Hi everyone. My husband and I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with type ll diabetes. His blood sugar level was 170. Is that high? What is normal? They also put him on 500mg of Metformin which has a side of lactic acidosis which is fatal and that really worries us. Can someone give us some insight on this? I didn't think 170 was THAT bad! He is about 30 lbs overweight but can't he control this with diet and excercise? :confused:

170 is high enough to diagnose diabetes, but not horribly high. If he doesn't want to take the metformin, he can probably talk his doctor into letting him treat with diet and exercise at this point.

Metformin is an excellent Anti-Diabetic drug, addressing the insulin resistence that is the source of high blood sugars in Type II Diabetics. All drugs come with risks, but this is a really good drug and your friend's Doctor was wise to prescribe it. A fasting blood sugar level of 126 or higher is considered "Diabetic." The fact that your friend had a level of 170 mg/dl indicates that he/she got the diagnosis quite early, which is an awesome thing as proper control will be easier than if he/she had been diagnosed much later.

It's difficult to tell how advance your friend's diabetes is without knowing if that 170 was a fasting blood glucose or a non-fasting bg. If fasting, then it's high enough that he needs to get it down immediately, and his doctor was absolutely right to start him on medications. If his blood sugar is 170 fasting, then it's probably going way over 250 after eating.

As fishdude pointed out, ALL medications have side effects. Doctors usually weigh the risks of the medication versus the benefits of taking it. In your friend's case, the risks of NOT medicating are that he could develop all sorts of complications from uncontrolled diabetes...nerve damage (both peripheral and autonomic), eye problems such as retinopathy, kidney damage, vascular problems, and more. For some people, it doesn't take very long to develop side effects; thus his doctor has assessed that the risks of NOT taking medication are greater than the risks of taking it.

Your friend might possibly be able to get off medications down the road if he loses the excess weight and continues to monitor his eating, along with getting regular exercise. But the greater goal should be to keep blood sugar levels down by whatever means necessary.

Ruth

Here are his stats: LDL-145
HDL-47
Total-236

Tryclycerides-220

A1C- 7.3

Fasting bl. sugar-162

He is taking Vytorin for high chloesterol (sp) every day. He is trying to control it with diet and excercise at this point. I'm no expert, but I would think at this point, he could try it this way without the other med. I was reading up on Alpha-glucosidase inhibitors which seem far more safe to take by reading the side effects. Anyway, thanks everyone for listening.

Singer1

...... I'm no expert, but I would think at this point, he could try it this way without the other med. I was reading up on Alpha-glucosidase inhibitors which seem far more safe to take by reading the side effects.
Metformin is actually a very safe and effective drug. It got a bad reputation because of the history surrounding its development. Here is some info about it.

Two drugs from the biguanide class, metformin and phenformin, were developed in 1957. Unfortunately, phenformin reached the U.S. market first and resulted in several deaths from lactic acidosis. When this risk surfaced, phenformin was pulled from drugstore shelves worldwide. Metformin was eventually found to be 20 times less likely to cause lactic acidosis, but it was tainted by the history of its cousin. Metformin first became available in France in 1979 and has been widely used in Europe since then, but it was not cleared for use in Type 2 diabetes in the U.S. until 1994.

Metformin is a chemical kin to the French lilac plant, which was noted in the early 1900’s to lower the blood sugar. However, French lilac, like phenformin, turned out to be too toxic for use in humans. Metformin, with a much shorter action time than phenformin, has a much lower risk for severe side effects and is quite safe for use by anyone who is otherwise healthy. In fact, in the major UKPDS study, it was the only drug that reduced diabetes-related death rates, heart attacks, and strokes. It should not be used by those who use more than two ounces or two drinks of alcohol a day, who have congestive heart failure, or who have significant kidney, liver, or lung disease.

Metformin lowers fasting blood glucose levels by an average of 25% (17 to 37%), postprandial blood glucose up to 44.5%, and the A1c by an average of 1.5% (0.8 to 3.1%). Metformin reduces raised plasma insulin levels in cases of metabolic syndrome by as much as 30% and reduces the need for injected insulin in Type 2s by 15 to 32%.

Here is a link to another article on the subject. http://www.aafp.org/afp/20040415/tips/1.html

Cheers,

Mark

Wow! Thanks Mark. by the way, did you draw this info from the site that you gave me? :wave: