EXCLUSIVE Common ADHD drug promised calm without unpleasant side effects of Ritalin - but patients now warn of a possible dark side
The dog groomer from Georgia, USA, admits she often couldn't keep on top of basic chores — dishes piled up in the sink and clothes were strewn across her bedroom floor.
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The Independent
35 minutes ago
- The Independent
Continuous glucose monitors are in vogue. But do you really need to track your blood sugar?
A quarter-size device that tracks the rise and fall of sugar in your blood is the latest source of hope — and hype — in the growing buzz around wearable health technology. Continuous glucose monitors, small patches that provide 24-hour insight into concentrations of sugar in the blood, could be a tool for Americans to 'take control over their own health,' Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently told federal lawmakers. 'They can take responsibility,' Kennedy said. 'They can begin to make good judgments about their diet, about their physical activity, about the way they live their lives.' The devices have lifesaving benefits for people with diabetes, the disease caused when blood sugar remains high because their bodies don't make enough insulin or become resistant to it. The condition, which affects more than 38 million people in the U.S., raises the risk of serious health problems such as heart and kidney disease and vision loss. But the devices have surged in popularity among people without diabetes. Sales have been driven by high-profile marketers such as Casey Means, the nominee for U.S. surgeon general. There's scant evidence the monitors are useful for people with normal blood sugar levels, said Dr. Jody Dushay, an endocrine specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Healthy bodies can effectively regulate glucose after meals and provide the energy they need to function. Glucose monitors may lead people to misinterpret normal swings in blood sugar that happen after eating or activity. In addition, the devices can be 'notoriously inaccurate,' providing misleading readings, she said. 'The problem with wearing these is that you can just be zooming in on and creating pathology when it's not there,' Dushay said. Here's what you need to know about the devices: Here's what a continuous glucose monitor does The device is a small patch, about the size of two stacked quarters, usually placed on the upper arm or stomach. It uses a needle to painlessly pierce the skin for a tiny sensor. The sensor measures the glucose in fluid under the skin, delivering a signal every few minutes to a phone app or a handheld display. The apps typically record blood sugar levels and help people track the foods they eat and how they impact those levels. When healthy people eat a meal that contains carbohydrates, their blood sugar rises, peaks and falls in response to the food. A healthy fasting blood glucose level for a person without diabetes is roughly 70 milligrams per deciliter to 99 milligrams per deciliter. A range from 100 to 126 milligrams per deciliter indicates prediabetes and above 126 milligrams per deciliter indicates diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. In adults without diabetes, blood sugar levels can climb to 140 milligrams per deciliter or more within an hour of a meal, before falling back to baseline levels within two or three hours, according to the association. It's a sign the body is processing sugar normally. Continuous glucose monitors have been available since the late 1990s For decades, these devices were available only for people with diabetes. The monitors revolutionized care by allowing more precise adjustment of insulin used to treat diabetes and giving people the ability to modify meals and activity more accurately. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first over-the-counter monitors. Since then, many companies have emerged to market them, claiming to provide intensive, individualized health monitoring. Cost is generally about $100 a month. They've really caught on with consumers curious about how food and activity affect their blood sugar levels. For instance, Noom, the weight-loss and fitness app, launched a blood glucose feature last year that has proven extremely popular, said Alexander Fabry, a company executive. 'Of the people who are using a CGM, the vast majority of them don't have a diabetes diagnosis,' he said. Who can use the monitors? The devices have been lifesaving for people with diabetes. And they can be helpful for people with risk factors for the disease, including obesity, prediabetes, a history of gestational diabetes or a family history of the condition. The devices can allow users to see how specific food and activity choices affect their blood sugar in near real-time, said Dr. Alaina Vidmar, a pediatric obesity specialist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. 