how exactly does met help you lose weight?

oedi · 10-18-2005, 08:48 PM

For those of you who lost weight on Metformin, how does this medicine provoke weight loss? Judging by the prevalence of nausea and upset stomach, is that the main reason-because appetite is decreased? Or does Metformin have that impact on your insulin resistance where if you were previously unable to process insulin, it corrects it and that in turn helps improve your metabolism?

I know weight loss is generally impossible without watching your diet and exercising as well. But I am curious. Whenever people speak of losing weight on Met, it seems as though it came with a significant amount of side effects. I know having an upset stomach can just make you queasy and take away your appetite entirely. But I thought perhaps Metformin, for those who are having insulin issues, will work to regulate your hormones...would that facilitate weight loss?

choirmissy · 10-18-2005, 09:39 PM

Met kind of levels the playing field a bit. In those of us with insulin resistance, our bodies produce too much insulin and the insulin isn't very effective. Met helps to control that. While the side effects do give a bit of a short-term weight loss, if you are eating properly, the Met should help to control the insulin your body puts out so you aren't feeling starved all the time. For instance, before I was diagnosed in the summer of 2004, I was swimming an hour long swim practice with the kids that I coached, mowed my 2 acres with a push mower (generally an hour or two a day) or did aerobics in the off days. I usually eat less in the summer because the heat bothers me. I didn't lose a pound, and I wasn't overeating. After the met, with the same diet and exercising only 45 minutes a day, I started to slowly lose weight.

Hope that helps explain a bit.
Melissa

nobimbo · 10-19-2005, 08:36 AM

The mechanism by which Met helps with weight loss appears to be associated with it's insulin-sensitizing ability, not just the side effects, although that plays a role in some people. It has been shown that Met works best for weight loss in the obese. Here is one summary of the studies about weight loss/Met in non-diabetics:

Metformin in nondiabetic patients:
Weight loss is modest at best
In most studies of metformin in people without diabetes, the subjects were obese and had various features of insulin resistance or polycystic ovary syndrome.
In most of these studies, taking metformin led to a loss of weight and improvements in insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome. However, a few studies did not show any statistically significant weight loss, and in the rest the mean weight loss was only modestly greater with metformin than with placebo (2-3 kg).
Studies in patients who were not obese showed no significant weight loss.