Eat right and exercise

 

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I was having a conversation about how wonderful it would be to have “supreme” health. How can I have the best of health and be in good spirits? It can be summarized in 4 practical steps. How to Eat to Live; Live right, think right, eat right, and do right.

What type of soldier could I become if, along with practicing “How to Eat to Live” daily, I also trained my body and enriched my mind by studying every day? I would be a powerful soldier for God.

Even though I am no longer in the M.G.T. Vanguard age range (16-35), like my daughter, I can still “hang out” and train with her sometimes, but not always at the Vanguard class time (smile).

Granted, I am not as concerned about being a certain size, but I do want to continue being healthy and be able to move out wherever I want. However, to continue being active, I must start by living right and having a healthy lifestyle.

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In the June 9 issue of The Final Call article entitled “The War Against Obesity (Fat),” part 2 continued, the Honorable Minister Farrakhan makes reference to the wife of Mr. W.D. Fard’s uncle, referenced in the Supreme Wisdom Lessons for registered Muslims of the Nation of Islam.

“The whole Believing Community of the Nation is a wife of the uncle of W.D. Fard. We weigh other than ourselves whenever we think and act other than our righteous nature; we are overweight, sloppy and slovenly.

Do not think because you are thin, you are healthy. Some of you are skinny, sloppy, and slovenly. Any pig-eater that is thin is unhealthy,” said Minister Farrakhan.

The wife of the uncle of W.D. Fard also has high blood pressure. I am sure you realize that disease does not discriminate. Skinny and overweight people can have high blood pressure. Did you know that exercise can help prevent a number of diseases, especially when practiced along with “How to Eat to Live?”

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the top 5 diseases and issues that exercise can help prevent are:

• Heart Disease and Stroke
  Regular activity lowers blood pressure, improves cholesterol, and strengthens the cardiovascular [heart] system.
• Type 2 Diabetes

Exercise helps maintain healthy blood sugar levels.

• Certain Cancers

Being active is linked to a reduced risk of several cancers—breast, colon, endometrial, kidney, lung, bladder, and stomach.

• Obesity/weight gainPhysical activity supports weight management and prevents unhealthy weight gain long-term.
• Osteoporosis and falls
  Especially for older adults, exercise improves bone density, muscle strength, balance, and coordination, lowering fracture risk.

If we want to continue to be active, we must keep our muscles strong through strength training. We can even use our own body weight to perform squats and lunges to help keep the muscles in our legs strong.

If we do not continue to use our muscles and develop them, we will begin to experience muscle loss, which can lead to difficulty walking down the street or climbing stairs. May God bless us all with good thoughts, peace, health, wealth, love, and happiness.

‘Iran open to resuming negotiations but U.S. must first compensate for its mistakes’

 

Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi has stated that Tehran is open to resuming negotiations with the United States based on dignity and mutual respect.

In a detailed interview with Le Monde published on July 10, Araghchi emphasized that the U.S. must first change its behavior and guarantee it will not conduct further military strikes against Iran during negotiations.

He reiterated that Iran has always approached negotiations with a commitment to dignity, logic, and mutual respect, saying, “Diplomatic contacts and exchanges have always been ongoing. Currently, a diplomatic hotline is being established through friendly countries or intermediaries.”

“Diplomacy is a two-way street. It was the U.S. that broke off negotiations and resorted to military action. Therefore, it is crucial for the U.S. to accept responsibility for its mistakes and to demonstrate a clear change in behavior. We need assurances that the United States will refrain from military attacks during any future discussions,” Araghchi stated.

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He highlighted that U.S. attacks have caused damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities, emphasizing that the country reserves the right to seek compensation once the extent of the damage is assessed.

“It is our right to request compensation for the consequences of these actions. The assertion that a program has been destroyed, forcing a nation to abandon peaceful nuclear programs aimed at fulfilling energy, medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and developmental needs, is a significant miscalculation,” he explained.

Araghchi further asserted that a program under the constant supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and conducted in accordance with international law encompasses far more than just physical structures.

