten by elephants and other herbivores that live in that region, a protective role that has been known since the beginning of the century: “For our Surprisingly, we discovered that these small ants act as effective defenders of the trees, stabilizing the tree cover of these landscapes and making it possible for acacias to survive in an area where large herbivorous mammals live,” says Palmer.

But the arrival of the big-headed ant upset that balance. Without the protection of native ants, whose colonies are devoured by the invasive species, elephants and other animals have no obstacles to eating the leaves of these trees, which little by little are left naked or semi-naked.. With less tree cover to hide in, lions have a harder time ambushing zebras.

The lions, which are the kings of the jungle for a reason, are adapting to the new situation and according to Palmer, they are beginning to pay more attention to the African buffaloes due to the difficulties in hunting zebras.

Thus, the scientists determined that the killing of zebras in places where the big-headed ant had not reached was 2.87 times higher than in places invaded by this invasive species.. From 2003 to 2020, the proportion of zebras killed by lions fell from 67% to 42%, while the proportion of buffalo killed rose from 0% to 42%.

“They are transforming landscapes in very subtle ways but with devastating effects”

Therefore, the good news is that since the invasion of the big-headed ant was detected, the lion population has not been reduced, at least for the moment, according to the authors.

“Nature is intelligent and creatures like lions tend to find solutions to the problems they face, but we still don't know what could result from this profound change in lions' hunting strategy.”. We are very interested in following this story,” admits the ecologist.

The African savannah is not the only ecosystem that the big-headed ant is altering, since according to Palmer, it has already spread to many places: “They are everywhere, especially in tropical and subtropical areas. “You can find them in your yard in Florida, and it's people who move them from one place to another.”

The ant lion is a pest of some crops of coffee, cocoa and fruit trees but at the same time it is used to control some pests that affect other crops or the expansion of some species of tick that affects livestock.

According to Palmer, they are working with land managers to investigate interventions, including temporary fencing of large herbivores to minimize the impact of invasive ants on tree populations.”