mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕

Captivated by science, research. Science writer. 🧬 Fav season = football season 🏈 Ally🌈 Politically homeless; both parties are corporate-owned. 🦠N95ing.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. I've held dying hearts in my hands in the cath lab at 3 AM. And I need to tell you something that changes everything about how we prevent heart attacks.

For decades, the entire field was built on one target: lower LDL cholesterol. Statins save lives — that's settled science. But too many of my patients did everything right — took their statins, hit their numbers, lived clean — and still ended up on my table with a ruptured artery.

We were treating the smoke while the fire kept burning.
The fire is inflammation. And the evidence is now overwhelming.

The CANTOS trial proved it first — lowering inflammation independent of cholesterol reduced cardiac events. But the newer data is what keeps me up at night.

AI-enhanced CT angiography can now detect inflamed arteries by measuring changes in the fat surrounding your coronary vessels — the perivascular fat attenuation index. Higher inflammation in the fat around even one artery independently predicts cardiac death. When multiple arteries show inflammation, the risk multiplies dramatically — even in patients whose cholesterol looks perfect.

This isn't theoretical. This is measurable. Right now. On a scan you can get this month.

Low-dose colchicine — a drug that's been around for centuries for gout — is now FDA-approved specifically for reducing cardiovascular events. It works by quieting the inflammatory cascade that destabilizes the plaque sitting in your arteries. A pill that costs pennies is saving lives the statins couldn't reach.

And the next wave is already in Phase 3 trials. Ziltivekimab — an IL-6 inhibitor — targets the central inflammatory pathway driving atherosclerosis. Phase 2 data showed a 90% reduction in hsCRP. The ZEUS cardiovascular outcomes trial is enrolling now, with results expected late 2026 into 2027. If positive, anti-inflammatory therapy will become standard in managing heart disease alongside lipid-lowering. The era of inflammation-targeted cardiology is arriving.
But it goes deeper than drugs. AI is now predicting heart failure and cardiac events 5+ years before symptoms — integrating CT imaging, electronic health records, and genetic data with accuracy that jumps far beyond traditional risk calculators.

And polygenic risk scores — a simple genetic test that flags inherited cardiovascular risk — are now formally recognized as a risk-enhancing factor in the 2026 ACC/AHA guidelines. A single blood draw can reveal risk that's been silently building since birth. Decades before the first chest pain.

Here's what this means for you right now — today:
Ask your doctor for a high-sensitivity CRP test. It's cheap, routine, and measures the systemic inflammation that standard cholesterol panels completely miss. You can have perfect LDL and inflamed arteries that are quietly preparing to rupture.
If your hsCRP is elevated, discuss low-dose colchicine with your physician. It's FDA-approved for exactly this.
Push for a coronary CT angiography with AI plaque and inflammation analysis if you have risk factors. This isn't the stress test your parents got. This is 3D visualization of your actual arteries — with AI quantifying not just how much plaque you have, but what kind it is and whether the surrounding tissue is inflamed.
Consider polygenic risk score testing — especially with a family history of early heart disease. It's now guideline-supported.

And the foundation that never changes: move daily, eat real food, sleep 7-9 hours, manage stress, and know your numbers — ApoB, Lp(a), hsCRP, fasting insulin.
I left Iran as a child with nothing. I rebuilt everything in a country that gave me the freedom to become a physician. I've spent twenty years watching patients get second chances.

The ones who haunt me aren't the ones who died on my table. They're the ones who survived but never acted on what the science was telling them — years before the event that didn't have to happen.

You can have perfect cholesterol and still have a heart attack. Inflammation plus genetics can drive plaque rupture in arteries that look "fine" on a standard panel.
The myth that normal cholesterol means you're safe has cost more lives than I can count.

We now have the tools to detect the fire — not just the smoke. AI to see it. Genetics to predict it. Drugs to quiet it. And the ancient basics — movement, real food, sleep, purpose — to prevent it from starting.

Prevention is the new cure. And the science to make it real is no longer coming.
It's here.

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@cardone_paul @KC_Invests What a ridiculous take.

20% of the world’s oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz. Also, a majority of fertilizer components traverses the strait, as well as plastics, aluminum, helium, food, and other critical materials.

“Who cares” is foolish, lazy and admitting defeat.

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@raamije__ @hell_line0 When the household has two working parents, and wife asks husband to pick up his socks, she’s accused of nagging.

Unfair when both work 40+ hours, but the wife bears the brunt of the household, child, & emotional labor.

Male privilege has made many men lazy.

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@BrettErickson28 @FDD @CliffordDMay @therealBehnamBT @SGhasseminejad Seems like Iran has outwitted us from multiple angles, time and time again.

And each day the strait is closed and we’re drawing down our SPR, we move closer to falling off a cliff into a global energy crisis.

Why isn’t Trump meeting this moment with the urgency it deserves?