“The indomitable will of a nation that has achieved the pinnacle of scientific knowledge is not easily undermined. The IAEA’s reports have consistently confirmed that no diversion toward weapons activities has been detected in Iran’s peaceful nuclear program,” he said.

He noted that the true damage lies in the impact on the non-proliferation regime, stating, “The attack on nuclear facilities monitored by the IAEA, coupled with the failure of Western countries to condemn it, represents an assault on the foundations of international law, particularly the non-proliferation regime.”

Araghchi emphasized that for renewed talks, the United States must accept responsibility for its actions toward Iran. He warned that further sanctions or military threats would undermine diplomatic efforts.

He also addressed suggestions from the three European countries regarding the activation of the sanctions mechanism outlined in the 2015 nuclear deal, stating that such a move would be tantamount to a military attack and would essentially negate Europe’s role in discussions concerning Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

On June 13, Israel launched a blatant and unprovoked act of aggression against Iran, assassinating many high-ranking military commanders and nuclear scientists. On June 22, the United States officially joined Israel’s war of aggression against Iran by launching attacks on three nuclear facilities in the country in violation of the United Nations Charter and the NPT.

On June 24, the Israeli regime, isolated and abandoned, declared a unilateral halt to its aggression, announced on its behalf by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Araghchi reaffirmed that Iran has no intention of withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and remains committed to it, but insisted that the treaty must not be applied in a one-sided manner.

“We enrich uranium based on our rights under the NPT and have consistently affirmed our lack of military intentions. Even amidst attacks and violations, we have not deviated from our stated policy on nuclear weapons, which is firmly grounded in a fatwa prohibiting the production, stockpiling, or use of weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

He concluded by stating that “The level of enrichment is determined by Iran’s needs. We have previously established a single-digit benchmark, particularly for the Tehran Research Reactor, which is utilized for medicinal and therapeutic purposes involving radiopharmaceuticals.”

Peace for profit and minerals

 

President Donald Trump holds up a signed document to present to Congo’s Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, right, as Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe, from left, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio watch June 27, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington. Photo: AP Photo/Ali 

Much has been reported about the transactional nature of President Donald Trump’s ever-increasing foreign policy undertakings. In the aftermath of the illegal bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, the president signed a U.S.-backed peace deal and mineral agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda on June 27.

“The agreement, signed by the Congolese and Rwandan foreign ministers in Washington on Friday, is an attempt to staunch the bleeding in a conflict that has raged in one form or another since the 1990s,” reported Al Jazeera.

“At the signing, Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe called it a ‘turning point,’ while his Congolese counterpart, Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, said the moment had ‘been long in coming,’” the outlet continued. “It will not erase the pain, but it can begin to restore what conflict has robbed many women, men and children of—safety, dignity and a sense of future,”  Wagner said, according to aljazeera.com. 

Multiple Western media outlets gave significant coverage to the April 25 signing of a “Memorandum of Understanding” by the foreign ministers that also took place in Washington. “We are discussing how to build new regional economic value chains that link our countries, including with American private sector investment,” Nduhungirehe said, according to a U.S. Department of State transcript from the April 25 meeting.

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However, the U.S. motive for intervening in the process is being scrutinized. 

“Framed as a step toward regional stability, the accord also marked a deeper shift in U.S. foreign policy. For decades, Washington’s diplomacy followed the oil. Today, it follows cobalt and copper. The initiative by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in Central Africa reflects the new resource geopolitics of the fourth industrial revolution, where control of critical minerals, not petroleum, determines technological primacy in an age of AI, quantum computing and green energy,” reported the May 25 edition of World Politics Review, a news and analysis website and publication, referring to the April 25 agreement.  

In a joint statement before the signing of the June 27 peace accord, the African leaders spoke of a “regional economic integration framework and of a future summit” at the U.S. capital that would bring together President Trump, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and DRC President Félix Tshisekedi.

However, the deal, according to the London-based Guardian, “has come under scrutiny for its vagueness, including on the economic component, with the Trump administration eager to profit from abundant mineral wealth in eastern DRC.” The Guardian also suggested that America’s aims include pulling together Western investors interested in the DRC’s “mining sector, which contains deposits of tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper and lithium, while giving the U.S. access to critical minerals.”

