Has anyone tried metformin and what kind of results did you obtain on your cholesterol numbers. The research I found on the web seems incouraging. I think I would have a better chance talking my doctor in to a script for that instead of a Statin. Just trying to know all my options before ai go to the dr.
Thanks,
Rick

metformin is for diabetes not cholesteral

Rick,
As Delrae said, glucophage is for Diabetes.

I doubt that you'll have trouble talking your doctor into a statin. If anything, most of them are MORE than ready and willing to prescribe them.

metformin is for diabetes not cholesteral
...Yes, you are both correct. I was researching the other day and ran across a report on the effects of metformin in a study. Besides the glucose benefits, there was significant improvement in the test subjects cholesterol levels. I suspect it works the same way that the Low gi diet works. I was just curious if anyone here had tried it.
...The more and more I research the subject on the web, the more I'm beginning to think that carbohydrate metabolism has a big influence on cholesterol. Right now I'm trying to find the relationship between the adrenal gland and cholesterol. I read one report that stated the adrenal gland uses LDL to make the adrenal hormones. It seems logical to me that if our adrenal system was overtaxed or exhausted, that the liver would produce extra LDL for the adrenal to use to make more hormones. The adrenal gland also regulates the glucose levels of our metabolism when glycogen stores are depleted or inhibited by excess insulin.
...All these things can be carbohydrate metabolism related by conditions like insulin resistance, which is my problem. In anyput you may have on this would also be appreciated.
thanks,
Rick

Rick,

The system is WAY to complex to try to tinker with like that, and a wrench like glucophage or insulin when a person isn't running high blood sugar is likely to do a lot more damage than good.
Lines like "It seems logical to me that if our adrenal system was overtaxed or exhausted, that the liver would produce extra LDL for the adrenal to use to make more hormones." are SO pervasive in the pop literature without a hint of any provable "adrenal exhaustion." THey are the bread and butter of the pop-medicine paperbacks; they SOUND good with no real meaning.

My other fave is the "anti-oxidant" craze we hear about at every turn as if "oxidation" was an enemy. If we could turn off oxidation, life on earth would end in a millisecond.

Rick,

The system is WAY to complex to try to tinker with like that, and a wrench like glucophage or insulin when a person isn't running high blood sugar is likely to do a lot more damage than good.

Very true, I was thinking that if there were those here that had seen improvement with a low gi diet, that they may also be insulin resistant or have type two diabetes. CHD is so prevelant with these two groups, I thought there would be a good chance of finding someone like that here.

Your right about all the stuff out there on "adrenal exhaustion" A better word may have been adrenal stress. Adrenal health plays a big role in a lot of chronic conditions. I didn't think of looking for correlations of stress and cholesterol. I may do a search on PubMed and see if any studies have been done on that correlation. BTW, I pretty much limit my searches to site such as Medscape and pubmed in order to avoid the pop culture that manifests itself on the internet.
Thanks again,
Rick

Rick,

I wish so many of the GOOD research sites wouldn't immediately greet us with...
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...I was looking for some other info and ran across this article that actually talks in plain english about metformin. As you know, I have insulin resistance and I found it was aggrevating another chronic condition I have and when i addressed the insulin resistance, I got the added benefit of seeing my cholesterol numbers improve. I haven't tried metformin but I have hear that it works the same way that the Low GI diet does, which is to slow down the metabolism of Carbs thus decreasing insulin release. I'm starting to believe that some of us may have high cholesterol because of the demand for hormones of the different glands. In this case it would be the hormone insulin. For those whose process carbs normally, I would not expect to see any difference in cholesterol, if they were given this drug.

Metformin (dimethyl-biguanide) is an oral antidiabetic drug, which decreases hepatic glucose production (gluconeogenesis) and increases peripheral glucose uptake by muscles. Metformin is a first-line drug in the treatment of overweight and obese type 2 diabetic patients, offering a selective pathophysiological approach by its effect on insulin resistance. It has been shown in a number of studies to improve clinical outcomes in type 2 diabetic patients. It has been demonstrated in a number of studies that metformin has multiple biological effects - it has been shown to have platelet antiaggregating effects, to reduce the rate of formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and to decrease the cellular oxidative reactions, thus demonstrating the antioxidant effects of the drug, which may largely explain its vascular protective effect. A number of studies have established the favorable effect of metformin on body weight, insulin resistance, hyperinsulinaemia, lipid parameters (total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides), arterial hypertension, fibrinolysis, endothelial dysfunction. Thus metformin appears to have a broad set of pharmacological properties, making the drug potentially applicable even in nondiabetic situations such as obesity, extreme insulin resistance with acanthosis nigricans, polycystic ovary syndrome, etc. Metformin has been demonstrated in the Diabetes Prevention Program to be a drug with great potential in preventing the conversion of IGT to type 2 diabetes. Thus, metformin appears to be a drug with multiple therapeutic effects far beyond its effect on lowering blood glucose in diabetes mellitus.