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

How is the Strait of Hormuz closure impacting oil supply and how has the world countered this supply decrease? Good info here. ⬇️

[Patrick De Haan @GasBuddyGuy]

BREAKING: U.S. SPR declines 7.9 million barrels in the last week to 349.2 million as of June 5, meaning that at any moment in the next few days the SPR will decline to its lowest since 1983, when it was being filled for the first time.

[Roger @rdd147]

Oil experts warn that price manipulation has led to a rapid draw down in oil inventories, with many countries potentially giving false reports on inventory levels to reduce panic.

In the coming weeks, people will be increasingly seeing two rarely used phrases in stories covering our dwindling worldwide oil inventories: "operational minimum" and "tank bottoms."

Operational stress will become apparent in the second to third week of June.

$cvx $xom $oxy

https://t.co/BKuFNyDMte

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: Iran says it has now fully blocked the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, along with the complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with the next step being strikes on oil, gas and energy infrastructure of US-allied Gulf countries in response to today's Israeli strikes on the Petrochemical Complex, per a source close to Iran's Ghalibaf.

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@HermosoDiasm @OilandEnergy How exactly are oil markets being manipulating? What is happening behind the scenes and who is doing this?

Signed,
a weak long

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@67868DV @HormuzLetter Trump promised “No new wars” but you cult members forget that, never holding him to account. You’re down for whatever despicable act he presents. Now you not only cheerlead a big war, you want nukes too. Absolutely disgusting.

[Mark @Mark4XX]

RED ZONE BY SUMMER: BIROL CALLS FOR THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL REOPENING OF HORMUZ – OR GLOBAL PAIN INTENSIFIES

Fatih Birol has just confirmed the scale of the disaster facing global energy markets. The current crisis is already larger than everything the world lost in the 1973 oil crisis, the 1979 oil crisis, and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine energy shock combined. Yet the unconditional opening of the Strait of Hormuz without fees that he says is essential to avoid the red zone is not happening. On the contrary, the situation is getting worse by the hour.

THE LARGEST CRISIS IN HISTORY
➡️ Fatih Birol stated clearly that this is the largest energy crisis in the history.
➡️ The amount of oil and gas the world has lost in this Iran war crisis exceeds the combined total from the three previous major crises over the last half century.
➡️ Developing economies across Asia will feel the major implications first and hardest.

THE BUFFERS HAVE VANISHED
➡️ When the crisis began there were large surpluses in the market pushing oil prices down.
➡️ Those surpluses plus government and company inventories have been drawn down steadily ever since.
➡️ We are now coming to the bottom of those buffers with no new supply arriving to replace them.

THE UNCONDITIONAL WARNING
➡️ Birol warned that the Strait of Hormuz must see a fully and unconditional opening by the end of June.
➡️ Without it the world may enter the red zone for the global economy during the peak summer travel season of July and August.
➡️ Markets want tankers to travel without security questions and without paying any fees under international maritime law.

THE CONTRARY REALITY
➡️ Iran introduced the announcement that it will collect fees for the vessels of its choosing by fully controlling Hormuz.
➡️ This stands in direct opposition to the unconditional free passage Birol says the markets require.
➡️ The US and Israel are continuing to escalate the situation with attacks on Iranian facilities and Beirut – making a deal impossible.

THE BOTTOM LINE
The energy crisis is now a given because Fatih Birol has confirmed it as history's largest while the unconditional opening of Hormuz without fees is being replaced by Iran collecting fees on its own terms and the United States escalating tensions.
This is how the red zone locks in as summer demand approaches with empty inventories.

#EnergyCrisis #HormuzStrait #OilShock #IEAWarning #IranFees #RedZoneSummer

[StockMarket.News @_Investinq]

Jeff Currie thinks we are sleepwalking into one of the biggest commodity shocks since Covid and the market is still pricing it like a headline risk instead of a physical crisis (Save this).

He calls it molecular contagion and last week, jet fuel shortages were concentrated in Singapore, where prices spiked to roughly 230 dollars a barrel.

This week the same pattern has shown up in Rotterdam at around 220 dollars and in Thailand, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia which means the dislocation has gone intercontinental.

In his words, there is no longer any meaningful spread between Singapore and Rotterdam, no spare barrels to re route, and no policy lever that can solve the problem in the short term.

Currie’s core point is brutally simple, you can print money, but you cannot print molecules.

The futures curve, the paper market is still trading around 100 dollars a barrel.

The physical market on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz is telling a completely different story, with Oman crude spiking to 173 dollars and Asia bound blends effectively clearing around 130 dollars a barrel.

Refined products like jet fuel and diesel are already spiraling north of 200 dollars a barrel in multiple hubs.

That is the tale of two markets he is talking about.

On one side you have screen prices that look volatile but manageable, helped by algorithmic trading, cross commodity hedging and the lingering belief that high prices fix high prices before anything breaks.