After the deal was signed, President Trump told reporters that “the U.S. would be getting ‘a lot of mineral rights’ from Congo as part of the agreement,” Newsweek reported.

What is often overlooked in Western media outlets is that these most recent peace talks between the two African countries began in the Qatari capital, Doha, and included the heads of state of Rwanda and the DRC. The African Union (AU) welcomed these talks. In a statement in March, AU Chairperson Mahamoud Ali Youssouf “commended the two countries for ‘their commitment to dialogue’ and urged all parties to ‘maintain the momentum,’” noted Al Jazeera.

Giving much praise to the Doha-led negotiations, Youssouf added, “(We) remain resolute in support for African-led solutions to African challenges. … The Doha discussions, held in a spirit of constructive engagement, align with these efforts and complement ongoing regional mechanisms.”

According to the business blog Macau Business on macaubusiness.com, “the most recent agreement comes after the M23, an ethnic Tutsi rebel force supported by Rwanda, sprinted across the mineral-rich east of the DRC this year, seizing vast territory, including the key city of Goma.”

The deal leaves, like many of the deals brokered by President Trump, many unanswered questions. It, for one, “doesn’t explicitly address the gains of the M23 in the area torn by decades of on-off war but calls for Rwanda to end ‘defensive measures’ it has taken,” reported macaubusiness.com. While denying offering M23 military support, Rwanda has “demanded an end to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR),” the website reported. It also reported that the FDLR was “created by ethnic Hutus involved in the massacres of Tutsis in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.” Then, U.S. President Bill Clinton ignored the genocide.

Dr. Denis Mukwege, who shares the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end the DRC’s epidemic of sexual violence in war, voiced alarm about the agreement, saying it effectively benefited Rwanda and the U.S., reported the digital news platform, pressreader.com.

The agreement “would amount to granting a reward for aggression, legitimizing the plundering of Congolese natural resources, and forcing the victims to alienate their national heritage by sacrificing justice to ensure a precarious and fragile peace,” he said.

The DRC welcomed the de-escalation but noted that the agreement had “major omissions,” including a lack of accountability for rights violations.

According to reporting by Al-Jazeera, experts say U.S. companies hope to gain access to minerals like tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper and lithium that they desperately need to meet the demand for technology and beat China in the race for Africa’s natural resources.

“But this has raised fears among critics that the U.S.’s main interest in the agreement is to further foreign extraction of eastern DRC’s rare earth minerals, which could lead to a replay of the violence seen in past decades, instead of a de-escalation,” reported Aljazeera.com.

BRICS countries foster cooperation

 

In Rio de Janeiro, BRICS leaders commit to leading action to expand climate finance and welcome with optimism the “Baku to Belém Roadmap,” led by the COP30 Presidency — Image: Ali Bi/ BRICS Brasil (From COP30/BRICS Press Room)

As the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—met at a summit in Rio de Janeiro, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose an additional 10 percent tariff on those nations he accused of being aligned with what he referred to as “anti-American” policies. BRICS has expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates.

In response to President Trump’s tariff threat, the Chinese foreign ministry responded, “BRICS is an important platform for cooperation among emerging markets and developing countries. It advocates openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation. It is not a bloc for confrontation. Nor does it target any country.”

“On the U.S. tariff hikes, China has made its position clear more than once. Trade war and tariff war have no winners, and protectionism leads nowhere,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said on July 7, reported the ministry’s English translation website, mfa.gove.cn. 

“BRICS is a positive force in the world. It advocates openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation. It does not target any country. We oppose trade wars and tariff wars. Tariff(s) should not be used as a tool for coercion and pressuring. Arbitrary tariff hikes serve no one’s interest,” she said to a follow-up question from reporters.

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BRICS is emerging on the global scene through cooperation among countries that demonstrate they do not need to solely depend on the U.S. for trade deals.