'After a large meal, you may watch your blood sugar go up and sort of learn something about yourself,' Vidmar said. 'For example, I drink a sugar-sweetened soda and my blood sugar goes up really high, really fast. And maybe I don't feel as good, right?' What are the cautions? People without risk factors for diabetes may turn to the monitors just because they're curious, said Dr. David Kessler. A former FDA commissioner, Kessler doesn't have diabetes, but he wore a monitor for a couple months during research for his recent book, 'Diet, Drugs and Dopamine.' 'I think it's a very interesting tool to experiment with if you're so inclined,' Kessler said. But, he noted, the devices can't be used to diagnose or treat disease. Even experts don't agree on how to interpret or provide health advice for people without diabetes based on blood sugar data. 'No one knows what's optimal in the nondiabetic state,' he said. Before using a monitor, Dushay asks patients to consider their motives. 'What do you think you're going to get from the data?' she said. 'What is to be gained from wearing that monitor?' ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Mom forced son, 8, who kept wetting himself to buy new pants with allowance - even though he had medical issue
A clinical child psychologist forced her eight-year-old son who couldn't stop wetting himself to buy his own underwear despite discovering he had a medical issue. Dr. Andrea Mata, who runs the webinar 'Gentle Parenting Doesn't Work', made the shock confession while speaking with The Wall Street Journal. The 41-year-old spoke with the outlet about a growing number of parents who are ditching a soft approach to parenting and adopting a harder stance. She said that recently her son had been wetting himself and she believed that he had been ignoring the urge to go to the bathroom. Following repeat episodes, she admitted to the outlet that she had told her child to use his own allowance to pay for new underpants. Dr. Mata later discovered her son was dealing with a medical issue, which has now been resolved, and she apologized to him. But sticking with her hard stance on parenting, she said that she refused to reimburse him because he had lied to her about it and covered it up. She told the WSJ that she would stand by the idea of repercussions if a child intentionally falls shorts of their expected behavior. Dr. Mata has been widely criticized for her remarks by readers of the publication, with some branding her 'tone deaf' for her response. One person said: 'If you've embarrassed a kid with a medical issue - you owe them way more than an apology. 'What a horrible unfeeling parenting. Really? We're penalizing the kid for being ashamed about peeing in his pants at eight? Poor child.' Another said: 'The clinical child psychologist telling this story ignored an important flaw in her own thinking. 'She was tone deaf to a young boy's shame and embarrassment, she punished him anyway when he understandably hid it as any eight-year-old would do, and then she publishes the details using her own name so all of her son's friends will be aware of his humiliation. 'That is a lesson in poor parenting, and her son will never forget it.' One other added: 'No "doctor" Mata, you don't need a PhD. You do, though, need yours taken away for putting a child's health at risk.' Another reader said they agreed with the hard parenting stance but still took aim at Dr. Mata. They added: 'The child psychologist who can't admit their own mistake and still made their eight-year-old kid pay for something caused by a medical issue that the parent ignored is a useless example for this article. 'That person probably needs an adult psychologist to help with their own issues.' For her remarks, Dr Mata has been widely criticized by readers of the publication According to an online profile, Dr. Mata graduated from Valparaiso University, in Indiana, after majoring in psychology. She previously worked as a college professor at the University of Findlay, Ohio, for nine years. She and her husband Jim have three children, girl-boy twins and a younger daughter. After the article went live she expressed her delight in being featured by sharing a post to her Instagram. She said: 'HOLY S***!!! I'm featured in the WSJ. Goodbye, gentle parenting! It wasn't nice knowing you! Good riddance'. The Daily Mail has approached Dr. Mata for comment on the remarks.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
I nearly died in a freezer... and now I receive strange messages from dead people
