Diabetes and metformin

[Barry bwfc]

Hi All.. I had my prostate removed to it being cancerous a couple of years ago, all the cancer has gone but I suffered an acute kidney injury during the operation and have been under a kidney specialist since then. My recent blood test show all good with my kidneys but my sugar levels were 61 or 7.7 and my kidney specialist advised me to increase my metformin (sukkarto SR) from 2 x 500mg to 4 x 500 mg. This resulted in extreme diareah after a couple of days so went back to my normal 2 x500. I am aware that diareah can be caused by metformin but keen to reduced my sugars levels.. would it have been better to ease myself up to 4 x500mg ie take 3 x 500 for a few weeks then ease into the 4 x500? Thank you

 

[JoKalsbeek]

Hi All.. I had my prostate removed to it being cancerous a couple of years ago, all the cancer has gone but I suffered an acute kidney injury during the operation and have been under a kidney specialist since then. My recent blood test show all good with my kidneys but my sugar levels were 61 or 7.7 and my kidney specialist advised me to increase my metformin (sukkarto SR) from 2 x 500mg to 4 x 500 mg. This resulted in extreme diareah after a couple of days so went back to my normal 2 x500. I am aware that diareah can be caused by metformin but keen to reduced my sugars levels.. would it have been better to ease myself up to 4 x500mg ie take 3 x 500 for a few weeks then ease into the 4 x500? Thank you

Sorry you've been having such a rough time of it lately. As for metformin, I couldn't tolerate it either, so I went the diet-route... Got my blood sugars back to normal without medicinal help, which might appeal to you after the toilet-disaster. https://josekalsbeek.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-nutritional-thingy.html might help a little. Basically, practically all carbs end up as blood glucose, so, cut the carbs, lower blood sugar levels. I doubt you'll have to change your diet overmuch, as with a HbA1c of 66 you should be able to get back to good numbers right-quick with just a few tweaks. Maybe ditch bread, potatoes, rice, cereals, corn... That alone should make a massive difference. You could slowly up the metformin, but as you're already on slow release, I don't know how much use it'll be... It's up to you whether you want to try that experiment.

Good luck!
Jo