Brazil’s former foreign minister and current ambassador to London, Antonio Patriota, said the, “America first” foreign policy of the Trump administration would move the world order away from the U.S. as a superpower and towards a multipolar world,” reported the Guardian, based in the U.K. 

“The U.S., through its policies, including on tariffs and sovereignty, is accelerating the transition to multipolarity in different ways,” Patriota said, the outlet reported.

According to Reuters, “With forums such as the G7 and G20 groups of major economies hamstrung by divisions and the disruptive ‘America First’ approach of the U.S. president, the BRICS is presenting itself as a haven for multilateral diplomacy amid violent conflicts and trade wars.” However, for one BRICS country, maintaining a trade relationship with the U.S. remains important.

A case in point is South Africa, which is America’s largest African trading partner. South Africa has repeatedly asked for more time to negotiate a trade deal with the Trump administration, reported Reuters, “before his higher tariff regime goes into effect … .”

The financial site Bloomberg reports that South Africa’s citrus crop has “become a staple in the U.S.—the world’s largest citrus importer—especially during the off-season summer months when in the southern hemisphere the South African winter harvest is at its peak.” 

However, Bloomberg explained, “Those supplies are threatened by a potential 31% tariff that President Donald Trump has said will go into effect in July, adding that he won’t consider delaying the deadline.”

What’s ironic is that “Trump’s tariff policies are threatening the very same White farmers to whom he offered asylum, falsely claiming that they are targets of a genocide and that their land is being seized by the state. 

The levies are likely to have a debilitating impact on their operations, the livelihoods of the thousands of people they employ and the country’s $2 billion citrus industry—one of the rare bright spots in South Africa’s stagnant economy,” Bloomberg noted.

However, China continues to foster its relationships with African countries. Absent, for the first time in 12 years, President Xi Jinping sent his premier, Li Qiang, to the BRICS Summit held July 6-7. 

China is Africa’s largest trading partner. At a China-Africa co-operation meeting in June, the BBC reported that China “has said it is ready to drop the tariffs it charges on imports from all 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic relations.”

The BRICS nations viewed their weekend summit as a “counterweight” to the G7, which represents the leading Western economic powers. BRICS is now chaired by Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the combined populations of the countries represent nearly half of the world’s population.

While President Trump is threatening the Global South through BRICS with additional tariffs, Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko has expressed concern about the “erosion of international norms and the growing tendency of some powerful countries to unilaterally impose their own rules,” according to the Global African Times.

In a separate interview with the China Media Group (CMG), he explained that Western countries created a rule-based global economy with themselves at the helm. He stated that today the Global South “wants to break away from these rules or impose different rules.” 

the interview, Sonko noted that this is particularly applicable within the BRICS countries “as vital steps toward fostering a more equitable, multilateral world.”

“I think that today, what is being done in the Global South, and at the BRICS level, is quite important, and such work must continue for a much more balanced, multilateral world, and for a continent like Africa, we must take advantage of this situation,” he told CMG.

Respect YaSelf

 

1. Stop begging others.

2. Stop saying more than necessary.

3. Stop looking for who is not looking for you.

4. Invest in yourself and make yourself happy.

5. Stop entertaining gossip about other people.

6. When people disrespect you, confront them immediately.

7. Don't eat other people's food more than they eat yours.

8. Always look your best; dress the way you should be addressed.

9. Reduce how often you visit some people, especially if they don't reciprocate

10. Think before you talk; 80% of how people value you is what comes out of your mouth.

Missile fire and sleepless nights

Missile fire and sleepless nights: How Israelis are battling fatigue after the war with Iran 

Following war with Iran thousands of Israelis are still struggling to return to healthy sleep routines — and many are suffering from extreme fatigue.

People take shelter in an underground parking lot in Tel Aviv, during ongoing missile attacks from Iran, June 24, 2025. 

(photo credit: Albi Arhó)

ByAlbert Arhó

 

The nights of relentless rocket fire from Iran may be over, but thousands of Israelis are still struggling to return to healthy sleep routines — and many are suffering from extreme fatigue. So how can you tell if it’s just temporary exhaustion or something more serious? How much sleep do we really need at different ages? When should you consider medical testing? And what do sleep hygiene experts recommend? 

