Metformin Is Not A Wonder Drug

Metformin was approved as a treatment for diabetes in Europe in the 1950s. It wasn’t until 1995 that the FDA approved it for use in the U.S. It has since become the most widely prescribed medication for people with diabetes who cannot control their blood sugar through diet and exercise alone. Metformin is the world’s fourth most commonly prescribed medicine; therefore, its adverse impacts on nutritional factors affect a significant percentage of the global population.

Metformin is an antidiabetic agent that manages high blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes patients. It reduces glucose absorption from the intestines, lowers liver glucose production, and improves insulin sensitivity. For better results, metformin is recommended along with dietary changes and exercise.

Managing blood sugar levels with medications like metformin can prevent complications such as kidney damage, nerve issues, blindness, amputations, and sexual dysfunction, or that’s what they think. However, statistics for all these conditions suggest that metformin is not adequate and does little to control diabetes or lower the risk of heart attacks or strokes. If metformin was so good, why is it that one person dies every 33 seconds from cardiovascular disease in the United States?

Modern medicine makes a huge mistake when it comes to putting pharmaceuticals ahead of more natural and necessary medicines like magnesium, which do not come with the side effects of a drug like metformin. For all the wonders claimed for metformin, magnesium outperforms in every case. Magnesium is essential for life; metformin is not. It is a significant problem that metformin interferes with many aspects of magnesium’s absorption and excretion.

Low serum magnesium concentrations are associated with
dyslipidemia, hypertension, endothelial dysfunction, and inflammation,
and thus the development of cardiovascular disease, including diabetes.

Doctors cannot deny that there is a trade-off between the importance of long-term administration of metformin in improving glycaemic control and its negative impact on magnesium status, a nutrient vital for glycaemic control. This is so critical that some doctors recommend routine measurement of magnesium levels as a management strategy to prevent hypomagnesemia.

Hypomagnesemia in people diagnosed with diabetes is reported to be about 31%, based on a lower acceptable limit for magnesium of 0.70mmol/L. There is a recommendation for a universal lower acceptable limit for magnesium of 0.80 mmol/L, which, therefore, noticeably increases the percentage of people with diabetes with hypomagnesemia. These are ultra-conservative estimates.

Magnesium is involved in more than 600 different functions, including cell membrane stability, mitochondrial function, maintenance of the tertiary structure of DNA and RNA, many major metabolic and signaling pathways, protein, lipid, and carbohydrate synthesis and metabolism, insulin/glucose metabolism, nervous and immune system function, heart function, muscle formation and contraction, bone and calcium metabolism, and activation of the nutrients thiamine, vitamin C, vitamin D, and iodide.

Magnesium deficiency is associated with diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, including arrhythmia, preeclampsia, heart failure, and hypertension; neurological diseases, including headache, seizures, and stroke; respiratory diseases, including bronchial asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; depression, overweight and obesity, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes mellitus, and changes in lipid metabolism.

Doctors at Harvard University fill themselves with wishful thinking that metformin would lower the risk of cancer in persons with type 2 diabetes. These include cancers of the breast, colon, and prostate, and would reduce the risks of dementia and stroke. So bad do they want to sell this drug that they suggest that metformin may slow aging and increase life expectancy, possibly by improving the body’s responsiveness to insulin, antioxidant effects, and blood vessel health. How can it realistically do that if metformin compromises magnesium levels in any way?

Insulin-resistant people (diabetics and metabolic syndrome) have impaired wound healing. We know that in the arteries at the endothelium level, people with diabetes damage their arterial walls just by living. Reversing insulin resistance is the first step to reversing diabetes and heart disease. Dr. Jerry Nadler of the Gonda Diabetes Center at the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California, and his colleagues placed 16 healthy people on magnesium-deficient diets. Their insulin became less effective at getting sugar from their blood into their cells, where it’s burned or stored as fuel. In other words, they became less insulin sensitive or insulin resistant. Most men, women, and children today are magnesium deficient.

Side Effects Vs. No Side Effects – Metformin Vs. Magnesium

It has been recognized for over 50 years that low serum
magnesium concentrations can be found in patients with diabetes.

In some people, metformin causes blood glucose levels to drop too low. The medical term for this is hypoglycemia. However, gastrointestinal side effects are the primary barrier to metformin use. However, the most significant concern about metformin is its potential for lactic acidosis. Individuals with diabetes, especially type 2 diabetes, are at an increased risk for developing lactic acidosis. Studies indicate that the incidence of lactic acidosis is approximately 3% among all patients with diabetes compared to 0.1% in the non-diabetic population.

Metformin has a boxed warning — also called a black box warning — about the risk of lactic acidosis. A boxed warning is the most severe warning the FDA issues. Death, hypothermia, hypotension, and resistant bradyarrhythmias have been reported due to metformin-associated lactic acidosis. Lactic acidosis is a serious problem resulting from a buildup of metformin in your body, which causes a pH imbalance.

Onset may be subtle and include nonspecific symptoms such as malaise, myalgia, respiratory distress, somnolence, and abdominal distress; laboratory abnormalities include low pH, increased anion gap, and elevated blood lactate.

The risk for this is higher among people with significant kidney disease, so doctors tend to avoid prescribing metformin for them. A growing appreciation of the pathophysiological interrelatedness of metabolic risk factors such as obesity and diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease raises doubts about whether metformin should be prescribed for anyone. In 2023, cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome was recognized as a clinical reality, meaning kidney disease is a risk factor for everyone prescribed metformin.

Why risk all the side effects of metformin when magnesium is without side effects? Magnesium is a more fundamental and necessary intervention. The body needs magnesium, so why would there be side effects except for loose stools if you take high dosages?

There is a long list of metformin side effects:

• extreme tiredness
• weakness
• decreased appetite
• nausea
• vomiting
• trouble breathing
• dizziness
• lightheadedness
• a fast or slow heart rate
• a cold feeling
• muscle pain
• flushing or sudden reddening and warmth in your skin
• stomach pain combined with any of these other symptoms
• abdominal or stomach discomfort
• cough or hoarseness
• decreased appetite
• diarrhea
• fast or shallow breathing
• fever or chills
• a general feeling of discomfort
• lower back or side pain
• muscle pain or cramping
• painful or difficult urination
• sleepiness

Less common side effects

• anxiety
• blurred vision
• chest discomfort
• cold sweats
• coma
• confusion
• cool, pale skin
• depression
• difficult or labored breathing
• dizziness
• fast, irregular, pounding, or racing heartbeat or pulse
• feeling of warmth
• headache
• increased hunger
• increased sweating
• nausea
• nervousness
• nightmares
• redness of the face, neck, arms, and occasionally, upper chest
• seizures
• shakiness
• slurred speech
• tightness in the chest
• unusual tiredness or weakness

Rare side effects

• behavior change similar to being drunk
• difficulty with concentrating
• drowsiness
• lack or loss of strength
• restless sleep
• unusual sleepiness
• abnormal stools
• bad, unusual, or unpleasant (after) taste
• change in taste
• difficulty with moving
• discoloration of the fingernails or toenails
• flu-like symptoms
• joint pain
• rash
• sneezing
• stuffy or runny nose
• swollen joints