April 12, 2007

A Trial of Regular Metformin

As I discussed in an earlier blog entry, I'd noticed that my generic Metformin ER from the Teva manufacturing company was a lot peakier than the other brands and gave me a much lower blood sugar after lunch. With this in mind, I thought it might be time to see what would happen if I switched to regular Metformin instead of the extended release form.

So this week I'm taking 500 mg of regular metformin before meals (3 times a day) instead of the 1500 mg of Metformin ER which I've been taking at 10:30 AM.

So far, I'm not seeing any dramatic difference in the blood sugars, and, in fact, the post-lunch number isn't as good as before. I have noticed a stronger gastrointestinal effect: more gas and more frequent bowel movements. I'm going to give it a few more days but it looks to me like the Metformin ER has as strong an effect on the body with the advantages of less side effects and less need to remember to take the pill, since I take them all at once.

Dr. Bernstein contends in his latest book that the Glucophage brand of metformin is stronger than the generics. I haven't checked this out, but I did take the Glucophage XR version for a month without noticing anything dramatic. However, I have noticed very significant differences between other generic brands of metformin. If you aren't getting good results with yours, it might be worth asking the pharmacist if he has another generic brand you can try and see if it makes a difference. My pharmacist always fills my ER prescription with the Teva brand ever since I mentioned I was seeing much better numbers with it.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, Any of these medication you are talking about, all have serious side effects. They can be direct or indirect in conjuction to existing disease. I heard CAL Engineering have come out with some revolutionary therapeutic techniques, that provides blood sugar regulation with out any side effects as well repair the beta cells to some extent.

Ashley