Why women are at higher risk of having Alzheimer's than men
Scientists are investigating two primary biological differences: chromosomal variations, particularly genes on the X chromosome.
The natural decline of reproductive hormones during menopause is also considered a significant factor contributing to women 's increased risk.
Research suggests that women who received hormone replacement therapy after age 70 exhibited higher levels of the Alzheimer's hallmark protein 'tau' and greater cognitive decline.
Further studies are required to fully comprehend the complex associations between menopause, hormonal changes, and the long-term risk of developing Alzheimer's.
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Mom who kicked out mentally ill daughter, nine, because she was 'too hard to handle' claps back at haters
A mother who kicked her mentally ill daughter, nine, out of her house because she was 'too hard to handle' has clapped back at haters. Megan Morris, from Sapulpa, Oklahoma, explained during an exclusive chat with the Daily Mail that her daughter, whose name has been hidden for privacy reasons, started acting out when she was only a toddler. And as she got older, the youngster's 'outbursts' only got worse. She would erupt into fits of rage if her parents said no or if she felt overwhelmed; and sometimes, she would even get violent, 'lashing out physically with no warning' and 'attacking her siblings unprovoked,' leaving them terrified. She once reached behind from the back seat and covered her mom's eyes while she was driving, almost resulting in a horrific car accident. On another occasion, she flipped the swing her baby brother was in upside down so the then-three-month-old came crashing to the ground, and she once hit her sibling in the head with a candle, resulting in him needing stitches. Fearing for the safety of her other children, Megan made the hard decision to remove her daughter from their home three years ago. Chatting with the Daily Mail about it, the mother-of-five explained, 'Her behavior started becoming really hard to manage around age two-and-a-half, but there were signs even earlier. 'As a baby, she never slept and cried constantly. No matter what we tried, nothing helped. It always felt like something deeper was going on, even before she could talk.' She began therapy at age three and by the time she was six she was diagnosed with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and ADHD. 'She's been on medication since age five and has been hospitalized for inpatient treatment four times,' Megan continued. 'It's been an incredibly difficult road, but everything we've done has been to help her feel safe and supported. Megan admitted that for years, their home was consumed by 'fear and anxiety,' and that her daughter's constant outbursts were 'really hard' on her four siblings. 'She just can't handle being told to do something, and it escalates quickly. There have been times she's lashed out physically with no warning, and that kind of unpredictability is tough on everyone,' she continued. The violence became so severe that CPS eventually got involved, leading to the youngster, then nine, moving out of their home in 2022. 'CPS told me that if I didn't take action and one of the other kids got seriously hurt, I could be charged with failure to protect,' she explained. 'That was the most painful moment of my life, but I had to make the safest choice for all of my children - including her.' She's now living with her paternal grandparents, and Megan insisted she still talks to her 'every single day.' 'It's a more stable environment where she can get the support she needs,' she added. 'I still talk to her every single day through FaceTime and stay involved in all of her treatment, schooling, and care. She still comes to visit, but only for short stretches to keep it manageable for everyone.' Megan has been sharing their journey on TikTok, and while many people have been extremely supportive, she has faced some backlash over her decision to 'kick' her daughter out. 'Three years ago, I kicked my mentally ill nine-year-old out of my household for the safety and wellbeing of myself, as well as her siblings,' she said in one video, which was shared back in May and has since gotten nearly 25 million views. 'One of the major things she would do, if she was in the back seat and she was irritated or if you said something to her that she didn't like, or sometimes it was just random, she would get behind my seat and cover my eyes while I'm driving down the road. 'She would attack her siblings unprovoked. One time she got in trouble and she went and flipped her three month old brother out of his swing onto the floor. 'She took the dog kennel that our puppy was in and threw it across her room. She threw a candle at the back of her brother's head and he had to get stitches. 'She hit one of her sisters in the eye with a baseball bat because she was beefing with somebody else and for whatever reason, took it out on her sister. 'I have custody of my eight-year-old niece and one day she was sleeping on the couch and my daughter walked by her and just smacked her in the face with a shoe because she was in trouble. 'I can go on and on and on about the things my daughter did to everyone but I think you guys get the point. 'So for those of you who are judging or hating on me for removing my daughter from my household, I want to know what you would have done in these situations because disciplining my child only made things worse.' While speaking to the Daily Mail, Megan urged others to not judge her 'unless they've lived through this kind of situation.' 