rosiglitazone

Hi haritou, and welcome to the forum.

Good news about your Christmas sugar levels. I have no experience with any other drugs with metformin, hopefully someone who has will be on later to answer your questions.

Regards, Tubs.

I used to take gliclazide, which can cause hypos, but i stopped taking it when I went low carb.
Don't need it any more. i didn't want any more weight gain, which both rosiglitazone and gliclazide can cause. Metformin doesn't

haritou said:

Hi evryone, Have had type 2 for 2 years now and still its driving me crazy what to eat and not to eat . I must admit I ate lots of chocs over Christmas and my sugar levels were great. Must be the eat throughout the day thing and the fat content kept my sugar levels low. Weird?? I put on 5 lbs so back to swimming every day

My question is anyone still on the rosiglterzone drug with Metformin. The doctor gave me glucomide something like that and I had a hypo so back on the rosi. I have read so much bad press and really worried about it. Is there another drug I could take?
Thanks guys

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Hi Haritou and welcome to the forum.
The additional med your doctor gave you is almost certainly a sulpholylurea drug (these nearly all start with gl and end with ide), most probably gliclazide as this is the cheapest and therefore most commonly prescribed one. This drug forces your pancreas to produce more insulin, so a hypo can be a side effect. Your weight gain will most likely be down to the rosiglitazone. This is the most common side effect of the glitazone drugs, and is something that affects nearly all who take it. It can also have a number of other pretty nasty side effects, like oedema (fluid retention), shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, dizzyness and loss of balance. Recent studies have shown there may be an increased risk of coronary heart disease and heart attacks with rosiglitazone. I was on it for 6 months, during which I put on 5 stone despite constant dieting. The weight started to come off as soon as I was taken off it.

As to an alternative, well what it does is essentialy the same as metformin. It binds to cell receptors in order to reduce insulin resistance. The same result can often be achieved by a higher dose of metformin, or by switching to the slow release form of metformin (Glucophage SR) which acts over a longer period and so is more effective.

Hope that helps.

Agreed, the TZDs seem to be good drugs but only for a minority of patients. Metformin can be used up to 2500 mg or so, increasing the dose may bring back the squitters for a while, and its effect is potentiated by exercise.

Probably your best bet would be to pay more attention to your diet and postprandial numbers

http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/NewlyDiagnosed.htm

Hi Maria,

TZD is short for thiazolidinedione, the full name of the glitazone drug family. Bit of a mouthful so this type of medication is often called a glitazone or a TZD. Postprandial means after a meal, preprandial means before a meal. By postprandial numbers, what Trinkwasser was saying is that you should check your blood sugar level after food in order to see what effect your meal has had on your blood sugar. Of course this means that you also need to test before the meal so that you know what the increase has been. A test at 1 hour after eating will show your BS at it's peak level, and 2 hours after it should be back almost to the start point. By doing this test and experimenting with different types of food you will know what types of carbohydrates have what effect on your BS levels, and therefore what you should avoid or have only in small quantities.