Old diabetes drugs slash the risk of dementia by more than a FIFTH, study finds
The "risk" of heart disease from taking Avandia is rubbish. Avandia was the target of a political war. See my previous comment on it
A class of diabetes drugs that have fallen out of fashion may help prevent Alzheimer's, a major study suggests.
Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) reduced the risk of developing the disease by more than a fifth in a study of more than half a million patients.
The drugs are thought to work by reducing bad cholesterol in the blood and boosting blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain.
They are sold under the brand names Actos or Avandia but they are rarely prescribed because of their links to liver toxicity and heart problems
But researchers from Arizona University, who did the latest study, are hoping the drugs can find a new lease of life.
They say the drugs should be given to type 2 diabetics to prevent cognitive issues that could turn into dementia.
Previous studies have shown people with this form of diabetes are at a higher risk of the memory-robbing condition.
Having too much sugar in the blood can damage organs, including the brain.
TZDs can drop dementia risk by more than 20 per cent in type 2 diabetics that use the drug. These drugs have largely been removed from the US market over risks related to heart failure and bladder cancer
The research team, which published its findings Tuesday in the BMJ, gathered data from 560,000 type 2 diabetics from 2000 to 2019.
Each of the participants was over the age of 60 and had received either a TZD or other popular type 2 diabetes drugs like metformin or sulfonylurea.
These drugs are typically taken once daily, but in some cases a patient may take up to three doses per day.
TZDs - once a popular class of diabetes drugs that have since been dropped from the market
Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) are type 2 diabetes drugs.
They work by activating genes in a cell's protein that make them more sensitive to insulin. This, as a result, makes the body more able to process glucose in the blood.
While they were once a popular treatment for the disease, they have since fallen out of favor across the US and Europe.
The drugs have been linked to fluid build up in the heart and even an increased risk of heart failure. They have also been linked to bladder cancer, liver toxicity, losses in bone mass and severe weight gain.
The drugs were pulled from many international markets in the early 2010s. They now see rare, if any use, across the world as they have been outclassed by more modern type 2 diabetes drugs.
Participants had their health tracked using Veterans Affairs medical records for an average of eight years each. Those who used a TZD alone had a 22 per cent lower risk of developing all-cause dementia than those who used metformin within the first year. There was also an 11 per cent drop in risk of dementia in particular, and a 57 per cent fall in cases of vascular dementia - caused by reduced blood flow to the brain.
The drugs were even more effective at preventing cognitive problems when they were taken alongside metformin - dropping the risk by another 11 per cent.
The research could bring a second-life to a class of drugs that has largely been left by the wayside. Also known as glitazones, TZDs help combat type 2 diabetes by reducing the blood's resistance to insulin. They work by binding to a cell's protein and activating genes that help increase the blood's sensitivity to the hormone.
Avandia, one of the most popular TZDs, was pulled from the US market by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2010 after it was linked to an increased heart attack risk.
Its main competitor Actos has also been linked to heart issues, along with bladder cancer and liver toxicity.
While Actos is still available in the US, it is rarely prescribed anymore as newer, safer, diabetes drugs have since taken its place on the market.
The drugs have also been linked to loss of bone mass and uncharacteristic weight gain in users.
Development of type 2 diabetes has long been linked to risk of dementia. Alzheimer's has even been described by some as 'type 3 diabetes' because of the similarities in how they affect the body at the cellular level.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that around ten per cent of US adults are suffering from diabetes.
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Billion-Dollar Transgender Industry Leaves Broken Families and Lives
Photos of Jeff Younger’s smiling twin boys are scattered throughout his home in the Dallas suburbs—happy moments, frozen in time.
Next to the back door, a jump rope and youth-sizes boxing headgear haven’t moved from the corner where they were tossed 13 months ago. Outside, a punching bag hangs silent from a sturdy shade tree towering over a yard once filled with the tap-tap-tap sound of little fists pounding canvas.
Younger spent hours at a time in that space with his boys, James and Jude, who were 9 at the time, teaching them how to wrestle and how to land a punch—just as his father taught him when he was a kid. “I remember people by the things they do,” Younger said.
He took the boys to parks, teaching them how to hurl sticks and track rabbits along a creek, all part of growing his boys into men. But for James, now 10, manhood may never come.
James is like so many swept up in the hype of transgenderism, part of an exploding trend among youth and young adults. And Younger is among a swarm of objectors, many of them parents, fighting an uphill battle against a $2.1 billion transgender industry in the United States.