'I didn't give up on my child. I made the hardest decision of my life to protect everyone, including her,' she insisted. 'Love sometimes means making impossible choices, and this was one of them.' She added that she hopes by sharing their story she can help 'bring awareness to childhood mental health.' 'People are quick to assume a kid's behavior must come from trauma, but sometimes it's just a chemical imbalance,' she said. 'That's not something parents can love away or discipline out of a child.' And while she's gotten some negative comments, she insisted that the positive messages have far outweighed the haters. 'Honestly, I've been blown away by the response. So many moms have messaged me saying they're going through the same thing and thought they were the only one,' she revealed. 'That's why I keep talking about it. We need more honesty and less shame around this.' Now, Megan is raising money through GoFundMe so her daughter, now 12, can get an 'in-depth SPECT brain scan' that will look at how her brain functions. 'These evaluations could give us real answers and help us figure out the best treatment moving forward. She deserves every chance at a better future,' Megan said. In the end, she said she believes her daughter is not a bad person, but simply a 'hurting kid,' and insisted that she has not given up on her. 'After an outburst, she'll sometimes feel really bad. She'll say she wants to be better and that she doesn't understand why she loses control,' shared the mother. 'I truly believe she doesn't want to hurt anyone. She just doesn't have the ability to regulate herself when she's in that heightened state. We're working hard to give her the tools to manage it.'
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
Is random bruising just normal ageing or something I should worry about?
OUR resident specialist and NHS GP, Dr Zoe Williams, shares her expert advice. Today, Dr Zoe helps a reader who is worried about random bruises appearing on their skin. 2 Q) SHOULD I be worried about random bruises? I am 68 and have no other symptoms. I can attribute some of them to something but the others were random. Is this just normal ageing? A) Thank you for sending the images which show many bruises of a variety of ages on your limbs. When bruises appear without known injury or trauma we call this spontaneous bruising, and it should not be ignored or fobbed off as a normal part of ageing. It is true that we are more likely to bruise easily as we get older, due to our skin getting thinner and blood vessels more fragile, but it can also be a sign of issues from minor to serious. While occasional unexplained bruises can be harmless, recurrent spontaneous bruising always warrants medical investigation to rule out nutritional deficiencies, blood, bone marrow and clotting disorders, or auto-immune and rare genetic issues. Certain medications can cause this too – especially those that thin the blood and steroids. It's a good idea to see your GP to discuss your symptoms and have some basic tests done. Blood tests can check for clotting, platelet count, and nutritional deficiency, as well as assess liver function, which plays a role in blood clotting. Note symptoms you may have in addition, such as fatigue or prolonged bleeding from small cuts. Understanding blood clots
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Public-private pain: buying back Sydney's embattled Northern Beaches hospital faces uncertain prognosis
Just before the New South Wales parliament rose for the winter break, an unusual piece of legislation passed through both chambers late in the evening. It aimed to strengthen the arm of the Minns government in its negotiations to return the Northern Beaches hospital (NBH) to public ownership by threatening changes to the terms of the contract with its private partner, Healthscope. NBH is the only public-private partnership (PPP) in NSW where public hospital services, including emergency care, are delivered by the private sector. The Labor government, a staunch critic of PPPs, has vowed it would not enter any such deals in the future. To underscore its stance, it has now passed legislation banning PPPs to deliver acute care. After years of mounting debt and a string of complaints about care standards – including a toddler dying in a chair while waiting hours for care and a woman whose baby died in childbirth because an emergency caesarean was offered too late – the hospital went into receivership in May. Untangling its private components from its public ones and settling the terms of the government's buyback are proving painful. The PPP was put in place by the previous Coalition government in 2013, despite a similar failed experiment by the Greiner government at Port Macquarie hospital almost two decades before. The Minns government had resisted earlier calls to buy back NBH, but it has now been forced into action after Healthscope's collapse, with debt of $1.6bn. Local MPs and staff at the hospital had long been sounding the alarm about the impact of the financial incentive for profit on patient care. The independent Wakehurst MP, Michael Regan, has campaigned for a government buyback, proposing legislation that would return the hospital to public hands with no compensation at all. With the financial future of a hospital serving more than 370,000 residents on Sydney's northern beaches uncertain, the government has concluded a buyback is its only option. It