Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Why then don’t doctors prescribe metformin even more often than they do? Partly it is because some people experience nausea from it. But I know from my own experience of taking metformin up until a year ago that when people start it at small doses and work up to larger ones, you can usually avoid that problem.
I suspect that the reason so many people are still using Avandia is because the manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, markets it so well. Because metformin is an inexpensive generic drug, there’s just not that much money in it for the pharmaceutical companies. And cost is all the more reason for people who are still using Avandia to try to persuade their doctors to switch them to metformin.
Januvia and Byetta are more expensive than metformin. But unlike Avandia, they help us control our blood glucose while not causing cause heart attacks or weight gain. And as I have reported here in several articles, Byetta can help us to lose a lot of weight.