Younger’s ex-wife, Anne Georgulas, a pediatrician in Coppell, Texas, says that James has wanted to identify as a female since preschool, wears dresses, and goes by the name Luna. Younger hasn’t seen James in more than a year because he has refused to go along with the idea that James is a girl.
Now, the Texas father, who’s embroiled in a high-profile custody battle, fears that a court ruling in September could allow his ex-wife to move to California and chemically castrate his son.
Younger worries that his ex-wife now will transition James medically. He said documents he obtained during court proceedings show that she took James to a therapist who recommended that the family “explore” gender transitioning at the Dallas-based Genecis medical clinic.
Younger said his former wife’s medical practice is scheduled to close on Oct. 31. Georgulas declined to comment about a potential move to California when contacted by The Epoch Times.
But California is a welcoming place for young people seeking to medically transition.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Sept. 29 giving the state authority over transgender minors, creating a potential nightmare for Younger. Gender-altering surgery and drugs, referred to as “gender-affirming care” by its supporters, is legal in California, and the new law shields Californians from laws and court actions in other states that could block transition treatments.
Younger believes that the new California law will allow his ex-wife to get around a previous Texas court order preventing either parent from treating the child with hormonal suppression therapy, puberty blockers, or transgender reassignment surgery without both parents’ consent or a court order.
Transgender Money Machine
Money and a hysteria epidemic are driving the transgenderism phenomenon, according to Clifford Alan Hopewell, a Fort Worth neuropsychologist who spoke to The Epoch Times.
Hopewell—a trained behaviorist, a former Texas Psychological Association president, and a fellow with the American Psychological Association—said therapy has become the gateway to a bustling transgender economy.
Gender dysphoria is a relatively new diagnosis, made up so insurance companies will cover the costs of so-called gender-affirming care, he said. Therapists will write out a prescription with no questions asked, he said. Mental health providers “just see the money.”
“It’s all bogus,” Hopewell said. “There’s this transgender money-making machine.”
The current market for transgender surgery is expected to increase to $5 billion in 2030 from $2.1 billion in 2022, an 11 percent compound annual growth rate, according to Grand View Research, a market research company.
Breast or chest surgery in females transitioning to males showed the most growth in terms of transitioning surgeries, which increased by 15 percent over the 2019–20 period, according to the Plastic Surgery Statistics by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
The absurdity of the cycle is astonishing, Hopewell said.
A man or woman can visit a licensed mental health provider and express interest in becoming the opposite sex. The therapist affirms the patient, who has self-diagnosed, he said.
“If you walk in and say, ‘Amputate my leg,’ nobody would do it,” Hopewell said. “You walk in and say, ‘Amputate my penis,’ ‘Oh, well, let’s get you on the surgery list right now [is the response].'”
He cited a recently exposed 2018 Vanderbilt University video in which a hospital representative talked about money-making opportunities in the transgender industry. Top surgeries could bring in $40,000 per patient, the representative told the audience enthusiastically.
Creating a Need
People who decide to transition need transgender care for the rest of their lives, Hopewell said. Hormones and other needed medications could cost $200,000 or more over the lifetime of a transgender person.
But as some transitioners have discovered, the total cost can be much higher—and can’t be counted just in dollars.
For 49-year-old Scott Newgent, a woman who began transitioning to appear male seven years ago, the journey has been filled with expensive medications, surgeries, and complications. Newgent, who lives in Texas, estimates that the transition has cost about $1.2 million so far.
Like Hopewell, Newgent believes that transitioning represents a lucrative new revenue stream for the health care industry. “It’s all very, very evil,” Newgent told The Epoch Times. “There’s too much money.”
Cross-sex hormones prescribed to Newgent have cost roughly $30,000. The price of phalloplasty was $309,000. During that procedure, a surgeon cuts into the forearm to remove a tissue flap to form and attach a pseudo-penis and extend the urethra.
Insurance has paid for much of the transition, Newgent said, noting that without insurance, the surgery would have cost $70,000 in cash.
Newgent now refers to the surgeon who performed the surgery as a “monster.” Complications from the procedures led to months of infections, emergency room visits, and maddening pain. The cost of care climbed by another $850,000.
In a recently released documentary titled “What is a Woman?” Newgent passionately described the suffering in hopes of warning the world about the dangers of transition surgeries.
If she had known the dangers, transitioning wouldn’t have been an option for her, Newgent said.
