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Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

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Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#181

Post by stuckinhell »

eric4smith wrote: post #154

It’s so interesting that type 2 diabetes is curable with diet. Type 1 is incurable. My point is that the psychology of eating is so strong that people would rather take a drug that pass on birth defects to the future than change eating habits. And I’m a person coming from struggling with just those habits. I think if someone could come up with a treatment to adjust mindsets - it would change healthcare forever and en…

I both agree and disagree with you. Asking the average human to resist the efforts of multi-billion dollar companies using powerful psychological science to get people to buy their junk food seems a lot to ask.

Coca-cola successfully got entire nations to change from their traditional drinks to soda pop using propaganda.

I think we need to deal with the American Oligarchs/Megacorps in a very serious manner and very soon.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#182

Post by anonfornoreason »

nerdawson wrote: post #159
bsder wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prescriptions of diet and exercise are ineffective because many obese / type 2 diabetic people can't exercise self-control. That's why they're obese in the first place. Research continues its trend against this statement. 1) One problem is the fact that the number of fat cells in the body is conserved after some point. So, if you grew lots of fat cells as a child, sucks to be you, you're now stuck with them as an a…

#4 is surprisingly difficult for people to understand. It seems to fly in the face of what weight loss is expected to entail. Strength training, on the other hand, is (at least I hear) helpful in losing weight.

#4 is t correct, or rather it’s helpful but in a counter intuitive way. On its face, it’s very hard to exercise away a donut, but daily exercise causes your metabolism to pickup and you burn more calories for the rest of the day. Additionally, the more muscle you have the more your body will burn calories, so for weight loss it’s best to start with strength training (and not bullshit “toning” exercises) and then move into cardio.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#184

Post by alistairSH »

donkeydoug wrote: post #97
sp332 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diabetes is really rough on the organs. Especially once the kidneys go, you need dialysis 3 times per week and the treatment takes hours. If a substantial fraction of the population needs that treatment, it's going to be rough. Plus the eye surgeries for glaucoma, and other kinds of organ failure.

can't decide if it's good or bad then that we somehow have universal care... but only for kidneys, lol https://www.npr.org/transcripts/131167638

Oh wow, thanks for the link. I had no idea that we covered kidney disease that way.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#185

Post by alistairSH »

nradov wrote: post #168
watwut wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All in all, we eat and live in a more healthy way then generations before.

No, we really don't. Just look at the way the obesity rate has steadily increased over the past several generations. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti... Doctors are now seeing children come in fatty liver disease. That never used to happen.

I think it's safe to say both are true.

In general, we live in a healthier world. We know more about nutrition, cancer-causing chemicals, etc. We continue to make progress automating some of the most body-breaking jobs. Most of us (western world, anyways) have access to clean water.

But, a substantial portion of the US (and world?) population is making bad decisions about their diet which have life-altering side-effects like diabetes. The question then is "why?" We know a lot about nutrition and it's impact on our bodies. Is it advertising? Is it cost (McDonalds is more sometimes more affordable on a time+money basis than home-cooked food)? Is it just our tiny lizard brains REALLY like salt and sugar and Nestle etc know how to manipulate that?

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#186

Post by alistairSH »

refurb wrote: post #24
Gatsky wrote: post #11

> In the United States, prescriptions to 18- to 49-year-olds with type 2 diabetes grew from fewer than 2200 in 2000 to 768,000 in 2015. What the hell… that has to be a mistake? What is going on? Can poor lifestyle really cause this massive increase in young people with diabetes??

Treatment guidelines change all the time. Last time I checked metformin is now the the 1st drug therapy for type II diabetes and even "pre-diabetes". It's basically "oh, your blood sugar might be an issue, let's start with metformin" where in the past it was "lets try a bunch of others things and just watch your levels for a bit"

This. I have a few family members who struggle with blood sugar levels. Their doctors are quick to turn to pills instead of lifestyle/diet and monitoring. Likely because lifestyle/diet changes are hard and not very successful. Most of them have managed to adapt and deal without the pills, but it does take regular monitoring and they're all still borderline (pre-diabetic, I think is the term).

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#187

Post by ccalloway »

eMSF wrote: post #180
ianai wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works out to 6.0341E-06%

A condition which would affect 6e-6%, or 0.000006% of the US population (330M) would affect 20 persons. 200000/330M = 0.0006 = 0.06%.

The deformity in the general population affects 0.24% of male babies, so 0.12% of the population.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#188

Post by SpodGaju »

My hypothesis is that a functional zinc deficiency is the cause of most cases of diabetes, and by taking metformin, it will at least, not correct a zinc deficiency, and probably make it worse.

To begin I would like to share that I was born with an undecended testicle (cryptorchidism) that had to be removed surgically when I was 3. My brother was born with hypospadia. I have been studying the genetics and environmental issues around these for the last 15 years.

I carry several high risk genes for diabetes but probably the most relevant is that I carry the homozygous risk alleles for rs2466293 in SLC30A8 which is a zinc transporters gene. So I absorb zinc more slowly than most people.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5428214/

"Conclusion ZnT8A detection increases T1D diagnosis rate even in mixed populations. SLC30A8 rs2466293 was associated with T1D predisposition in non-European descents."

I had my serum zinc tested and it was low. So now I need to take 240mg of Zinc Sulphate and eat a lot of oysters to keep my zinc levels up.

I was diagnosed with Lupus and now I no longer present constant symptoms.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7544280/

"Ikaros family zinc finger 1(IKZF1) encodes a lymphoid-restricted zinc finger transcription factor named Ikaros that regulates lymphocyte differentiation and proliferation as well as self-tolerance. Increasing evidence indicates that IKZF1 could contribute to the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases."

So also understand that my mother had diabetes, an immune disorder, and a mood disorder, all of them linked to zinc deficiency.

So, in studies zinc deficiency has been linked to diabetes:

https://www.mdpi.com/260782

"Zinc deficiency is a risk factor for obesity and diabetes."

And genital abnormalities: (This is just one study, but there are hundreds like it.)

https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/441988

"WT1 is a transcriptional regulator with various functions including signalling in both the embryonic kidneys and gonads. Mutations in this zinc finger transcription factor are associated with Denys-Drash or Frasier syndromes, which result in a broad range of malformations including hypospadias."

So I do not think the problem is metformin. I think the problem is doctors not providing patients with diabetes a full nutritional workup and ignoring the role of nutrition in human health.

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#189

Post by arijun »

ImaCake wrote: post #119

Whatever your opinion on metformin this study is not really providing strong enough evidence to take seriously. No one should give it any attention, except the researchers who will try and do a better one next time and hopefully can prove/disprove this important hypothesis. The authors have done a lot of tests here. If you do enough tests, even on null data, you eventually get false positive results. Nevermind the ef…

Relevant xkcd:

https://xkcd.com/882/

Re: Rare genital defects seen in sons of men taking major diabetes drug

#190

Post by SpodGaju »

based69 wrote: post #78

Obese women’s offspring have double the risk of hypospadius, and women having babies after 40 have 4x the risk of hypospadius. Metformin is a drug that men are probably 100x more likely to be on at 45 vs 25. Therefore men on metformin are far more likely to be reproducing with older (and likely obese) women. I’m not saying this explains all the correlation, I’m just saying if the study doesn’t really make a good effo…

The link is probably not causal but it is still important. Meaning there is probably an underlying issue that causes both diabetes and genital abnormalities.

See my other comment where I link it to a functional zinc deficiency.

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