Metformin drug for diabetes, it can make a long life

The drug metformin is used for patients with type 2 diabetes (diabetes). Now, a new study by a team of experts from Cardiff University in the UK reveals that this drug has surprising properties, namely to prolong the life of a person who is not diabetic.

According to the CDC, about 9.3 percent of the world's population has diabetes. Diabetes is usually associated with old age, obesity, lack of physical activity, and a family history of diabetes.

Disease can be prevented by eating a healthy diet, regular physical activity, and reducing excess body weight. People with diabetes have to make some of these efforts to control their symptoms, but sometimes they still need insulin or oral medication for diabetes.

Overview of the drug metformin

Metformin is a biguanide oral medication for the treatment of diabetes, a condition in which the body cannot use or produce insulin normally. Insulin is a hormone whose job is to convert sugar into energy. Lack of insulin means that sugar will only build up in the blood, not be converted into energy.

Well, this diabetes drug helps control the amount of sugar or glucose levels in your blood. You do this by reducing the amount of glucose absorption from the food you eat and reducing the amount of glucose formed by your liver. These drugs also increase the body's natural response to produce insulin which can help control the amount of sugar in the blood.

Is it true that metformin can make you live long?

A large-scale study, involving more than 180,000 people, compared the survival rates for diabetes patients treated with metformin and the sulfonylurea class of drugs. This study also included people who did not have diabetes.

The study found 78,241 patients treated with metformin, 12,222 patients treated with sulfonylurea, and 90,463 people without diabetes as a comparison or control group. During the study, 7,498 deaths were recorded.

Diabetes is estimated to reduce the life expectancy of sufferers by an average of about eight years. However, the investigators found that users of the metformin drug lived 15 percent longer (equivalent to an additional 3 years) than those in the control group, while patients treated with the sulfonylurea drug had a lower life expectancy than the control group.

Another study conducted by the National Institute of Aging found that mice given the drug metformin lived five percent longer than mice not given metformin.

The mice given metformin were also physically healthier in old age and were less likely to develop cataracts when compared to mice that did not receive metformin.

How can the drug metformin make a long life?

Researchers say that metformin appears to have effects such as reducing cholesterol levels and turning certain genes on or off. The drug metformin also increases antioxidant responses in animals and reduces inflammation, which may contribute to the effect of increasing life expectancy.

I don't have diabetes, can I take metformin so I can live long?

This drug is not recommended for consumption without a doctor's supervision, especially for the long term. Especially those of you who don't have diabetes, this drug will actually provide various side effects that are not good for the body, instead of providing longevity benefits.

Because this drug is responsible for triggering insulin action in the body, you may end up with an insulin overdose, which is when there is too much insulin in the body. This condition is also known as hyperinsulinemia. This condition can increase the risk of inflammation in the body to diseases such as gout and hypertension (high blood pressure).