Hidden body fat linked to faster heart aging

Excessive amounts of visceral fat—the hidden fat surrounding organs—is linked with faster aging of the heart, a new study has found.

Aging is the biggest risk factor for heart disease, but why some people age faster than others isn't fully understood. The scientists leading the research say that visceral body fat could play an important role in accelerating aging of the heart and blood vessels. This type of fat is known to be harmful to health and this study now links it to faster heart aging.

In the study, published in the European Heart Journal, the scientists analyzed data from 21,241 participants in the UK Biobank, which includes whole-body imaging to map the amount of fat and where it is located in the body.

The UK Biobank data also includes detailed imaging of the heart and blood vessels. Artificial intelligence was used to analyze these images to capture signs of organ aging—such as tissues becoming stiff and inflamed. An individual was given a "heart age" which can be compared to their actual age at the time of the scan.

The researchers found that faster heart aging was linked to having more visceral adipose tissue. Visceral adipose tissue is fat found deep inside the abdomen around organs such as the stomach, intestines, and liver. This type of fat cannot be seen from the outside, and some people can have large amounts of visceral fat despite having a healthy weight.

The researchers found signs on blood tests that visceral fat is linked to increased inflammation in the body—which is a potential cause of premature aging.

They also found differences between the sexes. Male-type fat distribution (fat around the belly, often called 'apple' shaped) was particularly predictive of early aging in men.

In contrast, a genetic predisposition to female-type fat (fat on the hips and thighs, often called "pear" shaped) was protective against heart aging in women.

The researchers also found a link between higher estrogen levels in premenopausal women and a slowing of heart aging, which they suggest could indicate a role for hormones in protecting against heart aging.

Declan P O'Regan et al, Sex-specific body fat distribution predicts cardiovascular ageing, European Heart Journal (2025). DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf553

Croatian Freediver Shatters Record For Longest-Held Breath
This year, on June 14, Croatian freediver Vitomir Maričić set a world record when he held his breath for 29 minutes and 3 seconds.

That’s longer than a bottlenose dolphin, and 5 minutes longer than the previous Guinness World Record holder.
Nearly half an hour without air is mind boggling. That's roughly twice as long as a bottlenose dolphin is thought to hold its breath.
With each breath, a seal can replace 90 percent of the air in its lungs – but our species can only replace 20 percent. To keep up, we need more breaths to fill our lungs with fresh air.

To get as much oxygen into his body as it could possibly carry, Maričić inhaled pure oxygen for 10 minutes before the attempt.
This increased the oxygen dissolved in his blood plasma, which is a crucial reservoir for the body's tissues.

On an Instagram reel, Maričić explains that he started his record-breaking attempt with nearly five times more oxygen in his body than usual. Without that, he never could have lasted so long.

https://www.sciencealert.com/croatian-freediver-shatters-record-for...

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Scientists Have Just Created The Most Synthetic Life Form Ever

Scientists have created a bacteria with a genetic code more streamlined – and more meddled with – than any other life on Earth. This bacteria, a synthetic Escherichia coli called Syn57, has been engineered to build its body using just 57 of the 64 'codons' that have served all known organisms for billions of years. The recipe for life is written in a language that uses 64 different codons, each composed of a triplet of nucleotides. It's the long sentences of 'three-letter' codons that make up our DNA and RNA. They provide our cells with the essential instructions to translate ordinary matter into the building blocks of life, amino acids, which are threaded in sequence to form proteins. When a cell is building proteins, it 'reads' the codon sequence, written using those 64 nucleotide triplets, to know which amino acids to add next, and when to stop.By engineering the entire genome from scratch, the researchers set out to eliminate four of the six codons associated with the amino acid serine, two of the four alanine codons, and one 'stop' codon. Where these redundant codons appeared in the bacteria's genome, the researchers substituted them with synonymous codons that give the same instructions. This required more than 101,000 changes to the genetic code. These were planned out on the computer first, in 100-kilobyte fragments, and then came the arduous work of assembling the gene. To make sure they weren't inserting fundamentally harmful changes into the microbes, the team tested small fragments of the synthetic genome in living bacteria bit by bit, eventually stitching it all together to form the final, entirely synthetic strain.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4368

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