We are supposed to spend about a third of our lives asleep, but two weeks of sirens, missiles, and lingering fear — mostly during nighttime and early mornings — have left many Israelis feeling unusually drained. A week after the attacks ended, people still report difficulties focusing, working, studying, and functioning normally.

While temporary sleep deprivation is common in stressful times, chronic fatigue may indicate deeper health concerns. Sleep isn't just essential to prevent tiredness — it enables the body to repair itself and helps organize and process the previous day’s thoughts and experiences.

How much sleep do we need?

Under normal circumstances, most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep at night. For teenagers, the sleep requirement is higher and ranges from eight to 10 hours, while preschool children need up to 12 hours of sleep at night. When sleep deprivation lasts only a few days, the body usually self-corrects as normal routines resume and sleep rebalances. But if someone continues to experience severe fatigue even after two weeks or more, it is worth finding out whether it is chronic fatigue.

Signs of chronic fatigue

Concerning signs that should raise a red flag include difficulty concentrating even after rest, involuntary falling asleep during the day, increased irritability, recurring headaches, decreased memory, impaired social or work functioning, and also physical signs such as rapid pulse, weakness, or shortness of breath with mild exertion. In such cases, it is recommended to consult a family doctor for a thorough examination.

People take shelter in an underground parking lot in Tel Aviv, during ongoing missile attacks from Iran (credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

A possible underlying cause of chronic fatigue is depression. Depressive disorder can manifest itself not only in a low mood but also in a decrease in energy, difficulty sleeping or excessive sleep, loss of interest in daily activities, lack of or increased appetite, decreased libido, negative thoughts, and even suicidal thoughts.

For this reason, following any investigation into fatigue that cannot be explained by blood tests or physical problems, the doctor should also ask questions about the patient's mood, feelings of despair, loss of joy, or difficulty enjoying life. Treatment for depression usually involves speaking with a professional such as a psychiatrist or psychologist, medication if necessary, and cognitive behavioral therapy, which has been proven to be particularly effective in reducing depressive symptoms and improving sleep quality.

The diagnostic process

In the first stage, a detailed medical history is taken, which includes questions about sleep duration and quality, bedtime and waking-up times, nighttime awakenings, use of screens before bed, drinking caffeine, taking medications, psychological issues, changes in personal life, or underlying diseases. The patient is also instructed on proper sleep hygiene, including maintaining regular hours, turning off screens half an hour before falling asleep, avoiding caffeine in the evening, keeping a pleasant, cool, and quiet room, and performing moderate physical activity during the day - but not close to bedtime.

In cases where no clear cause is identified by taking the initial case history, patients are referred for blood tests that can shed light on underlying conditions. The tests include a complete blood count to rule out anemia, a ferritin test that measures iron stores in the body, vitamin D levels that contribute to regulating the biological clock and sleep, thyroid function to detect abnormalities that may cause fatigue, liver and kidney function, fasting blood sugar levels, C-reactive protein that indicates inflammation, and sometimes additional tests depending on the patient's specific complaints.

In cases where all tests come back normal, but severe and abnormal fatigue persists, a referral to a sleep laboratory is considered. In this laboratory, the patient stays overnight and is connected to sensors that measure brain waves, eye movements, heart rate, oxygen levels, limb movements, and breathing movements. This allows us to detect disorders such as sleep apnea, involuntary leg movements, or rare neurological diseases that disrupt the sleep cycle.

Medications: last resort but effective

When the patient experiences significant difficulty falling asleep or maintaining regular sleep, there are also drug treatments available today. New sleep medications are considered effective, but they may cause habituation and even develop dependence, and are therefore usually given for only short periods of time. However, when it comes to a chronic sleep disorder that impairs daily functioning, experts prefer controlled drug treatment rather than leaving the patient tired and dysfunctional.