A grief counselor from California has revealed how she has been able to see dead people since a childhood accident nearly killed her. Susan Grau, who refers to herself as an intuitive medium, told that she nearly died of hypothermia and lack of oxygen after getting trapped in a home freezer when she was only four years old. While screaming for her life, Grau said she experienced a life-changing vision, where beings of light took her to another dimension, where she heard the prayers of other children. Once she was rescued from the freezer, Grau was left with a startling power, the ability to see and hear beings who had just entered the spirit world. 'I just connected. I would lie in bed and I'd hear, you know, 'Wake up. I just died,'' Grau explained. For years, she kept quiet about her experiences, before finally learning that her ability to communicate with the dead meant she was a medium - someone capable of serving as an intermediary between the physical world and the spirit world. She worked in addiction therapy and grief therapy without revealing her abilities before eventually admitting what she had been seeing in a Facebook message to her family. 'I was highly sensitive and highly attached to people and the spirit world. I feel like I'm half in and half out,' Grau said. Near-death experiences (NDEs) are complex and not fully understood, but scientific research suggests they are likely neurological phenomena arising from specific brain activity during moments of critical illness or near-death. While various theories exist, a key aspect involves the brain's continued activity, even after the heart stops, potentially leading to altered states of consciousness and vivid perceptions. Grau's journey started when some fellow children told her to climb up into her garage freezer for some popsicles, but the freezer had unknowingly been unplugged. 'Because I was so young, I didn't recognize that it wasn't plugged in anymore. My mom had unplugged it. She was supposed to turn it towards the wall, and she didn't,' Grau explained. When she heard the door close behind her, everything changed, and Grau was now in mortal danger of suffocating or freezing to death. 'I heard the garage door thud, and it was silence. And I remember just screaming in terror,' she recounted. What happened next changed Grau's life forever. The medium was screaming for help and trying to free herself from the locked freezer when three bright lights appeared, and she felt herself being pulled out of her physical body. Grau said that she saw a 'light version of herself' in a group of three beings as her spirit left the freezer. The beings told her to stop screaming, and promised to get her mother, which calmed the four-year-old down. Grau recalled seeing a beautiful building with beautiful pillars, a cracked stairway, and a mysterious well in the middle of the room. She also remembered seeing words and hearing prayers that seemed to come from other children, saying: 'I'm going to turn 16. 'Please make my mom and dad get me a car,' and 'God, and my mom is sick. Please don't let her die.' Grau added that she travelled down a beautiful yellow road, which she called the 'yellow brick road' because it was the only way to describe it. She saw people dropping to their knees and saying, 'Dear God, you know, nothing's working the way I want it to. Everything's going wrong. Why don't things go my way?' Then the people vanished. Grau believed it was a message for her to understand later, that 'what you try to control controls you. What you run after chases you.' The medium said she moved through different dimensions, and the angels who rescued her from the freezer told her she had a huge amount to take in during this journey. Grau said she attempted to ascend to the top of a mountain where a beautiful being of light was waiting but she wasn't able to. That's when the being came to her instead. 'The minute I thought, I need to get there, I saw this gorgeous, powerful beam of light come to me. It came to me, and it was love, pure, pure love,' Grau explained. At that point the angel told Grau it was time to go back and that her mother was waiting for her. The light being added that she was going to go through a lot in life, and that Grau was going to help people and she needed to remember the things she learned during her journey to accomplish that task. At the same time, Grau said her mother began hearing a voice quietly saying, 'Your baby's in the freezer.' 'She said, all of a sudden she heard it loud, like a scream, 'Your baby's in the freezer!' And she ran outside, and she said she saw the door closed [in] the garage,' the medium revealed. When Grau was found, her skinned had already turned gray, her fingers were blue, and she fell forward onto the cement as she started to breathe again. That's when her new ability to see spirits manifested. 'I could see things around me. I covered my head and said, 'Go away. Go away. Go away.' And they didn't,' she explained. Grau said she kept seeing the beings all around her, but they were beautiful and they never harmed her, so she quickly stopped being afraid of them. Now a mother, grandmother, author, and inspirational speaker, Grau has continued to work with children who have had near-death experiences, using her skills as a medium to help with her counseling.
