Promising pill to prevent diabetes

New study shows that taking a pill may help prevent adult onset diabetes. But it’s not for everyone.


Metformin, also known as Glucophage, is prescribed to those that have a condition where the body does not respond to insulin well. Insulin is the hormone the body makes when it has too much sugar and tries to get rid of it (and store it as fat).

Understand How Glucophage Works

Glucophage is a well-known brand of the generic drug, metformin. Glucophage is an anti-diabetic medication that helps your body use insulin more efficiently. Glucophage also decreases the amount of sugar your body absorbs from food and helps lower the level of blood glucose. Glucophage itself is not insulin, so it doesn’t work for insulin dependent diabetics.

Type 2 diabetics who still produce some insulin from their pancreas benefit from Glucophage. People who have Type 2 diabetes have either a decreased amount of insulin produced or their cells are resistant to the insulin. When a Type 2 diabetic takes Glucophage, the Glucophage helps the cells receive the insulin already in their body and helps to lower blood glucose levels.

Many of us have a hard time losing weight and although most of the time it’s because we don’t manage what we eat well (70% of your weight depends on what you eat!) sometimes it is a hormonal problem. Medical conditions such as thyroid disease, insulin resistance, and polycystic ovarian syndrome along with diabetes are a few conditions where not losing weight can be blamed on your hormones.

While I don’t prescribe diet pills (hey, if they worked every doctor you know would be thin, right?), I do prescribe Metformin and I feel it is a great pill. But not for everyone.

Metformin works for people who have insulin resistance. When they take it, they love it, because almost immediately they begin to lose weight easier than they have before. But if you are not insulin resistant you should not bother taking it. It won’t help you. It is not a diet pill. It is a “pre-diabetic pill”.

So, how do you know if you have insulin resistance or not?

I like to think of this condition as a prediabetic phase. It’s what happens before your body gives up and makes you a full diabetic.

The first thing that happens is that your body can’t read the insulin your pancreas is making and so it keeps producing too much of it. Insulin should really only be high if you just ate something, especially something rich in carbs and sugars. It takes the sugar you have and stores it as fat.

So an ideal situation is when you wake up and you haven’t eaten all night. Then, your sugar should be low. Less than 126 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl). The equally important thing is that your insulin should be low too. Right? You only need insulin after you eat. Normal fasting insulin should be less than 30 milli-international units per milliliter (mIU/mL).

Well in insulin resistant conditions, including polycystic ovarian syndrome, you wake up with a low sugar, like 96 mg/dl, but your insulin is so high, like 67 (mIU/mL) , that the first thing you eat is stored as fat because your insulin is ready to start working and store food as fat.

That is why it is important to look at more than just the sugar in the morning. You should ask your doctor to look at the sugar to insulin ratio in the morning. 

That is know as a fasting glucose/ insulin ratio.

 A normal ratio should be around 4.5 or higher. In other words, while you are sleeping all night, you should wake up with a sugar say about 90 mg/dl and insulin of say 8 mIU/ml!

There are more sensitive tests as well that require you to drink loads of sugar but I think the sugar/insulin ratio is a good start.

Categories: General
Alexandra Simotas