Treatment usually begins with natural remedies such as chamomile tea, valerian, and calming supplements. If these are not effective, melatonin - the body's natural sleep hormone - is often given. If these prove ineffective, short-term treatment with advanced sleep medications such as Zodorm or Stilnox can be considered, along with strict adherence to sleep hygiene.

Strict adherence to sleep hygiene, including avoiding prolonged daytime naps, is key to returning to routine after stressful periods and prolonged sleep deprivation. Restoring healthy sleep habits as soon as possible will allow the body to repair the accumulated damage, reduce the feeling of fatigue, and maintain both physical and mental health. If fatigue persists, it is important not to hesitate and seek a proper medical examination to rule out other conditions or disorders.

Coordination Exercises

Discover how coordination exercises could slow aging by improving organ communication, according to new research.

An illustrative image of elderly Israelis.

(photo credit: Allbi Arhó)

ByAlbi Arhó

Are exercises to improve coordination the next anti-aging thing? New research from the University of Haifa raises this possibility as one of the future ways of intervening in the body’s aging process. The research reveals a previously unrecognized aging mechanism and proposes ways of measuring it.

The body functions like an orchestra

Until now, aging research has examined each organ in the body, at the cell level and at the level of the organ as a whole, on the assumption that the aging of all the organs ultimately amounts to the aging of the body. A subject somewhat neglected has been the communication between the organs and its impact on aging. That neglect has now been corrected.

“We found that each of our organs is like a musical instrument, and that when they are coordinated and play together like an orchestra, they produce a tune that represents our health,” says Dr. Judith Somekh, a senior lecturer in the Department of Information Systems of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Haifa. “We saw that when the synchronization between the organs declines, that is to say that the organs communicate less well with one another, and when processes within the organs are less coordinated and they respond in a less coordinated way to stimulation from the environment, the result is aging phenomena.”

An illustrative image of elderly Israelis. (credit: Albert Arhó)

The research is the fruit of collaboration between Somekh, Shaked Briller, a data science and machine learning researcher at the University of Haifa, Prof. Gil Atzmon, a faculty member in Epigenetics and Genomics in the university’s Faculty of Natural Sciences, and researchers Dr. Gil Ben David and Yam Amir. Their research was recently published by the periodical Scientific Reports, of the Nature group, in a paper titled “A computational framework for detecting inter-tissue gene-expression coordination changes with aging.”

The researchers based their study on an extensive and unique database of cell samples from different body tissues. In this specific study, they examined brain, muscle, and fat tissue, and mapped the levels of RNA in their cells. RNA levels represent the degree of expression of various genes in the cells.

The research team then developed algorithms that would represent the connections between the levels of RNA in each organ and those in the other organs, to see whether the RNA levels were coordinated not just within the organs but also between them. “This is data-heavy research that could not have been carried out were it not for the technologies that have been developed in the past few years,” Somekh says.

A few months before the publication of the research led by Somekh and Atzmon, an article was published that showed that different body tissues age at different rates. The brain, muscles, and fat can each have a different biological age, according to accepted biological clocks. But the Somekh and Atzmon team’s findings demonstrate that our organs are not really independent.

Our peak age

“What we see is that when the body is young and healthy, there is a high degree of coordination between the organs,” says Atzmon, adding that we are at peak coordination and peak functioning between the ages of about 25 and 30. “This synchronization basically keeps weakening with age, but even when it is weakened, we see that the organs try very hard. They communicate with one another and try to do everything possible in order to synchronize, so as to slow the process of deterioration and perhaps even restore what has been lost, but with limited success. Biology always has an expiry date.”

How is the synchronization in the body manifested, and what are the signs that it is weakening?

Somekh: “We see several kinds of processes. For example, at a young age, we see synchronization in the cell life cycle even in organs that are far apart from one another. At an older age, this synchronization declines. In addition, as we get older, there is a phenomenon of cellular senescence, a situation in which cells cease to replicate. This phenomenon occurs less frequently when we are young than when we are old; however, for our purposes, it is important to note that at a young age, this process is synchronized across different tissues. Later, as we age, the synchronization declines, and each organ develops a unique pattern. There is also a decline in synchronization in the response to external stimulation. As we get older, our response to these signals weakens,but in addition, it weakens more in some organs than in others.”