On the other side you have physical supply chains that are already breaking, tankers being diverted, refineries bidding against each other for the last uncommitted barrels, and regional shortages that cannot be solved with central bank liquidity.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. A 42-year-old mother of two came to my office complaining of jaw pain and crushing fatigue. She ran half-marathons. Her EKG was normal. Another doctor had sent her home with anxiety medication.
When I got her into the cath lab, I found severe microvascular disease — plaque choking the tiniest vessels of her heart, the ones standard angiograms routinely miss.
Her heart had been starving in silence while everyone told her she was stressed.
She is alive today. Too many women like her are not.
Heart disease kills more women than every cancer combined. And medicine is still diagnosing it through a male lens.
84% of cardiologists report having patients in the past year whose heart disease was misdiagnosed by another physician. Women with a STEMI heart attack have a 59% greater chance of being misdiagnosed compared to men. Women with an NSTEMI — 41% greater chance.
The reason is structural. For decades, we screened, tested, and treated women using a template built for men.
Men's heart attacks announce themselves — the crushing chest pain, the clutched fist, the Hollywood collapse. Women's hearts whisper. Crushing fatigue that feels like wearing a lead vest. Jaw pain written off as TMJ. Nausea blamed on a stomach bug. An ache between the shoulder blades blamed on a long week. Shortness of breath blamed on being out of shape.
For years, medicine called these "atypical" symptoms. They are not atypical. They are female-typical. Half of humanity is not a variant.
And the biology runs deeper than symptoms.
Women have smaller hearts and narrower coronary arteries. Plaque doesn't only clog the big highway vessels — it hides in the microvasculature, the tiny branches feeding the heart muscle itself. A woman can have a heart attack with a completely "clean" standard angiogram.
SCAD — spontaneous coronary artery dissection — occurs 90% of the time in women. Often young, fit women with zero traditional risk factors. It's the leading cause of heart attack in women under 50, accounting for roughly one quarter of all cases in that age group. Most doctors have never diagnosed one.
And some of the most dangerous cardiac risk factors are hidden in women's medical histories where no one thinks to look:
Preeclampsia or gestational hypertension doubles to quadruples lifetime heart disease and stroke risk. Pregnancy is the body's first cardiac stress test — and these complications are early warning sirens, not closed chapters.
Autoimmune disease — lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis — far more common in women, turbocharges inflammation and plaque formation at any age.
Cardiovascular disease in women aged 20-44 is projected to surge nearly 50% by 2050.
The youngest patients in my practice keep getting younger.
What every woman should ask her doctor — and what every doctor should be asking:
"Given my pregnancy history, autoimmune status, and family history — what is my full cardiovascular risk?" If they don't ask about preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, volunteer it.
"Should I have an Lp(a) test and a coronary calcium score?" Standard cholesterol panels miss too much. Lp(a) is genetic, one-time, and most women have never been tested.
"My tests came back normal but my symptoms haven't stopped — what's next?" Normal stress tests and angiograms can miss microvascular disease, spasm, and SCAD. Persistent symptoms warrant coronary CT angiography or cardiac MRI.
And if something feels wrong — say these exact words to your doctor: "I am concerned this could be my heart."
That single sentence changes the workup. Do not soften it. Do not apologize for it.
80% of heart disease is preventable. But the playbook has to be built for female biology.
Two decades ago, I wrote one of the first books warning that heart disease was the number one killer of women and that medicine was diagnosing it through a male lens. It was recognized by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House during the early years of the national conversation about women's heart health.
I'm haunted by how much of that book I could republish today unchanged.
The science has advanced. The awareness has grown. But the gap between what we know and what happens in the exam room is still costing women their lives.
Share this with every woman you love — and every doctor who treats them. READ MORE: https://t.co/4LRugiY8q2

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@BrettErickson28 I wish I believed Trump prioritized America. Last week, he abandoned negotiations saying, “I couldn’t care less about the strait.”

Then he repeatedly threatened to “finish it.”

It’s clear. He meant bombs. Now humiliated, he’ll seek revenge and follow the neocon war plan.

[David Ullrich @DavidUllrich202]

Mysterious ‘cold blob’ in the Atlantic suggests the AMOC is weakening

A patch of ocean south-east of Greenland is the only place on Earth that is cooling, and it could be a sign that the warm water “conveyor belt” in the Atlantic is slowing down

https://t.co/iOP7S0fjUS

https://t.co/nKdwhlJCaW

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@SuperMAGA17 @disclosureday Exorcist podcasts.

Wow, there’s a podcast for everything!

Not my wheelhouse, AT ALL.

But you enjoy!

[BOSS @thebeautyofsaas]

it is an unwritten rule of life that after every prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period when you are going to achieve quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life. the only requirement is that you do not give up on yourself

[Nithya Shri @Nithya_Shrii]

Unpopular opinion: People need to understand that once you go through your worst times alone you really don't care who stays in your life anymore.

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@ForHisMercy777 @disclosureday Do you have a Netflix subscription? They will send you the movie which will arrive in your mailbox in about a week.

[mary orangeosaurus🍊🦕 @curiousdatacat]

@SuperMAGA17 @disclosureday Good grief

🙄