Margit Slimáková

The magical moment of the day. This IKEA store decided to be a shelter in winter to protect stray dogs from the cold. Employees and customers alike take care of them and sometimes even adopt them.

Most exercise and aging studies can't answer a basic question: is muscle deterioration from aging itself, or just from decades of moving less? A new Nature Aging study solved this by recruiting older adults who moved as much as people in their twenties. The researchers from Amsterdam UMC and Maastricht University recruited four distinct groups: young adults in their twenties, older adults whose daily step counts and high-intensity activity matched the young group, older adults who had trained consistently for years (three structured hour-long sessions per week for over a year), and older adults with early physical impairment. They took muscle biopsies before and after a one-hour cycling session, then measured over 24,000 gene transcripts, 135 metabolites, and 1,383 lipid species. By matching activity levels between young and older groups, any molecular differences couldn't be blamed on the older adults simply moving less. This isolated aging from inactivity for the first time at this molecular depth. Key findings: • The defining molecular signature of muscle aging is an energy crisis. Comparing young adults to activity-matched older adults, 1,106 genes were downregulated with age. These genes build the mitochondrial machinery that produces cellular energy: ATP synthase, cytochrome c oxidase, and NADH dehydrogenase subunits. Mitochondria are the power plants of cells, converting nutrients into ATP, the energy currency cells use to function. When these genes decline, cells lose their ability to generate energy efficiently. • NAD+ levels declined and triglycerides accumulated inside aging muscle. NAD+ is a molecule required for energy production and cellular repair. Lower NAD+ means less capacity to convert fuel into usable energy. Triglycerides are stored fats, their accumulation inside muscle indicates unburned fuel piling up as the tissue loses its ability to process it. • More than half the molecular signature of muscle aging was absent in trained older adults. Specifically, 57.1% of age-related gene downregulation and 55.9% of upregulation were missing in the trained group. Their muscle resembled young adults far more than their chronological age would predict. • The changes training preserved were specifically the energy metabolism ones. Genes like NDUFS1 and COX5A, which were depleted in normally active and impaired older adults, sat at youthful levels in the trained group across all five mitochondrial respiratory complexes. The single most prominent feature of muscle aging turned out to be the single most preventable. • Being generally active was not enough. Structured training was the difference. The normally active older adults walked as much as young adults, and their energy metabolism genes declined anyway. What preserved the youthful molecular profile was structured, sustained training. Filling a step counter and being genuinely trained are not equivalent at the molecular level. • Roughly half of muscle aging persisted regardless of training. Changes in genes controlling synaptic transmission (how nerves communicate with muscle) and WNT signaling (a pathway regulating tissue maintenance and stem cell function) appeared in all older adults, trained or not. This unavoidable half is where drugs will have to work. • The fittest muscle mounted the largest inflammatory response to exercise. All groups activated stress and immune genes after exercise, including IL6, IL1B, and TNF. But the magnitude scaled with fitness. Trained older adults most closely resembled young adults in their response, followed by normally active, with impaired older adults showing the most blunted response. The stress response to exercise appears to be the mechanism of adaptation, not damage to be minimized. This raises a concern about anti-inflammatory longevity strategies. If the inflammatory stress response is how exercise produces its benefits, chronically suppressing inflammation may blunt the adaptation that exercise depends on. It doesn't mean inflammation is beneficial in general, but the timing and context matter. A separate discovery: the proteasome appears to regulate NAD+. The proteasome is the cellular machinery that breaks down damaged proteins. When researchers inhibited it, NAD+ levels rose in both muscle and liver cells to a degree comparable to NAD+ precursor supplements. This opens a new route to understanding NAD+ decline that operates through protein turnover rather than just supplying more raw material. The study draws a clear line between what lifestyle can address and what will require therapeutics. The energy metabolism decline, mitochondrial deterioration, and NAD+ depletion that define muscle aging are largely preventable through structured training. The synaptic and signaling changes that persist in all older adults represent the unavoidable half where drugs will need to work. The decisions made about structured training in midlife determine which molecular trajectory muscle follows in later decades. Half of muscle aging is optional. The other half isn't. Knowing which changes belong to each category is knowing where behavior ends and biology takes over.