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Pronouns right and wrong
The word ‘they’ has two legitimate uses and one illegitimate use. The first proper and legitimate use is as the subjective case of the third person plural pronoun – that is, to refer to a bunch of people. The second is as a singular pronoun in cases where it is impossible to know the gender of the person referred to, for example: ‘If someone wins the lottery they should…’ In such cases, and only in such cases, it is proper to use ‘they’ just as ‘you’ has been employed for centuries – covering both singular and plural.
However, it is improper, illegitimate and totally appalling to use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun when the gender is known. This has been done, apparently, by Northlakes High School in NSW. At that school, the boys’ toilet has a sign saying ‘He/They’ and the girls’ toilet one saying ‘She/They.’ This is wrong on so many fronts it’s hard to know where to begin. For a start, toilets are not normally labelled with pronouns – they are labelled ‘mens’ (or ‘gents’) and ‘womens’ (or ‘ladies’). In a school context this becomes ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. Switching to a pronoun for labelling is nonsense.
Worse, the gender is known. Males go to boys’ toilets and females go to girls’ toilets – so the use of ‘they’ to be gender neutral is a bit of hard-left Marxist ideological madness. And third, this is dangerous. Mark Latham has pointed out that these lunatic woke signs may encourage boys to use the girls’ toilets – meaning little 12- and 13-year-old girls could find themselves in a toilet with perving 17- and 18-year-old boys. It is outrageous that a principal could assume the power to impose politically correct stupidity on a whole school (without – as it happens – telling parents or seeking their permission). Madness. Dangerous madness.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/language-31/
********************************************************TV presenter slams plans to introduce a spanking ban on kids in Australia
The claim that smacking/spanking has bad mental health outcomes is based on the old fallacy that correlation is causation. The bad mental health among some children who are smacked could be a CAUSE rather than the result of the smacking. Ill-behaved children are more likely to be smacked and mental health problems can cause bad behaviour. See here for an example of the research concerned
My father never laid a hand on me nor did I ever lay a hand on my son but both of us are quiet intellectual types not drawn to any kind of florid behaviour. But all children are not the same and some children do need pressure to observe boundaries. And smacking is a clear sign that a boundary has been transgressed.
Karl Stefanovic has furiously shot down plans to introduce a ban on Australian parents giving their kids a smack.
University of Melbourne Professor Sophie Havighurst supports the idea of making corporal punishment illegal, saying it 'has effects on children in a whole range of different ways'.
She referenced research from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study that found 61 per cent of young Aussies had been smacked at least four times in their life. 'We now know that that doubles their chances of anxiety and depression,' Prof Havighurst told The Today Show on Thursday morning.
But Stefanovic wasn't having any of it, saying there was no need for a law change. 'I don't want to see any more legislation around me as a parent, my head explodes,' he said.
'And the idea of parents being charged or going into court for smacking a child. I mean, come on, Sophie, give me a break, please.'
The professor said she wasn't seeking any consequences for those who use physical punishment on their children, but wanted the law to change. 'Any form of smacking or physical discipline has been found to have a negative effect on children,' she said.
Sixty-three countries around the world have made physical punishment against children illegal including Scotland, Sweden and Korea.
Prof Havighurst said the law change hadn't led to an increase in prosecution of parents who hit their kids in any of those countries. She said banning the behaviour would lead to a cultural and attitude change among Aussie parents.
The expert sympathised with Stefanovic's concerns parents would be charged for smacking their children, but said discussion around the topic was important. 'We all have times when we lose it ... but in New Zealand when they changed the law in 2007, they didn't get an increase in what you're fearful of,' she said.
'We don't want the government and police having more involvement in our family lives but we do know that law change can guide us to use other ways of parenting and that's really important.'
Australia's former deputy chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth also weighed in on the matter, saying the bottom line was that parents should not smack their kids - but that making the behaviour illegal wasn't necessary.
'My view is that governments should do their best to educate and make sure kids are safe,' he said. 'Criminalising aspects of parenting, even those aspects that are wrong, shouldn't be the direction the government should be going in, in my view.'
In Australia it's currently legal for parents to smack their kids but varying states have specific rules on the matter.
In NSW, the physical punishment should not be painful for more than a brief moment, and kids can't be hit on their heads or necks.
In Victoria, there is no legislation surrounding parents applying physical punishment to their kids while in various other states it must be considered 'reasonable under the circumstances'.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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