Two critical warnings you NEED to know if you take the No. 1 diabetes drug

The side effects of the type 2 diabetes drug metformin are generally mild.

However, I want to bring attention to two notes of caution every metformin user needs to be aware of, especially if you’re just starting the drug.

  • Note 1: Beware of gastrointestinal side effects

A friend of mine recently began using metformin. Unfortunately, her doctor didn’t ease her into the dosage. I’ll spare you the details (they aren’t pretty), but she developed gastrointestinal symptoms painful enough to send her to the emergency room.

  • Note 2: Metformin may impede your ability to absorb B vitamins

These issues came to my attention through a recent article in which a People’s Pharmacy (PP) reader wrote in to share his metformin experience. He says he’s had success controlling blood sugar with metformin, but the side effects — including nausea, stomach cramps, diarrhea, and heartburn — are too much to bear.

PP responded by acknowledging that the reader’s symptoms are not unusual, but many who suffer these gastro reactions find that they subside in time. They also note that kidney function should be monitored with metformin use, especially in those with compromised kidneys (and that would include many diabetics).

Oddly, PP doesn’t mention B vitamin absorption. Apparently, this metformin issue isn’t widely known.

As Dr. Marc Micozzi points out in his Integrative Protocol for Defeating Diabetes: “Unfortunately, many doctors have yet to catch up to the research on this risk. So to be safe, you should supplement daily with a high-quality B vitamin for as long as you take Metformin.”

And those B vitamins just might be the key to overcoming metformin’s gastrointestinal problems. As Dr. Micozzi notes, all eight vitamins in the B complex are important for digestive health. He offers these five examples of the ways B vitamins affect digestion:

  • Vitamin B1 (thiamine) — helps convert carbohydrates into energy
  • Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) — aids digestion by maintaining the mucosal lining of the digestive tract
  • Vitamin B3 (niacin) — breaks down carbs, fats, and alcohol — a deficiency causes pellagra which prompts vomiting and diarrhea
  • Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) — helps the body process proteins
  • Vitamin B7 (biotin) — processes proteins, carbs, and fatty acids

You can get the full host of the B vitamin complex in meat, dairy, eggs, green leafy vegetables, beans, seafood, and whole grains. But for most people, that won’t be enough to offset the metformin effect of B depletion. So to make sure your digestive tract stays up and running smoothly, Dr. Micozzi recommends you take a quality vitamin B-complex supplement.

Dr. Micozzi also stresses the vital importance of one B vitamin in particular: B12 which protects the nerves and helps prevent peripheral neuropathy — a major health issue for diabetics. So be sure that the B-complex formula you choose contains at least 12 mcg of vitamin B12.

Once you get past the B vitamin issue, which is simple to solve, metformin provides one tremendous tradeoff: cancer prevention.

A few years ago, doctors noticed that type 2 patients who took metformin had lower cancer rates compared to diabetic patients who used other drugs to control their blood sugar. When they began investigating, results were remarkable.

For instance, in a recent meta-analysis of 11 studies, researchers found that cancer risk dropped by 30 percent in patients who took metformin compared to other diabetes drugs.

Researchers are not yet certain why metformin has this preventive effect on cancer that appears to be missing in other diabetes drugs, but one study concluded that metformin shuts down access to the fuel required by cancer cells to survive.

And Dr. Micozzi adds: “Cancer cells thrive with higher levels of sugar in the blood. It supports their rapid growth. Cancer also appears to like high insulin levels. The pancreas produces more insulin when blood sugar is not getting into the tissue cells, as is the case with diabetes. In fact, this helps explain why type 2 diabetes patients run a higher risk of developing cancer.”

For these reasons, and for its stellar track record for blood sugar control, Dr. Micozzi believes metformin should still be the first-line treatment for diabetics, despite the potential gastrointestinal effects. (And again, these effects can usually be avoided by gradually increasing your dose over a couple of weeks. You should work with your doctor to find a dosing strategy that you feel comfortable with.)

You can read more about metformin and other ways to effectively (and naturally) manage your blood sugar in Dr. Micozzi’s Integrative Protocol for Defeating Diabetes. To learn more about this protocol or to enroll today, click here.

 

SOURCES 

peoplespharmacy.com. “Can You Manage the Side Effects of Metformin?” People’s Pharmacy. April 2, 2018