What the pharmacist told me today

[Greg1957]

On the advice of a great forum member, I went to Boots the chemist in order to source magnesium citrate in order to keep the food basket regular.

I told him I was on a low carb high fat diet, he asked me how I was doing, I told him my blood sugars were falling, I had stopped taking gliclizide and I hoped before long to stop metformin. He shrieked NO! Never stop taking metformin! Taken aback, I asked why?

He said that everyone in the world should be on metformin, and stated, Cancer loves sugar, metformin makes sugar harder for cancer to ingest, he said that people with uncontrolled sugar have an increased risk of 20% as far as contracting cancer. And even if my sugars are under control I should continue to take metformin!

My question is simple, is my pharmacist correct?

 

[bulkbiker]

Pharmacist sounds like a bit of an idiot.. don't eat carbs (sugar) don't feed glucose loving cancer cells.. hardly rocket science..
Although it has yet to be shown that all cancer cells live on glucose but ultra low carb diets do seem to help reduce some of them. Brain tumours especially from what I have read. Still very cutting edge science though.

 

[Sue192]

On balance, pharmacists are usually a source of good advice, but not in this case perhaps?! I am very uncomfortable with blanket prescribing - statins, for example - as one size NEVER fits all. It smacks of those Victorian wedding/21st birthday have-all-your-teeth-out 'presents', given to pre-empt all your teeth falling out/having to be pulled out (which in those days they probably did). And wooo, absolutely huge profits for the pharmaceutical companies.....

 

[Resurgam]

There are cancers which can only use glucose as an energy source, so if you go low carb you would deprive them of the ability to flourish - however - what possible mechanism would Metformin have to act on the glucose using cancers? Our bodies cannot differentiate between cancer cells and our proper ones - so what could Metformin be doing to achieve what the pharmacist claimed?

 

[sally and james]

None of us have a Metformin deficiency, but many of us don't eat good, real food and are under nourished and swallow an awful lot of rubbish. Unless you really can't absorb something, or have an actual illness that requires a drug (eg. T1 diabetes - insulin), personally, I would avoid all drugs and let my body get on with things.
Sally

 

[MikeTurin]

There alre studies that find that metformin lowers the risk of colon cancer and polyps

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(15)00565-3/abstract

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4204699/

And the mechanism seems not related to the liver dump prevention, maybe there was a misunderstatement of the whole message?

 

[Resurgam]

As my colon felt as though it was about to escape or be expelled due to it being red hot, I would imagine that Metformin would be effective against anything finding my gut a likely looking place to settle down.

 

[MikeTurin]

As my colon felt as though it was about to escape or be expelled due to it being red hot, I would imagine that Metformin would be effective against anything finding my gut a likely looking place to settle down.

Maybe the possible side effect of metformin on colon an the polyp prevention are correlated, like it works on the walls making them different...

Anyway, like aspirin, the dame medicie could have vastly different uses with vastly different mechanisms.

 

[ringi]

Given that both VirtaHealth (run by the people who wrote the book on low carb) and Prof Tim Noakes are positive about Metformin for people who have controled their BG with LCHF, I consider that Metformin is lickly to be a good option for anyone with a high level of insilin restaince (or risk of inslin resistance) regardless of BG level. (Assuming the side effects don't reduce quallity of life.)

(It is now looking like some cancers love high inslin levels, and Metformin helps to reduce our inslin level regardless of our BG level.)

It is very lickly the pharmacist is correct, but as no one makes a lot of money from the sale of Metformin, I exepct the reseach to find out will never be done.

 

[sally and james]

@Greg1957 wrote of an "increased risk of 20%" and @MikeTurin[USER] wrote that a drug "lowers the risk". Let us remind ourselves of what this means in real life: If one in a thousand normally get Condition X, but drinking apple juice doubles the risk (Yes, DOUBLES the risk, see the headlines!!), that will mean two in a thousand get it. Are we too troubled, will we give up apple juice? Or the other way round, very nasty Condition Y troubles two in a thousand, but expensive pill Q will halve the risk (FANTASTIC, risk halved!!), so only one in a thousand get it.
Before I took a pill every day I would want to know, 1) I am very likely to get the disease, 2) the pill will definitely stop me from getting it, especially if the pill had its own side effects.
Sally

Edit: Tried to correct the above, the more times I try and get the link to Mike Turin working, the more wrong it goes!

 

[ringi]

Remember that it seem every week another condition is shown to be related to insulin resistance........

 

[donnellysdogs]

My Professor Oncologist in a presentation a while ago mentioned Metformin as being preventative for cancer but did not go in to details beyond saying that insulin resistance being so involved with cancer too.