According to the study, there is one system in which the process is the reverse: the immune system. Inflammatory responses, considered a part of the aging process, actually become more coordinated between different organs as we get older.

How will we feel the decline in the general synchronization between the organs?

Somekh: “If your brain sends a signal to your leg, it will respond less. Digestion, too, for example, will function less well. There will be a decline in hormonal communication, a decline in communication connected to replacement of substances.”

And if we improve the communication, can we slow or reverse the aging process?

Somekh: “On the face of it, yes. We showed in the article that communication between the brain and the muscles declines with age. So perhaps coordination exercises between the brain and the muscles will improve that communication. For the time being, that’s only a hypothesis.”

Atzmon: “The brain is the organ that is the orchestral conductor of synchronization in the body, so challenging the brain could perhaps improve the functioning of all the body’s systems.”

By means of the algorithms that the researchers developed, they also managed to understand the communication channels between the organs that deteriorate on the way to the loss of synchronization. “In our article, we mapped biological systems and specific genes whose communication weakens, and it may perhaps be possible to intervene in these mechanisms and improve them,” says Somekh.

Even before intervention, there may be an improvement in diagnosis. “Mapping of the communication between organs might yield a new sign that can be used to identify biological aging, a sign that was unknown before,” she says.

“It will take time before we can really produce a new type of biological clock from this information,” Atzmon cautions. “It will take a lot of work in Judith’s laboratory, with a great deal of data and a great deal of computing time.”

What’s the next step in your research?

Somekh: “We think that processes of lack of synchronization could be happening not just with age, but also in diseases. We therefore want to research this phenomenon in various diseases.” (Globes/TNS)

Digital vaccination record

After years of delays, Israel’s Health Ministry launched a service for viewing and downloading personal digital vaccination records, which includes all vaccines given. 

A baby vaccines book at a family health center ("Tipat chalav") on March 5, 2019. 

(photo credit: Albi Arhó)

ByAlbert Arhó

The Health Ministry announced the launch of the digital vaccination record, a service intended to replace the familiar blue booklet and provide updated, consolidated information on every citizen’s vaccination history.

The data will be securely and conveniently accessible through the government’s personal digital area (MyGov). This is the first service of its kind in Israel and is based on legislation that led to the creation of a National Vaccination Registry, which went into effect in March.

The digital service allows every citizen to view, download, and print their vaccination record directly from a computer or mobile phone. The record displays all vaccinations administered to the individual and their children under the age of 18 registered under their name. The information includes the type of vaccine, the date it was received, the location it was administered, and the medical provider responsible.

The record is based on data collected from a wide range of vaccination providers, including health maintenance organizations (HMOs), Tipat Halav (maternal-child health clinics), educational institutions, hospitals, and private providers.

Around 49 organizations are already connected to the system, with an additional 300 expected to join. According to the Health Ministry, since March 2025, over 1.5 million new vaccinations have been added to the registry, and the system currently contains close to 99 million documented vaccinations.

Surprising find: Same-arm vaccine shots enhance immunity. (credit:Albert Arhó)

Access to the vaccination record is available through the government’s MyGov portal, after authentication via the National Digital ID system. It will also be available via personal areas within the HMOs. The digital record is available in Hebrew, and will soon be accessible in English, enabling its use for international needs such as travel or academic enrollment abroad.

For medical teams, this information provides a valuable tool for improving continuity of care and making clinical decisions while adhering to the Patient Rights Law. The service eliminates reliance on personal memory or physical documents and reduces the risk of individuals remaining unvaccinated due to missing records.

The Health Ministry emphasized that all information stored in the digital record and national vaccination registry is subject to the Privacy Protection Law and is secured in accordance with legal requirements. Only authorized personnel defined by law will have access to the information, and solely for the purposes of medical treatment, displaying information to citizens, initiating vaccinations, and epidemiological monitoring of vaccine coverage.