is adamant, however, that it does not want to pay a 'windfall gain' and so supported the amended legislation. The Northern Beaches hospital continues to operate normally with a financial lifeline from the Commonwealth Bank, while a government-appointed taskforce negotiates with Healthscope's receivers, McGrathNicol. Progress, however, has been slow. The parties have not reached agreement over the price or exactly what it is that the government is going to buy. One of the problems is that the private and public components at NBH are closely integrated, unlike some other hospitals, where the private facilities are often housed in a separate building with its own services. NBH has separate wards, but many services – such as theatres, nursing staff, cleaning, , X-ray, pharmacy and pathology – are shared, with several operated by third-party private companies. The building itself had also been sold to a property trust, which leases it back to Healthscope, adding further layers of complexity. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email The cost of building the hospital was well north of $1bn, with the government contributing $600m at the time. A report in 2015 said the total cost to taxpayers – for the building and for Healthscope providing the public hospital beds over the life of the contract to 2038 – was $2.14bn. Healthscope also has rights to operate the private component until 2046. But is it a lucrative deal or not? It was revealed in a scathing independent report by the NSW auditor general, Bola Oyetunji, released in April that Healthscope was anxious to exit from running the public hospital part of NBH and had made two offers to the government to sell in 2023. The special legislation passed in late June arguably tips the scales in the government's favour by making it clear that receivership is a breach and starts the clock ticking on a resolution. 'If a mutual agreement is not reached, the amendments would give the health minister the power to issue a termination notice to Healthscope,' the treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, said in a statement. 'In addition, the treasurer would have the power to ensure that compensation negotiations occur in a reasonable time frame and to appoint an independent person to determine compensation if agreement cannot be reached.' Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion But the approach by the government has drawn criticism from business and the opposition (which ultimately supported the bill) on the grounds that it amounts to retrospective alteration of a contract and raises the question of sovereign risk for future investors in NSW. For the time being, the receivers and the taskforce appointed by the government are back at the table. A spokesperson for Mookhey said they are looking for a quick resolution. The government has a pot of money available for the buyback of the hospital. The 2025-26 budget revealed unallocated funds of $860m. It could all go smoothly or it could end in the courts. 'We are continuing to engage in constructive discussions with the NSW government on the future ownership of Northern Beaches hospital,' Healthscope said in a statement. 'Given the government's policy position against further public-private partnerships in the health sector, we believe this is in the best interest of the Northern Beaches hospital staff, patients and wider community.' There have been serious questions about NBH's ability to provide reliable healthcare since it opened in 2018. Staff reported shortages of basic supplies and an inefficient IT system where records were divided over several databases. Some teething problems were resolved early on, but staff continued to be concerned about the tensions between profit and patient care. The auditor general's April report confirmed critics' concerns, finding the PPP 'creates tension between commercial imperatives and clinical outcomes'. It found the hospital had failed to act on warnings about risks to patient safety and outcomes, and its electronic medical record systems 'present quality and safety risks', which Healthscope and the government's Northern Sydney Local Health District had known about since the hospital opened in 2018. In 2019, Healthscope was bought by a Canadian private equity firm Brookfield. High levels of debt intensified Healthscope's financial pressures and resulted in more concerns about how the PPP was operating. At the same time, the private hospital sector was at war with private insurers over a reduction in payout amounts for in-hospital care, which added to financial pressures. NBH – or at least its public hospital operations – will be returned to public ownership. The more likely outcome is that the government will buy the whole hospital, though this is not certain. It hopes the sale can be resolved quickly – and without blowing the budget. That will be welcomed by nurses who want to be employed on the same terms as their colleagues working in government-owned hospitals, including better patient ratios. For patients on the northern beaches, there will hopefully be an improvement in services, though Healthscope insists it already performs well compared with other similar hospitals. One of the big changes is likely to be the types of operations offered at NBH. At the moment, more complex cases are channelled to the Royal North Shore hospital under opaque policies put in place by the Northern Sydney Local Health District. With the same ownership, there will be less incentive for this practice to continue.
