Have you recently been diagnosed with Diabetes or PCOS? Has your doctor recommended taking Metformin as part of your treatment? Learn about the most common side effects and the best ways to try and avoid them. Starting a new medication can be scary so be informed.
In this video we’re gonna be going over the medication metformin keep watching because we’re gonna teach you about why you take it what are the most common side effects we’ll give some tips on how to avoid those side effects as well as warn you about some of the things that you need be careful of all taking there welcome to family met i’m doctor richardson and
This is your home for practical and accurate information to help your family make healthy decisions this is a channel that focuses on bringing better helps to your home this sounds like the kind of information that would be helpful to you make sure you hit that subscribe button follow along with us on today’s episode we’re going to be talking about one of those
Common medications that we use a treat diabetes called metformin this is a medication that’s been available in united states since 1995 its main use is to help control blood sugars and diabetes but it’s also using conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome and some use it to help with weight loss now but foreman blings belongs to a class of medications called
By guanines it works a little different than any other diabetic medications there’s several are different effects it has in the body to help control blood sugar the first is that it works on decreasing how much sugar your liver releases into the blood now maybe you didn’t know this but the liver is actually one of the biggest storage organs for sugar in the body
When you need a boost of energy the liver releases glucose to give you that little extra boost that you need now normally this works well and diabetes though it can be a problem you don’t want to have that extra sugar released some metformin helps slow that down also it decreases how much sugars absorb from the intestines it helps to work on improving your body
Sensitivity to insulin that’s one of the big problems and conditions like diabetes or pcos in these conditions your body’s resistant to the hormone that helps bring the sugar from the blood into the cells in order to be utilized so that’s why matt forma is such a great choice for most people with these conditions it does a great job in trying to decrease that
Resistance and counteract the effects of this causes so at this point you may have asked why you should even care that your blood sugars are elevated well this is a great question and unfortunately that’s one we have to talk about a lot diabetes is extremely common and getting more and more so as time goes on untreated diabetes has some awful complications that
Can happen including dramatically increasing your risk for heart attacks and strokes it can affect your eyes putting your risk from going blind it can affect your kidneys causing them to fail as well as affect your nerves and circulation your legs and feet especially causing damage to those nerves this is a big deal because it makes it easier to get injured and
Then it doesn’t heal well putting you at risk for infections and even leading sometimes to amputations so diabetes is not a good thing and not treating it as obviously not a good thing so if you’re taking this for diabetes that’s the reason you’d be motivated to control and treat this is the best you can know certainly medication is not the only way you should
Treat diabetes diet and lifestyle changes are the absolute most essential thing to be working on to control this and keep it from getting worse but unfortunately for many diet and lifestyle changes are not enough or we can’t make them fast enough in order to get your sugar’s under control that’s likely by your doctors recommending me to take metformin so what
Should you expect from this medication well first of all it comes in a tablet and a liquid form tablets come in either an immediate release or in an extended release version of 500 850 or a thousand milligrams and depending on which formulation you have you can take it either once or twice a day an important thing to remember about this medication specifically in
Diabetes medications in general is it only works while you’re taking it i have people come in all the time with their blood sugar’s high after we originally had a control telling me that they stopped medicine because they fixed it well unfortunately this isn’t the way it works unless you have some underlying lifestyle issues that are causing your blood sugars to
Be high and you fix those you need to stay on these medications don’t stop them unless she discuss it with your doctor on metformin is typically the first medication that we start people on when they’re diagnosed with diabetes overall for most people has tolerated quite well but there are some issues that people can have would take the medication that we need to
Talk about the most common side effect we tend to see with metformin there’s some sort of stomach type symptoms this can be nausea bloating gas diarrhea or all of the above this can anyb be anywhere from mild to more severe symptoms now there are ways that we try to avoid this though so don’t despair if you’re patient did you start this medication we can usually
Get you to the appropriate dose without having to live with the side effects one of the tricks that we use a starting medication at a low dose and increasing it slowly for example we’ll start somebody at 500 milligrams once a day then increase our dose every few days to a week until they’re at the goal dose this usually does a trick now taking the higher dose too
Quickly as usually the reason people start to have side effects and we’ve also noticed that taking it with meals or in the evening at first can also make a difference and finally i found that a lot of people putting them on the extended-release version tends to help them avoid these side effects now the other thing you can do to minimize these side effects is be
More careful with your diet if you remember one of the ways this medication works is by blocking how much sugar is absorbed from the gut when less sugar is absorbed more stays in the gut and the bacteria in your gut start to digest that sugar causing it to ferment well that causes gas and all the other unpleasant side effects that come with it so as a diabetic you
Need to be watching your sugar or carb intake anyway so this can add a little more motivation to do so but unfortunately some people just aren’t able to tolerate it and we have to reach for something else to treat but for the majority if we just increase the dose slow watch our diet better we can usually avoid this main side effect now besides an aussie and gas and
Diarrhea other side effects that we can see are some decreased appetite a feeling of weakness headaches sometimes a metallic taste in the mouth and a rash these last side-effects so i don’t see as much usually if somebody doesn’t want to take this medications because of the stomach symptoms now there are some more serious elvia traer reactions you should be aware
Of them watch for the most concerning of which is a condition lactic acidosis this is where the ph or acid level drops from your blood it can make you very sick or even be fatal this is very uncommon that can happen when your kidneys are not functioning well we watch for this in those who have chronic kidney disease as well as those who are really sick and behind
It as well as people who undergoing certain medical procedures where they’re getting some iv contrast your doctor should be keeping an eye on your kidney function over time so it’s not something that we see much i would also recommend my patients though that if they’re sick and they’re vomiting they’re not taking them fluids they really should avoid taking them at
Foreman during these times it’d be a good conversation to have with your doctor to see thing how they want you to handle it one other thing you should keep an eye on more recently we’ve seen it with metformin it can possibly affect your vitamin b12 absorption which if unrecognized might contribute to certain anemias or something we call neuropathy this is where the
Nerves are damaged and can cause some chronic pain issues this can easily check though in your routine blood work so overall this is a great medication to treat diabetes in fact we consider it the foundational medicine that treatment of the condition because of how it works and how it helps everything else you do to treat diabetes work better it’s a great medicine
That works and best of all it’s cheap you can get a 30-day supply of a 500 milligram extended-release metformin for around four dollars well so if diet and lifestyle changes have not been enough to control your diabetes or you suffer from conditions such as pcos and your doctor recommends that you take metformin as part of your treatment regimen hopefully have a
Little more confidence in using this as a part of your treatment plan but there certainly isn’t an all-inclusive and in-depth discussion everything that we told about this medication it’s not what i’m trying to do here my purpose in sharing this information is help give information that you can think about and discuss with your own doctor so please don’t take this
As a direct medical advice take everything you’ve learned today discuss it with your doctor and how it applies in your own situation well if you found this information to be helpful do me a favor go ahead and hit that like button and share it with your friends and family and if your health is really important to you consider subscribing and hit that notification
Button so you don’t miss out at any of our eat your content now don’t go anywhere because if you’re looking at ways that you can make that start in your diet and lifestyle changes to treat your diabetes click here to watch simple steps that you can take to start your diet journey and go ahead and click here to watch one of my other videos that you may like well
Until next time this is family mehta dr. richardson and remember take care of your body because it’s the only one you have you
Transcribed from video
METFORMIN FOR DIABETES AND More | Side Effects and How to Avoid Them! By Erik Richardson D.O.