Every month, I’ll be highlighting Diabetes research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: “One of the most confusing aspects for patients with type 2 diabetes is that we have high fasting glucose levels.” So – WHAT’S THE ANSWER???
“The World Health Organization (WHO) considers type 2 diabetes, one of the pandemics of the 21st century…it is a condition that results in high levels of circulating glucose -- the cellular energy fuel -- due to a deficient insulin response in the body…When blood glucose, also called blood sugar, levels rise after you eat, your pancreas [is supposed to] releases insulin into the blood. Insulin then lowers blood glucose to keep it in the normal range…In T2 patients, the glucose synthesis pathway in the liver (gluconeogenesis) is hyperactivated, a process that can be controlled by drugs such as metformin. ”
But metformin has never CURED T2. It wasn’t meant to. It’s a way to CONTROL T2. This group of researchers noticed something odd. From the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, “…factors involved in the control of gluconeogenesis [which is the liver making blood sugars and injecting them into our bloodstream]… sometimes patients hospitalized with COVID-19 showed high glucose levels…[it] seems to be related to the ability of the virus to spark the activity of proteins involved in starting the liver up making glucose and sending it to the bloodstream…”
So, that response of the bodies of people with COVID sometimes made their body react as if they were also Type 2 diabetic. Now, I take FOUR metformin tablets every day. I was SHOCKED to read this: “The mechanisms of action of metformin, the most commonly prescribed drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, which reduces how much glucose is in the blood, are still not fully understood.”
In other words, researchers, doctors, and pharmacists DON’T KNOW HOW METFORMIN WORKS!!!!!!! While I intentionally made that more alarm than I could have, the fact is that as researches dig into the method of metformin function, they’re finding out WAY more than they expected, up to and including the effect of metformin in REDUCING AGING!!! “Early evidence highlighted the liver as the major organ involved in the effect of metformin on reducing blood levels of glucose. However, increasing evidence points towards other sites of action that might also have an important role, including the gastrointestinal tract, the gut microbial communities and the tissue-resident immune cells.”
“At the molecular level, it seems that the mechanisms of action vary depending on the dose of metformin used and duration of treatment. Initial studies have shown that metformin targets hepatic mitochondria; however, the identification of a novel target at low concentrations of metformin at the lysosome surface might reveal a new mechanism of action. Based on the effectiveness and safety records in T2DM, attention has been given to the repurposing of metformin as part of adjunct therapy for the treatment of cancer, age-related diseases, inflammatory diseases, and COVID-19.”
Rest assured, I’ll be poking around this paper more as time goes on!
To briefly recap, it seems that HOW metformin works is even deeper than just at the level of CELLS – but deeper still into the “powerhouse” of every cell in your body: the mitochondria…
So, that’s it for now. Obviously I’ll continue to dig deeper into HOW metformin works. (I commented to my wife with a sigh, “Oh, great, now metformin with become as hard to get as Ozempic because the rich will start to pop the pills to stay young and beautiful!”
*sigh* I vote we should just suppress THAT little bit of information!
Links: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/06/240607121434.htm; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214027/; https://fagron.com/news-media/post/exploring-the-multifaceted-benefits-of-metformin-hydrochloride-beyond-diabetes-management/ ; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-023-00833-4
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