Metformin

[Shellygirl]

I had to stopped taking metformin as it was making me really poorly. My diabetes is now out of control again ... waiting to hear back from my nurse but has anyone any advice on other meds I might be able to take 😬

[parkie13]

See health care professional meanwhile stop eating carbohydrates you can have protein and lots of fats as in butter olive oil coconut oil sour cream.

[Fatbuddy27]

Try not to eat any carbs and stay away from food with high sugar in it. Please drink plenty of water too

[ceejayblue]

Watch your carbs, you don't have to ditch them completely, the Low Carb High Fat diet doesn't work for everyone and certainly isn't suitable for everyone. Have you tried the slow release Metformin? That's the one I'm on and I have no side effects.

Get the Carbs & Cals book by Chris Cheyette (from Amazon and there's an app too) it gives great pictures of foods with portion sizes and the total calories and carbs in them. I aim for around 50g of carbs per meal with 45g per day for snacks and treats if needed.

Also ask your nurse to send you on an educational course. I did the Xperthealth.org.uk one a few years ago and have done a couple of refresher days too. It was really helpful in regard to diet, exercise and medication. You can go on line and refer yourself also I believe. Another brillilant resource is the Diabetes.org.uk website where they also have some great educational tools that will help you understand diabetes more. Although they currently recommend the NICE Eatwell Plate things are changing and Diabetes UK are also looking at lower carb diets.

Reduce your carbs and portion sizes initially and see how things go. Your nurse should be able to support you and answer any questions but make sure you check out the websites above (sometimes diabetes teams aren't quite as up to date as they should be).

Hope that your nurse gives you lots of support and remember if you can get your levels down without taking medication that will be brilliant. Most of the other meds for diabetes mean that you may start to hypo (gliclacide and sitagliptin) so personally its not something I want to take unless its absolutely necessary. I'm on Metformin slow release and with lowering my carbs I'm nearly back into the non-diabetic range.

I hope that you get your levels down soon.

[Gambit62]

how exactly was the metformin making you feel ill?

metformin can inhibit the absorption of B12 from your diet - if you already had a problem absorbing B12 then it could accelerate a deficiency.

checklist of symptoms can be found here

pernicious-anaemia-society....

[Shellygirl in reply to Gambit62]

I had just finished chemo and the symptoms were very debilitating ... I had 20 of the side affects which included nausea constantly and vomiting when I stopped taking metformin on health care professionals advice all of the symptoms disappeared and I was able to return to work ... my diet is healthy but I feel that my cancer could have affected my metabolism just wanted to be more informed about other possible medication when I speak to my nurse Tuesday

[Gambit62 in reply to Shellygirl]

hope you manage to find a suitable alternative.