Everyone talks about mass unskilled immigration to Europe, but the reality is much worse. Skilled Europeans, engineers, researchers, entrepreneurs, are leaving in large numbers. High marginal tax rates that treat additional earnings and business success primarily as a fiscal resource, layered with heavy regulation and a left cultural climate that views high productivity with suspicion, make them emigrate. Countries which reward hard work and entrepreneurship instead of punishing them with obscene taxes, become attractive destinations. At the same time, many European welfare systems offer relatively unconditional lifelong benefits. This creates a huge pull for lower-skilled migration that does not require the same language, credentials, or immediate labor-market contribution. PISA data shows persistent and large achievement gaps between immigrant-background and native students in reading, mathematics, and science in numerous European countries. First-generation students frequently score even below basic proficiency and functional literacy thresholds. High-value industries like advanced manufacturing, software, biotech, precision engineering require a skilled workforce. How can Europe stay competitive and prosperous if the best talent has had enough of the left nonsense and emigrates, replaced by largely illiterate inflows?

Few doctors know this. Some organ meats have as much vitamin C as an orange, without the sugar. Read on... You've been told for years that without fruit you'll get scurvy. Here's what the national food tables from the US, the UK, Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany say. Raw veal sweetbreads have 56 mg of vitamin C per 100 grams. An orange has 53. Beef spleen has 45.5 in the USDA table. Beef liver has about 23 in the UK, Danish, and Swiss tables. Beef kidney has about 9. The NIH says scurvy signs can show up when people get less than about 10 mg a day. Even stewed, ox liver still has 15 mg per 100 grams in the UK table. One note on the numbers. The USDA lists beef liver at only 1.3 mg, way below every other country's table, so I went with the others. Plain muscle meat lists close to zero everywhere. If you eat Carnivore, eat some organs too.

Liebe Gen Z, herzlichen Glückwunsch! Jahrelang brav freitags die Schule geschwänzt, blind hinter Greta hergewatschelt und die grüne Transformation herbeidemonstriert. Das hehre Ziel: ➡️ die Rettung des Klimas ➡️ das Ende der bösen Marktwirtschaft. „Degrowth“ – also gewollter wirtschaftlicher Rückbau – war das Zauberwort der studentischen Klimaaktivisten. Nun, Mission erfüllt! Die deutsche Wirtschaft schrumpft, die Industrie wandert ab, und der Staat schröpft seine Bürger mit Rekordabgaben, um die unkontrollierte Migration und eine planwirtschaftliche Energiewende zu finanzieren. Doch anstatt den eigenen Triumph zu feiern, herrscht jetzt plötzlich großes Gejammer in der WG-Küche. Der Döner kostet 8,50 Euro (Steuern, Inflation und Energieknappheit sei Dank). Die flauschigen Traumjobs für Orchideenfächer lösen sich in Luft auf, und der Wohnungsmarkt ist ein gnadenloses Schlachtfeld. Wer hätte auch ahnen können, dass Millionen zusätzliche Migranten seit 2015, aberwitzige Bauvorschriften, hohe Zinsen und linke Mietpreisbremsen nicht auf magische Weise zu billigem Wohnraum führen? Wer Beton, Neubau und Vorstädte als Klimasünden verteufelt, darf sich nicht wundern, wenn er am Ende kein Dach über dem Kopf findet. Statt aber die eigenen politischen Fehlleistungen zu reflektieren, flüchten sich die enttäuschten Wohlstandskinder in die Arme von Altmarxisten, klammen Linksextremisten und deren Enteignungsfantasien. Wie sagte Trotzki so passend: „Trotz ist die jugendliche Form von Altersstarrsinn.“ Ihr wolltet den grünen Verzicht, offene Grenzen und das große historische Degrowth-Experiment. Es wurde geliefert. Die Rechnung dafür zahlt aber nicht der clevere Boomer im abbezahlten Eigenheim, der mit Holz aus dem eigenen Wald heizt. Die zahlt ihr. Willkommen in eurer eigenen Utopie. #GenZregelt #Degrowth #Energiewende